Category Archives: Vicarious

Coping with the Fear of Death through the Vicarious Humanity of Jesus

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Death is scary, or at least the thought and the process of death are scary. It goes against the grain of humanity; the grain of humanity after all is the indestructible life of God in Jesus Christ for us (Deus incarnandus), as He is the imago Dei, the εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ, the image of God whose image humanity simpliciter has been both created and recreated in (i.e. the resurrection). To be ripped lastsupperasunder from that life, His life necessarily creates an existential anxiety and response within human beings who live in that state of separation on a day to day basis. But even for those of us who have acknowledged our election in God in Christ, even for those who have actively said yes to God from the Yes and Amen of God for us in Jesus Christ, we still live in these fallen frail bodies that cry out from the futility that has been inflicted upon them. Even though we know that our lives are grounded in Christ’s life, in His resurrected humanity (cf. Rom. 6; Col. 3; etc.) we still live in bodies that are subject to biological death, aging, sickness, disease, and a host of other unnatural things (if we understand that the natural mode for what it means to be human is determined by Christ’s humanity rather than the fallen humanity we continue to inhabit). And so when we are confronted with our mortality it is scary; it is something that humans as a rule don’t dwell upon from day to day, instead we live as if we might never die (or at least that’s how people tacitly seem to function day to day).

But we are going to die, and are dying every day; the reality of death is inescapable. When I was diagnosed with incurable statistically terminal cancer back in 2009 I was scared! I can remember before that though, for most of my life, I had this inexplicable fear of death (and I have been a Christian from a very young age); it was an oppressive fear I would sometimes get when faced with the thought that I could get cancer or something, and then I did! When that happened, the diagnosis, I went into a deep shock.

One of my particular plagues is that I am a deep thinker, and at points my mind can grab onto an idea and run it deeper than it should, or even really can. This was part of my problem from years past, ever before I was diagnosed with cancer; I would take the concept of my personal mortality, and its reality, and try to make some sense out of it at an existential and subjective level, at a felt level. But my mind, obviously, could never make sense of it; it was like entering into a dark abyss and trying to navigate a course through it. The moment I would finally hit the wall, and admit it, this is where heavy fear would come in; it meant I was up against a reality that I could not control, and my ‘flesh’ could not handle that. But it wasn’t just that, it was the thought of trying to conceive of life apart from what I’ve always known life to be, with full extension into space and time in my embodied physical concrete state. I think this reality is the one that scared me the most about death (and when I think about it it still is scary). It simply is not natural for a human being to die, as such it becomes a totally inscrutable thing to try and conceive of and make sense of; it truly is a labyrinth that humans have not been equipped to grasp or navigate through, it truly is a privatio or privation of what makes sense (which is what humanity has been created for; i.e. life with God).

This particular deep fear of mine, and I would imagine this is not my fear alone, was given some perspective as I walked through the valley of shadow of death with my cancer. Did the ‘fear of death’ completely go away? Absolutely not! I have no desire to die or go through the process of death. But what did happen is that that Lord showed up in some very real and tangible ways; in ways that let me and my family know that the armies of heaven were standing with us, and that the Lord of Hosts Himself was ever present. Not in some sort of abstract ‘up there’ kind of way, but in a concrete way that made clear that death was no match for Him! The reality that He is “the resurrection and the life” and that though I may “die, yet I shall live” became very real.

As I started this post out with, the ground and reality of our lives is the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. There is no separate humanity from His, but we find our humanity as we participate from His for us. We look solely to Him as the source of eternal life that springs up from our navels as living waters which cannot be quenched. This is my hope, and I am glad that I have found it in Jesus Christ! We need this hope in our world today! People are dying all around us, even if they try to live and act like they aren’t; they are. They need the hope of Jesus Christ, and the hope of His resurrection life as the ground and basis of their lives. He alone can enter into the abyss of death, put it to death, and rise again in a glorified body, and has! If we are going to have hope and a way through such darkness we need to be in a participatory relationship with Him by the Holy Spirit. If this is the reality we live in and from, ‘in Christ,’ then all hope is ours and the fear of death can no longer hold us captive; we can live truly free in and from the freedom of God’s indestructible Triune life which is indeed graciously for us in Jesus Christ.

25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: 26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? ~John 11.25-26

14 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;15 And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. ~Hebrews 2.14-15

4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: ~Romans 6.4-5

3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.4 When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. ~Colossians 3.3-4

For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. ~II Corinthians 5.1

 

 

 

To Be ‘In Christ’ and the Bigger Picture of Salvation

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In Christ, this little phrase is ubiquitous throughout the writings of St. Paul. If you are a Bible reader this phrase, ‘in Christ,’ will be very familiar to you, and maybe also very encouraging to you, if not somewhat mysterious sounding. Indeed, there is mystery to it (think of John Calvin’s unio mystica), but not so much that we cannot press into it with very fruitful and edifying understanding imagodeitowards our own spiritual formational understanding of what it means to be children of God.

Karl Barth has a very insightful way of understanding what this phrase means, and it is related, of course!, to his unique doctrine of election; it is also related, more generally, to a doctrine of creation and theological-anthropology. Barth is concerned to highlight the reality that Jesus Christ himself is indeed the ‘first-fruits’ of God’s creation, in his vicarious humanity for us (see Col. 1.15ff); he is concerned to show that Jesus Christ is really what it looks like to be a human being, and not concerned in abstraction, but concerned in the concrete reality of His humanity serving as the ground of human life and the imago Dei who humans were originally created in as images of the image (and now recreated in, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ).

This makes Barth’s conception unique, not because his conception of Christ’s vicarious humanity is outside the bounds of historic Christian orthodox teaching, but unique instead because Barth worked within the Reformed tradition. For the Reformed tradition in general to be ‘in Christ’ relative to soteriological thinking has to do with declarative reality for the elect; it has to do with the elect’s positional relationship to God, as God declares them to be forensically justified in and through the penal substitutionary work of Christ. This is different from Barth’s emphasis. Barth (and TF Torrance et. al.), as I noted above, has more to do with ontological reality; that is, what reality, for Barth, stands as the ultimate ground of what it means to be human? Answering this question, for Barth, is to answer the question: what does it mean to be ‘in Christ?’ Barth’s response is this:

“In Christ” means that in him we are reconciled to God, in him we are elect from eternity, in him we are called, in him we are justified and sanctified, in him our sin is carried to the grave, in his resurrection our death is overcome, with him our life is hid with Christ in God, in him everything that has to be done for us has already been done, has previously been removed and put in its place, in him we are children in the Father’s house, just as he is by nature. All that has to be said about us can be said only by describing and explaining our existence in him; not by describing and explaining it as an existence we might have in and for itself…. For by Christ we will never be anything else than just what we are in Christ. And when the Holy Spirit draws and takes us right into the reality of revelation by doing what we cannot do, by opening our eyes and ears and hearts, he does not tell us anything except that we are in Christ by Christ.[1]

Barth’s concern is bigger than simply being concerned with a doctrine of salvation; he is more focused on the big picture of God’s good creation. Yes, sin entered the picture and humanity’s plight went wild in the wilderness of that sin, but sin was not a subversion of God’s plan nor its dictate. In other words, humanity always already had a ground and location apart from sin, and that ground and reality was, like we noted earlier, the humanity of Jesus Christ, whose image humanity was originally created in and recreated ‘in Christ.’

