Author Archives: Victor Shepherd

Victor Shepherd’s address to Tyndale faculty, Aug 2015

September 1, 2015

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Reincarnation – Making sense of Christian faith

June 2, 2015

Victor Shepherd’s sermon on Reincarnation

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The Role of Faith Communities in the Treatment of Mental Illness “The Story Of Our Life: Written By The God Who Suffers For Us And With Us”

May 20, 2015

I: — In my final year of theology studies (1970), University of Toronto, I enrolled in a course, “The Human Person in a Stressful World”. The course instructor was Dr James Wilkes, a psychiatrist connected with the Clark Institute of Psychiatry (now part of Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health). Until then (I was 25 years old) I had apprehended no more of psychiatry than the silly caricatures and stupid jokes that popularly surround ‘shrinks’ and ‘wig-pickers’. Months later I emerged from the course not merely with medical information I had heretofore lacked; I emerged with a new world. Wilkes hadn’t simply added several items to my mental furniture; he had admitted me to a world I hadn’t known to exist.

What was the world? It was the complexity of the human person together with the multidimensionality, pervasiveness and relentlessness of human suffering. It was the configuration of the stresses, frequently swelling to distresses – intra-psychic, social, biological, historical, religious – that bear upon people, together with the configuration of responses to such stresses. (Some responses are individual – stress stimulates some people to greater achievement, while stress effects breakdown in others; other responses are social – institutionalization, whether in hospital or prison, is one such social response.)

My debt to Dr Wilkes is unpayable. Not least, he introduced to me the Diagnostic Statistical Manual; as a result I gained even deeper appreciation of the scope, profundity and versatility of human suffering. He spared me lifelong shallowness born of ignorance; spared me a simplistic, unrealistic approach to the people I would see every day for the next forty years in my work as a pastor.

II: — One month after the course had concluded I was ordained to the ministry of The United Church of Canada, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. In no time I was living and working in north-eastern New Brunswick, one of the most economically deprived areas of Canada. And just as quickly I found myself face-to-face with people whose difficulties were the ‘common cold’ of the psychiatric world; e.g., mood disorders, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia. I also witnessed suffering less commonly seen in the Twentieth Century: hysterical paralysis (episodic leg immobility in someone devoid of a physical impediment) and even hysterical blindness when someone was ‘put on the spot’ in a troubling social situation only to find her vision disappearing and returning repeatedly.

III: — My work as pastor on behalf of psychiatric sufferers found me conversing with family physicians and psychiatrists. Both groups, but especially psychiatrists, frequently appeared suspicious of clergy, even occasionally disdainful. Soon I learnt why: too many clergy (at least of that era) tended to a facile, one-sided pronouncement concerning psychiatric patients as possessing inadequate faith and defective trust in God; psychiatric sufferers were haunted by a guilt they were supposed to have; in addition they were self-absorbed. The clergy-proposed cure was simple: all such spiritual problems could be shed through a combination of ‘positive thinking’, ‘exercise of the will’, and ‘greater faith’. The medical fraternity appeared to think the clergy only worsened the sufferers’ predicament in that to their anguish were now added guilt (they were manifest spiritual failures) and anxiety (they feared they lacked the spiritual resources for rising above their pain).

Thanks to Dr Wilkes I was spared such simplistic glibness. Equipped with what I had gained from him, I revisited my theological formation, now keeping in mind the subtleties and complexities of human distress, determined to avoid naïve assessments and subtle accusations of personal deficiency if not personal failure; determined to avoid, in short, a false spiritualization of someone’s suffering.

IV: — As I revisited my theological understanding I developed a constellation of key spiritual themes found in the Abrahamic tradition. This constellation of key spiritual themes formed the matrix of my ministry to psychiatric sufferers.

[A] The first is elemental: God is for us. Three thousand years ago the Psalmist exulted, “This I know, that God is for me.” (Ps. 56:9) This conviction is the bass note, the downbeat, the ever-recurring throb. It remains the stable basis and the governing truth of everything else: God is for us. It’s picked up again in the apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Rome: “If God is for us, who is against us?” (Roman 8:31). The force of the assertion is, “If God is for us, who could ever be against us ultimately, regardless of all appearances to the contrary?” Since ‘appearances to the contrary’ abound in anyone’s life and especially in the ill person’s life, it cannot be insisted too often that God is for us.

To be sure, those who belong to any of the Abrahamic traditions arising from ‘The Book’; that is, those belonging to the Jewish, Islamic and Christian communities are always aware that ‘The Book’ says much else about God: God is judge, God is wrathful, God’s face is set against evildoers, and so on. Ill people tend to fasten on these texts, convinced that their illness is the result of God’s anger concerning them and God’s judgement upon them.

The general tenor of ‘The Book’, however, is wholly different. To be sure, God is judge (isn’t any person who lacks judgement anywhere in life to be pitied?). Unlike our judgement, however, God’s judgment is always the converse of his mercy. God bothers to judge us only because God has first resolved to rescue us and restore us. (If God didn’t intend the latter he wouldn’t bother with the former: he would simply ignore us.) God’s judgement, then, is always and only the first instalment of our restoration and the guarantee of its completion.

Since, according to ‘The Book’, God is love, love isn’t merely something God does (the implication being that God could as readily do something else if he wished; namely, not love); rather, since God is love, love is all God is and therefore all God can do. God can never not love, never act in a way that contradicts his character. God’s wrath, said Martin Luther, is God’s love burning hot – but always and everywhere love.

Mentally ill people, let me repeat, tend to assume their illness is the result of God’s displeasure with them. Two comments have to be made here: one, their illness isn’t the result of God’s displeasure; two, if elsewhere in life they have mobilized God’s displeasure (ill people like to remind me – correctly – that though they may be ill they are still sinners) God’s judgement is only his love setting us right. God’s judgement is God’s mercy beginning its work of restoration.

God is for us. This note has to be sounded relentlessly, for this note determines the rhythm of human existence.

[B] The second item in the constellation of key spiritual themes: God shares our vulnerability; shares our vulnerability not least because God is vulnerable himself. Ill people, I have found, fault themselves remorselessly for not being invulnerable; for not being strong enough, able enough, competent enough, resilient enough; in short, for not being inviolable. They assume that finitude, limitation, weakness isn’t or isn’t supposed to be part of our humanness. They fault themselves for not being invulnerable in the face of life’s assaults. (I have noticed, by the way, that psychiatric sufferers who fault themselves for their fragility would never fault themselves if they suffered a broken leg in a car accident. Without hesitation they would fault the driver whose car struck them. In other words, when they are physically incapacitated, they can legitimately blame others; when they are psychiatrically incapacitated they can only blame themselves.)

There has arisen in our society a miasma that continues to settle upon and soak into the populace at large; namely, we are, or are supposed to be, invincible, devoid of fragility, frailty and finitude. We are, or are supposed to be, nothing less than titanic in our capacity to withstand assaults. We are, or are supposed to be, possessed of an omnicompetence amounting to omnipotence. Worse, such omnipotence is deemed to be an attribute of God and therefore a property of those made in God’s image.

Omnipotence, however, understood as unmodified, unconditioned power, is terrible. A moment’s reflection should assure us that power for the sake of power; power unqualified by anything; sheer power is sheer evil. Then why attribute it to God?

More profoundly, power, properly understood, is the capacity to achieve purpose. What is God’s purpose? – a people who love him and honour him as surely as he loves and honours us. How does God achieve such purpose? – through God’s own vulnerability. The Abrahamic traditions refer alike to the One who repeatedly, characteristically suffers at the hands of his people yet never abandons them. God’s suffering, in these traditions, is likened to many things, but likened most often to a woman in end-stage labour whose child, conceived in pure joy, has brought her greater distress than she could have imagined yet who will not renounce the struggle but must see it through, until the child who is her delight is in her arms and on her lap.

So it is with God. From a Christian perspective specifically, the cross attests God’s limitless vulnerability (he hasn’t spared himself anything for our sakes), while the resurrection attests the limitless efficacy of limitless vulnerability.

Not only are we humans unable to escape our vulnerability (regardless of the messages advertisers beam upon us); to want to escape it is to want to be titanic. And to think we can escape it is to fancy ourselves gigantic and to ignore our Creator who renders himself defenceless before us for our sakes.

Psychiatric sufferers should be helped to see that their fragility isn’t a sign of moral weakness or personal failure or uncommon ineptitude or unusual folly. They should be helped to see that owning their vulnerability, rather than denying it or attempting to flee it, might just be essential to their recovery. Sufferers should be helped to see that their vulnerability is the leading edge of their triumph.

[C] The third item in the constellation of spiritual themes: God alone is the ‘story-writer’ who can render the negative, seemingly opaque developments and details of our existence a story rather than a chaotic jumble that ultimately defies comprehension.

Imagine a line in the middle of a novel; e.g., “The man who had waited for hours finally walked away, dismayed that the woman hadn’t noticed him.” If the question were asked, “What does it mean?”, the obvious rejoinder would be, “It all depends; it all depends on what preceded this event in the narrative; and no less it all depends on what follows this event; ultimately, it all depends on how the narrative turns out; that is, it depends on the last chapter. The mentally ill person persistently comments, “I don’t know why I’m ill; I don’t understand what it’s supposed to mean; I can’t make any sense of it.” Lack of meaning is a stress in anyone’s life, yet lack of meaning is something that confronts us all whenever we are face-to-face with evil.

We should admit that one aspect of evil’s evilness is evil’s sheer meaninglessness. To the extent that evil could be understood, it would be rational event, its evilness reduced by the explanation. What is evil is finally inexplicable and will always lack meaning, not least the evil of illness.

In the face of the stress of that meaninglessness which makes the burden of illness all the more burdensome, the ill person is always prone to try to reduce the burden by positing a meaning, by ‘finding’ a meaning (as it were) that actually isn’t there but the ‘finding’ of which is easier to endure than no meaning. The problem here, however, is that the ‘meaning’ the ill person posits is arbitrary, unrealistic, and worst of all, self-deprecating. Now she thinks the meaning of her illness is that it was ‘sent’ to teach her a lesson, or to remind her of personal failure, or to make major changes in her life, or to confirm her inherent wickedness. In the interest of reducing her burden she has only increased it.

The truth is, the meaning of any one event in anyone’s life depends on several factors. In the first place it depends on what has preceded the onset of illness. In the second place it depends on what is yet to occur in that person’s life. Above all, it depends on the meta-narrative that gathers up and determines the ultimate significance of all the events, good and bad, in that person’s life – which meta-narrative no one, ill or not, can write inasmuch as no individual is the author of her own meta-narrative.

All of us like to think we understand how life is unfolding and how life’s ingredients are connected until – until a negativity occurs that is nothing less than a ‘surd’ (in the mathematical sense); i.e., a development that doesn’t fit anywhere and can’t be seen to fit or be made to fit; a ‘surd’ development that defies the logic by which we had understood our own existence up to this point. Yet since the meaning of a story depends on the last chapter, and since the last chapter hasn’t been written nor can be written by us, we must admit that for the present illness remains a surd: we cannot determine its meaning at this time nor its place in the conclusive narrative that is anyone’s life. People from the traditions of ‘The Book’, however, maintain that the ultimate meaning of anyone’s life can be entrusted to the One whose meta-narrative gathers up our self-determined, myopic narratives and transmutes them into something whose meaning, truth and splendour we can only await at this time but which we need not doubt.

Let’s change the metaphor. Instead of an author or master narrator let’s think of a master weaver. A weaver weaves loose threads into a rug whose pattern is recognizable and pleasing; more than pleasing, desirable – why else would anyone find the rug attractive and want to purchase it? Two comments are in order here. One, what goes into the rug are hundreds of loose threads of assorted lengths and diverse materials. Two, even while these threads are being woven into a rug, anyone looking at the rug from underneath would see something that wasn’t recognizable, wasn’t attractive, and would seem little improvement on loose threads. And yet, when the weaver has finished and we can look at the rug from above we recognize a pattern, a completion, an orderliness that is comely and convinces us that the rug is a finished work, elegantly concluded. Only as we are brought from looking up from underneath to looking down from above do we recognize what the weaver has accomplished.

Right now all of us are on the underside of the rug looking up at it; and while the apparent lack of order and attractiveness may puzzle us or even amuse us, the mentally ill person is never amused and is more than puzzled: she is dismayed, fearing that her life, seemingly a jumble now, will never be more than a jumble. Lacking coherence now, it will always lack coherence. The Abrahamic traditions, however, maintain that ultimately no one’s life is meaningless; no one has to posit an arbitrary meaning in order render life endurable, fictively endurable. Instead, we affirm that the weaver gathers up all the elements of our existence, including the most painful and incomprehensible, with the result that our life, our concrete existence, finally is and finally is seen to be coherent, meaningful, attractive, useful, a finished work brought to completion.

[D] The fourth item in the constellation of key spiritual themes: a community has to embody the truth it claims to cherish. In short, a community has to embody, exemplify, the constellation of spiritual themes discussed to this point. Since the communities of the Abrahamic traditions maintain, for instance, that there is no human being, anywhere, in any predicament, who is ever God-forsaken, the community that upholds this truth has to embody it.

Note: I didn’t say there is no human being who doesn’t feel God-forsaken. Neither did I say that people have no reason to feel God-forsaken. They manifestly have. Nonetheless, since it remains true that God doesn’t abandon, despise or reject, there has to be a community that doesn’t abandon, despise or reject.

Our concrete embodiment of this truth takes at least two forms.

(a) Most simply, the community shares its material resources with those who are especially needy. Everyone is aware, of course, that there is a government-enforced, non-voluntary sharing of our material resources with the needy. This enforced, non-voluntary assistance is found in the combination of graduated income tax and social assistance and health-care. While this arrangement isn’t an explicit aspect of the life of church or synagogue or mosque, it is the indirect illumination arising from the witness of biblically-informed communities. We ought never to sell it short, and we should continue to ask ourselves what might be the social texture of our society if secularism succeeds in extinguishing the indirect illumination of biblically-informed peoples.

The Mississauga congregation I pastored for 21 years partnered with the local synagogue and Baha’i fellowship in developing two affordable housing projects (value: $35 million). This housing accommodated needy people, among whom were always many who were in psychiatric difficulty, and more than a few whose psychiatric condition was chronic. Quickly we noticed that many of the people we housed were undernourished; whereupon we developed Mississauga’s first food bank. It still operates, and every year it distributes food whose market value is $12 million. Next we noticed that many children were so poorly fed they were underachieving at school; whereupon we fashioned a ‘breakfast club’ in order to give them a nutritious start to the school-day. The ‘breakfast club’ was headed-up by the rebbitzin, the rabbi’s wife. She served unstintingly for 25 years. At one point there were 44 people from my own congregation serving in the ‘breakfast club’.

The most elemental level of community is serving the neighbour’s material scarcity through our material abundance.

(b) The second expression of community is sharing the neighbour’s suffering. To share the neighbour’s suffering where mental illness is concerned is at least to befriend that person and thereby at least reduce the suffering person’s isolation and loneliness.

The mentally ill person suffers what every human suffers in terms of frailty, disease, bodily breakdown through accident, sickness and aging. In addition the mentally ill person suffers from her particular psychiatric problem, indeed lives, lives out, that problem, as the non-psychiatrically afflicted do not live that problem, at least. And in the third place, the mentally ill person suffers the social stigma visited upon the psychiatrically troubled. The community has to be aware of all three levels of such suffering, and remain aware that such suffering, cumulatively, is an appalling burden.

When I was a pastor in Mississauga my wife and I invited back to lunch each Sunday a different family from the congregation. Several matters need to be noted here.

One, the unmarried person was still a family, and should not be overlooked in a society almost exclusively couple-oriented.

Two, in a congregation of 400 families there were always several people who had been diagnosed with assorted psychiatric problems.

Three, the mentally ill person is not only suffering atrociously herself; her family is suffering too, in a different manner to be sure, but suffering nonetheless.

Four, while these people had been invited to lunch, if they were still sitting in our living room at 5:00 p.m., they were invited to supper. I came to see that loneliness is an enormous problem, not least loneliness among those one would think least likely to be lonely since their lives outwardly seemed devoid of social deficit; loneliness especially in those whose mental illness heightened their isolation; and of course loneliness in those whose ill family-member found others avoiding the family.

In the course of our simple hospitality we welcomed to our home and table the bipolar person, the obsessive-compulsive, the phobic, the schizophrenic, the substance-addicted, and those afflicted with personality disorders. Among these were the ‘dual-diagnosed’; e.g., the mentally ill person who is also blind or in trouble with the law.

The role of the community of faith isn’t to mimic the mental health professional; certainly it isn’t to suggest that medical intervention is superfluous. The role of the community of faith is to render concrete its conviction that ill people matter and shouldn’t be ignored. Not least, the role of the community of faith is to hold up – for the sufferer herself but also for the wider society – the truth that the troubled of this earth have been appointed to a future release and recovery more glorious than their pain allows them to glimpse at this time.

Address to the American Psychiatric Association May 2015

Dr. Victor A. Shepherd

Grace and Truth

May 4, 2015

Grace & Truth JWesley

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‘Grace and Truth’: Lessons from John Wesley

Why Is This Friday Different From All Others?

April 4, 2015

Isaiah 53:7-12 1st Peter 2:22-25 Luke 23:32-43

Today is Passover, and in Passover services throughout the Jewish community a young child asks his parents, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” It’s assumed it’s important that the child know why this night is different from all others. It’s assumed as well that the child’s parents can tell her why.

At some point our children have asked us or will ask us, “Why is this Friday different from all other Fridays? Why do we call Good Friday ‘good’? It’s important that our children know why. And we, their parents, should be able to tell them.

The quickest answer is “Good Friday is the day on which Jesus died.” But our children will still have many questions: “Why do we make so much of the death of Jesus? We don’t make anything of the death of John the Baptist? And when aunt Susie died last year no one at the funeral said it was good.”

Children persist. “Is it because Jesus died a martyr?” But thousands of Christians have died martyrs. “Then is it because Jesus’ death was unusually painful or distressing?” But millions have died in greater physical pain and distress. “Then why is this Friday different from all others?”

‘Good Friday’ is a modern expression. In the mediaeval era Christians spoke of God’s Friday. For on this day God acted definitively on behalf of humankind. On this day God did something apart from which the human predicament would be hopeless. He did something apart from which we would have remained helpless. This Friday, God’s Friday, has eternal significance for the entire human creation.

I: — As we ponder what God did and why he did it the truth about us humans begins to settle upon us. We read the all-time favourite parable of the lost son, and we hear the father cry, “My son was lost. He was dead.” Lost? Dead? Do these words really describe the situation of sinful humankind before God? Surely Jesus didn’t mean that unbelief has consequences as serious as this. (‘Lost, dead.’)

And then our eyes alight on a few words with which Jesus introduces a teaching to his disciples: “If you fellows, evil as you are…” He’s talking to disciples, to his friends, not to atheists or moral degenerates or

ne’er do wells; to disciples. And to them he says, matter of factly, as if what he’s saying were so obvious no one could disagree, “If you fellows, evil as you are….”

We penetrate the sentimental haze that surrounds Christmas and recognize that the unrestrained effusiveness and uninhibited joy pertain to one item: we’ve been given a saviour. We catch the mood of the New Testament writers. Their mood is, “Whew. At last. Just when we thought it was all over with us and our predicament was irretrievable.” If these men and women are ecstatic over the gift of the saviour, do they know something about the human predicament that we, in our inflated self-assurance, have overlooked?

And then we hear Jesus announcing, as he looks detractors in the eye, “I didn’t come to call the righteous. I came to call sinners to repentance.” Repentance is a turn-around in life; it’s an about-face, a 180-degree redirection. Does Jesus Christ assume that my life is fundamentally misdirected now?

Yes. Our Lord’s diagnosis is that humankind is wrapped up in a deep-rooted revolt against God. Unbelief (he’s not talking now of the unbelief of the head, a relatively slight matter, but rather about the unbelief of the heart: hardness of heart); unbelief, he insists, isn’t an ‘allowable option’ that some pseudo-sophisticates prefer to hold. Unbelief of the heart is wilful rebellion and repudiation, protracted defiance and disdain concerning God himself. It’s persistent ingratitude concerning God and prideful contempt as well. Our revolt issues, in God’s economy, in a human condition that is accurately described, without exaggeration, by the words ‘lost’, ‘dead’.

A diagnosis as catastrophic as this has to be met with a treatment that’s anything but superficial, or else the treatment will prove wholly ineffective. Yet in our society shallow diagnoses of the human condition abound, and we are constantly proffered superficial treatments. Shallow diagnoses always call forth shallow treatments. One treatment is greater moral earnestness; another is hyped up religiosity; another is cultural refinement; another is more government control in order to ensure social order; another is less

government control in order to ensure individual responsibility. None of these treatments can remedy the human condition; they are all too shallow.

When I was eleven years old I was playing touch-football on the street when one of my friends upended me. My head struck the curb, and my skull was fractured. My friends managed to get me home. I was dazed, pain-wracked, and profoundly disoriented. My mother, distressed at seeing me and preferring not to think my condition critical, went to the bathroom medicine cabinet, took out a tube that was supposed to fix everything, and squirted Vaseline on my head. What was Vaseline going to do for a fractured skull? Nobody is faulting her. She didn’t perceive how badly I was injured; or unconsciously she couldn’t bring herself to admit I was badly injured; or she wanted to ‘buy time’, wait and see, by playing ‘Let’s pretend’.

