Blame God and Sin, An 'Asymmetry'

If you are going to blame anyone, blame God; for eternal life and salvation, that is. As an 'Evangelical Calvinist' my understanding of God's choice, relative to the individual's appropriation of that in and through the vicarious humanity of Christ's choice for us, is this:

1. Is that a person can only recognize their salvation because they have been made new and chosen by God in Christ. God has chosen 'humanity' exemplified in the incarnation of Christ for us. And so people who are in bondage to their choices which are shaped by a heart that on its own is inward curved and self-loving, are enlivened through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They are given a capacity by the Spirit to say Yes to the Father only in and through what has already happened in the humanity of Christ for us. We will never choose God left to our own devices.
2. The reason that everyone does not choose God instead of themselves can only be attributed to the mystery of evil and sin (because God has chosen all of humanity in the humanity of Christ); NOT GOD (only salvation in Christ can be attributed to Him!). This is what James 1 says:

¹³ When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; ¹⁴ but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. ¹⁵ Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. ¹⁶ Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. ¹⁷ Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. ¹⁸ He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

And John 3:

¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. ¹⁹ This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰ Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. ²¹ But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

So, to speak crudely, we blame God for salvation and His life in Christ for us; and we blame the inexplicable and fleeting reality of evil and sin for unbelief (and this sin is really just an absence of God's 'being', an absence of his life of love ... which is to say, that sin ends up being no-thing, and thus it is irrational to try and understand it or explain it).

[So there is an obvious asymmetry between these two things]. But it should be clear how this is a 'Calvinist' way of understanding things as well---minus the kind of deterministic/logical-causal reasoning that usually attends both classic Calvinist and Arminian ways.

Happy Human Independence/Freedom Day, from Karl Barth

Since it is 'Independence Day' here in America, today, I thought I would repost a reflection and response on 'Human Freedom' that I posted at my older EC blog quite a few months ago now. As you will see, these reflections are in response to a brother (in Christ) of mine. Happy 'Freedom Day'!

³⁶ So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. ~John 8.36

Silhouette of Barth, Garbed in the 'Colors'

I am reposting the following because I am working the next couple of days, and so don’t have the time to develop some things I would like to in response to the discussion I have been having with Nathan in this thread. Some have asked what ‘grace all the way down’ might mean (in the thread and post I am referencing). Some of you are wondering how I might move differently than a classic Calvinist or Arminian in framing human action as grounded in a theological-christological anthropology—thus ultimately recasting, and somewhat avoiding the usual categories of working out of ‘the bondage of the will’ dialogue. So in lieu of me writing an actual post that would articulate how I might proceed; this post, and maybe one more tomorrow will have to suffice until I can do a proper (new) one. Somebody might think that some of the language from Barth sounds like what Billings is critiquing in the Arminian, but it’s not. Since Barth’s construct grounds what it means to be human, dogmatically, in the elect humanity of Christ for us. This is the piece that classic Arminianism (and Calvinism) is missing; i.e. ‘the classic way’ operates with a competitive view between Divine-human action vis-á-vis human action simpliciter. Meaning that the classic approach, does not ground humanity from the humanity of Christ in an objective gracious way. Instead, it sees humanity as abstracted from the humanity of Christ in need of union with his humanity which is only actualised through their cooperation with God in salvation by habituating in the ‘created grace’ (which becomes the impersonal intermediary that binds elect or foreknown humanity to Christ’s humanity). More to be said. Here’s Barth on the vicarious humanity of Christ as ‘God with us’, which becomes the recreated humanity through which our humanity elevated to what it means to be human; or free for God.