Barth’s conceiving, then, has more to do with ontology and humanity’s orientation relative to God in that ontology. Enclosed within that reality is where a doctrine of salvation and/or soteriology can be premised and built upon, not the other way around (as the Augustinian method has it, the method upon which Reformed-orthodox theology is built).

[1] Karl Barth, CD I/2, 240 cited by George Hunsinger, Evangelical Catholic And Reformed: Doctrinal Essays on Barth and Related Themes (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2015), Loc. 4577, 4583 Kindle.

The Centrality of the Vicarious Humanity of Christ in the Theology of Thomas F. Torrance

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This post will be a kind of an introduction to the theology of Thomas F. Torrance (Scottish theologian spanning from the 20th and 21st centuries). What I am going to share from him is a very succinct offering on how the nation of Israel functions as a centerpiece in mediating Christ to the world for Torrance. Further, this quote will highlight the role that the doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ plays in christcenteredTorrance’s theology; maybe you have never really thought about that particular doctrine. TFT has a very unique place for that doctrine (as does Karl Barth), and it plays such an important role for him that it can and should be seen as the touchstone of his broader hermeneutic. It is for this reason, really, that I want to share this with you, so that you can see how Torrance himself talks about the vicarious humanity of Christ.

So without further ado (since the quote is lengthy), let’s hear from TF Torrance:

By singling out Israel from among the nations for this vicarious service and subjecting it to its long ordeal in history, God adapted Israel to his purpose in such a way as to form within it a womb for the incarnation of his Word and a matrix appropriate forms of thought and speech for the reception of his revelation in a final and definitive form. And so in the fullness of time Jesus was born of Mary, out of the organic correlation of revelation and response in the life and language of man, to be the Word of God heard and expressed in the truth and grace of perfect human response to God the Father. In Jesus, God’s eternal Word graciously humbled himself to participate in finite being, submitting to its limitations and operating within its struggles and structures, thus fulfilling God’s revealing and redeeming purpose of his incarnate life as Man on earth and in history. Such was the life and mission of Jesus Christ the Word made flesh, who mediated between God and man, reconciling them in and through himself, and so established a correlation and correspondence between God’s self-giving and man’s receiving in man and a true  and faithful response could be yielded by man to God. Thus, in effecting his self-communication to man, the Word of God assimilated the hearing and speaking of man to himself as constitutive ingredients of divine revelation. In him God’s articulate self-utterance became speech to man, through the medium of human words, and speaks as man to man, for in him God assumed human speech into union with his own, effecting it as the human expression of the divine Word.

Jesus Christ himself, then, is in the hearing and speaking man included in the Word of God incarnate, and he is that in a final and definitive way. In him we do not have to do simply with the word of God and response of man, brought together in some kind of “Nestorian” dualism, but with the indivisible, all significant middle term, the divinely provided response in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. Once and for all he has become God’s exclusive language to man and he alone must be man’s language to God. Here there operates, as it were, a theological form of Fermat’s principle, in accordance with which the selection of one among other possible paths in the formulation of natural law sets the others aside as unentertainable and actually impossible. In himself God is transcendently free and able to create other possibilities, but the actual incarnation of his eternal Word once and for all in our contingent existence in Jesus Christ excludes every other way to the Father and stamps the vicarious humanity of Christ as the sole norm and law, as well as the sole ground of acceptable human response to the Father. Let us note also that in Jesus Christ word and deed, language and event, were inextricably interwoven in his revealing and redeeming activity. His words were done as well as spoken and his deeds spoke as much as his words, for in him God’s Word has become physical, historical event, while the very fact and existence of Jesus Christ was and is itself Word of God to mankind. Jesus Christ is the one place on earth and in history where full reciprocity between God and man and man and God has been established in such a way that God’s Word and Truth come to us within the undiminished realities of our spatiotemporal existence and we human beings may really hear his Word and meet him face to face. In fact the real text of God’s self-revelation to mankind has once and for all been provided in the humanity of Jesus Christ, the Word of God personally incarnate in the flesh.[1]

Cashing Out

As we read this we see that for Torrance, Jesus Christ is the mediator between God and man (sounds like the Apostle Paul as well, in I Tim. 2.5-6); that Jesus is both the Godward to manward movement, and the manward to Godward movement for all of humanity. That Jesus, the eternal Word of God (Jn. 1.1) is God’s perfect response for us, and He is this for us in an ontic sense; in other words, for Torrance, Jesus in His vicarious humanity is the only real human being, that He is the human par excellence, that He is the imago Dei ‘the image of God’ (Col. 1.15) whose image Adam and Eve were originally created in, and whose image fallen humanity (taken up by Christ in the incarnation) is re-created in, in His resurrection.

The implications of this are manifold; some of those are: 1) Jesus Christ in His vicarious humanity is the ground towards which original creation was always intended; 2) Jesus Christ in His vicarious humanity is God’s grace temporally expressed in objective and personal reality for us; 3) Jesus Christ in His vicarious humanity does for us what we cannot do, and yet He does it for us from within the broken, frail, and defective location that we find ourselves in within our fallen humanity; 4) Jesus Christ by the anointing of the Holy Spirit is ‘born again’ for us, He believes for us, He repents for us, He dies for us, He is buried for us, He resurrects for us, He ascends for us, He intercedes as Priest for us, He is coming again for us to take us to where He is for us currently at the right hand of the Father. There are many more implications we could discuss, but these are good starters. We could have a huge discussion about Torrance’s idea in regard to Jesus assuming our fallen humanity (but remaining without sin of course by the Holy Spirit), but we won’t right now.

Further Reading

Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ.

Thomas F. Torrance edited by Robert T. Walker, Incarnation (Volume One) & Atonement (Volume Two).

And for a critical (he does not have a favorable view of this doctrine in TFT’s theology) and constructive engagement of TFT’s thinking about the vicarious humanity of Christ:

Kevin Chiarot, The Unassumed is the Unhealed: The Humanity of Christ in the Theology of T.F. Torrance.

[1] T.F. Torrance, Reality and Evangelical Theology: A fresh and challenging approach to Christian revelation (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1982), 87-9.

