Knowledge of God for Thomas Torrance

Here is a video I did about 2 years ago (forgive my haircut, this is actually just after I finished my chemo treatments, so my hair is growing back :-). Anyway, I am interacting with Paul Molnar's book Thomas F. Torrance: The Trinitarian Theologian. I think the material covered in this video is apropos towards providing more insight into some of the issues that seem to be arising for Roger Olson as he interacts with our book. Furthermore, the material covered in this video is what I develop further in my personal chapter in our book.

So knowledge of God can only come through knowledge of God as it is Self-revealed and determined to be in Jesus Christ (cf. Jn. 1:18). Knowledge of God can only be regulated by his own Self-revelation, and thus other modes for providing grammar and content for knowledge of God cannot be entertained (such as using philosophical categories like appealing to Aristotle etc. appeal to).

A Christ-Conditioned Interpretation of Scripture, As Literature

Of course in light of my last post; scripture is literature, and so I should be clear that I am not in anyway suggesting a rejection of that more than obvious reality. Instead, that there is an ontology of Scripture that flows from within a properly construed concept of God's triune life and Self-revelation of himself in Jesus Christ. It is this framework that ought to tense the way we approach scripture as the literature that it is, and appreciate that the singular meaning of scripture is centered in Jesus Christ and the God revealed in and through Jesus Christ (Triune). As Thomas Torrance has said, this is scriptures 'depth dimension', and one that framing and understanding scripture in the way that Ernst Käsemann cannot appreciate. Scripture is about Jesus, and I think it is about Jesus in an intensively, principial way; meaning that Jesus and God's Triune life is what holds all of scripture together. If this is the case, and I think it is, then this ought to impinge on the way we interpret scripture (as it did for Karl Barth for example in his Commentary on Romans). Here is how David Gibson describes Barth's approach to biblical interpretation, and in particular, his interpretation of Romans 9--11 as a case study:

Karl Barth

 A good example can be found in the way Barth approaches Romans 9–11. When his thesis of biblical text as witness to revelation is read in conjunction with his understanding of Jesus Christ as the object of that witness, and with his understanding of Jesus Christ as therefore the electing God and the elected man, then a particular set of theological lenses for reading Romans 9–11 come into view. Barth’s approach is well stated by Douglas Sharp:

[Barth's] exegesis [of Rom. 9--11] presupposes the identity of revelation/incarnation and election, and can be seen to consist in the interpretation of an objective reality (Israel and the Church) which he finds imaged in the text. The truly significant element of the exegesis is the fact that it is not so much the intepretation of biblical revelation as it is an interpretation of a medium which is itself an interpretation of revelation. This is to say that the exegesis of Romans 9–11 is an interpretation of an interpretation. Jesus Christ is the revelation, and Barth views the existence of the community as an interpretation of that revelation. Thus Barth interprets the community in its two forms in terms of the primary reality of Jesus Christ’s election.

This argument corresponds with what we discovered in reading Barth’s exegesis of Romans 9–11. The two forms of the community, Israel and the church, were read by Barth as witnesses to the two-fold determination of Jesus Christ for both judgment and mercy; here Christology intensively occupies the horizon of interpretation. We may recall how different this is to Calvin’s approach. Calvin’s covenant hermeneutic for Romans 9–11 (arguably the most salient feature of his exegesis) is influenced by Christology. But his hermeneutic is not christologically intensive, because he does not see Christology as the meaning of certain verses where Christ himself is not mentioned or as providing the typological structures for Israel and the church within the details of the text.

It is now clear that Barth’s reading of the Bible displays a heremeneutical paradigm that is created not just by Barth’s doctrine of election as it has emerged out of his reading of the Johannine Prologue, but just as closely by a tightly related set of well developed and consistently applied hermeneutical convictions that have operated at least as far back as CD I/2. As Barth comes to provide extended exegesis of biblical texts as part of his doctrine of election, his understanding of interpretive freedom and responsibility ensures that his exegesis of election will be carried out in a manner that may be described as intensively christocentric. This is because his account of the required subordination of the biblical interpreter to the witness of revelation is itself intensively christocentric. [David Gibson, Reading The Decree: Exegesis, Election, and Christology in Calvin and Barth, (London: T&T Clark, A Continuum imprint, 2009), 190-91]

I am actually not totally sure I am altogether comfortable with interpreting scripture the way Barth does, in toto, but I am quite close. I see all of the OT, for example, prefiguring the preincarnate Christ; and then the OT given it's proper orientation in its fulfillment in and through Jesus Christ's actual incarnation (and all the attendant realities associated with that). Nevertheless, in gist, I am heading more in the direction of Barth, than what Gibson describe's of Calvin's approach as soteriological-extensive (which we can get more into later); if possible, I might be somewhere in between Barth and Calvin. Which really, that's right about where T.F. Torrance was at.

PS. Just so you all know, if not apparent, I often work through my thinking right here at the blog, in the open. So, a post like this represents that mode of my blogging existence; I'm in process here.