In light of humankind’s predicament before God (universally denied by the purveyors of shallow diagnosis and treatment), all shallow recommendations are as ineffective as putting Vaseline on a fractured skull.

God sees our repudiation of him (the unbelief of the heart), our brazen attempts at disguising our revolt, and our shallow attempts at remedying a predicament whose profundity we won’t acknowledge. God reacts. Of course he reacts. If God didn’t react he’d be a psychopath, as character-deficient as those pathetic people who are conscienceless, shameless, and everywhere dangerous. His reaction is his condemnation. His reaction issues in our estrangement from him. His reaction fixes a gulf between him and us, which gulf our rebellion, rejection and repudiation of him aimed at anyway, didn’t it?

Our Lord is the supreme realist. His diagnosis is correct. We are, he tells us, estranged from God by our defiant disobedience, and fixed in that estrangement by God’s just judgement.

II: — Yet Good Friday is God’s Friday, remember; and God’s Friday is Good Friday. Good Friday must

be good news, it has to be good news, or nothing could be good about it. Good Friday is good news, the good news of the gospel. The gospel is God-in-his-mercy coming among us who are lost and dead just because he is more distressed at our estrangement from him than we are. In his mercy God will do anything in order to set us right with himself.

Then what has he done? At the cross he has sealed his judgement upon us and manifested that judgement incontrovertibly (bad news); and at the cross he has simultaneously taken his own judgement upon himself, thereby fashioning acquittal for us. Good news.

Think of the last time you had to discipline your child for a serious offence. You had to do two things. In the first place you had to impress on your child your displeasure at her; you had to ensure your child understood that her behaviour was unacceptable; you were not going to tolerate it, and her punishment she deserved entirely. In the second place, you had to assure your recalcitrant child that you still loved her; that her outrageous behaviour grieved you more than it grieved her; that your anger – legitimate, vivid, evident – was nonetheless nothing compared to your heartbreak. In a word, you had to assure your child that the punishment she had to undergo pained you more than it pained her, cost you more than it cost her. Every parent wrestles with this dilemma.

God wrestles with it too. And God resolves his dilemma through the cross. Through the cross he makes plain that our defiance of him and repudiation of him, so far from a slight matter, is an intolerable matter, a damnable matter. After all, our recalcitrance has cost him his Son – which is to say, has cost God himself everything, since Father and Son are one in their suffering on Good Friday.

At the same time, through the cross God declares that his mercy is without measure and without end, for he hasn’t spared his Son, hasn’t spared himself, all for the sake of sparing us. So it is that Paul exclaims, in limitless amazement, “God instantiates his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

I have heard people say, “What does the death of Jesus have to do with God’s saving us? If we were drowning a hundred metres offshore, out in the middle of the lake, and someone standing on the dock took pity on us, and exclaimed, ‘I feel sorry for your predicament. I’ll jump into the water and drown too: we’ll both drown together” – I’ve heard people say that such a situation doesn’t prove that the second person loves the first or can save the first. All it proves is the stupidity and ineffectiveness of the silly person who jumped off the dock and threw his life away.

Then did Jesus merely throw his life away? In truth, our Lord’s cross is wholly different. The alienation from his Father that the Son undergoes on Good Friday – ‘the dereliction’ we call it (“Why have you forsaken me?”) is nothing less and nothing other than humankind’s alienation from God (even though we are insensitive to it). And since, according to the Incarnation, Father and Son are one in their judgement upon us, one in their execution of that judgement, and one in the alienation that judgement entails, then the Son’s alienation from the Father is simultaneously the Father’s self-alienation. And the Father’s self-alienation is nothing less than God, the just judge, absorbing in himself his judgement upon us, leaving us acquittal, pardon, forgiveness, life.

Think of it from another angle. In Jesus Christ, God the judge enacts his sentence of condemnation upon humankind. And then God the judge does what no human judge ever does in a court of law. He steps down from his elevated bench, stands with the offender, and imposes on himself the sentence he has just imposed on the offender, thereby absorbing in himself the sentence the offender deserves and has received and yet is now spared.

Let’s return to the matter of parents disciplining children. A parent comes upon a child behaving outrageously and consigns that child to her bedroom, without supper. Some time later, the parent, so very upset at the child’s behaviour that the parent can’t eat his supper, goes to the child’s room, sits with the child, and tells the child why all of this had to occur. Then the parent, having absorbed the punishment he

assigned the child, puts his arm around the child, and the two of them walk out of the room together.

III: — Together. This word brings us to the last point of the sermon. As God has absorbed his judgement upon us at the cross, he and we can live henceforth together. He can’t do anything more for us than he has already done. Whether we live henceforth together now hangs on our response.

Our response will include several aspects. It will include our recognition that the diagnosis concerning us has been correct. It will include our acknowledgement that the remedy for our predicament God alone has fashioned. It will include our admission that we do not add to this cure nor do we subtract from it: either we receive it or we spurn it. Our response will include our discernment that the remedy, finally, isn’t an ‘it’ at all but rather the effectual presence of Jesus Christ himself, and therefore we are going to embrace him gratefully or rebuff him haughtily.

Two hundred years ago it was the custom of the leaders of a vanquished army to hand over their swords (ceremonial swords) to the victor. Handing over one’s sword was the conclusive, public acknowledgment of surrender.

After the last shot was fired in the Battle of Waterloo, 1815, the victorious general, the Duke of Wellington summoned the defeated French generals to his tent. They appeared, greeted Wellington, and took the seats he offered them. Immediately they congratulated Wellington on his superior military prowess. Why, they were professional soldiers too, and certainly they had an eye for military genius. In fact, they continued, so fine a soldier was Wellington that it was no disgrace to lose to him. It was an honour simply to be found on the field of battle with him. Perhaps they could all have a glass of sherry and toast each other.

The flattery mounted. Wellington listened to it for twenty-odd minutes and then said quietly, yet

uncompromisingly, “Gentlemen, I want your swords.” He didn’t want to be flattered. He wanted to be surrendered to. And he wanted a conclusive, public acknowledgement of that surrender. To this end the men who surrendered to him were going to have to stand before him empty-handed.

It is for the same reason the hymn writer cries, “Nothing in my hand I bring; simply to thy cross I cling.”

If you are offended by the simplicity of the Good Friday message, I can only say that the gospel, finally, is simple.

If you are offended by its diagnosis of the human predicament before God, I must insist on its realism.

If you are offended by the crudeness of crucifixion and blood and bedraggled Jew, I can only say that no one has ever been saved by Gentile, genteel refinement.

Why is this Friday different from all others? Why is this Friday Good Friday? Because it’s God’s Friday. And by God’s grace and the faith his grace enlivens within us, may it ever be yours – and mine as well.

Victor Shepherd

Good Friday 2015 St Bride’s Anglican Church, Mississauga

Festschrift Acceptance Speech

June 6, 2014

On the occasion of his Festscrift,Victor was honoured as Distinguished Fellow, with celebration writings, recognizing his outstanding contribution as “Pastor-Preacher-Scholar.” This event took place on Saturday June 7th, at Bayview Glen Church.

Fetschrift

Soren Kierkegaard, a better philosopher than I, once remarked, “Life can only be understood backwards, even though it has to be lived forwards.” Kierkegaard meant that only after episodes in our life have occurred can we understand them; but of course since we must ‘live forwards’ we can never anticipate how our lives are going to unfold. I could never have anticipated being named Distinguished Fellow by the Centre for Mentorship and Theological Reflection, founded by my colleague, Prof. Dennis Ngien. (The event tonight, by the way coincides with the 16^th anniversary of Dennis’s Centre for Mentorship and Theological Reflection.)

I began my theology studies in 1967, and was soon ordained to the ministry of Word, Sacrament and Pastoral Care. For four decades I was an everyday pastor and every-Sunday preacher, and for four decades I remained startled and moved at how people, suffering people in particular, count on their pastor to be for them an icon of Jesus Christ and his triumph.

And then, in the midst of and overlapping with my work as pastor, I was invited to teach at Tyndale.

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The occasion of my recognition tonight as teacher is also the occasion of gratitude to many.

First I must mention Donald Bastian, retired bishop of the Free Methodist Church in Canada. Over 20 years ago Bishop Bastian chaired the committee that appointed me the first occupant of Canada’s only Chair of Wesley Studies.

Of course I wouldn’t have been appointed anywhere had I not thrived under the doctoral supervision of Prof. David Demson, a thinker whose theological gifts in the University of Toronto were without peer.

Ten years after my appointment to Tyndale, Prof. David Neelands, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity at Trinity College, University of Toronto, appointed me to Trinity College in order to supervise doctoral students from any of the seven theological colleges on the U of T campus. Prof. Neelands gave me a gift greater than he will ever know.

The first two doctoral students assigned me (one each from Wycliffe and Trinity) made my task easy, thanks to their prodigious academic ability. Both are here tonight, and both are now professors at Moody Bible Institute, Chicago: Marcus Johnson and John Clark.

My single largest debt to any individual, however, is the debt I owe Professor Emil Fackenheim, whose grave I visited in Jerusalem in 2011. For decades Fackenheim was the brightest star in U of T’s philosophical firmament. In class he discussed philosophy, and nothing but philosophy. Fackenheim’s lectures acquainted us with aspects and implications of philosophy we could never have found or probed or profited from without him. Outside class, however, Fackenheim, rabbi as well as philosopher, didn’t care to talk about philosophy. Outside class Fackenheim wanted only to speak of GOD. One day he commented to me, “Shepherd, modernity thinks it is solid and substantial while God is ‘iffy’, vague, ethereal, ephemeral. Shepherd, there is nothing ‘iffy’ about God; God is concrete, weighty, opaque, dense. Modernity has it wrong. In light of the depredations of the 20^th century (here I knew he was thinking of the Holocaust) there is a huge question mark above humankind; but above Him there is no question mark whatever.” When Fackenheim uttered ‘God’, the entire room filled with the Shekinah, and I thought I was on Sinai with Moses or on Carmel with Elijah. Fackenheim’s stamp is on me everywhere.

I like to think that at my life’s end there will be two or three students who will have come to know through my witness what I came to know through Fackenheim’s: namely, what it is to be overwhelmed by and engulfed by and taken up into the immensity and density, the sheer ‘thickness’, of the One who can never be escaped and, at the last, won’t even be disputed.

Tyndale has been a wonderful gift to me, a gift of many facets: academic colleagues, staff members, administrators, librarians. The single, most moving aspect of Tyndale’s gift, however, has been students. The students have always struck me as younger venturers on the Kingdom-journey who, I trust, will profit from us who are older venturers on the same journey with them.

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Always to be cherished are the dozens of family-members and friends here tonight who have endured my spasticities and encouraged me at all times.

And then there’s my dear wife. In 45 years of marriage Maureen has never, never even once, complained about the sacrifices my vocation has exacted from her.

Above all, I am grateful to our Lord Jesus Christ. His crucified arms embrace us now even as he points us to the Day of his glorious appearing, when faith will give way to sight, hope give way to hope’s fulfillment, and love give way to nothing – except more love, for ever and ever.

The Triune God and the Threefold Nature of the Church

June 6, 2014

The Triune God and the Threefold Nature of the Church

On Halloween many people wear false faces. No one is upset because everyone knows the false face is only a game. If, however, someone walked into a bank wearing a false face, it would be another matter. Everyone would know the false face is an occasion of evil.

Many of us ‘put on’ a false face, as it were, in different social situations in order to misrepresent ourselves and deceive others. I can hate you in my heart and yet ‘put on’ a face that suggests friendship. I can despise you in my heart and yet ‘put on’ a face that suggests admiration. In these situations (situations of sin, we should note) the face we wear contradicts the heart we possess. Plainly the person putting on the false face can never be known, and because she can’t be known she can never be trusted. If anyone is to be known and trusted, face and heart have to be one.

What about God’s face and God’s heart? If we think of Jesus Christ as the manifest ‘face’ of God, then the doctrine of the Trinity attests the face of Jesus and the heart of the Father to be identical. The face the Father displays in the Son is not and never can be a false face. Face and heart are one. God as he is towards us (the Son) is identical with God as he is in himself (the Father). This point is crucial, for otherwise God’s activity upon us and within us might be merely something God does, unrelated to who God is. If this were the case, God’s activity upon us and within us would be a manipulation that never acquainted us with the heart of God, with the result that we could never know God himself, and therefore we could never trust him.

The doctrine of the Trinity is crucial. At the very least it attests the truth that who God is in his dealings with us is who God is in himself; and no less importantly, who God is in himself is who God is in his dealings with us.

In other words, the doctrine of the Trinity witnesses to God’s identity: what we see in Jesus Christ is what we get; namely, God himself and nothing other than God himself. In addition the doctrine of the Trinity witnesses to God’s unity. What is done for us in Jesus Christ and what is effected in us through the Holy Spirit is an act of the one God: these two acts aren’t the activities of two different deities or two lesser deities or two non-deities.

What God does for us in the Son is called ‘Christology’; what God effects in us through the Spirit is called ‘Pneumatology.’ The arithmetic is simple: Christology plus Pneumatology equals Theology.

“Who is God?” Scripture never answers this question directly. Scripture answers this question indirectly by posing two other questions. “What does God do on our behalf? What does God effect within us?” The answers to these two questions add up to the question “Who is God?” God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This God is one. The doctrine of the Trinity attests the unity of God, and, as we have already noted, the identity of God.

While Scripture nowhere articulates a doctrine of the Trinity, the ‘raw materials’, as it were, of the doctrine are not hard to find. Everyone is familiar with Paul’s blessing: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” (2^nd Cor. 13:14) The same triune formula is found in narrative form in Luke’s gospel concerning the Christmas annunciation made to Mary: “The Lord (“Lord” is the name of God in the older testament) is with you….you will bear a son who will be called the Son of the Most High….the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” (Luke 1:28-35) In John’s gospel Jesus announces that the Father will send the Holy Spirit in the name of the Son. (Jn. 14:26)

It is no surprise that when heresy threatened the church repeatedly, the Council of Nicaea (325 C.E.) framed a doctrine of the Trinity that has worn well ever since, departure from which is deemed no less than denial of the gospel.

I: — Despite the fitting emphasis on the Triune being of God, different theological families within the church tend to emphasize one person of the Trinity. Their emphasis gives rise to a particular theology and particular church practice. Later we shall see how a one-sided emphasis fosters serious distortion. But for now let’s note how highlighting one person of the Trinity characterizes one theological family in the church as a whole.

(i) Let’s think first of the understanding of the church in classical Protestantism, the churches that come out of the Reformation, more-or-less what we call ‘mainline’ Protestant denominations today. Here the church is understood as those who gather to hear the Word of God preached. And there’s nothing wrong with this as far as it goes, since we should gather to hear the Word of God preached.

This understanding is reflected in interior church architecture. The pulpit is front and centre. The pulpit is elevated, always elevated above the communion table. The bible is placed on the pulpit and is read from the pulpit. Plainly the theological order is Scripture, sermon and sacrament. Scripture is the source and norm of the sermon, and scripture and sermon together are the content of the sacrament. Good! Our Reformation foreparents were correct (I am convinced) when they insisted that without Scripture the sermon is no more than gospel-less subjectivism, and without Scripture and sermon the sacrament is no more than superstition.

The order of service reflects the priority of preaching. The sermon is the single, largest item of worship. It occupies not less than one-third of the service, frequently more than one-half. When, in this understanding of the church, a pastoral relations committee is assessing candidates for the pulpit, the paramount question on everyone’s lips is “Can she preach?”

The presuppositions of this understanding of the church are noteworthy. One such presupposition is that the gospel has a precise content, and people have to be informed of this content just because the gospel isn’t an instance of humanistic self-help or religion-in-general or vague sentimentality. The content is precise; it’s God-given. It isn’t negotiable or substitutable or alterable.

The gospel’s precise content matters, and matters supremely since the gospel is ultimately the power of God for salvation. (Rom. 1:16) The hearer’s eternal destiny and temporal wellbeing hang on the preached Word and the hearer’s response.

The precedent for this understanding of the church is impressive. Moses spoke – to the people who assembled to hear him. His speaking imparted something the world will never be without. The socio-political shape of the Western world (at least) is unimaginable without the Decalogue. When Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Great Britain, was taunted repeatedly in the House of Commons on account of his Jewishness, one day he had had enough. Disraeli turned on his ridiculers, “Yes, I am a Jew. And when your foreparents were eating acorns in the Forest of Arden, my foreparents were giving laws to the world.”

Not only Moses preached; the Hebrew prophets preached. Amos cried, “God has spoken; who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:8) In the same manner God exclaimed to Jeremiah, “I am making my words in your mouth a fire.” (Jer. 5:14) Either Jeremiah opened his mouth to let out the fiery word or he was consumed by it.

Jesus, we are told, “came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God.” (Mk. 1:14)

Not least, when Jesus sends out the seventy missioners he insists, “Whoever hears you, hears me.” (Lk. 10:16) There is no ‘as if’; “whoever hears you, it’s as if she heard me.” To hear the missioner preach Christ is to be confronted with Christ-in-person. To say the same thing, whenever the Word of God is preached, Jesus Christ acts – invariably.

The Protestant Reformers knew this. In his commentary on Galatians 3:1 John Calvin maintains that when the gospel is preached the “blood of Christ flows.” And in his commentary on Hebrews 9:20 Calvin writes, “When the gospel is preached, [Christ’s] sacred blood falls on us along with the words.” Imagine it: whenever the gospel is preached the saving blood soaks the congregation. In his commentary on Isaiah 6:1-5 Calvin reminds us that when Scripture is read today God-in-person speaks; then Calvin adds soberly, “When he speaks, we tremble.”

The living Word, Jesus Christ, surges over us as the inscripturated Word is expounded in the preached Word. This living Word we cannot acquire elsewhere or elsehow. We can’t acquire it through watching movies, playing golf or waterskiing.

Neither can we acquire it (him) through nature. Don’t tell me you can. Don’t tell me that God speaks most clearly to you through nature. Don’t tell me you feel closer to God in nature than you do anywhere else. When you have observed a tsunami or a fox eat a rabbit or a snake eat a frog, don’t tell me you have just had privileged access to God.

Don’t tell me that when you are standing on the dock on Lake Muskoka and the loon warbles just as the sun sets and you feel awed, you are closer to God than you are in church. At that moment you are moved (profoundly, we must admit) by God’s creation, the beauty of that creation and the genuine mystery of that creation. But the beauty of God’s creation is not the glory of God, and the mystery of the creation is not the mystery of the God who is forever other than his creation and ought never to be confused with it. No one looking at the creation, however long and however intently, ever came to an understanding of redemption and righteousness and sin. No gazing upon the immensity of the universe informs us of the God who, for the sake of us who despise him, humbled himself in a manger and humiliated himself at a cross where he was publicly identified with the scum of the earth.

To say that the church consists of those who gather to hear preached the gospel with its precise content is to say that there’s no such thing as blind faith. To be sure, we have to trust God on days so dark as to be utterly opaque; but the God whom we trust on opaque days himself can’t be opaque or we wouldn’t know whom to trust or why we should trust. Unless we are schooled week-by-week in the precise content of the gospel, faith will erode and discipleship will disappear.

Any understanding of the church that highlights the gospel in its uniqueness will also emphasize correct doctrine. Doctrines are truths about Christ that point to him and describe him. He is Truth (in the sense of reality). Truth, reality, shouldn’t be confused with or reduced to provisional statements about him, truths. At the same time, as Truth he can’t be described or commended or communicated apart from the truths that speak of him. To belittle doctrine is to belittle him of whom it speaks.

The church as those who gather to hear the Word preached; this understanding is important and should be cherished.

(ii) — Yet there’s another understanding of the people of God in Scripture. It’s one that’s dear to the Catholic tradition: Eastern Orthodox, and the twenty-two churches that make up the Catholic family, chief among which is the Roman Catholic. This understanding highlights the church as the body of Christ.

There are 188 images of the church in the New Testament. Immediately all of us could name some: the bride of Christ, for instance. Others are less-known: the church as perfume, or a farmer’s field, or a letter delivered by Canada Post. By far the dominant image among the 188 is the body of Christ. Jesus Christ is head of his own body, the church. Any assault on the body is at the same time an assault on our Lord. For this reason not to discern the corporate nature of the church, the body of Christ, is horrific.

In the Hebrew bible, as soon as you ask someone his name he tells you the name of his tribe, because he has no identity apart from his tribe. In the Hebrew mind the corporate identity of the people of God looms large.

We modern individuals have difficulty understanding the solidarity of Israel. The prophet Isaiah, commissioned by God to address a sharp word to the people; Isaiah doesn’t say, “I may be stuck living with degenerate people whom God is going to punish, but I know better than they and I’m not one of them.” Instead Isaiah, fully aware that he has a commission others lack, cries, “I am a man of unclean lips; and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.”