The Importance of the Doctrine of the Vicarious Humanity of Christ for Evangelical Calvinists Made Clear by a Roman Catholic

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The following is going to be a long quote from Paul Molnar (a Roman Catholic) on Torrance’s theology. I want to quote this for those of you, especially, who are more prone towards a “classically” conceived Calvinism, or even a Roman Catholic perspective. In this piece I hope that you will get a feel for Torrance’s insistence upon a thoroughly Christ-centered, Spirit-centered approach that he eleisonbelieves we must take if we are going to ground all of life and reality in life — viz. that we must “ground” all of life in Christ’s life (God’s life), or else we will fall into an array of theological problems. Let’s begin this quote:

What can be learned from Torrance’s emphasis on Christ’s high priestly mediation and his rejection of dualistic epistemology and ontology in understanding the Eucharist in a Trinitarian way? First, God gives himself to us in Jesus Christ; the Gift is identical with the Giver. If our understanding of God’s relation with the world is ‘damaged’ because of a dualistic perspective, then we will assume that God has not actually given himself within created time and space ‘but only something of himself through a created mediation’. A dualistic perspective actually divides the Gift from the Giver. The Catholic tendency focuses on the Gift in its concern for real presence, thought of ‘as inhering in the Eucharist as such’. The Protestant tendency focuses on ourselves as receivers over against the Giver. Torrance insists, against both of these tendencies, that because the Gift is identical with the Giver, God is immediately present in his own being and life through Jesus Christ; this self-giving ‘takes place in the Holy Spirit who is not just an emanation from God but the immediate presence and activity of God in his own divine Being, the Spirit of the Father and the Son . . . this is a real presence of Christ to us’.

Second, with respect to the Eucharistic sacrifice, the Offerer is identical with the Offering: what ‘the Incarnate Son offers to the Father on our behalf is his own human life which he took from us and assumed into unity with his divine life, his self-offering through the eternal Spirit of the Father’. Because the historical offering of his body on the cross is inherently one with himself as the Offerer, it is a once-and-for-all event which remains eternally valid. Understood dualistically, the Offerer and Offering are not finally one; ‘neither is his offering once and for all nor is it completely and sufficiently vicarious’. He becomes only a created intermediary and the offering is seen as a merely human offering so that no real mediation between God and creatures has taken place. Torrance insists that if Christ’s human priesthood is seen within a Nestorian or Apollinarian framework ‘then it becomes only a representative and no longer a vicarious priesthood, for it is no longer unique but only an exemplary form of our own’; thus it is no longer uniquely substitutionary.

This directs us to rely on ourselves ‘to effect our own “Pelagian” mediation with God by being our own priests and by offering to him our own sacrifices’. Even if this is done ‘for Christ’s sake’ and motivated by him, since it is not done ‘with him and in him we have no access through him into the immediate presence of God’. If, however, ‘Jesus Christ is himself both Priest and Victim, Offerer and Offering’ who has effected atoning reconciliation and so for ever ‘unites God and man in his one Person and as such coinheres with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the eternal Trinity, then, we participate in his self-consecration and self-offering to the Father and thus appear with him and in him and through him before the Majesty of God in worship, praise and adoration with no other sacrifice than the sacrifice of Christ Jesus our Mediator and High Priest’.

When the Church worships, praises and adores the Father through Jesus Christ, it is the self-offering and self-consecration of Jesus Christ ‘in our nature ascending to the Father from the Church in which he dwells through the Spirit;’ ‘it is Christ himself who worships, praises and adores the Father in and through his members’ shaping their prayers and conforming them in their communion in his body and blood.

T. F. Torrance’s achievement here is immense. By focusing on ‘God as Man’ rather than upon God in Man’, Torrance embraces a high Christology which concentrates on the humanity of the incarnate Son of God and a view of Eucharistic worship and life ‘in which the primacy is given to the priestly mediation of Jesus Christ’:

It is in fact the eternal life of the incarnate Son in us that ascends to the Father in our worship and prayer through, with and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. While they are our worship and prayer, in as much as we freely and fully participate in the Sonship of Christ and in the whole course of his filial obedience to the Father, they are derived from and rooted in a source beyond themselves, in the economic condenscension and ascension of the Son of God. The movement of worship and prayer . . . is essentially correlative to the movement of the divine love and grace, from the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit.

This leads to a more unified soteirology which views incarnation and atonement as a single continuous movement of God’s redeeming love which accentuates Jesus Christ’s ‘God-manward and his man-Godward activity’. Focusing on Jesus’ vicarious humanity emphasizes that Christ has put himself in our place, experiencing our aliented human condition and healing it. Eucharistic anamnesis is no mere recollection of what Christ has done for us once for all, but a memorial which ‘according to his command’ and ‘through the Spirit is filled with the presence of Christ in the indivisible unity of all his vicarious work and his glorified Person’. . . . [Paul Metzger, ed., Paul Molnar, Trinitarian Soundings in Systematic Theology, 184-86]

The vicarious point is a very important one for TFT, and his “Evangelical Calvinism.” I hope that you’ve found this quote from Molnar enlightening!

[I originally wrote this post in 2009, but thought it would be helpful for some who maybe haven’t yet grasped how important this doctrine as a hermeneutic is for Evangelical Calvinism]

Participatio, James B. Torrance, Alan Torrance, Limited Atonement, and Evangelical Calvinism

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Participatio is the peer reviewed online theological journal of the Thomas F. Torrance Theological Fellowship (I had the honor of being a copy editor and assistant editor for Participatio for a couple volumes), and they just came out with their latest volume. This latest volume is actually an issue dedicated to Thomas Torrance’s brother James B. Torrance, a virtuoso theologian and churchman in his own right. I would like to encourage all of my readers to head over to their website, and give this JBT volume a read. To whet your appetite I would like to offer a quote from the Introductory essay written by James’ son, prof (Dr) Alan Torrance (he is professor of theology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland). Not only do I want to offer this quote as something to pique your interest in the whole of the volume, but I also want to use the material in the quote as a bit of a springboard to talk about something that is core to what Myk Habets and I have called Evangelical Calvinism; as you all know by now, Thomas Torrance, and James Torrance (no less) have provided all kind of impetus and trajectory for the shaping of Evangelical Calvinism (in fact Myk and I stole that language from Thomas’ book Scottish Theology).

The following is a quote from Alan Torrance about an experience that his dad, James Torrance had (early on in his career) as he was asked to share the pulpit with two stalwart theologian-pastors of that day, Martin Lloyd Jones (who JBT served as youth pastor for), and James I. Packer; he found himself in a bit of a quagmire as he staunchly disagreed with his two elders on the issue of the extent of the atonement (both Jones and Packer, of course, affirm the classically held Reformed position that Jesus only died for the elect … more commonly understood in popular parlance as ‘limited atonement’). Here is what Alan Torrance writes of that experience:

Third, there was his “black day.” JB was profoundly involved in evangelical circles and he never ceased to regard himself as an evangelical. He was president of the IVF while studying philosophy in Edinburgh and went on to lead the largest mission ever organised by the Christian Union in Scotland. While in London, he worked alongside Martin Lloyd Jones as his youth pastor. All of this culminated in what he described as possibly the most influential (and distressing) experience of his theological development. He was invited to be a keynote speaker at a massive evangelical conference in London alongside James Packer and Martin Lloyd Jones. At this event, the subject of limited atonement came up — a topic that had been little discussed in post-war evangelical circles. My father found himself outnumbered on the platform when he offered an emphatic rejection of limited atonement, insisting that the God who became human loved and forgave his enemies just as he told us to love and forgive our enemies — seventy times seven, that is, unconditionally. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and those who deny Christ “reject the Lord who bought them.” What distressed him most was the fact that Martin Lloyd Jones supported limited atonement. As he once explained to me, it was this event that led him to devote most of the rest of his career to analysing the elements that had led to the emergence of a doctrine that he, like his missionary father, regarded as a heresy — one that tragically misrepresented the character of God, the integrity of the incarnation and the nature of God’s mission to the world in Jesus Christ. It meant that we could no longer tell people that God loved them or that Christ died for them. Indeed, ultimately, on this understanding, no-one could ever be sure, this side of the eschaton, that they were loved by God or that Christ died for them. [read the full volume here, this quote was taken from Alan Torrance’s Introductory essay to this volume]