Knowledge of God From John Knox through Thomas Torrance

I am on a bit of a posting blitz, but here is a post I wrote quite some time ago that I really like; enjoy:

In commenting on Evangelical Calvinist, John Knox’s understanding of God; Thomas Torrance offers a profound statement of what all of this entails:

Young, Thomas Torrance

[K]nowledge of the one and only God, as far as it is true knowledge, enshrines the mystery of God, and so is confessed and acknowledged as God eternal, infinite, immeasurable, incomprehensible, omniscient, invisible. This God whom we know cannot be fitted into our knowledge. God cannot be commanded by our reasons — cannot be comprehended by our minds. It is certainly to our minds that God reveals himself but only in such a way that he remains eternal, infinite, incomprehensible, etc. Knowledge of God cannot be put into precise words. God’s majesty defies definition or description — all theological language is apocalyptic in so far as it is genuine. That is true above all of the Trinity — knowledge of this God is infinitely open. Thus in faith the human reason is opened wide to the infinite and incomprehensible being and majesty of God as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. [Thomas F. Torrance, Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell, (T&T Clark: Edinburgh, 1996), 6 -- A review copy provided graciously by T&T Clark]

You will quickly notice which direction Torrance believes knowledge of God comes from; not from our epistemological schemas, but from God to us through Christ and into the Triune life of God himself. This approach to knowing God runs against the construing God from thinking of him through his works in creation or something. Or trying to find analogies in creation, or in humanity that in latent ways allow us to think and speak about God. No! Knowledge of God for Torrance, and as he would contend, John Knox, is a gift from God in Christ for us through the Spirit. There is never one-to-one correspondence between our theological language and God’s being. Instead, theological language is something that is constantly given to us anew as God continues to break in on our world, on our conceptions; and re-orders and re-orientates our grammar in a way that puts to death anything we had conceived of prior to this encounter in Christ. He provides a ground for knowing him that is completely out of this world (but decidedly and concretely in this world); the God-Man. He presents us with concepts that breaks up and re-orders our imaginations in ways that place us upon the precipice of heaven’s throne; Ezekiel knows what I’m talking about.
Just a little reflection . . .

Trinity: Tom McCall Critiques Zizoulas as Tom Torrance Critiques the Cappadocians

In Tom McCall's critique of Eastern Orthodox and Trinitarian theologian, John Zizoulas; McCall offers a proposal that is highly similar (if not self-same) with that of Thomas F. Torrance's. McCall is appreciative of Zizoulas' emphasis on Being-As-Communion as definitive for how we should conceive of the divine Monarchia or God-head, but like Torrance, contra the Cappadocians; McCall finds concern with Zizoulas' retrieval, as it were of the Cappadocian grounding of the God-head in the Person's, or Person (the Father), instead of the Being of God (ousia) which is given shape by the mutual in-dwelling, subject-in-being kind of onto-relating (as Torrance calls it) that as Torrance has highlighted someone like Epiphanius or Athanasius has offered in the Patristic Tradition. McCall sketches, and develops what is called the Sovereign Aseity Conviction, which is the belief that God alone gives himself his own being. McCall is worried that when this reality is correlated with Zizoulas' belief that 'Being-As-Communion' is understood as definitive for God, and further, when the conception of Sovereign Aseity is grounded in the Person of the Father, rather than an actual Being that is indeed in communion; that we end up with a non sequitur (and I share his worry). For if the definition of God-ness is indeed given primary shape by BAC, then to posit (as Zizoulas does) that there is principle of God-ness, such as Father, prior to the possibility for genuine communion to inhere; then we end up with a non-starting conception of God-ness if this conception is going to be defined by being-in-communion. [There is further discussion needed to parse this out further, and McCall provides it; discussion on person-hood in the Monarchia etc. But I am not going to provide that here, at the moment---maybe in the comments if someone wants. I am highlighting McCall's critique of Zizoulas here because it sounds very very similar to Thomas Torrance's critique of the Cappadocians in his book Trinitarian Faith]. Here is McCall on Zizoulas, and McCall's counter-proposal to Zizoulas:

[T]he first adjustment [to Zizoulas' view] is this: the SAC [Sovereign Aseity Conviction] must be seen as a property of the triune God rather than as a property of the Father alone. As we have seen, to predicate the SAC of the Father alone is to raise several concerns, not least of which is whether this means that the Father is of a different essence than is the Son or Spirit. To assert that the Father alone is unthrown and a se is to say that the Father has different essential properties than does the Son or Spirit --- properties that are not either accidental properties (after all, this seems to be what it means to be the Father) or "onto-relational" properties. But to predicate the SAC of the Trinity alleviates this problem; it makes the SAC an essential property of divinity, one that is had by each and all of the divine persons. Furthermore, the ascription of the SAC to God is the way the biblical writers think of it (e.g., Exod. 3:14). [Thomas H. McCall, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism?, 207]

I agree with McCall's call for an adjustment relative to Zizoulas' conceiving of things; just as I agree with Thomas Torrance's call for a dependence on Athanasius, Epiphanius, Didymus the Blind, et alia in contrast to the Cappadocians. A contrast that sees the importance of grounding God's being-in-communion in the Sovereign-Aseity of all the Persons mutual-indwellment of the other; instead of annexing this to the person of the Father alone (which would be contradictory because of prior conflict given the defined premises).

Anyway, besides the important theology being noted here; it makes me wonder how much McCall has depended on Thomas Torrance's proposal, contra the Cappadocians, for his (McCall's) own proposal contra Zizoulas? Let me close with a quote from Torrance, quoting Epiphanius, in Torrance's 'Trinitarian Faith':

[G]od is one, the Father in the Son, the Son in the Father with the Holy Spirit . . . true enhypostatic Father, and true enhypostatic Son, and true enhypostatic Holy Spirit, three Persons, one Godhead, one being, one glory, one God. In thinking of God you conceive of the Trinity, but without confusing in your mind the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father is the Father, the Son is the Son, the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit, but there is no deviation in the Trinity from oneness and identity. (Epiphanius, “Anc., 10,” cited by T. F. Torrance, “The Trinitarian Faith,” 234-35)