According to biblical understanding the church as body of Christ has everything to do with the church’s identity. You and I exist as Christian individuals only as we are related to Christ’s body, the corporate people. We like to think we can be related to Jesus without being related to the church, and we could be related to him without being related to them – if Christ were a severed head. But he isn’t a severed head. He is always and everywhere the head of his body. Therefore to be related to him at all is to be related to all of him, head and body.

Paul asks us to imagine a human body dismembered, the sort of spectacle we might find at an airplane crash or wartime bomb blast. There are detached arms and legs and torsos scattered everywhere, along with blood and guts and faeces and interstitial fluid and who knows what else. Repulsive? He wants it to be. He wants it to be so very repulsive that you and I will think twice about dismembering the Christian fellowship.

The second point the apostle has in mind is reflected in his question, “Of what use is a leg?” A leg is used to support and propel a torso. A severed leg can’t support or propel anything. Strictly speaking, therefore, is it a leg at all? Strictly speaking a severed ‘leg’ doesn’t exist; what exists is a chunk of putrefying flesh, nauseating and malodorous, that should be buried immediately.

It is only as you and I are members of the body that we share in the body’s ministry and mission. There is in truth only one ministry, the ministry of Christ in his body. To remove ourselves from his body is not to share in his ministry; which is to say, to have no ministry at all.

While we are speaking of ministry we should soberly take note of the fact that the churches that understand themselves chiefly as body of Christ (Anglo Catholic, Roman Catholic, and so on) have been the most faithful in ministering to the marginalized in the inner cities. It is they who minister to the mentally ill, the ex-convict, the recipient of social assistance; in short, they have been the most faithful in ministering to the least, the last, the lonely, the loser.

Christians who understand the church as the body of Christ have a wonderful sense of historical continuity. They know that humans are humans in any era, and therefore Christians today are not the first generation of Christians to face major issues. They smile when they are told that pluralism, for instance, is a new challenge to the church. New? Biblical faith took root in the midst of religious and cultural pluralism. Our Hebrew ancestors knew that God had spoken to Abraham and Moses and Malachi in an environment that included Canaanite religion and child sacrifice and sacral prostitution – all of which they had to resist. Christians in the apostolic era upheld Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God, the world’s sole saviour and Lord, the Messiah of Israel and the coming Judge – and all of this amidst a sea of Gnosticism, mystery religions, and idolatrous worship of the Roman emperor. We aren’t the first generation of Christians to face pluralism. Neither are we the first generation of Christians to face multisexuality, the presence of which, we are told, ought to find us adjusting our convictions. The ancient world, and every era ever since, has been acquainted with multisexuality.

Aware of the 3500-year history of the church, our Catholic friends appreciate the cruciality of Christian memory. To be without memory, anywhere in life; to be amnesiac is no small matter. The tragedy of amnesia isn’t that someone can’t remember where she left her umbrella. The tragedy, rather, is that the person with no memory doesn’t know who she is. Lacking an identity, she doesn’t know what to do, how to act. Lacking an identity, therefore, she can’t be trusted – not because she’s uncommonly wicked – but rather because, not knowing who she is, she doesn’t know how to act in conformity with who she is. Anything she does can only be arbitrary, capricious, spastic, inconsistent.

The year 2013 is only six months behind us. 2013 was the 450^th anniversary of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), a document some folk regard as the crown jewel of the shorter Reformation writings. The Heidelberg Catechism has sustained generations of Christians when shaken by assaults from without and upheavals from within. It begins magnificently. Its first question (of 129) is, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” Answer: “My only comfort in life and in death is that I am not my own, but I belong, body and soul, to my faithful saviour, Jesus Christ.” Since 2013 was the 450^th anniversary I looked in the Reformation churches everywhere in Canada for a celebration, or at least an acknowledgement, of this wonderful document. I looked in vain. Make no mistake: had the Heidelberg Catechism been written by Catholics it would have been visible last year in every church. Do we Protestants know who we are? Can our grandchildren trust us?

“The church as the perduring body of Christ; it all sounds good,” the sceptic remarks, “but it must refer to some mythological church that exists nowhere. It doesn’t refer to my church, St Matthew’s by the Esso station, with its bickering, pettiness, and power-plays.”
But it does refer to St Matthew’s by the Esso station. Yes, the church is like Noah’s Ark, Reinhold Niebuhr reminded us: if it weren’t for the storm outside no one could withstand the stink inside. Or as Karl Barth liked to say, “If Christ hadn’t been in the boat it would have sunk.” The point is, Christ was in the boat – and still is.

For this reason those who understand the church as the body of Christ, with its identity and visibility and perdurability, are characteristically patient Christians. Is the church weak? God will strengthen it. Compromised? God will restore it. Confused? God will enlighten it. While we should always be concerned, we should never panic.

For as long as time remains Jesus Christ will be head of his body. Decapitation isn’t going to occur. Christ will always use his body to do his work in the world; and he, the head of his body, will always guarantee the efficacy of that work.

(iii) There is yet another understanding of the church highlighted by many Christians, the church as the community of the Spirit. While we might think first, in this regard, of our Pentecostal friends, the church as community of the Spirit is found in many of the smaller, more charismatic denominations and independent congregations.

While the Pentecostal denomination appeared early in the 20^th century, its antecedents were found in the holiness movement of the 19^th century, and in every century before that, all the way back to the 1^st century church in Corinth.

Those who uphold this understanding of the church insist that we must choose to enter the kingdom; no one oozes into it. They are quick to remind us that while God loves the world and suffers on its behalf, the world remains the world; namely, the sum total of God-defiant, disobedient men and women tacitly organized in their hostility to the gospel. Repentance is not the same as remorse. Faith is not the same as ‘beliefism’. Cruciform discipleship is not the same as middle-class ‘yuppyism’. These people remind us that the gate which admits us to eternal life is narrow, and the way is anything but easy. There is a great gulf fixed between righteousness and condemnation, life and death, truth and delusion; in short, between God and evil.

They are quick to remind us that doctrine, however necessary, is an abstraction, while life in the Spirit is concrete; they tell us graphically that a body which lacks the Spirit is no better than a corpse.

When Paul, heartbroken and angry in equal measure, confronts the church in Galatia concerning its anti-gospel slide into legalism, he gets to the point in a hurry. “Tell me,” he writes: “Did you receive the Spirit through hearing with faith or by works of the law?” (Gal. 3:2) His reference to their receiving the Spirit is a reference to an occurrence in their Christian experience, an occurrence as vivid, memorable and undeniable as any occurrence in experience of any sort. It’s as if he said, “That raging headache you have right now; did you get it through concussion or through over-exposure to the sun?” What can’t be denied is that someone with a headache knows she has a headache. “Did you receive the Spirit through embracing the gospel with faith or through self-righteous legalism?” The apostle is trying to correct their theology by appealing to their experience of the Spirit.

The Christians in Rome are reminded that they have received the Spirit of sonship, adoption, with the result that the cry, “Abba, Father”, is drawn out of them. They utter it spontaneously. They can’t help crying, “Abba, Father,” as surely as someone in pain can’t help groaning, or someone tickled by a good joke can’t help laughing, or someone rejoicing can’t help beaming. The apostle isn’t asking them to expound the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God; he’s asking them to recall how they came to be ‘lit.’

The Christians in Thessalonica had undergone terrible persecution when Paul wrote them. Aware of their faith and their resilience he wrote, “You received the word in much affliction with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit.” (1^st Thess. 1:6) The Lord whom they cherished had poured his Spirit into them with the result that they remained unbroken and undeflectable, and all of this without grimness but rather with joy, when they had no earthly reason to rejoice.

The apostle John, in his brief, five-chapter 1^st epistle, uses the expression “we know” or “you know” or “I know” 34 times in one of the smallest books in Scripture. “We know that we have passed from death to life.” It’s all gathered up in “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit.” To be visited with God’s Spirit isn’t to wish or long for or hanker after or speculate; it’s to know.

In one of my seminary courses on homiletics we students had to preach to each other under the supervision of the professor. One of my classmates delivered a sermon in which he used the expression “I suppose” half-a-dozen times. When he finished, the class, and especially the student who had preached, waited on the professor for his evaluation. There was silence, painful silence. Then the professor looked at the student for the longest time and finally remarked, “You suppose? You suppose? Mister, when you ascend the pulpit steps on Sunday morning either you know or you don’t say anything.”

To speak of the Spirit is to speak of the immediacy and intensity and intimacy of God. The Spirit is God-in-our-midst acting, and acting upon and within his people so as to move them beyond doubting who he is, what he has done, and what he asks of them.

II: — Let’s return now to a discussion of the Trinity. Plainly any departure from Trinitarian understanding lands us in confusion, error, falsehood, even in personal distress. Yet despite Scripture’s insistence on a Trinitarian understanding of God and the church’s wisdom in framing the doctrine, a non-Trinitarian unitarianism always laps at the church. Such pseudo-Christian unitarianism can be a unitarianism of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Spirit.

(i) – A unitarianism of the Father depicts God as austere, even severe, even tyrannical. It renders God frigid and fearsome. It likes to speak of God as “in control.” It reiterates that God is sovereign, even as it confuses sovereignty with coercion. It speaks of God’s providence, even as it confuses providence with omnicausality. God is said to be “high and lifted up,” as Scripture maintains, even as unitarianism’s one-sidedness renders the exalted God inaccessible and unknowable.

(ii) There is also a unitarianism of the Son. Jesus is our pal. For this reason he and we can be palsy-walsy. He sympathizes with us in our pain and we sympathize with him in his. He’s our friend – and why not, since in John 15 he names us his friends. Forgotten, alas, in the unitarianism of the Son, is the complementary truth that while he is our friend, he ever remains Lord and Judge of the relationship. To be sure, Jesus is our friend, but he is a friend to be feared.

We are quick to co-opt Jesus for our self-serving agenda, when all the while he claims us for his Kingdom-agenda. He may be our friend, but he will never be our ‘flunkie.’

(iii) Lastly, there is a unitarianism of the Spirit. Religious experience is now featured. Before long any experience is featured, as long as it’s vivid and intense. Forgotten, of course, is that only one Spirit is holy; all other spirits are unholy. Holy Spirit gives rise to holy living; unholy spirits give rise to something else, regardless of intensity or vividness. A unitarianism of the Spirit one-sidedly magnifies religion of the heart, conveniently overlooking two crucial Scriptural truths: one, the heart of humankind is “deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt, utterly beyond understanding,” says the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. 17:9); two, ‘heart’ (‘lev’ in Hebrew) always includes the mind.

III: — To no one’s surprise, any distortion concerning the Trinity; that is, any decline from a Triune understanding of God to a unitarian misunderstanding of God results in a deformed understanding of the church cherished by that particular church family which one-sidedly highlights Father or Son or Spirit.

(i) Let’s begin with classical Protestantism, with the notion that the church consists of those who gather to hear the Word preached. Before long the emphasis on preaching turns into an adulation of the preacher. Now the congregation is built around a personality cult, or hero-worship, or verbal glitz. “Our minister is a dynamic speaker” some people have boasted to me. I don’t doubt that he is. And I have heard many dynamic speakers whose rhetorical gifts were deployed in the service of a high-flown enunciation of nothing. Such speakers forged a lucrative career by craftily saying nothing, and skilfully saying it well.

Again, a one-sided emphasis on speech-communication readily leaves hearers happy in the illusion that their only responsibility is to follow the argument of the sermon. They think that attentive listening to the dynamic speaker exhausts their obedience to God.

Again, where preaching is emphasized one-sidedly, the congregation becomes a club of amateur, armchair philosophers who relish intellectual titillation. Since Sunday morning worship is now one-sidedly intellectualist, a mood of intellectual snobbery arises in the congregation. After all, not every Christian is as intellectually sophisticated as are they and their pastor.

Again, a one-sided emphasis on preaching will always highlight doctrinal precision, and the history of the church tells us that unnecessary intricacy promotes a wrangling that finds yet another Protestant splinter added to the thousands that exist already.

(ii) What about our apprehension of the church as the body of Christ? Here too a glorious truth will be distorted and deformed if it is emphasized one-sidedly, in isolation from the other two understandings. While it is correct to maintain that the body of Christ will perdure inasmuch as Christ the head will never be severed from it, too often it is forgotten that Christ ever remains the Lord and Judge of the body. As soon as the church forgets this truth it assumes that everything it does has Christ’s blessing when in fact much that the church has done calls down Christ’s curse. “‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evil-doers’” – says Jesus himself. (Mat. 7:23)

Again, denominations that recall the promises Christ makes concerning the church – e.g., “The powers of death will never prevail against it” – assume that the survival of their denomination or congregation is guaranteed. The promise means nothing of the sort. When Christ pronounces the church irrefrangible he is promising that he will preserve the community of his faithful people; faithful people, faith-filled people – not membership rolls or baptism registers or Christmas and Easter drop-ins. History is littered with the dust of long-dead denominations and congregations. Christ’s faithful people can count on his promise; no one else should ever presume upon it.

Again, a one-sided emphasis on the church as the body of Christ finds people assuming, perhaps unconsciously, that Christ has collapsed himself into the church; he now inheres the church and is a function of the church: whatever the church does, he does. Wrong! Jesus Christ is never the church’s possession to be manipulated or deployed or even relegated to the basement should he prove awkward and embarrassing. Alas, such a church has forgotten Peter’s startling pronouncement: “…it is time for judgement to begin at the household of God.” (1^st Peter 4:17)

(iii) Lastly, a one-sided understanding of the church as the community of the Spirit will find the church’s one-sidedness distorting and disfiguring what it rightly tries to uphold. While a recognition of the place of Christian experience is legitimate, even necessary, a one-sided, unbalanced elevation of experience leaves people unable to distinguish between experience of God and experience of the world; unable to distinguish between experience of God and experience of anything at all; unable to distinguish between Christian righteousness and cultural refinement. Now the measure of spiritual authenticity is intra-psychic intensity, inner intensity of any sort arising from any stimulus. As a pastor of 40 years’ experience I have heard the silly, sad tale of those who insisted their extra-marital affair was God-willed and God-blessed; after all, the intensity of their affair was so much more thrilling than humdrum domesticity. Intensity, vividness, immediacy, we should note, can as readily describe a life of sin.

Ultimately, a one-sided emphasis on the church as community of the Spirit lends religious legitimacy to any community born of any spirit. At best there is the inability to distinguish the church from a neighbourhood club or social-service organization or humanistic association. At worst there is the inability to distinguish between the Holy Spirit and the satanic. Do I exaggerate? Recall the history of Germany in the 20^th century. The German people claimed a spiritual sanction (specifically a Christian sanction) for a demonized state that German people today want only to forget.

Not least, a one-sided understanding of the church as the community of those whom the Spirit has ‘torched’ in the present moment overlooks the history of the church and the wisdom entrenched in its tradition. To be sure, no one wants traditionalism, the suffocating grip of the long-dead. Nevertheless, our Christian sisters and brothers who have moved from the church militant to the church triumphant have something tell us, and they should be allowed to speak. Remember: we are not the first generation of Christians, and it is the height of arrogance to think that we can see farther by not standing on the shoulders of our foreparents in faith.

Lastly, a one-sided emphasis on the Spirit and Spirit’s immediacy undervalues the mind. We are to love God with our minds, and it is impossible to love God unless we understand something of his nature and his purpose and his way with us. Unless we understand something of God’s nature and purpose and way with us, our worship is sheer idolatry.

IV: — Distortions of the church abound. Invariably they arise from a distorted grasp of God as Triune. Plainly a more profound apprehension of God is needed if the church is to be healed. Therefore we must turn once again to the God who is Father, Son and Spirit.

While we rightly speak of the being of the triune God as Father, Son and Spirit, when it comes to our knowing the Triune God the order is always Spirit, Son and Father. As the Spirit surges over us and frees us, we abandon our unbelief and embrace in faith the Son who has already embraced us; and having embraced the Son who has already embraced us we are rendered one with the Father. At this point God’s Triune incursion and the church’s threefold witness have borne fruit concerning us.

Then tonight may the Spirit ever join you and me to the Son in the Son’s obedience to and adoration of the Father. For then we shall know ourselves sealed upon the heart of God, and this for ever and ever.

Victor Shepherd June 2014

Cirriculum Vitae

Victor Allan Shepherd

Professor of Systematic Theology and Historical Theology
Tyndale University College & Seminary
25 Ballyconnor Court
Toronto, Ontario, M2M 4B3
E-mail: vshepherd@tyndale.ca
(416)-226-6620 ext. 6726 (voice mail)

___________________________________________________________________________

I: EDUCATION

S.T.D. (Honoris Causa) Roberts Wesleyan College, 1995.

Th.D. Emmanuel College, Victoria University, University of Toronto 1974-77.

Postgraduate study at Aberdeen University, Aberdeen, Scotland, 1973-74.

B.D. Emmanuel College, Victoria University, University of Toronto, 1970.

M.A. Philosophy, University of Toronto, 1969.

B.A. Philosophy, Victoria College, University of Toronto, 1965.

II: EMPLOYMENT

Academic

Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology, Tyndale Seminary, 2003-

Professor, Tyndale Seminary, 1993-1999 (part-time)
First Occupant of Donald N. and Kathleen G. Bastian
Chair of Wesley Studies, and Professor of Historical Theology,
2000-2003 (full-time)

Adjunct Professor, Regis College (Toronto School of Theology)
University of Toronto, 2006-

Professor Ordinarius, Graduate Theological Foundation,
University of Oxford, 2005-

Adjunct Professor, Wycliffe College ( Toronto School of Theology)
University of Toronto, 2005-

Adjunct Professor, Trinity College ( Toronto School of Theology)
University of Toronto, 2002-

Adjunct Professor, Department of Religious Studies,
University of Winnipeg, 2002-

Adjunct Professor, Department of Religious Studies,
McMaster University, 1985

Adjunct Professor, Emmanuel College ,
University of Toronto, 1982

Adjunct Professor, Department of Religious Studies,
Memorial University of Newfoundland , 1976

Church
Minister, Emmanuel Presbyterian Church,
Schomberg , Ontario , 2004-2007

Interim Minister, Emmanuel Presbyterian Church,
Schomberg , Ontario , 2001-2004

Minister, Streetsville United Church,
Mississauga, Ontario, 1978-1999

Associate Minister, Kingsway-Lambton United Church,
Toronto, Ontario, 1977-1978

Minister, Victoria Square United Church,
Victoria Square, Ontario, 1974-1977

Minister, Tabusintac United Church,
Tabusintac, New Brunswick, 1970-1973

III: SERVICE TO THE TYNDALE COMMUNITY AND WIDER ACADEMIC COMMUNITY

Associate Editor, Canadian Evangelical Review, 2005-

Member, Promotion and Tenure Committee, 2002-

Member, Research and Ethics Committee, 2002-

Chair, Tyndale Seminary Faculty Association, 2003- 2004

Member, Academic Planning Committee, 2001-

Member, Search Committee for Bernardo Chair of Leadership Studies, 2001-2002

Chair, Library Committee, 1996-1999

Member, Academic Planning Committee, 1996-1997

IV: VOLUNTEER COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Confessing Theologians Commission
(Association for Church Renewal), 2002

Juror, Manitoba Arts Council, 2000-2002

Trustee, William and Catherine Booth College, 1995-2001

Member of District Health Council of Peel, 1992-1993

Chairperson of Peel Mental Health Housing Coalition, 1992-1993

Boardmember of Foodpath, 1984-1989; 2001

Vice-chairperson of Pathway Community Developments, 1991-1993

CHURCH INVOLVEMENT

(The Presbyterian Church in Canada)

Corresponding Member, Committee on Church Doctrine, The Presbyterian Church in Canada ,
2005-

Minister, Emmanuel Presbyterian Church
Schomberg , Ontario , 2004-

Pulpit Supply, Emmanuel Presbyterian Church,
Schomberg, Ontario, 2001-2004

(The United Church of Canada)

Free Methodist Church in Canada
Representative to World Methodist Conference, 2001

Representative to Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies, 1997

Commissioner to General Council, 1986

Member of Churches’ Consultation on the Jewish People,
World Council of Churches, 1985 -1988

Commissioner to General Council,
The United Church of Canada, 1984

Chairperson of Block Grants Committee,
Toronto Conference, 1977-1978

Minister, Streetsville United Church,
Mississauga, Ontario, 1978-1999

Chairperson of Group Insurance Task Force Committee,
General Council, 1979-1981

Member of Faith and Order Committee,
The Canadian Council of Churches, 1995-1998

Member of Education and Students’ Committee,
Halton Presbytery, Hamilton Conference, 1978-1987

Associate Minister, Kingsway-Lambton United Church,
Toronto, Ontario, 1977-1978

Minister, Victoria Square United Church,
Victoria Square, Ontario, 1974-1977

Minister, Tabusintac Pastoral Charge,
Tabusintac, New Brunswick, 1970-1973

V: COURSES TAUGHT
(in the last five years)

2005-2006
      Fall                   Systematic Theology I               THEO0531                  46 students
Fall                   Systematic Theology II             THEO0532                  22        “
Fall                   Theology of the Human Person THEO0646                  22        “

Winter Systematic Theology II THEO0532 41 “
Winter Theology of Martin Luther THEO0634 6 “