Here is a great statement from Barth on the vicarious humanity of Christ,

[T]he answer is that we ourselves are directly summoned, that we are lifted up, that we are awakened to our own truest being as life and act, that we are set in motion by the fact that in that one man God has made Himself our peacemaker and the giver and gift of our salvation. By it we are made free fro Him. By it we are put in the place which comes to us where our salvation (really ours) can come to us from Him (really from Him). This actualisation of His redemptive will by Himself opens up to us the one true possibility of our own being. Indeed, what remains to us of life and activity in the face of this actualisation of His redemptive will by Himself can only be one thing. This one thing does not mean the extinguishing of our humanity, but its establishment. It is not a small thing, but the greatest of all. It is not for us a passive presence as spectators, but our true and highest activation—the magnifying of His grace which has its highest and most profound greatness in the fact that God has made Himself man with us, to make our cause His own, and as His own to save it from disaster and to carry it through to success. The genuine being of man as life and activity, the “We with God,” is to affirm this, to admit that God is right, to be thankful for it, to accept the promise and the command which it contains, to exist as the community, and responsibly in the community, of those who know that this is all that remains to us, but that it does remain to us and that for all men everything depends upon its coming to pass. And it is this “We with God” that is meant by the Christian message in its central “God with us,” when it proclaims that God Himself has taken our place, that He Himself has made peace between Himself and us, that by Himself he has accomplished our salvation, I.e., our participation in His being. [Karl Barth CD IV/I, p. 12]

This is the kind of stuff I am looking for. A theological anthropology, that is Christological; that honors the integrity of created humanity by giving humanity its place in the recreated humanity of Jesus Christ for us. It is a participationist humanity that we are given as a gift, we don’t possess it in ourselves. The giveness of humanity is where humanity flourishes through its relation in the divine life (i.e. the proper order) in Christ. This early section in IV/I is entitled “God with Us.”

The Centrality of The Vicarious Humanity of Christ for EC

Here is a repost that some of you may have not ever read, so thus the repost. It touches upon the centrality that the vicarious humanity of Christ has within the theology offered from the mood of Evangelical Calvinism. You will notice a polemical bite towards the end of the post, as I contrast EC with what I usually call classic Calvinism (I do this intentionally as a riff on this version of Calvinism's dependence upon 'classical theism' in general). Don't stumble unnecessarily over the polemical bite; the bite simply is taking notice of the fact that there truly is a real and material difference between EC and classic Calvinism. And the vicarious humanity of Christ is a pivotal point of departure between the two, and its implications for soteriology as it is framed from a christologically conditioned notion of our triune God. Here is the post.

Here is a great summary of how Thomas Torrance understood the biblical realities of:justification, reconciliation, and redemption. This summary is provided by Robert Walker, TFT's nephew and editor of Torrance's book Atonement. Of note is thevicarious nature of all three concepts, all grounded in Jesus Christ as our priest and mediator:

(ii) Justification, reconciliation and redemption are the act of God and man in Christ
Again throughout his theology, Torrance emphasises that in Jesus Christ we have the act of God and of man, of God as man in his one person. Justification, reconciliation and redemption therefore must be thought of not simply as the act of God for our salvation, but also as the real act of man, of God as man for us. the importance of this for Torrance's theology and for understanding it cannot be overstated. Justification is not simply the act of God judging sin, atoning for it himself and declaring us righteous in his beloved Son, it is man saying amen to the righteous judgement of God and at the same time fulfilling all righteousness in his own perfect life and humanity. Reconciliation is thus not simply God reconciling the world to himself in Christ, but reconciliation worked out, achieved and realised by Christ as man within his own person, in his own mind, life, heart and soul. Redemption is the mighty act of God in which mankind is liberated from bondage and decay into the new creation through the resurrection of the man Jesus Christ from the dead in the fullness of physical existence. [T. F. Torrance, ed. Robert T. Walker, "Atonement," xlv]

This is the stuff (the guts) of Evangelical Calvinist thought on salvation. If you fail to grasp this, then you will fail to see how EC is indeed distinguishable from Classic Calvinism, in general; and most Christian soteriological understandings, in particular. Furthermore, if you fail to engage the material here, then at the same time, you'll also fail to realize 'how' Calvinist this actually is.

First, there is a grounding of all salvation in God's life alone, in Christ; thus the reason EC stresses the vicarious humanity of Christ for us. We press this, because if we don't, we leave open the possibility for man to have some objective part in salvation (i.e. cooperate with God kind of soteriology). If Christ truly assumed humanity --- and He did --- and if He truly is our priest and mediator --- and He is --- then He, as the firstfruits from the dead, accomplished every aspect of salvation (in Himself). He trusted the Father for us, He first loved the Father, that we might love Him; He repented in our stead, He resurrected that we might resurrect, etc. etc. How this is appropriated is through the Holy Spirit's creativity and otherness (who brings us into communion with the Father and the Son, just as sure as He is the bond of communion and union between the Son's divine and human natures) --- Myk Habets alerts us to the language of theosis and theopoieses in the theology of Torrance [fodder for another post] --- the Spirit provides the space (as He did in the Son) for humanity to 'respond' out of Christ's faith on our behalf.