What a significant insight into James Torrance’s life and theological development! This is one of the distinguishing factors between us (as Evangelical Calvinists) and classically (so called) Reformed proponents. We believe along with James Torrance (and Thomas) that Jesus Christ in his vicarious humanity and as the ontological ground of all of humanity in the Incarnation assumed the humanity of all people in a very particular way as the man from Nazareth. As such it is impossible for the Evangelical Calvinist to ever conceive of the idea that God only loves some people, some of his creation enough to die for them. Indeed, the logic of our position requires that God loves all of humanity as much as he loves himself, for he has chosen to not be God without us as he elected our humanity for himself in his dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ. You see the dilemma then: if Jesus in the incarnation truly assumed humanity and serves as the ground the condition upon which all of humanity holds together (by the ‘word’ of his power see Hebrews 1), then it would be utterly impossible to even consider the idea that Jesus only died for just a few out of the mass of humanity; this would lead to the idea that there is some sort of rupture within the life of God (if in fact he truly did assume humanity in the incarnation, and he did so because of who he is as Triune love).

James Torrance is an Evangelical Calvinist par excellence; alongside, of course, his bother Thomas Torrance. I hope this insight from James’ son, Alan, helps to make clearer why he is such an important person and thinker for us Evangelical Calvinists.

In “Defense” of ‘Being Worldly’ from Christ as Common Image

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A sometimes commenter here, Steve, just left this comment on my last post (which was a post reflecting once again on the TV mini-series The Walking Dead); Steve commented:

I’d like to open a “can-o’-worms”. This is the second post in which you have praised worldly entertainments and mentioned your involvement with them – most Christians seem to share your enthusiasm (see Christianity Today issue after issue as an example). I respect your heart, intelligence, and biblical understanding, so please consider devoting a blog to giving a reasoned/biblical defense (if that’s the right word – you’re not on trial!) for such involvement. What is/has been the affect of TV, movies, etc. on the Christian life and the strength of the Church? I would like to hear your perspective if you have time.

I responded to Steve in the comment thread to that post, you can read my response by clicking here. You will notice that I somewhat responded with a bit of ‘passion’ if you will, especially in regard to what I perceived as the kind of sentiment that was informing Steve’s comment; if in fact that impulse is there (i.e. a kind of legalistic Fundamentalism). My guess would be that Steve would avoid the whole Fundamentalist label and appeal more directly to the holiness sections of Scripture (fair enough!).

I want to attempt to respond further to Steve’s question, but by way of an indirect route; a route where I will be building toward something of a more direct answer to Steve’s question. I won’t get to a direct answer in this post. Let’s begin.

Steve’s question is a matter of ethics, but we can’t have a proper ethical discussion without a proper theological discussion, and without recognizing the role that certain theological foundations might have, by way of implication, towards having a theologically robust discussion in regard to ethics and Christian holiness. In attempting to get into this, we are going to make a rather abrupt turn, right about … now.

Jesus’ Humanity is the Universal Ground of All Things

Common Grace is often appealed to by Dutch Reformed theologians as the underlying reality that holds all of God’s good creation together; whether ‘secular’ or ‘sacred’. In a sense, according to this view, all things are indeed sacred; all things belong to God, one way or the other (the good and the evil alike see Matt. 5.45). But I am not Dutch Reformed, I am an evangelical Calvinist. As such, since I am evangelical Calvinist, I have another theological grid to appeal to, yet pretty similar to the concept of common grace, just personalized. In other words, I see a universal bond underlying all of reality, and it isn’t a qualitative understanding of grace (like in the Dutch Reformed trad), it has to do with my doctrine of election. The underlying bond, beyond, holding all of reality together, charging reality with its ultimate purpose, is in God’s choice to be for us pro nobis, to not be God without us, but God with us Immanuel. The ultimate bond is found in God’s free un-coerced choice in Christ to ‘elect’ our reprobation, our humanity for himself, and in turn, in a wonderful exchange give all of humanity his elect status as the dearly beloved Son of man for us.

What this view does is erase an us-versus-them mentality. It brings all of humanity together in Christ. In contrast to the classical view of election and reprobation, it does not segregate some of humanity into an elect special status over against a reprobate damned status of humans. It allows us then to see people as people, people whom Christ loves, died for, prays for, and lives for. It implicates the way we engage with the ‘world’, and in fact it calls Christians to be ‘worldly’ Christians (I am reminded of Bonhoeffer here). We live from God’s life in Christ that is worldly in its proper orientation and purposeful direction, towards a beatific vision of God that is full of life and grace; not just for some of creation, but for all! Does this mean that there is an endorsement of people living under Christ’s election for them, to continue to live in ‘sin’ and active rebellion towards God. No! My point is that as an implication of God’s life for all of humanity, all of humanity is redeemable (and redeemed), which includes culture, entertainment, etc. There is still something ‘good’ about creation (eschatologically), not determined by creation, but by its Creator, and in Christ’s recreation/resurrection. If so, there is light and darkness together (as we live in the now and not-yet), and we as Christians are called to discern the light even in the midst of the darkness (not a black or white task, always).

How does any of this kind of rambling on my part get at Steve’s question? I think at a basic level, and for early starters, it means that we shouldn’t think in an us-versus-them when it comes to creation, and creaturely expressions (like art, story-telling, etc.). Instead, I think it calls us to critically engage with the world, not run from it, and even recognize that within the fallen structures and expressions of humanity, behind it yet, is Jesus Christ. Not usually endorsing it, but judging it, reversing it, and ultimately making all things new (we are responsible to live in this complex as the light, and notice light where light is present and darkness where it is present … a complicated task indeed).

The Walking Dead represents an aspect of the creaturely expression that Christ can commandeer and use as witness to himself. Certainly not every aspect of human ingenuity is good (because we still live in the old order of things, even as we live from the in-breaking new), in fact much of it is found ‘wanting’ and condemned by the good of God’s life in Christ. But by God’s grace, there are still elements within all creaturely expression (well much of) that God can use to bear witness to him. And I see some of that, even as I am being entertained (critically as it may be) in the story of The Walking Dead.

This post turned out to be more of a ramble than I wanted. I have some quotes I wanted to share, but I am going to wait and put all of that together at a later time.