(The proposed winter course, Theology of John Wesley was cancelled on account of undersubscription, even as the same course attracted many in the DRR format. See * below)

*DRR                 Theology of Wesley                              THEO0633DS01         13        “
DRR                Theology of Calvin                                THEO0636DS01           6        “
DRR                Theology of Luther                               THEO0634DSO2          2        “
DRR                Philosophy for Understanding Theology
THEO0539DS01           7        “
DRR                Historical Theology                               THEO0536DS01           2
DRR                Theology of the Human Person THEO0646                               12       “
DRR                Systematic Theology I               THEO0531                                5        ”
(DRR Total: 47students)

2004-2005
Spring              Systematic Theology II             THEO0532S01            24        “
Fall                   Systematic Theology II                         “                       32        “
Fall                   Theology of Karl Barth             THEO0640S01            4         “
Fall                   Theology of the Human Person  THEO0646S01            50        “

Winter              Systematic Theology                             THEO5231S01            38        “
Winter              Historical Theology                               THEO0536S01            10        “
Winter              ThM Seminar (Holiness)                       THEO0837                  7         “

DRR                Theology of Wesley                              THEO0633DS01         12       “
DRR                Theology of Calvin                                THEO0636DS01           6        “
DRR                Theology of Luther                               THEO0634DSO2          4        “
DRR                Philosophy for Understanding Theology THEO0539DS01           6        “
DRR                Historical Theology                               THEO0536DS01           4        “
(DRR Total: 32 students)

2003-2004
     Fall                  Systematic Theology II                        THEO0532S01           37 students
Fall                  Work of Charles Wesley                     THEO0643SO1           22        ”
Fall                  Philosophy                                          THEO0539S01           12        ”

Winter             Systematic Theology  I                        THEO0531S01           40        ”
Winter             Theology of Wesley                            THEO0633S01           12        ”
Winter             Theology of Calvin                             THEO0636S01           22        ”

DDR                Theology of Wesley                            THEO0633DS01         4         ”
DDR                Theology of Calvin                             THEO0636DS01         5
DDR                Philosophy for
Understanding Theology                    THEO0539DS01         4         ”

DDR                Luther                                                  THEO0634DS01         5         ”
DDR                Historical Theology                            THEO0536DS01         2         ”
ITS                  Contemporary Theology:
From Hegel to the
Death of God Theologies                                                        1          ”
ITS                  Augustine and Early
Mediaeval Theology                                                                1       ”
(DRR Total: 22 students)

2002-2003
Fall                  Systematic Theology II                        THEO0532S01           43 students
Fall                  Puritan Genius                                     THEO0635S01           9         ”
Fall                  Historical Theology                            THEO0536S01          13        ”

Spring Theology of Wesley THEO0633S01 12 ”

Winter             Systematic Theology I                         THEO0532S01           37        ”
Winter             Theology of the Human
Person                                                 THEO0646S01            30      ”
Winter             Holiness (ThM Seminar)                     INTD0930S01 3                     ”

    2001-2002
              Fall             Systematic Theology II            THEO0532SO1       62 students
Fall             Work of Charles Wesley         THEO0643SO1       12     ”
Fall             Philosophy                               THEO0539SO1      10    ”

Winter        Spirit of Methodism                  THEO0857SO2       10     ”
Winter         Systematic Theology I             THEO0531SO1        73    ”
Winter         Theology of Luther                  THEO0634SO2        15    ”

VI: SCHOLARLY ACTIVITIES

Invited Addresses

The Seasons of the Christian Life, Mt. Carmel Presbyterian Church, ( Singapore , 2006)

Wesley Then and Now, Biblical Graduate School of Theology , ( Singapore , 2006)

Friendship, Hospitality and Ecumenism – from a Wesleyan Perspective, Wesleyan Theological Society, ( Kansas City , 2006)

Theology: Does It Help?
      Why Theology – at All?
      Martin Luther’s Theologica Crucis: An Exemplification of “The Cross is Our Theology”,
      Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections as an Instrument of Spiritual Discernment,
      John Wesley on Christian Perfection: A Word for the Church Catholic from an Ecumenical Thinker, Presbyterian College , McGill University , ( Montreal , 2006)

Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections: An Aid to Spiritual Discernment, Center for Mentorship and Theological Reflection, ( Toronto , 2005)

The Sufficiency, Supremacy and Finality of Jesus Christ, Perichoresis North Conference, ( Mississauga , 2005)

A Comment on the History of Christian Anti-Semitism, Beth Tikvah Synagogue, ( Toronto , 2005)

Martin Luther for Today, Ottawa Summer School of Biblical and Theological Studies, ( Ottawa , 2004)

John Calvin on The Knowledge of God, Scripture, and Sin, Wycliffe College , University of Toronto , ( Toronto , 2004)

John Calvin’s Doctrine of Preaching and Calvin’s Sermon on Ephesians 2:8-10: An Illustration of His Theology, Centre for Mentorship and Theological Reflection, ( Toronto , 2004)

Luther’s Theologia Crucis, Perichoresis North Conference, ( Oakville , 2003)

C.S. Lewis and the Psalms, C.S. Lewis Society of Toronto , ( Toronto , 2003)

God’s Re-Assertion of His Holiness; God’s Re-Establishing of Ours, The Salvation Army, Manitoba and Northwest Ontario Division, (Winnipeg, 2003)

A Theology for Preacher and Witness, Ottawa Summer School of Theology , ( Ottawa , 2003)

A Christian’s Reflection upon Terrorist Attack, “Jewish, Christian and Islamic Responses to ‘9/11′”, Jewish-Christian Dialogue of Toronto , ( Toronto , 2002)

The Catholic Wesley, Ottawa Summer School of Theology , ( Ottawa , 2002)

John Wesley and the Law of God in the Book of Romans, University of Toronto ( Toronto , 200

An Assessment of Jeremy Begbie’s Theology, Music and Time, Trinity College, University of Toronto, May, 2001.)

Neither Calvin nor Wesley but Schleiermacher or Whose Theology is Operative in The United Church of Canada ?, Canadian Methodist Historical Society, June, 2000.

Martin Luther and John Calvin on Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22: Hope as the Reconciliation of Promise and Command, Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, November, 2000.)

Holiness: The Neglected Dimension of Scripture, The Salvation Army College For Officer Training, Toronto , 1999.

A Note On Wesley’s Challenge Concerning Christian Perfection: “Can You Find Anything More Amiable Than This? Anything More Desirable?, Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies, Oxford , UK , 1997.)

Ministry in the Twenty-First Century, McMaster Divinity College , 1995

John Calvin: Theologian and Pastor, and Puritan Vigour and the Christian Life, Ottawa Summer School of Biblical and Theological Studies, 1993.)

The Victory of Jesus Christ Over The Principalities and Powers: An Exposition of the Work of William Stringfellow and Jacques Ellul, Ottawa Summer School of Biblical and Theological Studies, 1992.

A Root of Anti-Semitism, Equity Studies Centre, Toronto Board of Education, 1992.)

From New Connexion Methodist To William Booth: Retention and Repudiation, Canadian Methodist Historical Society, 1991.)

Elemental Christian Doctrine, Ottawa Summer School of Biblical and Theological Studies, 1991.)

Academic Lectures, William and Catherine Booth College , February, 1990.

Lesser-Known Personages of the Reformation, Ottawa Summer School of Biblical and Theological Studies, 1990.

Discrimination: A Prejudice Born of Pietism, Ontario Christian Teachers’ Association, October, 1990.)

Systems of Theology in Review, Ottawa Summer School of Biblical and Theological Studies, 1989

Concerning the Jewish People: Was Luther a Son of Paul? The Catherine Gilbert Memorial Lecture, Toronto School of Theology , University of Toronto , 1987.

Is There Ethics in Business?, York University , Toronto , 1986

Is Christianity Necessarily Antisemitic?, Adath Israel Synagogue, 1986.

Calvin’s Christology: A Contradiction of Reprobation?, McGill University , Montreal , 1986.

A History of the Church’s Mistreatment of Jewish People, Gathering ’85: A Symposium for Holocaust Survivors and Their Children, Ottawa , 1985.

A Religious Root of Antisemitism, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto , 1985.

The Life and Teaching of John Calvin, York University , Toronto , 1981.

The Ecclesiology of John Calvin, St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto , 1976.

Activities

Calvin Studies Society of North America
Canadian Evangelical Theological Association
Canadian Methodist Historical Society
Canadian Philosophical Association
The Canadian Society of Presbyterian History
The Charles Wesley Society
The International Jacques Ellul Society
Karl Barth Society of North America
Kierkegaard Circle of Toronto
PEN Canada
Thomas F. Torrance Fellowship
Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium
World Methodist Historical Society
The Tyndale Society
The Writers’ Union of Canada

Awards

The R. Russell Fleming Scholarship in the General Course, Victoria College, University of Toronto, 1963.

The Prince of Wales Gold medal, Victoria University, 1965.

The Jean Preston Yoshioka Memorial Scholarship: First in Systematic Theology, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1968.

The W.J. Watt Prize in Christian Education, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1968.

The Emmanuel College General Proficiency Scholarship, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1969.

The John W. Billes Scholarship for Session 1968-1969, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto.

The Gordon Hamilton Award: First in General Proficiency in the second year, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1969.

The Charles Wesley Webb Prize: first in the basic course in the first year and one elective in the second year in New Testament, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1969.

The Rowell Scholarship: to the student of the second year who stands first in the work in Church History, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1969.

The Principal and Mrs. Richard Davidson Memorial Scholarship: first in Homiletics in the basic course in Public Worship, Emmanuel College University of Toronto, 1969.

The Emmanuel College General Proficiency Scholarship, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The John W. Billes Scholarship for Session 1969-1970, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto.

The Elizabeth Webb Prize in Old Testament and New Testament Literature over the three years, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The Francis Huston Wallace Prize: first in New Testament, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The John Dow Scholarship: first in the basic course and at least two electives in New Testament over the regular three year course, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The William Robert Young Prize: first in Church History over the three years, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The T.B. Kilpatrick Prize: first in at least two elective courses in Systematic Theology, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The Reverend Ezekiel Richardson Scholarship in Biblical and Doctrinal Preaching, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The Albert Wallace Scholarship in Homiletics, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The Reverend William J.H. Smyth Prizes for Stewardship Sermons, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The Edward Wilson Wallace Postgraduate Scholarship, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The Postgraduate Fellowship (A.J. Mitchell Bequest), Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The Sanford Gold Medal in Divinity, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

Award of Excellence for Outstanding Contribution in the Fields of Historical-Systematic Theology and Preaching, Center for Mentorship and Theological Reflection, 2004

Scholarship Excellence Award, Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2006

VII: PUBLICATIONS

1. Scholarly Books

The Nature and Function of Faith In The Theology of John Calvin (Macon, Mercer University Press, 1983) ISBN: 0-86554-066-7

[Second printing: ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2004) ISBN: 1-57383-328-2]

2. Scholarly Articles/Chapters

The Methodist Tradition in Canada , Encyclopaedia of Religions in Canada , ( Toronto , Harper Collins) [forthcoming]

Judging Ellul’s Jonah, The Ellul Forum For the Critique of Technological Civilization, ( Berkley , The International Jacques Ellul Society, October 2005) pp. 16-17

The Epistle to the Romans as Wesley’s Cure for Antinomian and Moralist Alike, Theopedia, (___, July 2005) [reprinted electronically]

John Wesley and the Law of God in the Book of Romans, Reading Romans: Encounters with the Epistle to the Romans Through the Centuries, ( Medford , Brazos Press, 2005) pp.149-168

Charles Wesley: 1707-1788, Touchstone: Heritage and Theology in a New Age, ( Winnipeg , University of Winnipeg , Sept. 2004) pp.35-44

International Kierkegaard Commentary: Vol. 21 (For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!), Robert L. Perkins, ed., International Journal of Systematic Theology ( Oxford, January 2004) pp.85-90 [review article]

John Wesley (1703-1791): A Tri-Centennial Appreciation, Touchstone: Heritage and Theology in a New Age, ( Winnipeg , University of Winnipeg , Sept. 2003) pp.107-120

Music, Theology and Time, Jeremy S. Begbie, International Journal of Systematic Theology ( Oxford , Summer, 2003) pp.243-247 [review article]

Sharing, Sharing, Sharing;
Tell Me the Old, Old Story;
Ridiculousness or Ravishment;
Of Enemies, Violence, Sacrifice and Life’s Crosses;
Living for the Present;
Glory, Grace and Gratitude;
Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ;
No Dabbling Here;
Three Deaths;
Promises, Promises, Promises;
The Lord’s Supper;
Terror and Tragedy;
Joseph;
The Good Samaritan;
A Note on God’s Love
Strathy Corpus of Canadian English, ( Kingston , Queen’s University, 2002) [electronic] [Published jointly by University of Liverpool and University of Cambridge ]

Egerton Ryerson: From Methodist Itinerant to Chief Superintendent of Education, Touchstone: Heritage and Theology in a New Age, ( Winnipeg , University of Winnipeg , September 2002) pp.38-46

The Trinity against the Spirit of Unitarianism, The Trinity: An Essential for Faith in Our Time, (Napp.anee, Herald Press, 2002) pp. 179-196

Thomas Oden, Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals, (Downer’s Grove, IVP, 2002) pp.484-487

Jacobus Arminius, Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals, (Downer’s Grove, IVP, 2002) pp.18-20

Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22: Hope as the Reconciliation of Promise and Command, Teach Me Your Paths: Essays in Old Testament Literature and Theology, (Toronto , Clements Publishing, 2001) pp. 9-38

Neither Calvin nor Wesley but Schleiermacher: Whose Theology is Operative in The United Church of Canada?, Papers of the Canadian Methodist Historical Society, Volume 13, ( Toronto , Canadian Methodist Historical Society, 2000) pp.203-211

A Note On Wesley’s Challenge Concerning Christian Perfection: “Can You Find Anything More Amiable Than This? Anything More Desirable?, Papers of the Canadian Methodist Historical Society, Volume 12, (Toronto, Canadian Methodist Historical Society, 1999) pp.18-43

Foreword to Ecclesiastical Minefields, Outerbridge, Ross and Kary, (Toronto, Or Emet Publishing, 1994) pp.xxv-xxix

From New Connexion Methodist To William Booth, Papers of the Canadian Methodist Historical Society, Volume 9 (Toronto, Canadian Methodist Historical Society, 1993) pp. 91-107

Response to The Kingdom of Christ According To Bucer and Calvin (Willem van’t Spijker), Calvin and the State, P. de Klerk, ed., (Grand Rapids, Calvin Studies Society, 1993) pp.133-136

“…That We May Perfectly Love Thee: John Wesley and Sanctification”, Touchstone: Heritage and Theology in a New Age, (Winnipeg, University of Winnipeg, May, 1988) pp.27-37

Calvin’s Doctrine of Church, Ministry and Sacraments, Papers of the Canadian Methodist Historical Society (Toronto, Canadian Methodist Historical Society, 1978) pp. 53-62

Calvin’s Doctrine of Justification, Papers of the Canadian Methodist Historical Society, (Toronto, Canadian Methodist Historical Society, 1978) pp. 63-72

Calvin’s Doctrine of Sanctification, Papers of the Canadian Methodist Historical Society, (Toronto, Canadian Methodist Historical Society, 1978) pp. 73-82

3. Audio Tapes

Why Should a Christian Study Philosophy?, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2000)

Philosophy for Understanding Theology, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2000)

The Theology of John Wesley, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2001)

The Theology of John Calvin, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2001)

Is Jesus Both God and Human?, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2001)

Is Jesus the Only Way to God?, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2001)

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Prayer: A Theological Investigation, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2001)

The Theology of Martin Luther, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2002)

Soren Kierkegaard and the Birth of Existentialism” (Vancouver, Regent College, 2002)

Historical Theology, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2003)

Luther’s Theologica Crucis, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2003)

Theology of John Wesley, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2004)

Theology of the Human Person, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2005)

4. Compact Discs

The Spirituality of Luther, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2002)

The Spirituality of Wesley, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2002)

Calvin and Predestination (Vancouver, Regent College, 2002)

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Prayer: A Theological Investigation (Vancouver, Regent College, 2002)

Historical Theology (MP3), ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2003)

Luther’s Theologia Crucis, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2003)

Calvin’s Theology of Preaching, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2004)

The Theology of John Wesley ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2004)

What is Theology?, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2005)

Theology of the Human Person (Vancouver, Regent College , 2005)

Systematic Theology (Part I) ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2005)

Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections: An Instrument for Spiritual Discernment, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2005)

Daniel, The Den of Lions, and Christians of Any Era, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2005)

Reflections on Paul Molnar’s Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2005)

The Supremacy, Sufficiency and Finality of Jesus Christ, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2006)

Concerning Intercessory Prayer, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2006)

The Doctrine of the Trinity, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2006)

The Doctrine of Scripture, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2006)

Postmodernism and Christian Faith, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2006)

Neither Epicurean nor Stoic but Christian,( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2006)
5. MP3s

Historical Theology, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2003)

The Theology of John Wesley, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2004)

Theology of the Human Person, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2005)

Systematic Theology I, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2005)

Systematic Theology II, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2006)

6. Pamphlets

The Theology of John Wesley: Lecture Notes and Handouts (Toronto, Clements Publishing, 2002) ISBN: 1-894667-04-2

The Theology of John Calvin: Lecture Notes and Handouts (Toronto, Clements Publishing, 2002) ISBN: 1-894667-16-6

Philosophy for Understanding Theology: Lecture Notes and Handouts (Toronto, Clements Publishing,2002) ISBN: 1-894667-15-8

The Theology of Martin Luther: Lecture Notes and Handouts (Toronto, Clements Publishing, 2002) ISBN: 1-894667-23-9

7. Scholarly Book Reviews

Watching and Praying: Personality Transformation in Eighteenth Century British Methodism,

The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth’s Theology, Eberhard Busch, Toronto Journal of Theology ( Toronto , Fall 2005)

W. Stanford Reid: An Evangelical in the Academy, A. Donald MacLeod, Toronto Journal of Theology ( Toronto , Fall 2005)

Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity, Paul D. Molnar, Toronto Journal of Theology ( Toronto , Fall 2005)

The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, Donald McKim, ed., International Journal of Systematic Theology ( Oxford , March, 2005)

The Reformation: A History, Patrick Collinson, Toronto Journal of Theology (Toronto, Spring, 2005)

On Thinking the Human: Resolutions of Difficult Notions, Robert W. Jenson, Canadian Evangelical Review ( Edmonton, Fall 2004)

The Rebirth of Orthodoxy: Signs of New Birth in Christianity, Thomas C. Oden, Canadian Evangelical Review (Edmonton , Fall 2004)

Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch, John Webster, Toronto Journal of Theology ( Toronto , Fall 2004)

The Theology of the Reformed Confessions, Karl Barth, Canadian Evangelical Review ( Edmonton , Spring 2004)

The Redemption & Restoration of Man in the Theology of Richard Baxter, James I. Packer, Canadian Evangelical Review (Edmonton, Spring 2004)

The Two Reformations: The Journey from the Last Days to the New World, Heiko A. Oberman, Toronto Journal of Theology (Toronto, Spring 2004)

Holiness, John Webster, Toronto Journal of Theology (Toronto, Spring 2004)

The Honour of God and Human Salvation: Calvin’s Theology According to His Institutes, Marijn de Kroon, Toronto Journal of Theology (Toronto, Fall, 2003)

Ever Against the Stream: The Politics of Karl Barth, 1906-1968, Frank Jehle, Toronto Journal of Theology (Toronto, Spring, 2003)

The Christian Faith: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine, Colin E. Gunton, Toronto Journal of Theology, (Toronto, Spring, 2003)

Hugh Price Hughes, Christopher Oldstone-Moore, Canadian Evangelical Review (Edmonton, Spring 2003)

Calvin: A Biography, Bernard Cottret, Canadian Evangelical Review, (Edmonton , Spring, 2003)

The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, John Webster (ed.), Canadian Evangelical Review, (Edmonton, Spring, 2003)

The Methodist Church on the Prairies: 1896-1914, University of Toronto Quarterly, (Toronto, January, 2003)

How to Read T.F. Torrance: Understanding his Trinitarian & Scientific Theology, Elmer M. Colyer, Toronto Journal of Theology, (Toronto, Fall, 2002)

A Scientific Theology, Volume One: Nature, Alister E. McGrath, Canadian Evangelical Review (Edmonton, Fall, 2002)

The Promise of Trinitarian Theology: Theologians in Dialogue with T.F. Torrance, Elmer M. Colyer, Canadian Evangelical Review (Edmonton, Fall, 2002)

Law and Gospel: Philip Melanchthon’s Debate with John Agricola of Eisleben over Poenitentia, Timothy J.Wengert, Canadian Evangelical Review (Edmonton, Spring, 2002)

The Binding of God: Calvin’s Role in the Development of Covenant Theology, Peter A. Lillback, Canadian Evangelical Review (Edmonton, Spring, 2002)

Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life, Geoffrey Wainwright, Toronto Journal of Theology, (Toronto, Fall, 2001)

A Handbook of Contemporary Theology, David. L. Smith, Canadian Evangelical Review, (Edmonton, Spring, 2001)

The Concept of Equity in Calvin’s Ethics, Guenther H. Haas, Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, (Regina, Spring, 2001)

For Our Salvation, Geoffrey Wainwright, Toronto Journal of Theology, (Toronto, Spring, 1999).