Thinking Like a Christian: Obedience Unto Death

Here is Alan Torrance (nephew of Thomas Torrance and son of James Torrance) developing Barth's understanding, basically, of what Thomas Torrance has called Theological Science (which is developed further by Torrance in his so called 'epistemological inversion'); which has to do with how we know things or persons (in brief). Here is Alan Torrance:

[T]his requires a reassessment of the question of truthfulness such that it is conceived neither in terms of successful, objective reference projecting across the gulf between the human and the divine (i.e. in terms of a 'correspondence theory of truth'), nor in terms of internal consistency within a system of propositions or ideas (i.e. in terms of a 'coherence theory of truth'), but in terms of what is customarily assumed to be a quite foreign category, one that is subjective and ethical, namely obedience --- the obedience of thought and of mind. Theological truthfulness is a form of intellectual obedience before the Reality of God. Here, Barth comes close to interpreting truth in 'performative' terms. However, the truth-performance connection here is not bound up with any autonomous human performance, but with the divine speech-act performed in and through the ambiguous event of God's Self-veiling/unveiling in the human context. Truthfulness is ultimately to be found, therefore, in and through the divine event of Self-communication in the Church, where the obedience of the human hearer is included within the divine speech-act and where God is 'heard', and therefore conceived, in a creative divine act of the reconciliation of the human mind to himself. [Alan Torrance, Persons In Communion: Trinitarian Description And Human Participation, 14]

Obedience Unto Death

Once again, as I have frequently noted here, the engagement of the reality of God (coram Deo) cannot be detached from God's own Self-givenness in his Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. This calls for a certain posture and attitude toward the reality of God that is participatory, personal, and present in and from the life of God mediated to and for us in the humanity of Christ (I Timothy 2:5,6). The reality of God is outside of us, and comes apocalyptically to us in the person of Christ (along with the Holy Spirit). We only hear from God, moment by moment, through his Word for us; and this then becomes the 'place' wherein dogmatic knowledge and formulation comes to the fore. That is, through a loving intimate relationship with God in Christ by the Spirit. We are not Lord, he is; and this must shape the way we speak and act theologically. Here is how A. Torrance follows his development of Barth here, by quoting from Barth's Church Dogmatics:

... what is under debate in dogmatics is the Church's fundamental relation of obedience to its Lord in respect of its proclamation ... A dogmatics which it (the Church) might  not pursue, in whose enquiry it did not wholly participate as in the enquiry about its whole existence, a dogmatics which might let itself be crowded into the corner of religious intellectuals or the intellectually religious, could only be a poor, useless and tedious dogmatics which it would be better not to pursue at all. We pursue dogmatics because, unconstrained by the fact of the Bible, we cannot shake off the question of the obedience of Church proclamation. The question of its obedience includes that of its truth. But the question of its truth can be put only as the question of its obedience. As the question of its obedience it is the question of its dogma. [Karl Barth, CD 1.1, 274-5 cited by Alan Torrance, Persons In Communion: Trinitarian Description And Human Participation, 15]

Thomas Torrance calls this approach 'repentant thinking'; the point is that unlike most of propositionally-philosophically-analytically derived approaches to 'knowing' (and knowing God), this paradigm believes that Christian truth, in particular, only comes as we are conditioned and put 'under' and brought into the environs of truth as it is opened up in Jesus Christ. We don't first construct a matrix and then try to fit God into that matrix; instead we are the ones placed into the matrix of God in Jesus Christ. This requires, at least, an analogy of faith (V. an analogy of being), or analogy of relation; or as A. Torrance will develop in this book an 'analogy of communion'. So we obey because God first loved us that we might love him.

There are many contemporary applications of this for the American (Western) Evangelical church, but I will have to put this off for another time.

Reading Scripture is a truly Christian Event

I remember my undergrad days in Bible College; one of the perennial questions (at least during our pneumatology section/semester) was:  If indeed the non-Christian, un-regenerate person could access and interpret Scripture in a way that appreciates the point and depth of Scripture? Or, could they understand the primary signification that the Scripture's ontology rises from; viz. Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ God's Son Savior

We had some profs who would argue that clearly there are non-Christian biblical students and exegetes who can offer exegetical insight into the text of Scripture. But to me, this was always skirting the question. The question isn't if the non-Christian can 'offer exegetical insight into the Text,' but if that same person can understand and 'know' what in fact is significant about Scripture's primary intention; i.e. to tell us about, and invite us into an intimate and ongoing-evergrowing relationship with God in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit.

So the question that I was usually interested in was on what has been called in the Christian Tradition, illumination. John Webster offers a good word of knowledge (for all my charismatic brothers and sisters ;-) on this:

[C]orresponding to the perfect and wholly sufficient work of the Son in the redemption of fallen creatures, there is a further mission of God in their regeneration and restoration to intelligent, consensual, affective and active fellowship with God. This is the mission of the Holy Spirit, by whose grace it comes about that there is a company of creatures in whom redemption is brought to full realisation in the renewal of creaturely nature. The Spirit ‘perfects’ the work of the Son by bringing his work to its creaturely term, manifesting its virtue, distributing its benefits, and establishing a creaturely subject to receive, know and act out of its grace. The renewal of creaturely nature includes renewal in the knowledge of God, for the Spirit is ‘the spirit of wisdom and of revelation’ (Eph 1.17). This work of the Spirit is the environment for a theology of revelation, and therefore of Holy Scripture as its prophetic and apostolic form, and therefore of the illumination of the regenerate mind for the reading of Scripture. The Spirit is given that, having the eyes of their hearts enlightened, the saints may know. [John Webster, Journal of Reformed Theology 5 (2011) 325-340, Illumination, p. 328-29

Webster, would answer, in a dogmatically nuance way---answer my question---that it is not the prerogative of the non-Christian to 'know' what Scripture is about, because Scripture is about Jesus Christ. And if the non-Christian by definition (Rom. 8.11) does not have the Spirit of God in Christ; then they, like the Pharisees (Jn. 5) can get at the 'letter' of the Scripture. But they certainly cannot get at the 'Spirit' of the Scripture, sense the Spirit is absent; de facto Christ is absent (for them), because Christ did not come without the Spirit, but with the Spirit full of grace and truth.