Union[s] with Christ According to evangelical Calvinism

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The following is a post I put up at the very inception of this blog The Evangelical Calvinist, when I started it in 2009 (after I had already been blogging elsewhere since 2005). It is an essay that Myk Habets provided for me as a guest post here at the blog. I want to repost this for various reasons, reasons I cannot elaborate on at the moment, but will become apparent in the days to come.

Union with Christ is a very important aspect of the evangelical Calvinist project, so failure to understand how EC is nuancing that can result in a failure to actually offer a critique that is ultimately substantial and satisfying. In light of that then, I want to share this essay by Myk, with hopes of gesturing and making clear how EC conceives of ‘union with Christ’ (unio cum Christo).

T.F. Torrance and Union with Christ in Scottish Theology

Myk Habets

Without exploring the entire history of Scottish theology as read through the eyes of Torrance, we may note a few key influences on his thinking about union with Christ from this context. Torrance believes that ‘Union with Christ probably had a more important place in [Robert] Leighton’s theology than that given to it in the thought of any other Scottish theologian.’ Torrance gives Leighton (1611-1684) praise for not considering union with Christ simply as a ‘judicial union’ but as a ‘real union’ which occupies the centre of the whole redemptive activity mediated through Christ as saving grace. Utilised in this way union with Christ is fundamentally related to both election in Christ and the concept of saving exchange whereby Christ gives to humanity what is his – his righteousness and filial status – and takes to himself what is not his own – our sin and alienation. In James Fraser of Brea (1639-1698) Torrance identifies the same emphasis placed upon union with Christ, ‘It is through union and communion with [Christ], grounded in the “personal union” of his divine and human natures, that we come out of ourselves and partake of his fullness; we approach him empty to find all our salvation in the all-sufficient Lord Jesus.’ Thomas Boston (1676-1732) viewed union with Christ not merely as a legal union but a ‘real and proper union with ‘the whole Christ’ transformed through his death and resurrection, that is, a union of an ontological kind.’ Boston often spoke of this as a ‘mystical union’ in which all the benefits of the covenant of grace are given to the elect. Torrance traces these ideas back directly through Robert Bruce (c1554-1631), John Knox (1505-1572), John Calvin, and many others.

Of special interest to Torrance is H.R. Mackintosh (1870-1936). Torrance shows how Mackintosh in continuity with Calvin and the Scottish Reformed tradition, also made the concept of the unio mystica central to his soteriology. For Mackintosh, the concept of the unio mystica was merely a dogmatic restatement of the biblically rich material on the believer’s participatio Christi found throughout the New Testament, particularly in the ‘in/with Christ’ language of Paul and in the organic relationship between Christ and believers depicted in Johannine theology.

According to Mackintosh, mystical union effects a change in the believer’s identity. Through participating in Christ there is an ‘importation of another’s personality into him; the life, the will of Christ has taken over what once was in sheer antagonism to it, and replaced the power of sin by the forces of a divine life.’ There is a twofold objectivity about union with Christ: on the one hand, there is a ‘Christ-in-you’ relationship, and on the other there is a ‘you-in-Christ’ aspect. The former has to do with Christ being present within the believer as the source of new life, while the latter points to the foundation of this new life as lying outside of the believer in Christ. The union is mediated by the Holy Spirit. Torrance adopts these two aspects of participation in Christ into his own theology.

Mackintosh was attempting to postulate a union with Christ Jesus that went beyond the merely moral or ethical. Like Torrance, Mackintosh had reservations over using the term ‘mystical union’ (despite teaching its substance), but chose to define what he meant by unio mystica more willingly than discard the term altogether. By ‘mystical’ Mackintosh means, according to Redman, ‘that the believer’s relationship to Christ transcends human relationships and human experiences of solidarity and union.’ In place of a mere moral union Mackintosh presents a spiritual union that, while rational, is beyond human comprehension. By ‘union’ Mackintosh does not mean a complete identification in which Christ and the believer become indistinguishable; this would be an essential union, something found in the writings of some of the medieval mystics. Mackintosh was aware of the risk of pantheism and avoided this in his christology. Through participatio Christi, Mackintosh argues, one has communion with God as a human being because it is through union with the incarnate Christ that we come to commune with God. By defining union with Christ in such a way Mackintosh is in basic agreement with Calvin’s three senses of the term – incarnational, mystical, and spiritual. One can clearly see why Torrance is so attracted to Mackintosh’s theology.

In his critique of Mackintosh’s doctrine of the unio mystica Redman comments on his use of language. He argues that Mackintosh should have ceased using the language of mystical union and instead used concepts more akin to the essential logic of his theology, such as spiritual communion. Torrance perhaps agrees with Redman’s critique for he does not use the term ‘mystical union’ either, but retains the basic three-fold sense of union with Christ. Despite differences of terminology, Torrance considers his use of theōsis, both in terminology and in substance, conforms to a consistent theme of Reformed theology going back to Calvin and found particularly within the Scottish tradition.

Within this very specific trajectory of Reformed theology Torrance posits his own soteriology. Torrance articulates the dimensions of union with Christ in various ways but consistently he sees three realities involved. Firstly, there is union with Christ made possible objectively through the homoousion of the incarnate Son (Calvin’s ‘incarnational union’ ). Secondly, there is the hypostatic union, and its significance for the reconciling exchange wrought by Christ in his life, death, and resurrection (Calvin’s unio mystica). Finally, these two aspects of union with Christ are fulfilled or brought to completion in the communion that exists between believers and the triune God (broadly corresponding to Calvin’s ‘spiritual union’).

In a paraphrase of Torrance’s theology, Hunsinger presents three aspects which correlate approximately to our outline. Firstly, reception, a past event which involves what Christ has done for us. This is received by grace through faith alone. Secondly, participation, a present event, in which believers are clothed with Christ’s righteousness through partaking of Christ by virtue of his vicarious humanity. Thirdly, communion, the future or eschatological aspect which equates to eternal life itself in which believers enjoy communion in reciprocal love and knowledge of the triune God.

According to Torrance, union with Christ is not a ‘judicial union’ but a ‘real union’ which lies at the heart of the whole redemptive activity mediated through Christ as an act of saving grace. Torrance uses three words to elaborate what union with Christ means in his essay ‘The Mystery of the Kingdom’: divine purpose (prothesis), mystery (mystērion), and fellowship/communion (koinōnia). This triadic structure reflects the trinitarian action of the triune God: prothesis – the Father, mystērion – the Son, and koinōnia – the Holy Spirit. Prothesis refers to divine election whereby the Father purposed or ‘set forth’ the union of God and humanity in Jesus Christ. Divine e
lection is a free, sovereign decision, a contingent act of God’s love; as such it is neither arbitrary nor necessary. Torrance thus holds to the Reformed doctrine of unconditional election, one which represents a strictly theonomous way of thinking, from a centre in God and not in ourselves. Torrance draws on certain aspects of Barth’s doctrine of election for he equates the incarnation as the counterpart to the doctrine of election so that ‘the incarnation, therefore, may be regarded as the eternal decision or election of God in his Love…’ Calling upon Calvin’s analogy, Torrance insists that ‘Christ himself is the ‘mirror of election,’ for it takes place in him in such a way that he is the Origin and the End, the Agent and the Substance of election…’

The second key expression Torrance uses is mystērion; the term is applied to Christ, and specifically to the mystery of his hypostatic union. In relation to God this means that the consubstantial union of the Trinity upholds the hypostatic union so that God does not merely come in man but as man. In this union of God and man a complete henosis between the two is effected, and they are ‘perfectly at one’.