The Concept of Equity in Calvin’s Ethics, Guenther H. Haas, Toronto Journal of Theology, (Toronto, Fall, 1998)

Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church, 1532 – 1546, Martin Brecht, Toronto Journal of Theology, (Toronto, Spring, 1997)

Trojan Horse, Donald L. Faris, Theological Digest, (Burlington, January 1990)

Science and the Gospel, Victor H. Fiddes, Theological Digest, (Burlington, January, 1989)

8. Professional and Popular Writings
Books

Our Evangelical Faith (Toronto, Clements Publishing, 2006) ISBN: 1-894667-84-0

Ponder and Pray (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, 1985) ISBN: 0-88622-177-3

[Second Edition (Mississauga, Light and Life Press, 1993)]

[Third Edition (Toronto, Clements Publishing, 2002)] ISBN: 1-894667-03-4

Witnesses to the Word (Toronto, Clements Publishing, 2001) ISBN: 1-89466-00-X

[Turkish translation: Istanbul, 2004. ISBN: 975-8318-81-0]

Seasons of Grace (Carp, Creative Bound, 1994) ISBN: 0-921165-36-6

[Second Edition: (Toronto, Clements Publishing, 2001) ISBN: 1-894667-01-8]

So Great a Cloud of Witnesses (Mississauga, Light and Life Press, 1993) ISBN: 0‑919201-10-5

Making Sense of Christian Faith: Understood, Challenged and Lived (Burlington, G.R. Welch, 1987) ISBN: 1-55011-029-2

Articles
2006
We Believe in…the Holy Scriptures;
We Believe in…the Holy Trinity;
We Believe in…our Lord Jesus Christ;
We Believe in…Salvation by Faith;
We Believe in…he Holy Spirit;
We Believe in…the Church as Christ’s Body;
We Believe in…the Day of Judgment.
Christianity.ca, ( Toronto , Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, March 2006) [reprinted electronically]

We Believe in The Day of Judgment, Faith Today, ( Toronto , March/April 2006)

Bishop J.C. Ryle, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , March 2006)

Women Preachers in Early Day Methodism, Daily Devotions, (___, January 2006) [reprinted electronically]

We Believe in The Church as Christ’s Body, Faith Today, ( Toronto , January/February 2006)

2005
Women Preachers in Early Day Methodism, Devotions for Women, (___, December 2005) [reprinted electronically]

Love Means ‘I Want You To Be’, Mosaic, (Toronto, December/January 2005/06) [reprinted]

John Wesley, The Nassau Guardian, (Nassau, October 2005) [reprinted]

On Reformation Sunday, A Note Concerning William Tyndale. (Lima, Ohio, CSS Publishing Company, October 2005) [published electronically]

We Believe in The Holy Spirit, Faith Today, (Toronto, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, November/December 2005)

We Believe in Salvation by Faith, Faith Today, (Toronto, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, September/October 2005)

John Knox, Resources on The Scot’s Reformation (1546 – 1660): John Knox (1505-1572), Andrew Melville, Robert Bruce, James Stewart (Moray), Mary Queen of Scots, Mary of Guise, James (VI) I, (_________, August 2005) [reprinted electronically]

Pope John Paul II: An Assessment, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September 2005)

Susanna Annesley, Methodist Archives and Research Centre, (Manchester, John Rylands University Library, August 2005) [reprinted electronically]

Calvin on Prayer, Channels, (Toronto, Presbyterian Renewal Fellowship, July 2005)

Almost Christian, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, July 2005) [reprinted electronically]

We Believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ, Faith Today, (Toronto, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, July/August 2005)

We Believe in The Holy Trinity, Faith Today, (Toronto, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, May/June 2005)

Mandate for a Congregation, Homiletics, (Canton, Communication Resources of Canton, May/June 2005)

We Believe in The Holy Scriptures,, Faith Today, ( Toronto, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, March/April 2005)

Griffith Jones, 1683 – 1761 ( New Rochelle, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, March 2005) [reprinted electronically]

He is Coming, But Who is He? Four Judgements about Jesus, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, March 2005)

Pursuing Freedom in the Body of Christ, (Toronto, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, May 2005( [reprinted electronically]

John Knox, The Irish Theological Association, (Dublin, The Irish Theological Association, February 2005) [reprinted electronically]

Teresa of Avila, European History, (http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/teresaofavila/, February 2005) [reprinted electronically)

Menno Simons, Anabaptist Network, (——-, February 2005) [reprinted electronically]

Heinrich Bullinger: 1504-1575, Touchstone: Heritage and Theology in a New Age, (Winnipeg , University of Winnipeg, January 2005)

Repentance, Church Alive, ( Burlington , Church Alive, January 2005) [reprinted electronically]

Pursuing Freedom in the Body of Christ, New Direction for Life Ministries of Canada , (Toronto, January 2005)

Jacques Ellul, Theory of Technology: Studies of Human Artefacts as Cause and Consequence of Socio-Cultural Development, ( Denver , University of Colorado at Denver; School of Education , Jan. 2005) [reprinted electronically]

2004
Susanna Wesley, Methodist Archives and Research Centre, (Manchester, John Rylands University Library, December 2004) [reprinted electronically]

Francis Asbury, Methodist Archives and Research Centre, (Manchester, John Rylands University Library, December 2004) [reprinted electronically]

On the 500^th Anniversary of the Birth of Heinrich Bullinger, Reformer, Institut fur schweizerische Reformationgeschichte, ( Zurich , University of Zurich, Dec. 2004) [reprinted electronically]

What Do We Mean by ‘Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ?’, Homiletics, ( Canton , Communication Resources of Canton , Nov./Dec. 2004)

Julian of Norwich , Holy Trinity Newsletter, ( Utrecht , Holy Trinity Newsletter, December 2004) [reprinted electronically]

A Legacy of Journalism, a Vision for a Nation, The United Church Observer, ( Toronto , November 2004)

The Canadian Martyrs, Christianity.ca, ( Toronto , Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, October 2004 [reprinted electronically]

Daniel Berrigan, S.J., Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , September 2004)

Crucial Words in the Christian Vocabulary: Repentance, Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , September 2004)

Helmut Thielicke, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , June, 2004)

John the Baptist and Jesus, Christianity.ca, ( Toronto , Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, May 2004) [reprinted electronically]

Oscar Romero, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , March 2004)

On Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, Ephesians: The People of the Gospel ( Mississauga , World Team, March 2004)

C.S. Lewis and the Imprecatory Psalms, Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , March 2004)

Contemplating Wesley, Christianity.ca, ( Toronto , Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, February 2004) [reprinted]

Mother Julian of Norwich , Seabury Western Theological Seminary, ( Evanston , Jan. 2004) [reprinted electronically]

2003
Martin Luther King, jr., Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, December 2003)

Questions Jesus Asked: “What’s Your Name?” (Mark 5:9), Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , September 2003)

Celebrating John Wesley: A Man Consumed with Love for his God and his Neighbour, The Free Methodist Herald, ( Mississauga , September/October 2003)

Not Glued but Grafted, Faith Today, ( Toronto , Evangelical Fellowship of Canada , September 2003)

Maximilian Kolbe, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , September, 2003)

Hugh Price Hughes, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , June, 2003)

Contemplating Wesley, The United Church Observer, ( Toronto , June, 2003)

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , March, 2003)

2002
My Spiritual Debt to Martin Luther, The Canadian Lutheran, ( Edmonton , October, 2002)

The Canadian Martyrs, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , September, 2002)

“Our Doctrines”, Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , September, 2002)

John the Baptist and Jesus, Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , March, 2002)

Honouring Martin Niemoeller, the Pastor Who Defied Hitler (reprinted), Common Ground, ( Vancouver , January 2002)

Adolphus Egerton Ryerson, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , March, 2002)

Thomas Clark Oden, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , June, 2002)

2001
Jacobus Arminius, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , March, 2001)

Pentecost, Faith Today, ( Toronto , May, 2001)

Women Preachers in Early-Day Methodism, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , June 2001)

Science and the Word: Thomas Torrance, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , September 2001)

Griffith Jones: First Light of Revival, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , December, 2001)

Running the Race in the Pursuit of Excellence, Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , September, 2001)

Lord’s Supp.er: Last Supp.er, Family Supp.er, Future/Final Supp.er, Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , September, 2001)

Two Kinds of Knowing, Science and Faith, ( Cape Town , South Africa , October 2001)

2000
William Tyndale, (reprinted), The Free Methodist Church , ( Mississauga , Free Methodist Church in Canada , January/February, 2000)

The Educational Ministry of the Church, Theological Digest & Outlook,( Burlington , March, 2000)

Thomas Cranmer, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , March, 2000)

The Coming Revival, (reprinted) Horizons, ( Toronto , The Salvation Army, March/April, 2000)

Thomas Cranmer, (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, ( Mississauga , Free Methodist Church in Canada , May/June, 2000.)

John Fletcher, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , June, 2000)

From Power to Effectiveness: Learning to be Salt in a Post-Christian Society, The Free Methodist Herald, ( Mississauga , Free Methodist Church in Canada , July/August, 2000)

Julian of Norwich , Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , September, 2000)

The Cross of Christ, Horizons, ( Toronto , The Salvation Army, Nov./Dec., 2000)

Jan Hus, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , December, 2000)

How Did We Get Here? or The Origins of the Operative Theology of The United Church of Canada , Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , March, 2000)

The Educational Ministry of the Church, Theological Digest & Outlook,( Burlington , March, 2000)

Love Means “I Want You to Be”, Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , August, 2000.)

1999
C.S. Lewis” (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, January/February, 1999)

Millennium Predictions, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March, 1999)

Francis Asbury” (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, March/April, 1999)

“Follow Me!”: Seven Questions on Discipleship, Horizons, (Toronto, The Salvation Army, May/June, 1999)

John Newton” (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, May/June, 1999)

When Christ Returns, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, June, 1999)

Foreword to Lowly Manger, Empty Tomb, E. Alan Roberts, (Raleigh, Pentland Press, 1999)

Barbara Heck” (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, July/August, 1999)

Soren Kierkegaard, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September, 1999)

Karl Barth” (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, September/October, 1999)

William and Catherine Booth” (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, November/December, 1999)

Thomas Watson, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, December, 1999)

“What is Man?” or “Does Theology Matter?”, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, March 1999)

You Asked For A Sermon On Postmodernism, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, September, 1999)

1998
Predicament and Provision, The Free Methodist Herald, ( Mississauga , Free Methodist Church in Canada , Jan./Feb, 1998).

A Soldier of Christ, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March, 1998).

Modern Saints and Prophets?, The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, March/April, 1998).

What Are We?, The Free Methodist Herald, ( Mississauga , Free Methodist Church in Canada , May/June, 1998).

A Tribute to a Spiritual Mentor , Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, June, 1998).

On God, Hockey and Children, The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, July/August, 1998)

What in the World is Wesley Day?, The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, July/August, 1998)

Teresa of Avila , Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September, 1998)

Loving Our Enemies, Horizons, (Toronto, The Salvation Army, Nov./Dec., 1998)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Nov./Dec, 1998)

Surprise Best Seller: The Heidelberg Catechism, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, December, 1998)

Always to Pray and Never Lose Heart” (reprinted), The Messenger, (Steinbach, December, 1998) Will the 21^st Century be an Age of Religious Revival?, Books In Canada, (Toronto, The Canadian Review of Books Ltd., February, 1998)

A Note on Intercession, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, September, 1998)

Theology of Life, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, September, 1998)

1997
Athanasius, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March, 1997).

Proud to be Puritan, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, June, 1997).

A Flea for Methodism, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September, 1997).

Has The Church A Future?, Horizons, (Toronto, The Salvation Army, November, 1997).

Repentance and Life, The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, Nov./Dec., 1997).

A Note On Christian Maturity, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, September, 1997).

The Ethics Of Organ Transplants, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, September, 1997).

1996
A Tribute to Ross Salmon, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, January/February, 1996).

William Sangster, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March/April, 1996).

William Sangster, Christianity.ca, (Toronto, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, September 1996) [reprinted electronically.]

Ulrich Zwingli, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, Fall, 1996).

Almost Christian, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, December, 1996).

Of Reason, The Gospel, and Catholicity, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, January, 1996).

1995
A Faith for All Seasons, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, January/February, 1995)

On Honouring A Foreparent In Faith: John Wesley and “The Duty Of Constant Communion”, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, January, 1995).

John Wesley and the Witness of the Spirit, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, July 1995).

Jonathan Edwards, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, April/May, 1995).

If Christ Be Not Raised From the Dead, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, July 1995).

Menno Simons, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, Nov./Dec. 1995).

1994
Neither Mist Nor Mud, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, January, 1994).

John Knox, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, February/March, 1994).

A Guide Through The Minefield, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, May/June, 1994).

God the Holy Spirit, Light and Life, (Indianapolis, June, 1994).

George MacDonald, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September/October, 1994).

Isaac Watts, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, November/December, 1994).

1993
Can A Recovery of the Doctrine of the Trinity Assist the Restoration of The United Church of Canada ?, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, January, 1993.)

Francis Asbury, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, January/February, 1993).

John Wesley, Fellowship Magazine, (( Barrie , March/April, 1993).

Eva Burrows, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, May/June, 1993).

Manifesto of the Real Revolution, Abingdon Preacher’s Annual, (Nashville, Abingdon, 1993).

Rejoice Always, Abingdon Preacher’s Annual, (Nashville, Abingdon, 1993).

How Does The Old(er) Testament Differ From The New(er)?, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, July, 1993).

Retiring Bishop Faithful to Wesleyan Root, Christian Week, (Winnipeg, August, 1993).

Susanna Annesley, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September/October, 1993).

Doctrine – And The Shape Of One’s Life, The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, October, 1993).

Anthony Ashley Cooper (Earl of Shaftsbury), Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, December/January, 1993).

1992
Martin Niemoeller, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, January/February, 1992).

Barbara Heck, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March/April, 1992).

William Stringfellow, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, May/June, 1992)

Jacques Ellul, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September/October, 1992).

William Wilberforce, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, November/December, 1992).

A Comment On “The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture”, Theological Digest, (Burlington, July, 1992).

1991
William and Catherine Booth, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, January/February, 1991).

John Calvin, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March/April, 1991).

Charles Hadden Spurgeon, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, May/June, 1991).

George Whitefield, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September/October, 1991).

The Elder Brother, Abingdon Preacher’s Annual, (Nashville, Abingdon, 1991).

What Price Gratitude?, Abingdon Preacher’s Annual, (Nashville, Abingdon, 1991).

Karl Barth, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, November/December, 1991).

1990
Mother Teresa, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, January/February, 1990).

Charles Wesley, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March/April, 1990).

William Tyndale, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, May/June, 1990).

C.S. Lewis, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, July/August, 1990).

John Bunyan, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September/October, 1990).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, November/December, 1990).

1989
Suicide, Presbyterian Record, (Toronto, March, 1989)

The Foundation of It All, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March/April, 1989)

Luther, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, July/August, 1989)

Setting Forth Into A Brave New Theological World, Christian Week,

John Newton, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September/October, 1989).

Francis of Assisi , Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, November/December, 1989).

1988
Symbol of a Secular World: the Mall as Cathedral, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, March, 1988)

All Because of the Risen Christ, Christian Week, (Winnipeg, March 1988)

Places A Challenge to Very Life of the Church, Christian Week, ( Winnipeg , April 1988)

A Critique of “Towards a Christian Understanding of Sexual Orientations, Lifestyles and Ministry”, Channels, (Toronto, Presbyterian Renewal Fellowship, July 1988) [reprinted]

On Bearing One Another’s Burdens, Not Necessarily My Best Sermon, (Toronto, The United Church Publishing House, August, 1988)

The United Church and Ordination of Active Homosexuals, A Crisis of Understanding, (Burlington, G.R. Welch, 1988)

1987
Murder and the Cross, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, May, 1987)

Principalities, Powers: Agents of Death, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, July, 1987).

Guilt and Grace in Abortion, Christian Week, (Winnipeg, October, 1987)

The Word Became Flesh, Christian Week, (Winnipeg, December, 1987)

The Walking Wounded, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, December, 1987)

1986
Always to Pray and Never Lose Heart, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, February, 1986)

A Search for Common Biblical Ground, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, June, 1986)

Finding the Lord For the Liberal Church , The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, August, 1986)

Journey to Iona and to Reconciliation, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, December, 1986)

1985
God’s Grace Also in the Mentally Ill, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, March, 1985)

The Risen Lord, Crowned as Crucified, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, April, 1985)

Holocaust Seeds in Christianity, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, May, 1985)

The Virgin Birth: God’s Gift of Hope, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, December, 1985)

1984
Honouring Our Parent, John Wesley, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, September, 1984)

Dumpster Dinners: An Inner-City Sojourn, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, December,1984)

1983
Who Needs a Saviour?, Getting It All Together, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, 1983)

1980
The Meaning of the Cross, The United Church Observer: Perspective, Vol. 3, No. 6, pp.. 2-3 (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, 1980)

Faith and Sexuality, A Spectrum of Theological Views in the United Church of Canada for the General Council, pp.. 20-21 (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, 1980)

Reviews

Bless Me, Father, For I Have Sinned, Q. Donoghue and L. Shapiro, Toronto , The United Church Observer, (The United Church of Canada, September, 1985)

Fortunate Exile, Irving Layton, Toronto , The United Church Observer, (The United Church of Canada , February, 1988).

The New International Commentary on James, Peter H. Davids, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, May/June, 1991)

Global Gods: Exploring the Role of Religions in Modern Societies, David W. Shenk, Christian Week, (Winnipeg, November 5, 1996)

John Newton and the Evangelical Tradition, Bruce Hindmarsh, Christian Week, (Winnipeg, March 18, 1997)

VIII: GRADUATE SUPERVISIONS

I am deployed in the setting and grading of PhD comprehensive examinations principally in Reformation Studies, Modern Theology, Systematic Theology, and Eighteenth Century Studies) for students, chiefly in the doctoral programme at TST, University of Toronto , but also in other institutions as I am requested. In addition I direct courses at U of T member colleges for MA, ThM and MTS students.

PhD comprehensive examinations (preparation and evaluation) (i) reason and revelation in Barth and Kaufman
(ii) reason and faith in Calvin, Edwards, Hodge and Warfield
(iii) the place of natural reason in fundamentalism and evangelicalism
Mr. George Coon 2003-04
TST, University of Toronto

PhD thesis co-supervision: The Deployment of Reason in the Transition from Fundamentalism to Evangelicalism
Mr. George Coon, 2003-
TST, University of Toronto

MA directed research in the work of John Wesley

Ms. Susan Carole, 2003

TST, University of Toronto

ThM thesis: The Concept of Sacrifice in the Theology of John Calvin

Mr. August Oku, 2003

TST, University of Toronto

ThD external examiner: John Wesley and the German Pietist Heritage: The Development of Hymnody

Mr. Paul Wagner, 2004

TST, University of Toronto

PhD directed research in the theology of John Calvin

Mr. Marcus Johnson, 2004

TST, University of Toronto

PhD directed research in the theology of Martin Luther

Mr. Marcus Johnson, 2005

TST, University of Toronto

PhD directed research in the theology of Martin Luther,

Mr. John Clark

TST, University of Toronto , 2005

PhD thesis: “John Wesley’s Doctrine of Preaching”

Rev. James Clubine

Graduate Theological Foundation, University of Oxford , 2005-

MA thesis: “The Doctrine of Assurance in the Theology of John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley”

Mr. John Kiboi

TST, University of Toronto , 2005

PhD comprehensive examinations (preparation and examination)

(i) John Calvin’s Christology and Soteriology

(ii) The Doctrine of Justification in the History of the Church

(iii) The function of Unio Christi in John Calvin’s Theology

Mr. Marcus Johnson

TST, University of Toronto (2005)

PhD thesis: “‘ Union with Christ’ in the Theology of John Calvin”

Mr. Marcus Johnson

TST, University of Toronto (2005-)

PhD comprehensive examinations (preparation and examination)

(i) Faith and Reason in the Theology of Martin Luther

(ii) John Calvin’s Exposition of the Work of Christ

(iii) Desacralization and Sacralization in the Thought of Jacques Ellul

(iv) Comparison of John Calvin and the Westminster Theology Concerning the Nature and Function of Law in the Christian Life

Mr. John Clark

TST, University of Toronto (2005)

ThM thesis: “Martin Luther and John Calvin on the Relation of Faith and Works, with Attention to Their Exegesis of the Book of James”

Mr. Jeffery MacMillan

Tyndale University College & Seminary, Toronto (2005-2006)

PhD thesis: “Calvin’s Understanding of the Atonement”

Mr. John Clark

TST, University of Toronto (2005-)

PhD comprehensive examination (preparation and examination)

“Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections and the Influence of the Enlightenment

“John Calvin’s Unio Christi as an Aspect of Reformation Christology”

Mr. Jon Vickery

TST, University of Toronto (2005)

ThM thesis: “The Eucharistic Theology of Charles Wesley’s Hymns”

Mr. Matthew McEwen

Tyndale University College & Seminary, Toronto , 2005

PhD thesis: “The Role of Reason in the Theology of Thomas Goodwin and

Thomas Brooks”

Mr. Jon Vickery

TST, University of Toronto (2005-)

PhD thesis: “The ‘Principalities and Powers’ in William Stringfellow and the ‘Lordless Powers’ in Karl Barth: A Comparison”

Mr. Patrick McManus

TST, University of Toronto (2005-)

MTS directed research in the work of John Wesley

Capt. Justin Bradbury

TST University of Toronto (2006)

PhD comprehensive examination (preparation and examination)

“The Person and Work of Christ: P.T. Forsyth’s Response to Liberal Theology”

Scott Kindred-Barnes, TST, University of Toronto , 2006

ThD thesis: “The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards”

Mr. Jonathan Li

TST, University of Toronto (2006-)

IX: RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

I am planning to research a book on nineteenth-century Canadian Methodist Theology. The book will investigate the thought of the three most prominent Canadian Methodist theologians (Burwarsh, Nelles and Blewett), therein indicating what Methodism brought in 1925 to church union and the formation of The United Church of Canada. In addition, the book will explore this matter as an aspect of Canadian intellectual history.