The conclusion is that the non-Christian cannot truly engage in biblical hermeneutics, given Scripture's ontology and situadedness from the Spirit's breath, and the Son's humanity; both of these realities being absent, by definition in the non-Christian's life. Clearly the non-Christian exegete can do lexical and syntactical analyses of the Sciptures, etc. But, again, given the dogmatic ordering of things (and Scriptures placement within that through the analogy of faith etc.); they cannot do Christian hermeneutics which flows from the Spirit's authorship of Scripture (through the humanity of Christ and the sending of the Prophets and Apostles), and the corresponding authorship of human salvation in and through Christ. The one correlates to the other; in short, if you don't know the author's intent, then you can't truly appreciate what the author intended and meant (means). Reading the Bible is a truly Christian event. 

Tom McCall and the Need for Scholasticism in Trinitarian Theology

I am just starting to read Tom McCall's book, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism?: Philosophical and Systematic Theologians on the Metaphysics of Trinitarian Theology. McCall is associate professor of biblical and systematic theology at TEDS (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), in Chicago. I am friends with McCall on Facebook; so I offer this initial impression to the introduction to his book as a friend :-).

McCall opens his book on the Trinity, as any good analytic theologian might do; by setting up the dialogical landscape (or lack thereof) that has inhered (or not) between constructive/dialectic theologians (which is where I am coming from), and McCall's camp, the analytic/philosophic theologians. He introduces his book this way to be clear about one of his intentions for writing this book, and for writing it in the way he does; one of the reasons he is writing this book is to bridge the chasm that is in place between the constructive/dialectic theologian and the analytic. With this context understood, let me quote some of the sentiment that McCall thinks would be good for Systematic Theology in general (it is something that repels me, just to give you a heads up):

[...] The theologians need --- sometimes desperately need --- the kind of assistance that might be found in the analytic toolkit. The theologian R. R. Reno sees this clearly, and he sounds a clarion call for theologians to employ the conceptual tools offered by the analytic tradition. As he sees things, analytic methodology bears a close resemblance to scholasticism, and he thinks contemporary theology could use a good does of it. He says that although the "overwhelming majority of theologians today sift through Heideggar and his philosophical children and grandchildren to try and find useable material," this impulse is fundamentally "misguided." Reno concludes that analytic philosophy might be an important ally for theology, and this is "because analytic philosophy is unequivocally and fundamentally a force for the strengthening of truth, not its weakening. [emphasis mine] [Thomas H. McCall, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism?, 4-5]

Without wanting to be too foreboding, and wanting to give McCall a fair reading; let me just assert up front that exactly what contemporary theology does not need is a good dose of scholasticism! If what Tom means by this is that contemporary theology needs to constructively retrieve the substance metaphysics that classical theism hath bequeathed to us in Christian Theology through the seminal kind of work in this direction provided by the Thomist synthesis with Aristotelian categories and Christian Theology; then I object! I think this is what Reno means, and thus what McCall thinks is clarion.

What we need is an onto-relational metaphysic (or some such nomenclature) that emphasizes a Trinitarian theology that is given shape by an understanding of a personal God who has his being as a Subject-in-Being distinctiveness. In other words, we don't need to work from philosophical categories, like substance metaphysics offers up, that primarily think of God through monadic (unitary) categories. It is this ground that Federal Calvinism (amongst other developments within the Christian theological tradition) has developed; which has given us a God who must relate to his creation through impersonal decrees and Law-like precision.

So, four and five pages in; I object, Tom McCall! We'll see where you lead me ...

Christ Centered Exposition Juxtaposed with Principle-Application Centered Exposition: My Response to my Pastor

My pastor, Daniel Gettemy, made these points and asked this question in response to this post:

[...] I think you're making a pretty clear case for how one's grasp/view of Inspiration (or lack thereof) is feeding their exegetical approach. What role do you think, if any, ones view of Pastoral responsibility plays in the development of a series such as "The Coming Financial Armageddon"? In other words, do you think that such an exegetical approach (as the two had above) develops primarily as a consequence of a low view of inspiration? Or, do you think there are multiple factors, such as one's view of the pulpit's place in congregational ministry that are at play as well? I see both in play - even in my own ministry. There's certainly a tension that exists that has to be managed. I'd love to hear your view on how the Primary can and should feed the secondary issues in exegesis and (even) pulpit ministry.

Thanks brother!
Daniel

The following is my response to his points and query.

I think that both John MacArthur and David Jeremiah both operate from a typical Evangelical concept of inspiration---which as a friend of mine has noted, usually mistakes inspiration for incarnation; meaning that the text of Scripture is mistakenly imbued with properties that solely should belong to Jesus Christ as God's own personal Self-revelation of himself to humanity, of which Scripture then is taken up into as his Spirit breathed act of bearing witness to his own inerrant Word (so to speak), in Christ. So in other words, revelation becomes depersonalized (in the MacArthurite/Jeremiahite construal); and it is reduced to a set of impersonal logically deduced (postivistic) propositions which we squeeze axioms and principles from as a road-map for our daily lives (so the Bible becomes an answer book like the Reader's Digest or something, or a how to book for "Dummies"). This is a hang-over from the rationalist Fundamentalist hermeneutics that folks like MacArthur, Jeremiah, and almost all Evangelicals have inherited from this bygone era in our relatively recent past (e.g. the Fundamentalist reaction to the so called 'Liberalism' and higher criticism that penetrated American Christianity at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries). This in a nutshell serves as the backdrop to MacArthur's and Jeremiah's interpretive moves today.