He had come, Son of God incarnate as son of man, in order to get to grips with the powers of darkness and defeat them, but he had been sent to do that not through the manipulation of social, political or economic power-structures, but by striking beneath them all into the ontological depths of Israel’s existence where man, and Israel representing all mankind, had become estranged from God, and there within those ontological depths of human being to forge a bond of union and communion between man and God in himself which can never be undone.

Hence the hypostatic union is also a ‘reconciling union’ in which estrangement between God and humanity is bridged, conflict is eradicated, and human nature is ‘brought into perfect sanctifying union with divine nature in Jesus Christ.’

This atoning union is not merely external or juridical but actual, and points to the higher reality of communion. Hence Torrance can assert that:

it is not atonement that constitutes the goal and end of that integrated movement of reconciliation but union with God in and through Jesus Christ in whom our human nature is not only saved, healed and renewed but lifted up to participate in the very light, life and love of the Holy Trinity.

Union with Christ must be understood within Torrance’s doctrine of reconciliation to refer to the real participation of believers in the divine nature made possible by the dynamic atoning union of Christ. Torrance contends this is atonement in effect. As a result of the incarnation, humanity is united to divinity in the hypostatic union so that:

In the Church of Christ all who are redeemed through the atoning union embodied in him are made to share in his resurrection and are incorporated into Christ by the power of his Holy Spirit as living members of his Body…Thus it may be said that the ‘objective’ union which we have with Christ through his incarnational assumption of our humanity into himself is ‘subjectively’ actualised in us through his indwelling Spirit, ‘we in Christ’ and ‘Christ in us’ thus complementing and interpenetrating each other.

In addition to the hypostatic union Torrance applies the concept of mystērion to the mystery of the one-and-the-many, or Christ and his body the church. Torrance thus understands union with Christ to be largely corporate in nature but applicable to each individual member of his body who is ingrafted into Christ by Baptism and continue to live in union with him as they feed upon his body and blood in Holy Communion. Understanding the church as the body of Christ is thus another way of asserting an ontological union between the community of believers and Christ the Head.

The third term Torrance uses is koinōnia, and it too has a double reference. First, vertically, it represents our participation through the Spirit in the mystery of Christ’s union with us. Second, horizontally, it is applied to our fellowship or communion with one another in the body of Christ. At the intersection of the vertical and horizontal dimensions of koinōnia is the church, the community of believers united to Christ, who is himself united to humanity through the incarnation. Torrance asserts that ‘in and through koinonia the divine prothesis enshrining the eternal mysterion embodies itself horizontally in a community of those who are one with God through the reconciliation of Christ.’ It is this theology of union with Christ by means of fellowship or participation in God which links Torrance’s doctrines of soteriology and ecclesiology; both are aspects of his christology, as we shall see in more detail in the next chapter.

In summarising Torrance’s use of these three concepts Lee’s study helpfully concludes that ‘the cause (causa) of ‘union with Christ’ is prothesis, the election of God. Its substance (materia) is mysterion, the hypostatic union in Jesus Christ, and its fulfilment (effectus) is koinonia, the communion of the Holy Spirit.’ This outline focuses on the trinitarian foundation inherent throughout Torrance’s work which reminds readers not to see the work of reconciliation as exclusively that of the Son, or the Son and the Spirit, but as the work of the triune God.

The Five Points of Calvinism Restated for Evangelical Calvinism in a Christ Concentrated Key

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I have done this before, but let me reframe the so called 5 Points of Calvinism within an Evangelical Calvinist way of thinking of things:

  1. T otal Depravity – He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him. II Corinthians 5.21
  2. crucifiedU nconditional Election – By his poverty we have become rich. II Corinthians 8.9
  3. L imited Atonement – We have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer us who lives, but Christ who lives in us, and the life which we now live in the flesh, we live by the faith of the Son of God who loves us and give himself for us. Galatians 2.20
  4. I rresistible Grace – In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God …. and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1.1;14
  5. P erseverance of the Saint – Therefore He is able also to save [i]forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. Hebrews 7.25

What needs to be underscored is how a doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ grounds and conditions this redressing of the so called 5 Points of Calvinism. At every turn the humanity of Christ for us is the referent in regard to this great salvation that we participate in by the vicarious faith of the Son of God. It is He, as our mediator, between God and man (humanity), that blazed the holy trail for us; we simply echo his yes to the Father for us, out of his yes for us by the Holy Spirit. If you are wondering what the vicarious humanity of Christ is all about, then check out this list that Christian Kettler has put together in his published PhD dissertation on the topic:

1. Christology includes the “double movement” of the way of God to humanity and the way of humanity to God, contra Docetism and Ebionitism. The “Creator Son,” “the Word of God,” is identical with Jesus of Nazareth (Athanasius). Thus, the radical significance of Christology is “the coming of God himself into the universe he created.”

2. God coming as a human being, not just in a human being removes all possibility of a “deistic disjunction” between God and creation. The possibility of the interaction of the living God with space and time is opened up.

3. The vicarious humanity of Christ is the heartbeat of salvation history. From the circumcision of Abraham to the Incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, the interaction of the humanity of Christ with creaturely form provides a basis for the knowledge of God and the reconciliation of humanity within the structures of space and time.

4. However, the reality of the humanity of Christ, as the reality of the “Creator Son,” “the Word made flesh,” is not limited to the structures of space and time. This is what is expressed in the Reformed doctrine of the so-called extra Calvinisticum, the significance of the vicarious humanity of the risen and exalted Christ.

5. The reality of the vicarious humanity of Christ stresses the inability of fallen humanity to know and respond to God. The Lutheran emphasis on finitum capax infinitipaved the way for the nineteenth century doctrine of the religious capacity of the human spirit.

6. This integration of the divine and creaturely provides the basis for the mediatorial ministry of Christ.

7. The divine Logos in human flesh, as the vicarious humanity of Christ, communicates the very life of God in humanity (Campbell). Salvation is based on the communication of this life (Irenaeus, Athanasius). In this way, Christology is dynamically related to soteriology. In effect, Christ becomes the “very matter and substance of salvation.”

8. The work of the vicarious humanity of Christ is based on the twin moments in salvation of substitution/representation and incorporation. Christ not only takes our place, and becomes our representative, thereby creating a new humanity (substitution/representation), but also incorporates us into this new humanity (incorporation). Our actions become his actions. Our life becomes his life, the life of God.

