tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2934219918554432299.post8934822672897664857..comments2023-05-17T01:09:54.656-07:00Comments on The Evangelical Calvinist In Plain Language: Thesis 8, "Evangelical Calvinism endorses a supralapsarian Christology which emphasizes the doctrine of the primacy of ChristBobby Growhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06831009618873548948noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2934219918554432299.post-41820261093148091782012-06-17T23:51:54.891-07:002012-06-17T23:51:54.891-07:00I'd have to read the entire chapter. Last tim...I'd have to read the entire chapter. Last time I figured all this out, I came to an alapsarian position.Steve Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10297044571819912511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2934219918554432299.post-18841604303425137792012-06-17T18:43:48.342-07:002012-06-17T18:43:48.342-07:00Matt,
Well, I appreciate your Lutheran perspectiv...Matt,<br /><br />Well, I appreciate your <i>Lutheran</i> perspective! Obviously the "Adams" theology plays a more prominent role for us than does your position. And I would like to think that even if we have a determinist theology, that is in fact qualified in such a way that it is ultimately only determinist in a personal, trinitarian, and dynamic way that in the end does not emphasize God as an impersonal bully; but instead as someone who determines who and what he does from a scope and life of love and intimacy for the other (in se/ad extra).<br /><br />In the end, I am glad that you appreciate our approach, in general. And I can only say amen to your elaboration of "both first and last". Amen!Bobby Growhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06831009618873548948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2934219918554432299.post-75800247200680175982012-06-17T18:37:59.539-07:002012-06-17T18:37:59.539-07:00Jon,
Thank you, glad it is clear!Jon,<br /><br />Thank you, glad it is clear!Bobby Growhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06831009618873548948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2934219918554432299.post-88475876481252976732012-06-16T14:54:10.388-07:002012-06-16T14:54:10.388-07:00Interesting. This is a good explanation of a part...Interesting. This is a good explanation of a particular supralapsarianism. I like it, even though I can't bring myself to occupy any position in the spectrum of lapsarianism, because I don't believe in the basic framework. I don't have a determinist doctrine of election, let alone a twofold one. And I have never been trained, as a Lutheran, to think of the Christ and Adam problem as determinant of the incarnation. (It's a metaphor, and a very minor one as Christological tropes go!) Which knocks out the two major motivations behind a notion that Christ, as God's ultimate salvation, must relate as the answer to the Fall, and must therefore have been planned in either before or after it. Also, I have no supersessionist tendencies that would tempt me to jump clean over the entire OT history of God's faithfulness. The incarnation is radically continuous with that faithfulness; only the resulting political situations were not. Which God does not respect, any more than God chooses between Calvinists and Lutherans. ;)<br /><br />And yet, if I had to take a position here, it would be supralapsarian.<br /><br />Having just successfully convinced you what kind of anti-Calvinist heretic I am, here's why I have to respect your position. I do not hold that God changes in any way who God is with respect to the creature. God acts in freedom, in new ways across time as the dynamic creation changes, but the actions in time are not essentially different even if they are actually unique. God's relationship to creation is defined by the fact that God is its Creator, who pronounces it good and acts toward it in love. Therefore even if I could be lapsarian in some sense, I'd have to be supralapsarian; to be infra suggests too much that a new action is a new attitude of God, such that God changes who God is with respect to the creature. It implies that God can be unfaithful, that a new action of faithfulness can contradict the old. It is perfectly reasonable to me to say that Christ presents God in revelation as God has always been, and unreasonable to say that God has chosen in Christ to relate differently to creation. God's essential action toward creation is the same in Christ as it is ultimately in all of history, even if God speaks proximate negation in response to the negation that is sin. If the first response to the Fall is the Flood, the second response after Noah is Abraham. And Abraham is the true response of God, the response in which the Creator establishes faith with the creation by reserving a part for the sake of the whole. (Which is why I can't take the whole Christ and Adam thing as definitional.)<br /><br />And so, even though I have to disagree on particulars, I have to agree with your position resoundingly in the general, when you say that you "embrace the idea that who God is for us in Christ is grounded in the pre-temporal reality of his choice to be for us apart from and prior to the 'Fall' or even the creation itself. This theologically coheres with the Evangelical Calvinist conception of God’s life being shaped by who he is as love, and thus both chronologically and logically places his love and his self-determining freedom as the primary mode of God’s life; and thus the basis from which he acts, even in wrath. As such an Evangelical Calvinist may confidently assert that: 'There is no wrath of God that is not first experienced as the love of God for you.'" ... but I have to add that it is experienced in this way both first and last.Matthew Frosthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10232613079168523464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2934219918554432299.post-48986918758559798562012-06-16T12:10:43.933-07:002012-06-16T12:10:43.933-07:00Really appreciate the clarity of this explanation....Really appreciate the clarity of this explanation.Jon Sellersnoreply@blogger.com