Second, I say you'll realize how Calvinist this is because it places a genuine primacy on Christ's life. It places a supremacy on God's life as salvation and grace, as the origination of all that is. That without God's unilateral activity in salvation, there, indeed, is no salvation; after all, God's life is salvation. I say these markers are benchmarks of Calvinism because of Calvinism's goal, historically, to speak of salvation in terms that magnify Jesus alone. Now, just because all Calvinists would say these are the touchstones, does not mean all versions or instantiations of Calvinism reach these marks. My contention is that Federal/Classic Calvinism does not; and it is simply because Classic Calvinism has a flawed doctrine of God that does not allow fluid discussion about salvation, because it will not allow for a dynamic understanding of God's trinitarian and relational life.

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 . . .

Evangelical Calvinism is much better situated to be 'Incarnational-Missional' than is classic Calvinism

Being an 'incarnational-missional' or Evangelistically oriented Christian fits much better with Evangelical Calvinism than it does with classical Calvinism. [Todd Billings in is book Union With Christ provides a great critique of the usual usage of the language 'incarnational-missional', I am using this terminology with that critique in mind, and thus more in a denotative way---I think, later today, I will quote Billings and get further into what it means to actually live incarnational-missional over at my other blog 'Blogic Of Grace' (I already have a post up over there on this)]. Here is what I mean about 'Evangelical Calvinism' being better equipped to be 'Evangelistic' than its cousin 'classic Calvinism' is.

Evangelical Calvinists start with God as Self-revealed in Jesus Christ, and thus we have an orientation that grounds itself in Christ as the Son of the Father with the Holy Spirit as Triune; and thus our understanding of God is personalist and relational (other-centered from within the orbit of God's life as other centered or as 'subject-in-being' through mutual indwellment one in the other). Classical Calvinists start with a philosophical conception of God that appeals to Aristotle's notion of an unmoved mover, actual infinite, monad, or substance; once this conception of godness has been developed (apart from the Self-revelation in Jesus Christ), the classic Calvinist then applies this to the God of the Bible revealed in Jesus Christ. This initial and methodological move, relative to the disparate doctrines of God; leads Evangelical Calvinists and classic Calvinists to different paths in regards to their orthopraxis (or what each would consider right practice in the Christian life).

For the Evangelical Calvinist, she believes that God came down, immediately and personally, to humanity because of who he is in himself (antecedently); that is, that God is love (I Jn. 4:8 etc.). The Evangelical Calvinist thinks (at least this one does) that this 'coming down' means that Jesus truly became a human, entered into humanities' sinful state, and began redeeming us (from the inside out) from Christmas time, through his Baptism, into 'Good Friday', climaxing at Easter and Ascension, leading into Pentecost, and finally consummating and being fully realized at his second Advent. This all presupposes that all of sinful humanity was taken care of through the mediatorial and priestly work of Jesus Christ; emphasis is on ALL! In contrast, the classical Calvinist believes that God relates to humanity through abstract, deterministic, impersonal, philosophical decrees. Within the Covenantal/Federal system of Calvinism, this kind of Calvinist believes that God originally related to Adam and Eve through a situation of 'Law-keeping' (Covenant of Works); once Adam and Eve broke God's Law, then the Son and the Father agreed on a contract ('Pactum Salutis' or Covenant of Redemption), which resulted in the Covenant of Grace. This involved the Son coming, meeting the conditions of the Law (that Adam and Eve failed at), paying the legal penalty of death that accrued from original Law Breaking; and in so doing, literally purchasing an elect parcel of humanity for whom the Father and Son had already bartered over in the past (e.g. Unconditional Election). Once Christ fulfills and meets the conditions of the Law (forensically construed), and he purchases this elect group of humanity; then God is able to love this set of humanity.