9. The “correlation and correspondence” produced by the vicarious humanity of Christ provides an “inner determination” of life. There is a “reciprocity” of being which creates “wholeness” and “integrity” and presents a “contradiction” to the forces of darkness. [Christian D. Kettler, The Vicarious Humanity of Christ, 127-28]

In this key of things, theologically, Jesus in his vicarious humanity became us, he became totally depraved (but remained without sin through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit) for us; he in his vicarious humanity graciously and freely chose our reprobate humanity, and thus his vicarious humanity can be understood to be unconditionally elect; it is he in his vicarious humanity that the atonement is limited to, for there is no other real humanity but his alone for us; it is his choice to be for us, in his vicarious humanity that is irresistible, given the fact that he made this choice over our heads (as it were) without our approval or not, and he invaded our humanity with his making all things right in his resurrected and ascended humanity for us; and it is he who as our high priest, mediates for us through his priestly an intercessory work at the right hand of the Father that ensures for us that we truly are his for all eternity, and thus his humanity in the Incarnation and resurrection will always persevere for us before the Father, and it is through his humanity that we live and move and have our being, now and not yet.

I hope you can see better now how evangelical Calvinism’s redressing of the so called 5 points of Calvinism offers an exciting and edifying way forward that is genuinely Christ concentrated, Christ conditioned, such that all things start from his life for us to the glory of the Father.

Starting Salvation With Jesus, and Ending Salvation With Jesus: From the Patristics to Barth and Torrance

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Donald Fairbairn, Patristics theologian par excellence, has written a rich and very accessible book entitled Life In The Trinity: An Introduction To Theology With The Help Of The Church Fathers. I would highly eleisonrecommend this book to you, and even recommend it as a devotional type of book if you are interested in doing your devotions with the Trinity.

I have just recently finished reading through a section of the book that is discussing Christian salvation, and in particular, God’s action and human action in the realm of salvation. After sketching the common dilemma that has obtained in the Western branch of the Protestant church (i.e. Calvinism V Arminianism, e.g. emphasis on God’s choice or humanity’s choice in salvation – to be a bit reductionistic) in regard to salvation, Fairbairn offers an alternative that he has gleaned from his years spent with the Church Fathers. Here is what he has written:

To spell this idea out a bit more, I suggest that in our discussion of election/predestination, we should not place such priority on God’s choosing particular people that we imply he has nothing to do with those he will not ultimately save. Conversely, I suggest that we not place such priority on God’s universal desire to save that we imply that he deals exactly equally with everyone and all differences between people are due to their own responses to God (responses that God foreknows). Rather, I suggest that we place the priority on God’s eternal decision to honor his own relationship with his beloved Son and his Spirit by bringing people into that relationship. God’s eternal will was, first and foremost, a will to accomplish human redemption through the person and work of his Son and his Spirit. That eternal will included within its determination all that God ordained to happen, all that he knew would happen, all that both he and we would do. This means that when a person begins to trust in Christ or a believer prays for the salvation of others or someone proclaims the gospel, these people are privileged to share in what God has from all eternity determined that he would do. We are not merely the means by which he achieves his purpose, we are somehow privileged to be a part of the determination of that purpose, the establishment of the will of God in connection with his Son Jesus Christ. Such a way of looking at the relation between election and human action may help to ease the logjam the Western discussions of this issue have created for a millennium and a half. But even if it does not succeed in doing that, such a way of looking at the issue does place the emphasis where Scripture indicates it should lie–not on a seemingly arbitrary decree or on allegedly independent, free human action but instead on Christ the beloved Son of the Father, the one in whom we are chosen to participate.[1]

This will be too vague of an alternative for the scholastically Reformed mind among us, or even the evangelical mind. We want all of our theological “i’s” dotted and “t’s” crossed a certain way. But if a person is willing to live with some revelational dialectical tension, then what Fairbairn suggests from his reflection on the writings of the Fathers, will be resonant.

Interestingly, Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance, both Western theologians (Barth is even considered ‘scholastic’ by many) would affirm Fairbairn’s suggestion; but with further nuance and development. George Hunsinger writes on Barth, this:

[…] To say that Jesus Christ is the “pioneer of faith” (Heb. 12:2), Barth suggests, is not to say that his faith is merely the exemplar of ours, but that it is the vicarious ground and source of our faith. “There is vicarious faith,” writes Barth, “… only in the form of the faith which Jesus Christ established for us all as the archegos tes pisteos (Heb. 12:2), who empowers us for our own faith, and summons us to it, even as he stands there in our stead with his faith. Through his faith, we are not only moved but liberated to believe for ourselves” (IV/4, 186). Our faith may be said to exist “as a predicate” of his in the sense that whatever is real and true “in this Subject” is the foundation for whatever is correspondingly real and true in us (cf. II/2, 539). In short, our subjective apprehension of God does not exist independently, but only insofar as its source, mediation, and ground are found in the humanity of Jesus Christ.[2]

Barth represents someone who works, as a theologian, within the domain offered by the Patristics and noticed by Fairbairn where he makes his ‘suggestions’ from. If the focal point of salvation starts with God’s Triune life, and his Revealed life in the Son, Jesus Christ, I conclude that it will sound something like Fairbairn’s suggestions and proceed something like Barth’s (as described by Hunsinger) locution.

Passion

Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the Father except through him! This is where the heart of God is at for us, in the Son. Salvation constructs that don’t start and end here, in the Alpha & Omega of God, in my view, are not worth their salt in theological discussion. Salvation constructs that orbit around a psychologized self, or work from the bottom up (i.e. start in a frame that is concerned about ‘my salvation’ and how it relates to God’s salvation) are not commendable. Wherever we start the discussion, is where we will end up. If we start talking about salvation in Christ, then we will end in Christ; if we start the discussion with ourselves, we will end up with ourselves.

 

 

[1] Donald Fairbairn, Life in the Trinity: An Introduction to Theology with the Help of the Church Fathers (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009), 197-98.

[2] George Hunsinger, How To Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology, 96, Nook.

The Vicarious Faith Ethic

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This post is intended to highlight something of a lacuna in my own research and personal development over the last many years; that is in the discipline of Christian ethics. I have somewhat been neglecting this area, as far as my readings go, and so I have been reliant upon my exposure to ethics (as a discipline) way back in seminary (I graduated in 2003), and back into undergrad (I graduated in 2001). When I left seminary I would have told you I followed what my mentor and now former prof Ron Frost called Faith Ethics which was based upon Frost’s constructive development of Affective Theology, and attendant anthropology. Faith ethics repudiates decision-based or cognitivist based constructs of ethics, it repudiates natural-law based ethics, and instead operates more contextually as it places its ethical activity in relation to Christ and the other, and before self. This verse from Romans 14 was pivotal for the foundation of ‘Faith Ethics’:

 23 But those who have doubts are condemned if they eat, because they do not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faithis sin. Romans 14:23

So the ground of this ethic sought to place itself within the relationship that inheres between the human agent and the divine agent; in contrast to naturalist or cognitivist based ethics. The ‘faith ethic’ was more concerned with the reception of the new heart of the New Covenant (see II Cor. 3), and as such operated out of a mode that emphasized union with Christ theology; a participationist relation between the human agent and God. And so moral values, in a faith ethic were not something intrinsically available to human agents by way of reflection upon nature (as if nature is imbued with the ‘moral goods’), or based upon decision-making actions determined by the virtual and moral self (so conceived); but for the faith ethic, ethics are something that are extrinsic to the human agent, and thus fully dependent upon what is revealed. It is within a community who as corollary finds its reality from what is revealed (the Christian church) wherein this kind of faith ethic can be cultivated within the drama of everyday life.