So I think, in response to your question, that their hermeneutics have resulted from a defective view of inspiration or a bibliology or doctrine of Scripture that is built upon a rationalist/reactionary edifice that reduces and depersonalizes revelation to propositions instead of the person, Jesus Christ. Which explains quite a bit, relative to the way that both MacArthur and Jeremiah have proceeded in their "exegesis" of the text. They both presume that Scripture is our source-bed for providing a set of values and propositions that needs to be discerned (e.g. exegesis), principalized, and then given up for application for their listener's lives.

So the only solution, that I see, is to abandoned the defective edifice upon which Evangelical's understandings on a doctrine of Scripture (and thus hermeneutics) is built; and re-orientate oneself in a way that sees Scripture within the personal triune speech act of God to us, given to us through his Son, in and through the creative activity of the Holy Spirit. This way Scripture is no longer understood as a proposition book which humanity can master; but instead, Scripture is understood as the God ordained place wherein God in Christ by the Spirit contradicts and confronts our "human mastery" through direct encounter with him, in Christ (wherein Scripture finds its Spirit breathed voice through the resurrected humanity of Jesus Christ). This will set up a hermeneutical framework that methodologically seeks to lay bare the inner reality of Scripture, which finds its ground in Jesus Christ himself (in principle, quite intensively!). So the exegete and expositor won't be seeking to figure out how a particular text (like in the OT for example) is "relevant" or answers people's particular questions today. Instead, the exegete will trust that God alone knows all of our hearts, and his answer to our deepest longing is personal encounter with Him. That is what Scripture is for; to lead us to him in Christ. So when teaching an OT passage, for example (or even a NT one), the expositor will use a hermeneutical practice that exemplifies the kind that we see the NT authors using; it will interpret the OT promises in light of their fulfillment in Christ. For example, it will tie the suffering and rebellion we see happening over and again amongst God's people in the OT; into what Jesus elected for himself as he elected our humanity/reprobation for himself and gave us his elect status as our vicarious representative in his resurrected humanity (so the exegete would emphasize that God humbled himself, and in that humbling he exalted humanity in the resurrected humanity of Christ ... something like that).

So this requires a massive paradigm shift for the expositor's hermeneutical practice. It requires that the Pastor believe that God knew best when his prescription for humanities' daily longings and issues was who he revealed, himself, in Jesus Christ. It is this encounter alone that will set the captives free, and provide the deep kind of perspective and spirituality that God wants for all of his people (on a day to day basis)! MacArthur and Jeremiah (and any Evangelical pastor, in particular, that follows in their footsteps, methodologically) have missed the boat I have been describing. Does this help clarify?

The Vicarious Humanity of Christ for us in the Theology of John Calvin

John Calvin

I just finished reading a really provocative and intriguing essay by Ho-Jin Ahn in the Scottish Journal of Theology. In it he takes Oliver Crisp to task (at least at the ground clearing level) on Crisp's argument that Christ could not have assumed a fallen sinful humanity in the incarnation; since according to Crisp (and the scholastic [speculative] tradition from which he argues), if Christ truly took on a depraved humanity, then he would have needed a Savior himself. Ahn helpfully relocates Crisp's placement of this discussion from the Augustinian "original sin," and moves it into the realm of christology (which is where this dialogue ought to take place!). Ahn, in the process of relocating this discussion, develops John Calvin's understanding on this issue; Ahn looks, in a dialectical way, at Calvin's commentaries and his Institute. In a nutshell, what Ahn concludes is that Calvin might 'appear' to hold to something like Crisp (that Christ assumed an unfallen human nature), but in the final analysis, and at an interpretive/functional level, Calvin thinks from a view that sees Christ entering into the depths of our fallen humanity and redeeming us from the inside out through his vicarious humanity for us. Here is Ahn's conclusion:

[I]t is unreasonable for some theologians to argue for Christ’s unfallen humanity in the context of the doctrine of original sin because Christ himself overcame the power of sin and death in his fallen humanity. In the case of Calvin’s understanding of Christ’s humanity, we see that there is a tension between the nature and the state of Christ’s person. Calvin believes that Christ assumed our true humanity, lived a perfect life, and was sinless according to the Chalcedonian Definition. Thus, Calvin denies the fallenness of Christ’s humanity in order to preserve the doctrine of Christ’s perfect innocence. However, unlike others who are in favour of Christ’s unfallen humanity, Calvin forcefully affirms the vicarious humanity of Christ in our corrupted state. Calvin affirms that Christ had to suffer from our existential problems according to the narratives of the Gospels. Moreover, the mortal human nature which Christ assumed shows solidarity with sinners and the vicarious humanity of Christ pro nobis. If Calvin were to accept the idea of the fallen nature of Christ, his thoughts on Christ’s humanity for us would be more persuasive. Yet it is noted that Calvin’s theological logic is ‘anti-speculative’ in that he focuses on what Christ has done for us in his true humanity.