It should be clear, at this point, why Evangelical Calvinists have a capacity to be incarnational-missional; wherein, the classical Calvinist does not. Since Evangelical Calvinists believe that God 'is' love; then this is what motivates his creating, incarnating, redeeming, and coming for all of humanity. Since classic Calvinists believe that God's primary mode of relation 'is' law; then this results in a theology and practice that sees God only being able to meet the needs of a few elect folk, and not deal with all of humanities' sin problem. Given this scenario, between these two disparate approaches; it should be obvious, by now, that the Evangelical Calvinist can genuinely preach salvation to ALL of creation (Romans 8), instead of just part of it. Myk Habets turned me onto this quote from TF Torrance, years ago now; this quote captures exactly what I have been getting at, in regard to the capacity for the Evangelical Calvinist to be incarnational-missional and evangelistic in a way that is motivated by love for all:

"God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualised his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour." ~T. F. Torrance, "The Mediation of Christ", 94.

PS. Truth be told, I've never liked the language of 'incarnational-missional', because I've always understood the formation and impetus to this kind of language to flow from a theologically Pelagian perspective wherein the emphasis is upon what "I" can perform or do for Christ by way of mimicking my perception of the incarnation. This rubs against a truly Christ-conditioned understanding of Christian practice wherein we live lives that participate in Christ's life for us and others. So just understand that I am not endorsing the usual mode of what it means to be 'incarnational-missional'; which is why I opened up with that word about Billings critique of this movement.

You Don't Need To Be an 'Egg-head' to be a Theological Thinker

Don't be an 'Egghead', you might break!

Trained theologians clearly have their place for the church of Jesus Christ (cf. Eph. 4:11ff), but, of course, not all Christian folk are going to be 'trained theologians'. This is a constant tension for me though; my desire is for all Christians to learn to think deeply and theologically about all of life. To inhabit the life of Christ by the Spirit so much, that we cannot but help to interpret all of life's circumstances through the lens of Christ's life. And yet, I so often don't see people moving in this direction; it isn't that everyone needs to be up on all of the cutting edge theological discussions, but it is that all Christians are commanded and exhorted to quit thinking like babies, and in fact grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. So I have this tension; I want all people to be theologians, but I have to balance this out with the realization that not all Christians are called to be professional (so called) theologians. Thomas Torrance provides some good balancing words on this kind of tension:

[I] have been wonderfully blessed with a mother and a wife who have a profoundly Christian, and indeed a remarkably theological, instinct. My mother had little academic training in theology, but her life and her understanding were so tuned in to the mind of Christ that she knew at once where the truth lay and was quick to discern any deviation from it. This is also very true of my dear wife, who is imbued with an unerring theological instinct, evident again and again in her reaction to ideas put forward by preachers or teachers. At the end of the day that was the test I put to my students, as I read their essays and examinations or listened to them in the chapel. 'Has this person a genuinely theological instinct or not? Is his or her thinking spontaneously and naturally governed by the mind of Christ?' That is much more important than being theologically learned, much more important than being able to offer a formal academic account of some doctrine or historic debate in the church. What really counts in the end is whether a person's mind is radically transformed by Christ and so spiritually attuned to the mind of Christ, that he or she thinks instinctively from the depths of their mental being in a way worthy of God. [Thomas F. Torrance, Atonement, 445]

I similarly, like Thomas, am blessed with a dear wife who has these theological instincts. It is this kind of 'tacit knowledge' (another theme, or the same theme that TFT is appealing to here with his 'instinct knowledge') that we come to as we are in a submitted, even repentant posture towards our God through Christ, because we indeed love him (because he first love us in Christ I Jn. 4.19). Torrance's perspective is one that I must always keep before me; the goal, for the edification of the saints, is to equip them in ways that help to cultivate a life of instinctual, Holy Spirit given, Christ conditioned 'lights' that are constantly being switched on throughout our daily lives.