I am planning to turn my course, “Theology of the Human Person,” into a full-length book.

I am planning to research and write a monograph concerning John Calvin’s understanding of the “Majesty” of God.

Clements Publishing has asked me to re-write my 1987 book, Making Sense of Christian Faith: Understood, Lived, Challenged, as the publisher is convinced this book meets a need for a popular yet thoughtful articulation of the Christian faith beyond what is currently offered in the Alpha program. In light of the years I have spent probing theology since the initial publication of the book, and in light of the purpose to which a new edition is to be put, it is essential that the book be expanded and the material amplified. The ensuing book will therefore be approximately twice the length of the current book. In other words, enough material will be added to produce what is, in effect, a new book.

The publisher has already reproduced the text of Making Sense electronically so as to facilitate re-development of the material as soon as opportunity permits.

The audio lectures of my course Theology of Martin Luther have been transcribed. Since I now possess thirty-six hours of lectures in print form, I am currently turning this material into a book on Luther that aims at acquainting a thoughtful lay reader with the progenitor of the Protestant Reformation.

As a result of my being interviewed on radio CHIN ( Ottawa ) on the topic of the “Ornament of the World” (i.e., Christian-Jewish-Muslim coexistence in mediaeval Spain ) I shall shortly be added to Ottawa ’s “Jewish-Muslim Dialogue for the Next Generation”. My non-partisan role in this organization will entail research concerning the history of the relationship, the nature of the relatively recent conflict, and the manner in which a Christian may assist both groups at the same time as Christians are added to the Dialogue. A major area of research will be the role of Abraham and ‘Abrahamic faith’ as common to the three peoples who are alike ‘People of the Book’.

President Brian Stiller has asked me, together with the professors of the philosophy department, Tyndale University College , to write a four-part series of books that expound the faith and defend it in the wake of modernist and postmodernist attacks upon it.

Abingdon Press ( Nashville , Tennessee ) has asked me to write a book to be used by pastors in the USA . The purpose of the book is to provide pastors with a vehicle for schooling their congregation in the theology, history and practice of prayer. The book is to be more substantive than many of the manuals used currently. I have been in contact with representatives at Abingdon Press and have informed them, for instance, that John Calvin has written more on prayer than any thinker in the history of the church. For this reason more than a little of the book would arise from my knowledge of the Reformation.

Professor Daniel Wong, Tyndale University College , is currently editing a book on preaching. He has commissioned me to contribute the chapter, “Preaching in the Reformational Tradition.”

Several people, not least the current Managing Editor of The United Church Observer, have told me I should put my writing skill to writing short fiction. As a member of The Writers’ Union of Canada I have long been exposed to different kinds of writers (e.g., biographers and journalists), including novelists, short story writers, and poets. I am eager to begin writing short fiction. Once again, however, I am convinced I need a sabbatical leave in order to situate myself in the proper “space” required for this activity.

Select Bibliography

Select Bibliography

The most readable, comprehensive systematic theology for the beginner is Thomas Oden, The Living God, The Word of Life, Life in the Spirit. This is a 2000-page, three-volume work.

Bloesch, Donald G.; Christian Foundations

Since the course text is Bloesch’s Essentials of Evangelical Theology, the single best resource for more detailed reading with respect to the course is Bloesch’s definitive work. CF is a multi-volume work that is still being written.

Grenz, Stanley J.; Theology for the Community of God

Written by a Canadian, this book is a standard text in systematic theology. It engages both contemporary theology and postmodern culture. It is organized around the biblical concepts of kingdom and community.

Grenz, Stanley J. and Olson, Roger E.; Twentieth Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age

This IVF publication surveys, at an introductory level, Christian theology since the Enlightenment. It deploys the themes of transcendence and immanence to lay bare the crucial issues in modern theology.

Grudem, Wayne; Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine

This book emphasizes biblical exegesis and biblical theology as the essential foundation of Christian doctrine. It illustrates its many theses through life-illustrations and relates theology to worship.

Gunton, Colin E. (ed.); The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine

This book is a collection of fourteen essays in which American and British thinkers attempt to develop several matters that appear to hold out promise theologically at the same time that it introduces foundational topics in theology.

McGrath, Alister E.; Christian Theology: An Introduction

McGrath’s focus is the historical development of doctrine.

Essentials of Evangelical Theology

Volume I, Chapter One

p1 Evangelicalism needs to recover its identity in the face of “a new modernism [that] threatens to engulf mainline Christianity.” An ‘older’ modernism engulfed it decades ago. The mainline denominations in Canada , e.g., were “taken over”:

[a] erosion of the person and work of Jesus Christ

[b] erosion of the authority of scripture

[c] the tenets of liberalism became starker in the church. (Liberalism: the world’s self-
understanding is made the self-understanding of the church.)

Then what is the ‘new’ modernism? It is marked by

[a] little seriousness about intellectual matters

[b] loss of confidence in truth (postmodernism)

[c] little concern with history

[d] collapse of Transcendence of God into pantheism or panentheism

[e] rise of ‘counter-Spirit’ movements; e.g., Satanism, witchcraft, Wiccanism

[f] elevation of the perverse; e.g., ‘NAMBA’

p1 The threat: “syncretistic mysticism and latitudinarianism”

[i] there is a mysticism that is thoroughly biblical

[ii] “ “ that disdains encounter with the Holy One of Israel. It is

anti-incarnational (too narrow and non-intuitional)

anti-Trinitarian (because unconcerned about the life of God himself)

anti-atonement (too bloody, too primitive)

anti-obedience (too confining)

anti-justification (too set on the need for a ‘right-wising’ that we can’t give ourselves)

anti-theological (too complex in its understanding of the human condition).

In short, such non-biblical mysticism speaks of ‘union’ rather than ‘communion’ (with God).

[iii] latitudinarianism: doctrinal indifference. But of course indifference to truth is ultimately indifference to Truth.

Bloesch correctly see the necessary relation of and balance between faith as the content of the Christian message (i.e., what we believe) and faith as our act of believing.

If content is weighted one-sidedly>>sterile, cold orthodoxy.

If believing is “ “ >>religious sentimentality and rampant subjectivism.

Note Shepherd’s comment on Bl.p2 re: Wesley: “Wesley…sometimes minimized the importance of doctrinal fidelity in his emphasis on heart experience.” (Shepherd disagrees.) Wesley: theological indifference reflects the spirit of the anti-Christ.

p3 Bl’s criticisms of modern evangelicalism: the gospel has been reduced from world-transforming to world-resisting through a one-sided emphasis on individual salvation to the neglect of community responsibility.

Not so with ‘older’ (18^th and 19^th cent.) evangelicals.

p4 The formal principle of the Reformation: the authority of scripture.

The material “ “ “ the gospel of reconciliation and redemption that faith alone enjoys. Bl stresses that we must emphasize the latter: the former exists for this.

p5 Bl balances concern for truth (Luther and Calvin) with concern for holy living (Spener, Wesley, Puritans).

Shepherd: roughly speaking, 16^th cent. Reformers forged doctrine;

17^th cent. Puritans and Pietists articulated the necessity and nature of

rigorous discipleship, spiritual vigilance and spiritual growth.

Rev. V. Shepherd

WHY THEOLOGY?

The Basis of Theology

-the God about whom theol. speaks pursues us, acts so as to overtake us, acquaints us with himself, and therein discloses himself to us: God gives himself to us and illumines us concerning all that he has done.

-speculation doesn’t yield knowledge of God.

-we do not search for God; we flee him, and know him only as he overtakes us.

-theology is a rational explication of our understanding of the God whom we now know.

Note the nature of biblical “knowing.”

-scripture and HS are the source of our knowing (encountering) God; theol. is the intellectual activity by which truth about God is formulated and its meaning clarified.

Objections to Theology

1] It appears to contradict the immediacy, intimacy, intensity and simplicity of faith.

2] It appears to undercut the urgency of action (we are to be “doers” of the word) in the midst of a world whose suffering is incomprehensible.

3] It appears to be “dogmatic” in the worst sense of the term.

4] It appears fixated on disputes of earlier centuries.

Why Theology is Necessary

1] It forfends amnesia, and all the problems associated with amnesia. (See objection #4.)

It provides the “ballast” in the keel of the good ship “church.”

2] It is necessary in the struggle against false teaching.

3] It provides instruction in faith.

4] It apprehends the totality of the biblical witness.

It apprehends the integration of this totality.

5] It honours the concern for T/truth.

In Short

1] Faith seeks understanding. God is to be loved with the mind.

We cannot commend what we do not understand, however slightly.

2] Faith engages that world which God has refused to abandon. How does the Christian mind relate to philosophy, economics, psychology, ecology, the arts?

3] A church that disdains theology is saying

(i) there is no substance to the gospel

(ii) there is no such thing as T/truth

(iii) intellectual “mush” is God-honouring

(iv) the past cannot inform us at all.

The Meaning of ‘Evangelical’

7 Bl’s und’g of evangelical: [1] the message of salvation grounded in the atonement.
[2] this message is to be proclaimed since proclamation inheres the
message.
[3] the message elicits decision.

p7 evangelical is associated with the Reformation’s evangelische: [1] centrality of JC, [2] justification by faith, [3] all of the above attested in S.
Note the relation of sola scriptura, sola fide, solus Christus. All hearing/ heeding of JC takes the form of hearing/heeding theprophetic & apostolic testimony to him.

p7 evangelical is also associated with the post-Ref. “spiritual movement of purification”: Pietism and Puritanism.
In sum, the evangelical progression is cross+proclamation+decision+conversion+holiness of heart+holiness of life.

p8 Note the difference between semi-Pelagianism and “co-operation” (but not synergism!)

(EVANGELICALISM AND CATHOLICISM) p9
Catholic vs catholic: Romanism isn’t catholic enough. Romanism neglected too much ballast in ship’s keel.

Note the many aspects of what Bl says (The Future of Evangelicalism) is needed in terms of both restoration and balance. All of this is needed bec. evangelicalism is susceptible to heterodoxy, to the modern consciousness.

Then what do we mean by “catholic”? Identity plus Universality.
Identity: that which distinguishes the church from the world.
Universality: that which impels the church to embrace the world.
Note the catholicism of the early church.
Note the necessity of both organization and theology. Note the place of the creeds. Note what happens with the evangelical and the catholic are separated from each other.

(EVANGELICALISM AND LIBERALISM) p13
Liberalism (theol.)= the world’s self-und’g is the starting point, controlling principle, measure and agenda of the church’s self-und’g.

Liberalism denatures the gospel into ethics, ontology and mysticism.
Note the differences between evan’m and lib’m w.r.t. God, Christ, sin, righteousness, personal atittude.
Note the several features of lib’m, as well as its moving from adaptation to adoption.

p14 Some of evangelicalism’s non-negotiables:
[1] absolute transcendence of God
[2] authority and inspiration of S.
[3] humankind’s radical sinfulness
[4] the deity of Christ
[5] the atonement
[6] kingdom of God
[7] final judgement
[8] priority of evangelism
[9] service to others over self-fulfillment

p18 A Systematic Evangelical Theology
-must be rational without being rationalistic
-must be both dogmatic and apologetic
-must resist current heresies: universalism and unitarianism.
-must recognize what is the legitimate domain for theol. and what is not.

Points to Remember

1] evangelical always pertains to the gospel, not to a liturgical style or a hymn style.

2] is always related to S. There is no knowledge of the gospel apart from S. While the gospel isn’t the same as S, S + HSp= gospel.
Calvin: gospel=the effectual presence (i.e., presence and power) of JC
Luther: gospel=the promise of God fulfilled in our midst.
Lest we think JC to be “bare” or “naked” and therefore to be clothed with the ideation or ideology that we choose, Calvin speaks of “Christ clothed with this gospel.”

3] cherishes the evangelical revival of the 18^th century. Note how this differs from (a) church-growth movement (b) the re-enthusing of the saints.

4] biblical theology is the theology of the whole bible, as salvation is the entire creation healed.

5] the distinctive doctrines that evangelicals insist on are found in the teaching of Jesus otherwise (a) we are left saying that the apostles invented an evangelicalism that Jesus didn’t intend (b) we are left neglecting the concrete rigour of discipleship as depicted in the written gospels.

6] what is old needs to be freshly understood.

7] while the human condition doesn’t change, the human situation is always changing.

8] the doctrinally novel is ipso facto heretical.

The Sovereignty of God

How many times does “sovereignty of God” occur in Calvin’s Institutes?
The God who isn’t sov. simply isn’t God.  Yet what is meant by “sov’y” or “almightiness”?
God is omnipotent, but what is meant by “power”?  All Christian truth must be understood ultimately in the light of the cross!
Cross: there is no limit to God’s vulnerability.  Resurrection: no limit to the effectiveness of God’s vulnerability.
In speaking of God’s power we must understand that God is person: his power is the effectiveness of his person.

p25 God remains hidden until he gives himself to be known in revelation. The hidden God is revealed, while the revealed God remains hidden to all but the eyes of faith.

Note Luther’s Theologia Crucis.

(CREATOR AND LORD) [see next lecture on doctrine of creation]

(OMNIPOTENT WILL)
Errors to avoid in our understanding of God’s sov’y: What can God do? What not? In what sense is God unchangeable (immutable) ? In what sense not?
What is meant by God’s “repentance”?

What are the theological subtleties pertaining to
-process theology?
-omnicausality?  (Note the sophistication of the Aristotelian causa, and the use made of it to  help with theological difficulties; e.g., the “cause” of justification:
–     final cause
–     efficient cause
–     meritorious cause
–     instrumental cause
–    formal cause.)

-predestination?
-omniscience?
-omnipresence?

Note the theological issues pertaining to God’s eternality.
Eternity isn’t timelessness.
Eternity isn’t time endlessly extended.
Eternity isn’t “infinite” in the sense of vague or non-finite.
God’s sovereignty, omnipotence, immutability don’t render prayer superfluous; rather, they are the condition of prayer’s efficacy.
p31 Note the relation between Christ’s resurrection and his ascension.
p32  Outside of Christ we experience God’s wrath but can’t identify it (since Christ alone reveals the truth of God.)
p32  Note the connection between Word and Spirit:
Word alone yields a rationalist inference, an abstraction, an idol (inferred god=idol)
Spirit alone yields religious sentimentality, wish-fulfilment, fantasy , frenzy.
Scrip. carefully balances Word and Spirit, the objectivity of God’s deed/utterance and the subjective appropriation of it.  One-sided objectivism and subjectivism (scholastic orthodoxy and religious invention) alike miss the truth that faith is the between: a form of knowing (God) in which the knower is transformed.

(HOLY LOVE)
God’s holiness is the crucial category in all of S.
[1] God’s Godness, that which constitutes God uniquely God.
[2] God can’t be measured by anything other than himself.
[3] God’s character is without defect or deficiency.
[4] all aspects of God’s character are gathered up into a unity.

Note the features of holiness experienced that are exemplified in the theophany of Exodus 19:
[a] an awefulness that evokes a sense of dread: “And the whole mountain quaked greatly… Go down and warn the people…lest the LORD break out upon them.”
[b] majesty, unapproachability: “Take heed that you do not go up into the mountain or touch the border of it…. lest they break through to the LORD… The people cannot come to Mount Sinai .”
[c] urgency, vitality, energy experienced as “consuming fire”: “The LORD descended upon it in fire; and the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln.”
[d] mystery, the transcendent, the supernatural, the “wholly other”, incommensurable, “beyond”: “Lo, I am coming to you in a thick cloud.”
[e] fascination, a sense of being compelled, terror yet inability to ignore: “Do not let the priests and the people break through to the Lord.” (Cf. the shepherds in the Xmas narrative.)

p33 Note the difference between mercy (love meeting sin) and indulgence or toleration.

” ” ” adoration and admiration

” ” ” propitiation and expiation

p34 Note [1] why the absence of wrath would be a character-defect in God [2] why God’s holiness and wrath can’t be known apart from his love in JC.

Reverend V. Shepherd

the Doctrine of the Virgin Birth

(T.F. Torrance on the Doctrine of the Virgin Birth)

THE DOCTRINE OF THE VB: PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS:

The vb mustn’t be understood as explaining how the Son of God became human. It isn’t a scientific statement w.r.t. gynaecology or embryology.

II:

The mystery of the vb can only be understood as part of the whole mystery of Christ, the union of God and man.

The sign points to the reality but is not the reality.

Still, the outward sign and inward reality belong together.

Outward sign and inward reality are intrinsically or analogically related.

III:

The vb (the beginning of Christ’s earthly life) cannot be understood in abstraction from the triumphant consummation of Christ’s life, the Resurrection, for only the R’n reveals the mystery of his person.

The vb and the R’n are the two “end-signs” of the mystery of Christ.

Because of what God has done in Christ w.r.t. our humanity, we humans may share in the new humanity [continuity] even as we are liberated from bondage to sin: new [discontinuity].

The vb tells us that humankind of itself can’t generate the renewed humanity we desperately need.

The vb is the basis of the mystery of the R’n, while the mystery of the R’n is the revelation of the meaning of the mystery of the vb. (I.e., apart from the R’n the vb would be no more than a freakish occurrence.)

THE POSITIVE MESSAGE OF THE VB:

I:a:

The vb attests the genuine humanity of Jesus. (In the history of the church, the Docetists denied the vb.)

I:b:

The vb also denies Ebionitism (the notion that Jesus was at some point adopted as God.)

I:c:

The vb also denies all synergism, since the vb of Jesus arises from God’s will alone.

II:

Since the vb is God’s self-willed approach to us, the vb denies that we humans have the power to approach God. While the vb affirms that that the Son of God became human, it denies that this process can be reversed: we humans can’t become God.

Corollary: Human history can’t generate Jesus. The Incarnation (and all that it implies for us sinners) is a matter of unconditional grace.

III:

Since the vb entails the fact that Jesus was born of Mary, a human, therefore the Incarnation is a re-creation of our humanity. There is both continuity with our “old” humanity and discontinuity. Natural human processes can’t create the new humanity. (See III above.)

IV:

The vb represents a break in the sinful autonomy of humanity without implying any stigma on marriage or natural birth or sexual intercourse (contra the Gnostics.) On the contrary it elevates and sanctifies all these.

The vb tells us what the divine act of grace is: Mary is chosen by grace; she responds to God’s initiative.

Grace provides us, as grace provided Mary, with the Holy Spirit who is the power of our responding.

John of Damascus : “Mary conceived through the ear.” I.e., the Word quickens faith and the obedience of faith. (AKOUEIN= hear; HUPAKOUEIN= obey.)

As the vb was an act of grace, so our salvation, first to last, is an act of grace, for faith is a predicate of grace, not a natural human occurrence.

VI:

We can’t prove or demonstrate the vb. Only the Holy Spirit can convince of the fittingness of the vb, given the totality of the Christ event.

This being the case, while the vb is a sign, it’s also more than sign: it’s a determinative act of God; i.e., it’s part of the Christ-event, not merely a sign of or witness to the Christ event. [Note the shift TFT has taken here: he’s moved from vb as fitting sign of the event to vb as part of the event itself.]

Therefore to deny the vb is to deny the Incarnation, not because the vb is the cause of the Inc. but because the sign of the event is part of the event.

VII: In view of all that’s been said, affirmation of the vb is necessary for faith in Jesus Christ.

Torrance asks, “Could we have faith in the R’n of JC yet deny the empty tomb? Could we have faith in the Incarnation yet deny the vb?”

Shepherd: I have found that people who don’t believe in the vb don’t believe in the empty tomb either.

Professor V.Shepherd

The Doctrine of Creation

Lecture Outline

1] What the doctrine is not: it is not emanationism

-the notion that the universe emanates or issues from God’s nature, therein possessing the same

nature as God;

-the notion that the universe issues involuntarily or inevitably, God never having willed the

creation;

-the distinction between creation and emanationism is reflected in the dist’n b. monotheism and

monism; (Monism is obviously akin to pantheism and the New Age mentality.)