That said, I think a faith ethic, while commendable, and something that I would claim to adhere to needs some further qualification. I agree that an ethical construct ought to be understood as something that is extrinsic, revelationally-based, etc.; but I think the faith ethic needs a little more in terms of its theo-anthropology, and getting passed what Thomas Torrance has called the Latin Heresy. In other words, instead of positing a dualism between God and humanity, the faith ethic needs to be grounded in a theological anthropology that operates from the center of God’s revealed life in Jesus Christ. And so a properly construed ‘faith ethic’ would seek to find its ground and basis for conceiving of moral values in its lively connection, by the Holy Spirit, to Jesus Christ as Lord. So the church does not become the ground of determining moral value, but the church’s Lord does; the church only participates in and from the morality it gains by being in relationship with the only one who is good, who is God.

With the aforementioned noted, how would I describe my tentative ethical position (tentative, because like I said, this represents somewhat of a lacuna for me, which is in the process of being de-lacunaized)? I would integrate the faith ethic into my understanding, but with a desire to better and more theologically ground that in a Christ-concentration that emphasizes that the moral self can be found nowhere else but in union with the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. What best proximates this for me, with the options before me, is what Donald Bloesch calls Evangelical Contextualism (which is based in Divine Command Theory, but more of a mixed deontological theory qualified by a proper eschatological provenance–which I would have to try and explain later). Here is how Bloesch describes this position, and who he identifies with this position:

[E]vangelical contexualism [is] associated in our time with such luminaries as Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Helmut Thielicke, and Jacques Ellul. It has an unmistakable continuity with the Reformation, Pietism, and Puritanism….

This position is evangelical because it is based on the gospel and the law illumined by the gospel. It is biblical because the gospel and the law comprise the central content of Holy Scripture, the primary source of our knowledge of divine revelation. It is contextual because the ethical decision is made in the context of the fellowship of faith (koinonia), and it is related to the context of personal and social need. Its method is from the gospel through the church to the cultural situation.

The indefeasible criterion in this type of ethics is not the divine ordering in nature (as in Gustafson), nor the law of love (as in Reinhold Niebuhr), nor simply the spirit of love (as in the older liberalism), nor love with reason (as in situationalism). Instead, it is the divine commandment, which unites love and truth. This commandment also signifies the union of law and gospel, the divine imperative and the divine promise.

Our ultimate appeal is not to general principles (as in natural law ethics) but to the personal address of God as we hear this in and through the gospel proclamation. Karl Barth put it well: “General moral truths … do not have … no matter what their derivation, the force of the true command, for in them the decisive choice between concrete possibilities is still according to what seems best to us.” Nevertheless, we acknowledge the normative role of the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount, which give us some indication of the will of God for our particular period in history.

Our norm is derived neither from the cultural and historical situation nor from common human experience but from the living Word of God, Jesus Christ. It is therefore an extrinsic norm, one that transcends human subjectivity as well as cultural relativity. It is an absolute norm, but it is made available to us through the historical witness that constitutes Holy Scripture.

Although it is absolute in origin, it is concrete and specific in its thrust. It is always related to the actual situation in which we find ourselves. Its focus is never on an abstract ideal but always on the concrete good.

For the evangelical contextualist, the way of the cross is most adequately represented by agape rather than by eros or philia (brotherly love). Agape involves the denial of the self for the good of the neighbor. It ipso facto excludes both self-aggrandizement (as in power ethics) and self-sanctification (as in mysticism). The emphasis is on sacrificial service rather than mutual support (as is fraternalism). The focus is on vicarious identification rather than paternalistic benevolence (as in humanitarianism). The religion of the cross is characterized not by securing of the self from harm but by the forgetting of the self in love.[1]

Bloesch captures, pretty well, where I would situate myself[2]; although I would like to nuance it from an even more direct perspective that grounds its reality as an ethical option within a theological specter. In other words, I think, as I already underscored, that a theology of union with Christ, and an anthropology governed by the vicarious humanity of Christ within a participationist frame are very important towards placing the sources of this ethical theory within the realm of God’s Triune life and relationship. And this then eludes the problems presented by both natural-law and cognivitist theories, respectively, as moral values are not understood to be things derivable from nature (simpliciter), nor a humanity in abstraction (cognivitist) from its ground in Jesus Christ’s vicarious humanity. Vicarious faith, then, is what shapes the moral values within an evangelical contexutalist model, and avers the temptation of immanentizing ethics in an absolute nature (creation), or absolute self; but instead finds its shape from the absolute life of God revealed and continuously exegeted for us (Jn. 1.18), by the Holy Spirit (Jn. 14–17). And we as moral agents in this scheme, are continuously and being transformed from glory to glory (II Cor. 3.18), as we fellowship (koinonia) with God, and with each other in holy communion.

In closing, what a qualified evangelical contextualist ethical construct will not do (because it is not cognivitist based) is reduce ethics to a cluster of culturally induced ethical dilemmas (i.e. abortion, homosexuality, death penalty, etc.); nor will it reduce ethics to a universally accessible set of ethical norms (because it is not naturalist). What it will do is recognize that there are no genuine ethics unless they are provided for by God’s holy life, given to us in the cruciform shape of God’s life in Christ, and known by us, by the Spirit, by the faith of God in Jesus Christ. From within this frame we will act as moral agents, moment by moment, as we live from God’s life given to us, moment by moment by the grace of God in Jesus Christ.[3]

 

 

[1]Donald G. Bloesch, “Evangelical Contextualism,” in Readings In Christian Ethics, Volume 1: Theory and Method, eds. David K. Clark and Robert V. Rakestraw (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994), 157-58.

[2] I have read a forthcoming essay by Myk Habets that fits with my consideration very well; Myk places ethical thinking within the realm of theosis.

[3] I am obviously assuming a theological realist positionwhich then by mutual implication provides a morally realist trajectory for the ethical agents considered.

As far as sources for ethical consideration, Holy Scripture has been ear-marked, but only within a proper understanding of Scripture’s ontology within a properly construed Christian Dogmatic ordering of things which is given its best rendering, in my opinion, by John Webster in his book The Domain Of The Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (Great Britain: T&T Clark, A Continuum Imprint, 2012). Here is an example:

Countering the hegemony of pure nature in bibliology and heremeutics requires appeal to the Christian doctrine of God, and thus of God’s providential ordering of human speech and reason. Within the divine economy, the value of the natural properties of texts, and of the skills and operations of readers, does not consist in their self-sufficiency but in their appointment as creaturely auxiliaries through which God administers healing to wasted and ignorant sinners. What more may be said of this economy of revelation and redemption of which Scripture is a function? (p. 6)