Not everyone is called to be a professional theologian, but everyone is called to love God in Christ. And cultivation of this call will result in this kind of instinctual discernment that lays everything at the feet of Jesus before proceeding (whatever it is). It will be a life characterized by utter dependance upon the One who raises the dead, such that life will only make any sense (in every waking and sleeping moment) as it is lived from the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. The ground of this instinctual knowledge of God is found nowhere else but in the gracious and loving demonstration and reality of that in the mediatatorial humanity of Jesus Christ 'for us'.

Do you have this kind of theological instinct? If not, why not? It is time to get moving, the days are short, and the coming of Jesus is at hand (cf. Heb. 5--6 & Heb. 10:24ff).

Webster on Bonhoeffer and Scripture

Credit Picture (of Bonhoeffer) by Artist, Charles Pate

John Webster is commenting on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s understanding of our relation to Scripture. It’s not as if we give scripture its ground through imbuing it with our exegetical prowess; no, it’s that our ground is given footing as we find ourselves related to God in Christ through the Scripture’s story. This fits with the point that Webster is driving at, over-all, throughout his little book; that Scripture should be seen as an aspect of soteriology — sanctification in particular. And that Scripture is a part of God’s triune communicative act, ‘for us’; caught up in His self-Revelation itself. In other words, for Webster, as for Bonhoeffer (per Webster); Scripture shouldn’t be framed as a component of our epistemological foundation (wherein we put Scripture in its place, in effect), but Scripture is a mode of God’s gracious speech that acts upon us by the Spirit. And it is through this divine speech, that is grace, that we find ourselves — outside ourselves — in Christ, and thus in the Story of Scripture. This should have the effect of placing us under Scripture (which Luther would call ministerial) versus over Scripture (magisterial) — to simplify. Here’s the quote (a little introduction by Webster, and then a full quote of Bonhoeffer [also, notice the idea of vicariousness that Bonhoeffer appeals to as well]):

. . . More than anything else, it is listening or attention which is most important to Bonhoeffer, precisely because the self is not grounded in its own disposing of itself in the world, but grounded in the Word of Christ. Reading the Bible, as Bonhoeffer puts it in Life Together, is a matter of finding ourselves extra nos in the biblical history:

We are uprooted from our own existence and are taken back to the holy history of God on earth. There God has dealt with us, with our needs and our sins, by means of the divine wrath and grace. What is important is not that God is a spectator and participant in our life today, but that we are attentive listeners and participants in God’s action in the sacred story, the story of Christ on earth. God is with us today only as long as we are there.
Our salvation is ‘from outside ourselves’ (extra nos). I find salvation, not in my own life story, but only in the story of Jesus Christ . . . What we call our life, our troubles, and our guilt is by no means the whole of reality; our life, our need, our guilt, and our deliverance are there in the Scriptures. (John Webster, “Holy Scripture,” 83 citing Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Life Together,” 62.)

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.

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.

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).

The At-one-ment for this Holy Weekend

Thomas Torrance elucidates the Atonement for us during this solemn time of reflecting on this very act of God in Christ for us, At-one-ment!

[S]everal comments on this understanding of Christ’s sacrifice may be in place. While traditional forensic language is used, the atoning sacrifice is not to be understood as fulfilled by Christ merely as man (which would imply a Nestorian Christology), but of Christ as the one Mediator between God and man who is himself God and man in one Person. This means that ‘the joyful atonement made between God and man by Christ Jesus, by his death, resurrection and ascension’, is not to be understood in any sense as the act of the man Jesus placating God the Father, but as a propitiatory sacrifice in which God himself through the death of his dear Son draws near to man and draws man near to himself. It is along these lines also that we must interpret the statement of the Scots Confession that Christ ‘suffered in body and soul to make the full satisfication for the sins of the people’, for in the Cross God accepts the sacrifice made by Christ, whom he did not spare but delivered him up for us all, as satisfaction, thereby acknowledging his own bearing of the world’s sin guilt and judgment as the atonement. As Calvin pointed out in a very important passage, God does not love us because of what Christ has done, but it is because he first loved us that he came in Christ in order through atoning sacrifice in which God himself does not hold himself aloof but suffers in and with Christ to reconcile us to himself. Nor is there any suggestion that this atoning sacrifice was offered only for some people and not for all, for that would imply that he who became incarnate was not God the Creator in whom all men and women live and move and have their being, and that Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour was not God and man in the one Person, but only an instrument in the hands of the Father for the salvation of a chosen few. In other words, a notion of limited atonement implies a Nestorian heresy in which Jesus Christ is not really God and man united in one Person. It must be added that the perfect response offered by Jesus Christ in life and death to God in our place and on our behalf, contains and is the pledge of our response. Just as the union of God and man in Christ holds good in spite of all the contradiction of our sin under divine judgment, so his vicarious response holds good for us in spite of our unworthiness: ‘not I but Christ’. . . . (T. F. Torrance: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell,” 18-19)