What the doctrine is not: it is not dualism

-the notion that the universe is made by something (someone) independent of God

-dualism arises because of the presence, power and scope of evil

-with dualism, the world is made out of something outside of God that existed eternally or

spontaneously came into being

-the universe is something that God has to contend with himself.

What the doctrine is not: it is not gnosticism

-matter is loathesome and the body is the seat of sin

-creation is tainted

-not God but an inferior deity, the demiurge, created (the demiurge is ignorant of God and

hostile to God)

-gnosticism issues in two outlooks foreign to the Hebrew mind: rigid asceticism and profligate

libertinism.

2] The doctrine itself:

-in his freedom God will that there be something other than himself (God is under no constraint

to create)

-in his love ……: creation is an expression of God’s goodness

-the world God made is GOOD; this goodness, while contradicted in the Fall, perdures.

-God creates ex nihilo: God is therefore sovereign, LORD of the creation

-as sovereign LORD, what he has created he can also destroy.

3] How does God create?

-by the Word

-through Christ (since the Word is rendered incarnate in Christ)

-a crucial point: How do we know that the creation isn’t God? (Many people think it is.)

-only by revelation of the Word do we know this

-then knowledge of God the Creator always follows knowledge of God the Redeemer

-where this point is not grasped the creation is either shunned as bad or idolized as divine

4] Creation and covenant are related:

-covenant is God’s promise ever to be our God, never to fail us or forsake us; i.e., despite our

sin, God is faithful to us.

-God wills a people for himself; for there to be a people who live for the praise of God’s glory,

God has to create (i) people (ii) all that sustains people.

-in other words, creation is the external basis of the covenant, while covenant is the internal

meaning of the creation.

5] Creation and the kingdom of God:

-the kingdom is the creation healed

-note Jesus’ preoccupation with the kingdom

-what does it mean that we are to pray every day for the coming of a kingdom that is already

here? (wherever Christ the king is present, the kingdom is present)

6] The Creation of humankind:

-hk. is the crown of creation: “very good”

-hk. is made on the same “day” as the animals

-hk. alone is made in the image of God (what this is never stated in scripture; we must infer it

from scripture as a whole)

-hk. is made steward of the creation

-hk. is sexually differentiated

-hk., fallen as it is, can never fall into sub-humanness: the image of God is defaced, but never

effaced.

-faith renders hk. authentically human, but not superhuman

-since hk. is made by God for God, the quintessential human activity is PRAYER.

—————————————————————————————————————————–

Note how a doctrine of creation differs from idol-environmentalism.

On the one hand, it’s good to be environmentally concerned: we need vegetable/animal life to

survive, while it doesn’t need us. Still, when a concern for “nature” is elevated idolatrously,

i) nature-worship has supplanted the worship of God

ii) human existence is now thought to subserve nature instead of vice versa

iii) there is no awareness of where nature-worship leads: immorality and cruelty

iv) there is no awareness that creation can be fulfilled only in Christ

v) there is no awareness that humankind, while irreducibly bodily, is also spiritual; in fact spirit (the capacity for relationship with God) is what distinguishes hk.

The Doctrine of Creation

(comments on Bloesch text)

p25 CREATIO EX NIHILO – otherwise [1] something antedates God (What is its origin?);

[2] this “something” is a limitation on God.

God wasn’t compelled to create:

[1] no external necessity;

[2] no internal necessity

(e.g., “He couldn’t help creating.”

“He needed to create to be God.”

“Since God is love, he needed something to love.”)

Then why did God create?

Note the difference between anthropomorphism (God, or some aspect of him, is a human projection) and theomorphism (what we affirm and do as parents, for instance, is modeled on God’s parenting us.)

P25 GOD AS CREATOR AND LORD

[1] “essential goodness of creation”:

[a] creation’s goodness perdures despite the Fall;

[b] were it not essentially good it couldn’t be restored;

[c] “ “ “ then God’s action upon it in Christ couldn’t recover its true nature

but rather would change its nature;

[d] “ “ “ then the concept of sin would have no meaning.

[2] “meaningfulness of history”:

NB: the meaning of history can’t read off the face of history.

Still, [a] history is the sphere of God’s activity;

[b] history is the sphere of our activity (obedience)

The inner significance of history and its outer outcome are the Kingdom of God .

[c] history doesn’t to be fled into the realm of the supra-material (gnosticism) for us to be

truly ourselves.

The goodness of the creation opposes all notions of Gnostic disavowal of the material/bodily/fleshly with gnosticism’s twofold consequences: [a] extreme asceticism

[b] extreme indulgence.

Luther’s Theologia Crucis

The hidden God is the revealed God
and
The revealed God is the hidden God

The world perceives	The truth is
shame	glory
weakness	strength
folly	wisdom
condemnation	acquittal
sin	righteousness
death	life

In order to “benefit” from the gospel (i.e., be a beneficiary of Jesus Christ and all that he has wrought for us) we must “shut our eyes and open our ears.” (Luther)
“The gospel is essentially aural.” (Luther)

The theologia crucis is always to be distinguished from a theologia gloriae.

The following is found
(i)                  when God is identified with metaphysical speculation
(ii)                when the church becomes triumphalistic
(iii)               when it is thought that the truth and nature of God can be read off nature
(iv)              when it is thought that the truth and nature of God can be read off the face of history, of world-occurrence.

A Note on the Significance of Athanasius’s Statement: “…of one substance with the Father…”

The Contenders: Bishop Arius (256 — 336)
Bishop Athanasius (296 — 373)

The Arian Heresy:
– there are not three “persons” in the Godhead, co-eternal and co-essential, but one only, the “Father”.
– the Son is only a creature, made out of nothing like all creatures.
– the Son is called “God” only figuratively, only by an extension of language.
– the Son is not Son by nature, but only by adoption: God foresaw his merits.
– the Son’s creatureliness is unique: he is peculiarly associated with the Father, but his nature is not that of the Father.

The apostles attest that Jesus Christ was sent by God, was from God, and is of God the Father. What does this mean?

We must look at two heresies that surfaced in the early church (and have been found in the church ever after.)
EBIONITISM: Jesus Christ is only apparently divine.
DOCETISM: Jesus Christ is only apparently human.

The Ebionites maintained:
– that Jesus is the man chosen for a special divine sonship through the descent of the Holy Spirit upon him at his baptism; i.e., JC is not “begotten” but rather “created”.

– that JC is not God-Incarnate, but rather something closer to a prophet (albeit the supreme prophet) indwelt by the Spirit.

– that there is no internal relation between the Father and the Son, but merely an external, vocational relation that Jesus fulfilled in doing the work of the Messiah.

The Ebionites sought to say how God was in Christ so as to recognize Christ’s uniqueness (according to the church’s understanding), without compromising the transcendence of God.
However, they insisted that JC does not embody in his own person the real person or the saving activity of God among humankind.

Therefor JC is not the focus of faith (as he plainly is in the NT); rather, the focus of faith is that Father to whom Jesus directed us in his teaching. (Jesus ultimately points away from himself to God, never to himself as God — said the Ebionites.)

The Docetists sought to explain how God became man in JC so as to give full weight to his divine reality, yet without compromising the unchangeability of God through union with human flesh.

Result: (i) the human nature and the suffering of Christ were treated as unreal, (ii) the gospel was reduced from the saving word to the merely ideational, (iii) the objective and historical reality of Christ was undermined.

Since docetic christology can never affirm that in JC God has taken upon himself the human consequences of sin and absorbed these into himself so as to effect atonement (i.e., that in Jesus Christ God and man are inseparably united for our salvation), therefore docetic christology always tends toward speculation or mythological constructs projected onto God.

Note: both Ebionite and Docetic christologies posit an antithesis between divine truth and physical (historical) event. (The apostles, on the contrary, insist that “The Word become flesh, full of grace and truth…”.)
– in both Ebionite and Docetic christologies JC is contrasted with God or placed alongside God, and this the NT never does! According to the apostles, Jesus Christ is the effectual presence of God.

Briefly:
– if JC were not God, he couldn’t reveal God to us, for only through God may we know God.
– if JC were not man, he couldn’t be our saviour, for only as one with us is God savingly at work in our actual human existence.

(To say the same thing)
– if JC wasn’t really God then there was no divine reality in anything he said or did.
– if JC wasn’t really man then what God did in him has no saving relevance for human beings.

Arianism contradicts both of these essential poles, and puts forth both Ebionite and Docetic christologies; i.e., JC is neither unambiguously human with our humanity nor unambiguously God with God’s divinity: JC is a sort of “third thing”.

Athanasius, seeing what Arius was expounding, wrote, “begotten of the Father, only begotten, from the substance of the Father…true God of true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father…”. Just to be sure that everyone knew what was meant, the proponents of the “homoousios” (“same substance”) attached a canon to the Nicene Creed: “It is anathema to say (i) `There was when he (the Son) was not.’ (ii) `Before being begotten he was not.’ (iii) `He came into existence out of nothing.’

In other words, the crucial section of the Nicene Creed mirrored the apostles’ insistence that faith in Christ coincides perfectly with faith in God.

Arius had taught:
– because of the uncompromisable transcendence of God, the being of God is unknowable and incommunicable. Therefore there can be no Son who is eternally of the same nature as the Father himself.

– like all things created out of nothing, the being of the Son is different from the being of the Father. Therefore the Father is incomprehensible to the Son, and therefore the Son cannot have or mediate any authentic knowledge of God, since the Son can only know what the Son has a capacity to know.

– while the Son is a creature, he is unlike all other creatures: the Son is neither properly divine nor properly creaturely.

Arius insisted: “JC is a Son of the Father only by an act of the Father’s will.”
Athanasius insisted: “JC is the Son of the Father from his very being, essential nature and reality as God. “God, in that he ever is, ever is the Father of the Son.”

homoousios versus homoiousios

The Greek letter iota — i — is the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet. How important is it? What is the difference between asking someone to run your business and asking her to ruin it?

(“homo” in Greek means “same’; in Latin “homo” means “man”!)
(“ousia” in Greek means “being”.)
(“homoousios” = “of the same being/nature/substance”; “homoiousios” = “of similar being/nature/substance.”)

The question answered by the Nicene Creed (Athanasius): is the Son of the same nature as the Father, or merely like the Father?” Plainly, if only “like”, the next question is “How much like? A little bit like or a lot like?”

To be sure, “homoousios”is not itself a biblical term. Nevertheless, said Athanasius, “It breathes the spirit of scripture.” In other words, what is really important isn’t the actual words of scripture but the meanings which they convey and the realities to which they point.

Because of the truth of “homoousios”, whatever we say of the Father we can say of the Son, except “Father”; and whatever we say of the Son we can say of the Father, except “Son”.

Any detraction from the Son detracts from the Father, since to deny the deity of the Son is to deny that God is eternally and intrinsically Father. (I.e., the Father is Father in that he is the eternal Father of the eternal Son, not because he is the Father of believers.)

The “homoousios” was a bulwark against both unitarianism (God is eternally triune) and polytheism (because the Father and the Son have the same nature, the Son isn’t a second deity; and because the Father doesn’t need the world to be Father — or to be love — pagan deities tended to need the world to be who they were.)

The Gospel-Significance of “Homoousios”

The gospel significance of “h.” is highlighted by one question: “What is implied if F. and S. are not of one being?”

(i) God is utterly unknowable, since (said Arius) no creaturely being can mediate knowledge of God. To say the same thing: it then cannot be held that there is oneness between what the gospel presents as the revelation of God and God himself. “Revelation” would be no more than human fantasizing projected onto “God”.

(ii) The gospel is not the self-communication of God, nor the self-bestowal of God. (I.e., God reveals and bestows “something”, but not himself.)

(iii) In JC God has not condescended to us, and his love (so-called) has stopped short of becoming one with us.

(iv) There is no ontological — and therefore no epistemological — connexion between the love of Jesus and the love of God. The supreme mockery then is that God is said to love us in Jesus, but God is not actually that love in himself. (According to the apostles, to believe in JC is to believe in God himself, not merely in a truth about God.)
There is — or might be — a dark, unknown God behind the back of JC. Athanasius insisted, “The knowledge of the F. through the S., and of the S. from the F., is one and the same.”

(v) The acts of JC are not the acts of God. I.e., if JC is not God, then there is no final authority or validity for anything he said or did for human beings. “No creature can ever be saved by a creature.” (Athanasius)
The giver of grace and the gift of grace are not the same.

(vi) Grace is a created medium between God and man. (In truth, grace is the self-giving of God in the incarnate one, in whom giver and gift are indissolubly one. Otherwise grace is regarded as a detachable quality, a “thing”.)

(vii) On the last day we shall be judged by a God who is arbitrary in that he bears no relation to JC and all that the latter stood for.

(viii) What Jesus does on the cross is simply a judicial transaction that punishes a third party. What Jesus does on the cross is not done by him as representative man, and therefore no provision is made for the humanity of all humankind.

(Athanasius insisted that “The whole Christ (God and man) became a curse for us.” I.e., to save us God cursed our fallen humanity and cursed himself in cursing it. “It was not just a man who suffered and died for us, but the Lord as man; not just the life of a man that was offered to save us, but the life of God as man.” Athanasius’ pithiest statement in this regard was, “Our resurrection is stored up in the cross.”)

Karl Barth maintained that at the time of the Nicene controversy the Athanasian “homoousios” was the most significant theological statement since the apostles.

What do we think? Where is the church today?

In the later 500s Gregory of Nyssa journeyed to Constantinople and found all one hundred congregations there to be Arian. His immediate remark wasn’t a lament or a grumble or a wail; it was, “I have work to do.”

Lecture Outline on The Doctrine of the Trinity

(THE HOLY TRINITY)
The doctrine of the T. isn’t articulated in scripture.
However,
[1] The “raw materials” of the doctrine are there. E.g., Luke 1:28, 31, 35.
Consider Isaiah 48:16 (God’s Messiah is speaking): “Draw near to me (Messiah)…
from the beginning I have not spoken in secret….And now the Lord God has sent me and his Spirit.”
[2] The thrust of scrip. is certainly in the direction of the doctrine.

Note the church’s proclivity to various kinds of unitarianism.
[a] of the Father
     God is one-sidedly sovereign, so very “high and lifted up” as to be remote, inaccessible.
     (Most commonly found in a Magisterial Protestant environment.)
[b] of the Son
     Jesus Christ is our intimate (friend, pal), but never challenges us or rebukes us but rather
        aids and abets our schemes for ourselves and can be summoned to support us.
     (Most commonly found in a Roman Catholic environment, but also in sentimental
        Protestantism.)
[c] of the Spirit
     God is one-sidedly to be experienced (but not adored, not one before whom we prostrate
        ourselves).
     This unitarianism is frequently characterized by emotionalism, frenzy, undervaluation
        of scholarship amounting to mindlessness, corporate and individual disorderliness.
        (Most commonly found in the newer, more effusive churches.)

The heresy of modalism (p.35): God exists as Father, Son and Spirit in different eras, but never as triune.

The necessity of the ontological (or essential or immanent) T.: God is eternally triune. The economic T. maintains that God is triune only in his dealings with us. “Father”, “Son” and “Spirit” are merely three interrelated forms in which divine revelation functions.
We need an ontological T., for God’s revelation isn’t merely a “face” he puts on; rather, his “face” is the unambiguous disclosure of his heart, his essence, his being.
The triune revelation of God must point back to, presuppose, a triune being of God (or else we are saying that revelation is from God but not of God.)
Unless the economic T. is grounded in the ontological T., the economic T. isn’t a faithful and true revelation of the transcendent communion of F, S, and HS — which the eternal being of God is inhimself.

By means of the ordo cognoscendi we come to know the economic T.
Yet the ordo essendi plainly entails the ontological T.
These two interpenetrate each other and regulate each other.
Apart from the ontological T., the economic T. would have only transient significance and therefore be without saving power, since only the eternal God can save.

Note (p. 35) that the doctrine of the T. doesn’t mean one God in three manifestations (modalism) nor a triad of separate persons with separable functions.
Rather, the whole God is involved with us at all times.

The Arian Heresy
Arianism is a form of subordinationism (Jesus is an inferior sort of deity.)
There are two dangers here:
[a] polytheism: JC doesn’t disclose the nature of God, since Christ’s being isn’t the being of God.
[b] agnosticism: if Christ doesn’t disclose God, then who does? How do we know whether anyone does?
Note the subordinationism in all talk of “the God beyond God” or “the God beyond theism.”

With respect to Thomas Aquinas’ assertion, “The T. reflects the truth that God is intelligible but not comprehensible” (p.37), the implications are:
     [a] God is intelligible only to faith (God is never naturally intelligible)
     [b] if God weren’t intelligible (albeit to faith), nothing could be known or said of him
     [c] if God were comprehensible (rather than intelligible or apprehensible), then we’d have mastered God, transcended him.
The doctrine of the T.[a] affirms the knowability of God
                                     [b] preserves the mystery of God. (I.e., we know God truly but don’t
know him exhaustively.)

(SOLI DEO GLORIA)
God’s glory is the splendour of God turned outward upon us.
Where the glory of God isn’t our motive, then we lapse into a mysticism where we appear to be concerned with God but are chiefly concerned with what God can do for us and how he can nurture our “self” or even by means of whom we can find our “self.”
But in fact I come to my “self” only as I look away from myself to God. In other words, to exalt the glory of God is to find myself both established and exalted. (Here Christians must always disagree with those who say that concern for God’s glory is other-directed and therefore undercuts the foundation of a self even as it diminishes our “self.”)

(EROSION OF THE BIBLICAL VIEW OF GOD) p.41
The importation of the “static Absolute” of Platonism, neo-Platonism, and Aristotelian philosophy. (Or philosophy in general.)
     e.g., deism during the enlightenment
     e.g., Hegel and Pannenberg
     e.g., Heidegger and Bultmann
     e.g., Plotinus and Tillich

Erigena and emanationism (vs. creation)

The anthropocentric character of religion (p. 42)

A “growing sacramentalism in the church.” (p.43)

The Reformers’ distinction between the revealed will and secret will of God. (p.44)

The influence of Hegel.
The Influence of Schleiermacher
The Influence of Barth

Erosions of God from within Evangelicalism
[i] a sentimentality born of “palsi-walsiness”
[ii] the God who is chiefly concerned with my happiness rather than my holiness
[iii] the exhortation to “make Jesus Lord”
[iv] the tendency to restrict God’s concern to the church, rather than to acknowledge God’s concern with all aspects of the creation (especially the material and the socio-economic)
[v] the failure of Christians to honour God’s claim on their obedience
[vi] (Shepherd) the substitution of “spirituality” for faith
[vii] (Shepherd) the inversion of witness and apologetics

The Primacy of Scripture

(ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY)
p.52. S. is the human witness to divine revelation.
S. is God’s witness to his own revelation.

Note the nature of revelation (Shepherd)

[1] God acts.
[2] God illumines the people who are the beneficiaries of his action.
His illumining them as to what he has done is his definitive interpretation of what he has done
E.g., What has he done in the cross? How do we know? We know as we are made the beneficiary of it. What we know becomes part of the event of his “doing.”

How does he acquaint us with all this? through the human witness of prophets and apostles whom he inspires.
Note here the cruciality of the risen Jesus’s self-interpretation during the forty days between Resurrection and Ascension.

Points to ponder:
[1] S. is not the rev. of God. God doesn’t reveal a book or truth or propositions primarily. God reveals himself, and does so by giving himself. Revelation is from God and of God. God is the author and object of revelation.
[2] God’s act is witnessed by those who are the immediate beneficiaries of it.
[3] Those who are witnesses of it are also summoned and commissioned to be witnesses to it.
[4] The human witness to God’s revelation God owns and blesses as his own witness to himself. What humans write God endorses; God writes “on top of it”, as it were.
If we undervalue the human witness to rev., then we confuse s. with the Lord of s.
If we undervalue s. as God’s witness to himself, then we are left with a s. that is no more than a human document and therefore has no more than human authority.

In short, s. isn’t the rev., but because the R’n of JC includes the witness (testimony) of apostles (i.e., the R’n event is the raising of Jesus PLUS the risen Jesus’s self-interpretation to the apostles PLUS their subsequent writing of all of this), therefore s. is an aspect, even a necessary aspect, of rev. In other words, while rev. isn’t primarily or essentially verbal, since the apostolic testimony is part of the R’n event, rev. always includes a verbal element.

p.52. Bloesch compares deficient view of s. to deficient views of JC:
e.g., docetism (fundamentalist view of s.) and ebionitism (liberal view of s.)

p.52. S. is not rev. itself, but whenever it is read today and vivified by the Holy Spirit, it becomes the occasion of rev. (The work of the HS obviates any deducing or inferring God from s.)
When the HS vivifies s., God himself confronts us as surely as he confronted people in the pre- and post-Easter ministry of JC.
This point is crucial: s.+ HS = the living God’s giving himself to us, addressing us and summoning us.

p.53 Then what is meant by “Word of God”? — the self-utterance of the living God. I.e., “Word of God” = s. + HS.

p.54. Note: because we are fallen and therefore spiritually obtuse, the HS is essential to our finding s. to be the vehicle of God’s self-impartation.

p.55. Rev. is the action whereby God discloses himself. Inspiration is the election and guidance of prophets [and apostles], ensuring the trustworthiness and efficacy of their witness through the ages.
(Shepherd: Be sure to keep rev. primary. Rev. generates inspiration of s.; inspiration doesn’t generate rev. — as in much fundamentalism}

p.55. Note the distinction between inspiration (of writers of s.) and illumination (of readers of s.)

p.56. Insp. is complete; illum. is ongoing; therefore rev. is ongoing in the sense that JC, in the power of the HS, continues to disclose himself to readers/hearers of s. and bind them to himself in the faith he quickens within them.

p.56. JC is the substance of the OT as much as of the NT.
(Shepherd) this point is crucial or else
[1] we think a different deity is spoken of in the OT.
[2] we jettison the OT, thereby forfeiting a doctrine of creation, an understanding of community, the burden of the prophetic protest, the meaning of holiness, etc.
[3] we falsify Jesus. (Without the OT, Jesus becomes whatever we make him.)
[4] we become anti-semitic.

p.56. Historical criticism has its place in helping us uncover the meaning of s., but upholding historical criticism must never become the pretext for importing a non-s.’l philosophy that skews s.
S. is not the record or evidence of anything evolutionary.