Nevertheless, Calvin argues that the body of Christ himself is the temple of God through which we can come to the throne of God’s grace. Although Christ assumed our mortal body controlled by the power of sin and death after the Fall, Christ sanctified the body in his own person as the Mediator between God and all the fallen humanity and decaying creation. Furthermore, the reconciliation with God is not just attributed to the crucifixion of Christ in an external and forensic way but to the perfectly holy life of Christ who assumed our mortal body as a saviour in an internal and ontological perspective. Calvin’ s biblical views on the mortal body and its sanctification through the whole life fully describes the paradoxical character of Christ’s mystical incarnation in which Christ became a true human being like one of us without becoming a fallen sinner. I conclude that, according to Calvin, the vicarious humanity of Christ means that for the sake of our salvation Christ assumed a mortal body like ours and lived a perfect life in our miserable state. Therefore, Christ’s fallen humanity for us is the guarantee of reconciliation. [Ho-Jin AhnSJT 65(2): 145–158 (2012) C Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2012 doi:10.1017/S0036930612000026, Ahn's bio/contact: Korean Central Presbyterian Church of Queens, Bayside, NY 11364, USA ho-jin.ahn@alum.ptsem.edu]

I concur with Ahn, and appreciate his insightful analysis on Calvin's view of the vicarious humanity of Christ. Ahn would make a great Evangelical Calvinist; since the vicarious humanity of Christ is one of the touchstones of what it means to work within the mood of Evangelical Calvinism. It is this kind of Christ conditioned view of salvation that gets us into the trinitarian depth dimension of salvation that the classic forensic-juridical view of salvation simply cannot provide. Calvin is front and center for us, and shines brightest right here; that is when he emphasises the center of salvation in Christ.

The reality is, as Ahn develops in his essay, as Gregory of Nazianzus is oft quoted 'the unredeemed is the unhealed'; and if Christ did not vicariously (participatorily-representatively) enter our fallen human state, then we are of all men most to be pitied. Alas, we remain in our sins, and we have no real hope or answer to our sin problem; which is a depraved heart toward God (who is salvation in his very life!). If Christ does not participate with us (fully), then we cannot participate with him fully in the divine plenitude of his shared life with the Father and Holy Spirit; in other words, we are not saved. This is why understanding and meditating on the vicarious humanity of Christ is so fundamental to the Christian's life and spirituality; because it represents the very heart and deep caverns of the Gospel itself.

PS. This is the doctrine, The Vicarious Humanity of Christ, I am slowly researching towards my PhD. If you would like to help provide funding for me towards the PhD, please contact me via email (growba@gmail.com). Blessings.

The Great Hijacking: Christ the Abstraction and Not The Center

The Westminster Confession of Faith in its first article (chapter II) on a doctrine of God starts with God, simpliciter. There is a long history of this method for thinking of God in the Christian Tradition. Peter Lombard in his Sentences employed this methodology for ordering his thinking about God; indeed, John Calvin himself---in his late Medieval situation---orders his Institute in similar fashion. I have heard it argued from folk who follow this classic methodology that this really isn't a stretch at all; in fact, this (they argue) is the order that God himself has provided in his own disclosure in Scripture (starting in Genesis through Revelation). Here is the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF):

I. There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal, most just, and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty. (see full citation, here)

It is not until article III of this same chapter that the WCF speaks of God as triune. And this is my short critique of this methodology; even if it had started with God as triune---which would have been laudable---where a doctrine of God ought to start---for the Christian---is with Christ. This is not to go outside of Scripture's order, but to follow it in the way that it re-interprets everything through its fulfillment in Christ. John 1:1 is a primary example of this kind of re-interpretation (or as one of my favorites, Irenaeus of Lyons, has named it, recapitulation); the theologian, The Apostle John Writes:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1

This, as many commentators have noted throughout the history of biblical interpretation, is a Christian re-reading and direct allusion to Genesis 1:1 ('In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth'). And this helps illustrate what I am after relative to articulating a proper order to constructing a genuinely Christian theology. The WCF does not start with Christ. Indeed, it doesn't even start with God as Trinity; instead it appeals to classic Greek philosophical categories for its understanding of what God must be like. But this is not Christian; it does not honor the New Testament's mode of reinterpreting the Old Testament promises in light of their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. No, the WCF, and the whole classical theistic tradition (of which it is a part) can only, logically, think of Christ as an abstraction; as an addition to its concept of Godness; only to be spoken of later, like a dangling participle. So we end up, if we follow the WCF (and classical Christianity), with, at best, a theocentric ('god-centred') religion; but not a christocentric ('Christ-centred') belief structure, that is genuinely Christian. Donald Bloesch emphasizes the importance of following a Christ-centred methodology as the starting point for beginning our theological studies (even our Theology Proper/Doctrine of God):

[C]hristology constitutes the heart of theology, since it focuses on God's work of salvation in the historical figure Jesus of Nazareth and the bearing that this has on the history of humankind. To know the nature of God we must see his face in Jesus Christ. To know the plan of God for the world we must see this plan realized in the cross of Christ and fulfilled in his resurrection and second advent. Whereas philosophy ponders the nature of God in the abstract, theology reflects on the divine-human encounter in history as we find this in Jesus Christ. The way to knowledge of God is through knowledge of Christ, and the way to knowledge of Christ is by faith in his promises as revealed in the Bible. Donald G. Bloesch, "Jesus Christ: Lord & Savior," 16-7. 

This is quite radical! Being a Christian ought to be radical. So you have a choice; are you going to be a classical or radical Christian? The former means you will be entrenched in philosophical abstraction seeking a way to integrate Christianity into that mould; the latter means that you will start with Jesus Christ as God's Self-revelation, and it will be here that knowledge of God as triune will become the touchstone upon which a Christian theology can genuinely move forward as, Christian. 