A lot here! This would be the way I, as an Evangelical Calvinist, would understand what is going on in the Atoning work of Christ. You see an implicit critique of Federal Calvinism by Torrance in the quote. The fear is that classic Calvinism does not go far enough in thinking into and then out of the atonement; that is to say that if the atonement was merely meeting the conditions required by a legal penal substitutionary theory of the atonement, alone; then Christ's atoning work did not do the deed that was really required to reconcile us to God. That is, we don't just need our bad behaviors paid for (although this is an aspect); we need new hearts (at least that's what the Apostle Paul writes in II Corinthians 3). So we need our ontology rearranged, or better, recreated in the and through the vicarious and victorious humanity of Christ. We contemplate his death today and tomorrow, but look forward to the resurrection this early Sunday! The Good News is that Jesus entered into the depths of our humanity and changed us from the inside out; from the guts and all the way down.

The TULIP 'Dead Headed' by an Evangelical Calvinist

This is just off the top, and reflects something I said in the comment thread of another post. How would an Evangelical Calvinist reframe the infamous TULIP if he/she had to? Reframe so that we end up with a Christ-centred TULIP. Here’s a go:

• T otal Depravity = Reframe: He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. II Cor. 5:21
• U nconditional Election = Reframe: Col. 1:15ff (He has supremacy over life and death, He is the center of salvation in God’s life for us).
• L imited Atonement = Reframe: The atonement is ‘limited to Christ for us’.
• I rresistable Grace = Reframe: God has already taken the choice for humanities’ salvation in Christ (II Cor. 5:19).
• P erseverance = Reframe: Our life is grounded in Christ’s life, based on the power of an indestructible life. Heb. 7:15

Obviously Christ’s vicariousness plays the central role in this framing, what do you think? I think this could be done better, but it’s off the top; and in reality we aren’t slaves to the TULIP in the first place . . . just trying to be creative.

*I wrote this a few years ago, I would restate some of these to be even more clear; and maybe I'll do that in the days to come.

'The Faithfulness of Christ' in Romans with Wright

I have come to appreciate N.T. Wright more and more over time; both as I have read some of his books, and then listen to him present papers, lectures, and sermons. The following is Wright noting

something in the context of his exegesis of Romans 3; what I find significant is the role that the vicarious humanity of Christ (along with union with Christ) plays for Wright (as it ought to) in his exegetical work. Further, the admission and recognition that Wright's own exegesis is highly theological in orientation (which is something I find commendable for a biblical exegete to admit and even revel in, to an extent). Without further ado, here is Wright;

[U]nderneath all this, then, is Christology. Here again the truth to which, at its best, the doctrine of "imputed righteousness" can function as a kind of signpost. God has "put forth" Jesus so that, through his faithful death, all those who belong to him can be regarded as having died. God raised him up so that, through his vindication, all those who belong to him can be regarded as being themselves vindicated. Since that is more or less exactly what Paul says in Romans 4:25, and spells out at length in Romans 6, the point ought to be fairly clear. "The faithfulness of the Messiah" is a shorthand way of saying that in Jesus, as Israel's representative (and hence the new, personal, middle term in the single-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world), God has accomplished what he always said he would. The faithfulness of the Messiah" is, actually, a way of stressing---as one might have thought any good Reformed theologian would welcome!---the sovereignty of God and the unshakeable, rock-bottom reality, with the events of justification and salvation, not of the faith of those being justified, but of representative and therefore substitutionary death of Israel's Messiah, Jesus. . . . [N. T. Wright, Justification: God's Plan & Paul's Vision, 206-07]

Obviously Wright follows the subjective genetive camp (e.g. the 'faithfulness or faith of Christ'); which ought to challenge traditional understandings that don't truly think from an 'in Christ' theology. A Pauline theology that sees Christ as the embodiment of all the riches of God for us (cf. Eph. 1; II Cor. 8:9; etc.). Faith isn't something of our own making; it's not some created thingy that God imparts to a certain elect group of people; faith is what Christ, in his humanity for us, operated with as the living bond of trust he shares with the Father, by the Holy Spirit on our behalf, in and through his mediatorial and priestly role for all those who will inherit eternal life (in Christ). This is the significance of what I see Wright articulating.

Who's First? Me or Jesus ...

I think union with Christ and how that relates to salvation is one of the key pillars upon which EC rests. This nuance, relative to

Day of Pentecost

Federal Calvinism, or what have you, differentiates Evangelical Calvinism from the other approaches, which gets me very excited. In that vein let me share something from Myk Habets, he is speaking to this issue in the theology of Thomas Torrance; and how our choice for God (salvation) is first grounded in Jesus’ choice for us (and is acted out in His Spirit constituted humanity in-our-stead [substitution]). I hope you find this helpful:

[B]ased upon the mutual mediation of Son and Spirit, there is both a God-humanward movement and a human-Godward movement and Jesus through the Spirit mediates both. This means, as Deddo explains, ‘the Spirit not only brings to us the objective effects worked out in the vicarious life of Christ, but also the subjective effects worked out in his humanity. That is, the Spirit enables us to share in Jesus’ own faithful repsonse to the Father’. Torrance’s doctrine of human response as previously analysed provides a foundation for what is developed here by way of the Holy Spirit.

Through the Spirit we share in Christ’s response to the Father. The Spirit empowers the believer to cry ‘Abba, Father’, in the same way that comes naturally to the Son of God; for to be ‘in the Spirit’ is to be ‘in Christ’. Deddo notes that according to Torrance, ‘our whole lives in every part are constituted a participation: a dynamic life of union and communion with God’. Torrance insists that our holiness or sanctification is realised in Christ by the Holy Spirit: our repentance, faith, and obedience are actualised in Christ by the Holy Spirit; every part of our relationship with and response to God is thus achieved in, through, and by the Son and the Spirit. Not only is the Holy Spirit instrumental in justification, but now, also, to sanctification. Critically, however, both are located in Christ. Here we have, in effect, the other side of redemption: ‘the side of the subjectification of revelation and reconciliation in the life and faith of the church. That means the Spirit is creating and calling forth the response of man in faith and understanding, in thanksgiving and worship and prayer. . . . [Myk Habets, “Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance,” 152-53] 

What is keynote here is how all of the typical concepts (i.e. election, limited atonement, “by-faith-alone”, “by-grace-alone”, “in-Christ-alone”), which are usually placed in a decree, are reframed or recasted so that it is all grounded in God’s life in Christ by the Spirit. We don’t cooperate with God through grace (as if grace is something given to us that we can cooperate with Christ through) to appropriate salvation (which is the way Classic Calvinism construes it); instead we respond through the ‘free’ response of Jesus Christ to the Father by the Holy Spirit on our behalf. We are placed into, united to Christ, by the ‘person’ (non-created) of the Holy Spirt; it is through this union that our response is first instantiated, first accomplished in Christ’s mediation (in Christ’s Spirit constituted  humanity) for us. Union with Christ (and the broader category of Theosis from which this springs) is an integral part of the Evangelical Calvinist approach; that is because it holds that God’s life itself is salvation (not meeting the dictates of some decrees), thus if we are going to ‘be saved’ we must be in union with this life. And that is what happens through Christ’s humanity by the Spirit first; then we are united to His humanity by the Spirit, and it is out of this recreated humanity that we say ‘Yes’ to the Father (‘thy will be done’).

Evangelical Calvinism: T.F. Torrance and Union with Christ in Scottish Theology

The following is a guest post I originally posted at another instantiation of The Evangelical Calvinist back on August 24, 2009, here.
 

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 election 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.