I grow weary of the great hijacking of the Christian faith, and the implications this has for regular Christian folk who sit in the pew. To be sure, most Evangelicals in America aren't even getting theology or doctrine anymore; if they are though, it is steeped in the heritage that something like the WCF hath bequeathed upon us---viz. the god of the philosophers, not the God known to us in and through, Jesus Christ! What a tragedy  . . . 

Earth Day: 'Worshipping the Creation Rather than the Creator'

The problem with ‘Earth Week’ (or day), as it is ‘framed’ today, is basic; it is shaped and informed by an naturalist understanding of the universe (and thus earth). It is based upon assumptions that believe that all reality is reducible to material; here is a succinct summary of this perspective, provided by James Sire:

1. Matter exists eternally and is all there is. God does not exist.
As in theism and deism, the prime proposition concerns the nature of basic existence. In the former two the nature of God is the key factor. In naturalism it is the nature of the cosmos which is primary, for now, with an eternal creator-God out of the picture, the cosmos itself becomes eternal—-always there though not necessarily in its present form, in fact, certainly not in its present form. Carl Sagan, astrophysicist and popularizer of science, has said it as clearly as possible: “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” (James W. Sire, “The Universe Next Door,” 54)

The consequence of living as if there is no God is to fill that void with [an]other god; that is, material “creation” itself becomes God, but not without us. In other words, man becomes the center of the universe, and the earth becomes his sustenance — ‘Mother Earth’. This way of thinking is not ‘new’, it is not progressive or ‘cutting-edge’; it is as old as the ‘Fall’ itself (see Gen. 3 and the ensuing story [the rest of the scriptures, esp. the OT]). In fact the LORD admonishes his people, contrary to the ‘natural way of thinking’, not to lift up ‘nature’ as if that is all there is; He says:

¹⁵“Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, ¹⁶beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, ¹⁷the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, ¹⁸the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. ¹⁹And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. ²⁰But the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day. ~Deuteronomy 4:15-20

The negative of what Yahweh admonishes His people “not to do” (in the passage above) is the “natural orientation” of Fallen man. It is to worship the creation rather than the Creator (cf. Rom. 1); and this is what ‘Earth day (week, year)’ actually pivots upon.

Christians should not confuse stewardship of God’s creation with being ‘Green’. And really the only, and most basic reason for this, is what I have been trying to distinguish in my previous narrative; and that is, that ‘being Green’ is informed by an ‘worldview’ that is incompatible with the ‘Christian trinitarian’ perspective. The ‘Green’ approach “starts” out with the assumption that there is no God; the Christian, or what I like to call, ‘the Red’ approach, assumes just the opposite —- that there is a creator God, and He has revealed Himself to us in Christ.

In my view, it is irresponsible for Christians to take up the mantle of the ‘Green approach’, and assume that there is compatibility simply in the name of being ‘good stewards’. We need to be good ‘Stewards’ indeed, but in the name of Christ; and not simply by adopting the approach offered by the ‘unbelieving world’ (Christologically this is akin to the adoptionist heresy known as Ebionitism), and thus ‘Christianizing’ the pagan way of doing and thinking things.

**My next post will be on how to think about this stuff through the analogy of the incarnation (or Christologically); Colossians 1 is key for the Christian understanding at this juncture. If Christ is supreme over all creation, both as Creator and Redeemer, then as Christians it behooves us to think this issue out of that paradigm. Really this whole discussion orbits around that classic discussion between the relationship of nature and grace; the answer to that question must be centered in the life of Christ and how His hypostatic union (the relationship between his divine and human natures) should inform our approach to being stewards of this ‘creation’ or ‘recreation’ through Him. Instead of ‘Green’ I think Christians should call themselves ‘Red’, because without the shedding of God’s blood in Christ all we really have is ‘Black’ — which is what I think ‘Earth Day’ and its approach should really be called [not 'green']. Anyway, more to come.**

Evangelical Calvinist Christ Conditioned Supralapsarian Election

Here is Thomas F. Torrance critiquing George Hill’s understanding of limited atonement (you can find a fuller explication of this in TFT’s “The Mediation of Christ [must read]):

Hill seemed to have no idea of the biblical teaching about the election of one for the many found both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and of the idea that the redemptive purpose of God for all nations of the earth was narrowed down to Israel, to a remnant, and then in the most intensive way to Jesus in the midst of Israel, and was fulfilled in and through him in a universal way for all mankind. Thus in respect of the people of Israel the universalising purpose of God will lead to the point when ‘all Israel shall be saved’. Instead, Hill limited the universal sufficiency and extent of Christ’s atoning redemption by a notion of specific ‘destination’, governed by God’s eternal degree, of only certain individuals for ultimate salvation. Regarded from the end result, therefore, the penal satisfaction offered by Christ in his sacrificial death was held to be actually and finally effectual only for particular people. Thus even for George Hill, this evangelical moderate who sought to restore, in some measure at least, the place of the love and mercy of God to its primary place in redemption, the atonement was essentially and rigidly limited in its nature and extent. The question had to asked, therefore, as indeed it was by Thomas Chalmers, what kind of God does this imply? That was the great question with which the General Assembly was faced in 1830, with McLeod Campbell’s revolt against the idea of God that lay behind the doctrine of predestination and limited atonement in what George Hill regularly referred to as ‘the Calvinistic System’ that prevailed in the Kirk.

– Thomas F. Torrance, “Scottish Theology,” 262-63

The one for the many is a key biblical motif, and it first finds its ‘rootage’ in the antecedent life of God. In other words, who we see mediated through the national life of Israel, and then fully enfleshed in the tabernacling of Jesus (Jn 1:14); is what has always already been a reality in God’s life for us in the Son for all eternity (or ‘supra-time’). This is the some of the stuff that goes into an Evangelical Calvinist understanding of a Christ conditioned election or Christic Supralapsarianism. Salvation is grounded in God’s life, and so who we see revealed in Jesus of Nazareth is who has always been in the ontological coinhering relations of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

All of this dovetails nicely with Scott’s recent post on election.

*PS. This is a repost from way back in October 2009. This kind of 'Christ-conditioned' supralapsarianism is given masterful explication in Myk Habets' chapter on the same topic in our forthcoming book (due out, Lord willing, this May).

A Classic Calvinist thinks I need to repent: God's Impersonal Glory V. His Personal, 'In Christ'

*Here is a short post I originally wrote when I was in the midst of battling my cancer. It was given impetus by interaction I had been having, at that point, with a guy who attends The Master's Seminary (John MacArthur's seminary in Southern California). He believed (and probably still does) that I was in sin because I was having an ongoing dialogue with the LORD about my cancer; I told this fellow that at points I was angry with the LORD, and didn't understand why he would let this happen to me. This fellow thought this was a sinful response; i.e. because I was voicing my

frustration and anger with the LORD, in personal discussion with Him (the LORD), as my LORD. This guy from Master's was sure that I was harboring a sinful attitude, and thus in need of repentance. Here's that post (it was supposed to be the beginning of a series of posts, but I never got to those).

As a result of an email I recently received, I am going to do a series of posts on God’s glory and suffering — this will be a slow series, and will depend on my state of mind in the near future (in other words I am processing all kinds of stuff right now). I think it is very important to have an understanding of God’s glory that is shaped by His life of love in Christ by the Spirit. Which means that glory is not a principle outside of love and personal relationship; but in fact it is its inverse. In other words, God’s glory cares about intimate and personal details (like the sparrows or us). I’m afraid that there is thinking out there that sees “God’s glory” as an impersonal force that has nothing to do with “us;” when in fact the Incarnation says just the opposite.

In other words, what’s at stake here is how we correlate something like: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God” with Jesus Christ’s revelation of God’s glory as He ministered His life to those around Him while on earth (or even in His mediation to Israel in salvation history). I think there are competing things going on between the “Westminster Shorter Catechism’s” understanding of “glory and glorify,” and who we see revealed in Jesus Christ in the Incarnation. This will be the jumping off point for the posts ahead . . .

Why Charles Spurgeon is Wrong: On the Atonement and God

I just read this over at the Pyromaniacs, from Phil Johnson's weekly practice of posting quotes from his teacher, Charles Spurgeon. There are some things that Spurgeon writes and preaches that are edifying, but I am afraid the following will be representative of something that might only be half-baked; or maybe not baked at all. The concern I have with the following quote is the concept of God that must be present in order for Spurgeon to write what he does; let's take a look at that right now, and then pick it up afterward with a brief comment:

[O]h! my hearers, if you are trusting in the unconditional mercy of God, you are trusting in a myth. Has someone buoyed you up with the thought of the infinite goodness of God, I would remind you of his infinite holiness. Hath he not declared that he will by no means spare the guilty? No debt due to God is remitted unless it be paid. It must either be paid by the transgressor in the infinite, miseries of hell, or else it must be paid for him by a substitute. There must be a price for the ransom, and evidently, according to the text, that price must be a soul, a life. Christ did not give his body merely, nor his stainless character, nor merely his labors and sufferings, but he gave his soul, his life, a ransom. Oh! sinner, Almighty God will never be satisfied with anything less than thy soul.

"... Has someone buoyed you up with the thought of the infinite goodness of God, I would remind you of his infinite holiness. . . ." 

Here is a classic example of how a classic usage of Divine Simplicity can run awry; wherein the modes of God's attributes are played off against each other as if there is a schism in God's actions towards his creation (and I think without proper nuance thus implicating God's being ... even though Divine Simplicity is intended to thwart my concern). Anyway, unlike Spurgeon's usage of this, I think a proper Christian Trinitarian construing of God's life is one that grounds all of God's activity from his interpenetrating life of self-giveness one for the other (the Father, Son and Holy Spirit all living in koinonial 'fellowship' one with the other ... it is this kind of life that shapes His holiness [or which is His holiness], His justice, His mercy, His creating etc.). If this is the case we never concluded what Spurgeon has about God's holiness somehow working against or trumping God's goodness; these aren't competing realities. God's life is loving grace to begin with; everything else is butter after that! Meaning, God's wrath and justice must be understood to only come within his very life; which again is love, full of grace and truth. Spurgeon is wrong on this point.

"...  No debt due to God is remitted unless it be paid. It must either be paid by the transgressor in the infinite, miseries of hell, or else it must be paid for him by a substitute. There must be a price for the ransom, and evidently, according to the text, that price must be a soul, a life. . . ."


Here we have, even for the Baptist, Spurgeon, the lingering effects of Covenant Theology; such that (to be crude), the atonement is framed in a purely forensic and monetary mode. So that Jesus in the Incarnation and Atonement becomes nothing more than the instrument or Divine debit card by which God purchases the elect for himself; allowing him at that point (once the demands and the conditions of the Law have been met) to love his brand new people, but not until these conditions have been met. Jesus then becomes subordinated and abstracted from God's life, placing a rupture between God in eternity and Jesus in creation-time; Jesus becomes who he is dictated to become by creation itself.

I could say more, but on this Good Friday, it grieves me to think that folk accept what Spurgeon (and others like him) has to say about such things uncritically. I think this could be devastating to the Christian's daily walk and spirituality 'in Christ'.