(SCRIPTURAL PRIMACY)

S. takes precedence over tradition. Tradition can “vote” but cannot “veto.” Trad. must always be challenged and corrected by s.

p.58. The church recognizes the canonical collection, but the church doesn’t determine it. (Put differently, the canonical collection delineates “church”; the church doesn’t delineate “s.”

p.59. S. authenticates itself. (I.e., as self-authenticating, s. requires nothing to authenticate it.)
(Shepherd: Calvin’s point is crucial. Jesus Christ authenticates himself to us, and in doing this he consequently authenticates to us that document (s.) by which we learned of him.)

p.59-60. S. always stands above the church, above our experience, above culture.

p. 62-63. Bloesch makes the point again that s. is self-authenticating derivatively in that it is the means whereby I encounter the self-authenticating One.
(Shepherd) Note the way Luther speaks of baby and manger.
(Shepherd) At no time is s. an “Aladdin’s Lamp”: we “rub” it until the genie (JC) “comes out.” The s. we always have in our hands; JC we never have in our hands: he forever remains Lord of his own self-disclosure and Lord of the witness to him. At no time do we control him or that Spirit which he bears and bestows.

(INFALLIBILITY AND INERRANCY)

p.64. Unquestionably we find culturally conditioned ideas and historically conditioned language in s. Yet by the miracle of God’s s grace that Word is heard which isn’t conditioned.
(Shepherd: s. is “infallible” in that it never fails in doing that for which it is intended: bespeak the fact, nature and offer of salvation.)

p.66. Bloesch speaks of inerrancy. See f.n. #62 p. 83: Inerrancy doesn’t consist in scientific exactness or consistency in detail [Shepherd: Calvin drew up a list of inconsistencies in s.] but in “the faithfulness of God to communicate his Word to his appointed spokespersons and to preserve their testimony as the vehicle of its continual revelation to his children.”

p.69. We are not to treat s. as a source book of revealed truths that we can then extract from s.
(Shepherd)
[1] This would presupposes that God reveals a book.
[2] This would obviate any need for the HS, implying that not HS but our REASON gives us access to ultimate reality. (Note the relationship between ult. reality and the means of apprehending it: The Rational <> reason, versus Spirit<>spirit.)
[3] This would mean that unbelief has the same access to the heart of s. as has faith.
[4] This would deny the relationship of JC to s.: he ever remains Lord of s., is never “locked up” in it.
[5] Gathering up all the above, we must say reason or historical research cannot disclose God. God alone does this, and does this by creating faith in him in the context of our reading s. A miracle of grace is needed. (Since fallen creatures cannot “ascend” to God, any time any person comes to faith, a miracle has occurred.)

(THE HERMENEUTICAL TASK)

p.71. [1] We come to s. as a believer, expecting God to reveal himself and therein reveal us (as opposed to those like Bultmann and Tillich who presuppose a prior self-understanding we bring to s.)
[2] We examine the task critically (since we don’t uphold a “Joseph Smith” approach.)
[3] We read the text in the light of its theological context. For this, spiritual discernment is needed. While we may begin by interpreting the text, we always conclude by having the text “interpret” us.
[4] We relate the text to contemporaneity.
[5] Finally we must grasp the substance of s. as a whole. p.72. (Shepherd: I’d invert 4 and 5.)

(MISCONCEPTIONS IN MODERN EVANGELICALISM)

p.74 The s. is not to be identified with rev.
A theory of mechanical dictation is not to be identified with inspiration.
Once s. is no longer grounded in JC and his authority, it is said to be grounded in itself (K. Barth: “a paper pope”). (Shepherd: Why not simply say that when s. is regarded as grounded in itself it has become an idol?)

p.75. Note: much modern evangelicalism assumes a rationalist position and maintains that the Word of God is directly available to human reason.

– – – – – – –

Bloesch: The Future of Evangelical Theology
Bl. discusses three approaches to s.
[1] liberal-modernist. The s. is the written record of the religious history or religious experience of an ancient people.
[2] scholastic-fundamentalist. The s. is identified with rev; the s. is what God has revealed.
[3] sacramental. The s. is the “mirror” that reflects JC, a “channel” which brings Christ to us and us to him, a “vehicle” (think of Luther’s manger) by which the risen One is “conveyed.” We neither identify JC with scripture nor pretend that he can be known (i.e., received) apart from it. Once more, s. isn’t rev. but it ever remains unique and indispensable to our knowing and being the beneficiary of rev.

The Person of Jesus Christ

(THE STRUGGLE WITH LIBERALISM)

p120. Bl. speaks of neo-Protestantism and neo-Catholicism. Be sure to distinguish these from neo-orthodoxy.
NPr=theol’l liberalism: the world’s self-und’g is the presupposition of theol. and church.
NOr: the retention of scrip’l substance and logic while [1] accommodating hist’l criticism of scrip., [2] moving away from “verbal dictation” approach to scrip., [3] recognizing that rev. is from God and of God; only God can reveal, and God reveals himself (not something, not an abstract truth.)
NCa: RC thought with the same kind of infection as NPr.

Note: for lib. theol. the significance of JC is his being teacher. This notion, while claiming to exalt the person of JC, actually renders him superfluous. Note the arbitrariness of the “Quest of the Historical Jesus.”

p120. Harnack: “BOMFOG”.  Christology is the “simple” Jesus rendered complicated by Gk.Phil.
David Strauss: the true God-Man isn’t the Jesus of Nazareth but humanity as a whole: humanity is essentially united to God.  Jesus was the first to perceive this.
Biedermann: redemption arises from huankind’s religious self-consciousness.  (cf. Hegel)
SCHLEIERMACHER (the father of lib. theol.)  Jesus is not Word incarnate but a man whose “God-consciousness” is elevated to the highest degree.  “God-consc.” had to do with feeling (of absolute dependence.)
Note how S. attempted to adapt but came to adopt.
Ritschl: J. is not one with God essentially, but is united to God by the constancy of his will.
All of the above elevate ethics above salvation and end up moralizing the gospel.

Kaehler : the only depiction we have of Jesus is that of the apostles. It is impossible to go behind the apostles’ testimony and uncover/construct a J. different from the one the apostles’ attest.

Note that all such attempts at reconstructing the “J. of history”
[1] disregard the ressur’n as lacking the status of event.
[2] disregard the miracles.
[3] devalue the cross from atonement to martyrdom.
[4] elevate the significance of J. as teacher.
[5] render his teachings anemic.
[6] discount J.’s Jewishness in favour of cosmopolitanism.
[7] minimize the OT as primitive stage in religious evolution.

Note the perils of neglecting the Older Testament

p121. Bl maintains the J. of hist is the Christ of faith. “J of hist.” is an invention of scholars whose “tools” aren’t those of the apostles, while “Christ of faith” mustn’t be viewed as an invention of the early church.

  Kierkegaard [1] upheld the Inc. without qualification.
[2] faith means staking everything on an “objective uncertainty” (can’t be proved prior to faith.)
[3] such faith means we come to live “in truth”; “Truth is subjectivity” (not subjectivism!)  Note the cruciality of the “between.”
[4] phil’l speculation opposes faith.
[5] the fact of original sin cuts off any “maieutic” approach to knowledge (of God.)
[6] reason(ing) — not the structure of reason —  is damaged by the Fall.

Abraham is the exemplar of faith.

P.T. Forsyth: a British rep. of neo-orthodoxy, but sounder than Barth on such issues as faith and soteriology.

(THE N.T. WITNESS)
p124.  NB the difference between gnostics and apostles on Logos.
(Shepherd) Besides the NT passages that explicitly confess JC to be Son of God, the Incarnate One, there are many which implicitly do as much; e.g.,
[1] the manner in which J. speaks of God as “(my) Father.”
[2] his claim to forgive sin
[3] his insistence he will be the final judge of humankind
[4] his giving a new law (Torah)
[5] his use of the emphatic “I”
[6] his claim to satisfy those human needs that God alone can
[7] his unqualified demand of humankind’s allegiance.
p125.  NB the significance of “exalted to the right hand of”  and “giver” and “Lord” “of eternal life”
p125.  “Messiah” doesn’t of itself assume Incarnation; “Son of Man”, however is a Messianic figure who does have divine authority.
p126.  In our insistence on Inc. (in face of liberal erosion) we must always acknowledge the genuine humanity of J.  Recall Athanasius in the face of the Arians: not “the Lord in the form of man” but “the Lord as man”.  “Form of man” is in fact a denial of the Inc, since it reduces the humanity of J to merely apparent humanity. The NT unashamedly speaks of J’s hunger, thirst, fatigue, ignorance, etc.
(Note Shepherd’s disagreement with Bl re: “He was tempted to despair in the Garden of Gethsemane and again at Calvary.” Shepherd doesn’t think that despair is the meaning of the dereliction.)

(JESUS CHRIST — TRUE GOD AND TRUE MAN)
Council of Chalcedon (451).  NB the difference between Xn and pagan und’gs of incarnation.
p128.  Assorted heresies; e.g., [1] Arius (see earlier class notes on Trinity.)
[2] Apollinaris: JC has human body but divine soul.  Note the Platonic influence here.
[3] Paul of Samosata: J was Son of God not by nature but was merely united to God by adoption.
[4] Monphysites (“one nature”)  JC’s human nature merges into the divine.  (Not quite the same as Docetism)
The Logos absorbs the humanity so that the latter is dissolved and lost.
[5] Nestorius: J’s humanity and deity are joined adjacently (like two blocks of wood joined at the end.)  This allows people to say, e.g., that J suffered in his humanity but not in his deity.  (Calvin’s Christology has a “whiff” of Nestorianism.)  Nest’m leaves J with two different personalities, one human and one divine.

Note the precise formulations of Chalcedon:
[a] against the Monophysites: the two natures exist without confusion and without change (no absorption)
[b] against the Nestorians: the two natures exist without division and without separation.
Don’t say that Chalcedon is an unnecessary complication of the “simple person of J.” Without Chalcedon the Inc. is lost and therefore the gospel is lost (as we saw at Nicaea with Ath’s homoousion.)

Bl: there is no simple equation of J with God, but no separation of J from God.
(Shepherd) Recall Calvin’s “irreducible minimum”: [1] God is one.
[2] Jesus is both God and Son of God.
[3] Our salvation rests with God’s mercy.

(Shepherd) Note the distinction between “Word-flesh” and Word-spirit” Christologies.  (Word-flesh is heretical because in fact a denial of the Inc., even though it is what the church largely believes at any one time.)
p129.  Does Bl commit this heresy when he writes, “God is the acting subject and the manhood of Jesus is the predicate of the Godhead”?
p129.  Bl points out that Jesus differs from other men “in kind and not simply in degree.”  (Shepherd) Of course J differs from us in that he is the Word Incarnate; but his humanity doesn’t differ from ours (apart from sin.)

Aquinas: the hypostatic union is neither is neither essential nor accidental.
If essential, then the Word wouldn’t become flesh; the Word would be flesh eternally.
If accidental, then Nestorianism would be operative.
Bl: “…human being, even under the conditions of estrangement (i.e., sin) is virtually transparent to divine being.” What does Bl mean by “virtually”?
(Bl) “The deity of Christ necessarily entails his sinlessness, for God cannot sin.”
(Shepherd) Surely the humanity of Christ must not entail his sinlessness necessarily, or else Christ’s temptations weren’t genuine. Genuine temptation means that sin was a real possibility. (Compare a reader’s objection to Abraham/Isaac story: “so much is depending on the obedience of the man Abraham.” How much is hanging on the obedience of the man Jesus?)
The pre-existence of the Word. This isn’t the pre-existence of the Nazarene.
The cross is an event in history (and has to be), even as the lamb is “slain from before the foundation of the world.” (1 Peter 1:20). So J of Nazareth is an event in history even as his humanity is prefigured in the Word; i.e., the Word anticipates his humanity.
The Virgin Birth doesn’t prove the Inc. but testifies to it. It is a sign of profound truth.
Note Luther’s “three Christmas miracles.”
Note that the NT attestation for VB is much stronger than liberals suggest. (See T.F. Torrance article.)

(AREAS OF TENSION WITHIN THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY)
p132. RC vs Ref’d (Luth’n) Christologies.
Prot. Xology upholds [1] the sinless humanity of Christ (as does RC.)
[2] the finite humanity of Christ: J. had to learn obedience.

Aquinas: The humanity of J is fully developed at conception.  However, modern RC theol. recognizes this defect and the accompanying Monophysite view of Christ.
p133.  Once the Inc. is only apparent (God using a human body but not God as man), then Mary as co-mediatrix (-redemptrix) appears in order to supply a genuine humanity.
Note: in Prot. Xology, the whole Christ suffers for us, man and God.
Note: in Anglo-Catholic Xology humankind is reconciled to God by the God-man union in the Inc.  Scrip. insists we are reconciled only by the cross, the Inc. being the presupposition of the cross. I.e., the Inc. occurs for the sake of the cross.

Luth’n vs Ref’d Christologies.
Luth’n: communicatio idiomatum = communion of qualities (but not properties) of each nature into the other: whatever we say of Christ’s humanity we say of his deity; e.g, suffering, shame, glory. But beware of Monophysitism!
(Recall Luther’s theologica crucis: the truth of the cross is the opposite of what the world “sees.”
Ref’d: finitum non capax infinti = the finite isn’t capable of the infinite. And therefore some things prediated of Christ’s deity aren’t predicated of his humanity. But beware of Nestorianism!

Kenotic Christology
“He emptied himself.” (Phil. 2:6 and 2 Cor. 8:9) Of what? If of his deity, then there’s no Inc. (Shepherd) — He renounced his right to remain remote from the degradation of sin. He who knew no sin became sin.

Rev. V. Shepherd

The Work of Christ

(Bloesch, Essentials, chapt. VII)

(THE BIBLICAL UNDERSTANDING)

(Shepherd) — evang’l theol. always emphasizes the cross. Obviously the cross isn’t mentioned explicitly in the OT, but the sacrificial system is mentioned everywhere. The question is, “How can unholy people approach and be made right with an all-holy God?”

Liberal theol. [1] tends to isolate the prophetic dimension of the OT and ignore the piacular.

[2] therein distort the prophetic (now reduced to left-wing social criticism.)

Forgotten: [1] the sacrificial system is God-ordained.

[2] prophet and priest are allied (see Isaiah and Ezekiel) (…mercy not sacrifice…”?)

Presupposed in the sacrificial system: sin is, among other things, defilement. Evan’l thought has lost this: it’s assumed that if we are now estranged from God, all we need do is understand that we can“go home” and “go.” I.e., much evan’l thought features the cross but fails to understand it.

PROPITIATION is the key concept. Note how it differs from and grounds expiation.

Liberal theol. dismisses prop. as crude or primitive, as if an irascible deity were placated by a 3^rd party.

But note [1] prop. is the work of God. A reluctant God isn’t being bribed by a willing Jesus.

[2] God’s wrath isn’t ill-temper or petulance but rather his holy opposition to sin.

[3] Wrath isn’t the opposite of love. (Indifference is.)

[4] Prop., so far from being unrighteous and therefore enlarging injustice, establishes God’s right’s’s: he is both just and justifier.

– – – – –

Once we understand the above we can proceed to explore other descriptions of the cross; e.g., (149ff)

[1] redemption: in OT, referred to release from slavery; in NT, from enslavement to sin: deliverance. We have to be freed from before we are free for (obedience, service, etc.)

[2] reconciliation: restoration of the alienated to fellowship. (It presupposes prop. and expiation.) Don’t psychologize it!

[3] justification: to be declared “just” (=rightly related.)

[a] Is this a miscarriage of justice? Don’t overpress the forensic metaphor.

Don’t isolate the forensic metaphor from others.

[b] Don’t say “as if”: the guilty sinner is viewed “as if” right’s.

[4]regeneration (This is more commonly spoken of as a work of the Spirit. Plainly, however, it occurs only in those who are beneficiaries by faith of the cross.)

Regen’n is the “new birth.” Note the three meanings of anothen: [1] “one more time” (womb), [2] “from above” (=from God), [3] “from ‘square one'”; i.e., life without the curse of sin.

[5] sanctification: the ever-increasing removal of the arrears of sin and conformity to JC.

(Wesley: justification is the restoration to God’s favour; sanctification, of God’s image.

(DIFFERING VIEWS ON THE ATONEMENT)

Classic View (p152): the freeing and vindicating of those victimized in the course of evil’s cosmic conflict.

Latin View (p153): the “satisfying” of God who has been offended by the dishonour our sin visits upon him.

Bloesch’s exposition of Anselm isn’t entirely clear. Please note the following:

[1] God must be “recompensed” in view of humankind’s sin. (Our sin has deprived him of what is his.)

[2] What must be paid to God (because owed God) must be greater than every existing thing other than God; i.e., nothing merely creaturely can assuage the outrage to God’s justice and honour.

[3] Since the person who makes this payment must be more than merely creaturely, he must be divine.

[4] Yet only a human ought to make it, since the debt is humankind’s debt.

[5] Therefore someone both God and human is needed to make the necessary satisfaction; i.e., the Incarnate One. JC alone can render God that satisfaction apart from which he remains dishonoured and the entire cosmos disordered.

Strengths in Anselm’s Argument:

[1] it takes sin seriously.

[2] it deplores “cheap grace.”

[3] it upholds scrip’s emphasis on JC as representative humankind.

Questions/Criticisms re: Anselm’s Argument:

[1] Does A’s emphasis on “appropriate”, “fitting”, “honour”, rely on non-scrip’l categories that emerge from a mediaeval social/moral framework?

[2] If “appropriateness”, e.g., is the controlling category, has God’s mercy ceased to be unfathomable? free?

Instead of “God is love” is A left-handedly saying “God is honour”?

[3] While justice is crucial to A’s argument, does he understand it as scrip does (=judgement)?

Aquinas (p153): rightly emphasised that all that Christ has done for us “benefits” us only as we are bound to him in faith; only now all that he has done for us is also done in us.

(Shepherd: we must always hold together the objective dimension of the atonement and the subjective dimension of our appropriating it, without every making faith a subtle form of religious “work”.)

(Please see p155 in text re: Shepherd’s comments on Bl’s reading of Barth.)

Mystical Theory of Atonement (p156): contrast William Law and Phillips Brooks.

Moral Influence Theory of Atonement: the cross is the supreme manifestation of God’s love for us, which manifestation evokes our love for God, and which love for God then reconciles us to God.

Criticisms (Shepherd): [1] How do we know that Christ’s death demonstrates God’s love for us?

[2] Before we consider whether or how our hearts are softened (by beholding the cross), we must consider whether or how God’s judgement on us is to be dealt with.

[3] This theory assumes the root human problem to be that we are unaware that God loves us.

[4] This theory ultimately quickens moralism. (My love, rather than faith as God’s gift that I exercise, binds me to God.)

Governmental Theory of Atonement: the cross is neither satisfaction nor victory, but rather a protracted demonstration that God is “in the right” in his dispute with us. God will forgive us if we simply admit that God is in the right.

Note Bl’s criticisms: [1] here the cross relaxes the Law of God: forgiveness presupposes only our admission that God is in the right. [2] there’s no suggestion that an outrage must be addressed.

Vicarious Repentance Theory of Atonement (p157): the Son of God identifies himself with our sin and “confesses” this before the Father. The cross demonstrates God’s “creative sympathy” with sinful humankind’s predicament.

Overlooked here: [1] God’s law has been violated.

[2] It says more about the human predicament than about God’s (violated) holiness.

[3] The cross is said to attest God’s forgiveness but not effect that forgiveness.

In short, it ignores the whole matter of propitiation.

(THREE ASPECTS OF THE ATONEMENT)

p158. The atonement is a triumph over the powers of darkness. JC is not only suffering servant but reigning king. (NB the point Shepherd made at beginning of term in discussion of God’s sov’t’y: “He rules through suffering love, not worldly might.” Bl.)

The “Jesus is Victor” motif appears in many places in scrip.; e.g., Mark’s gospel. (Note the ministry of Johann Christoph Blumhardt.)

p159. Bl’s point: a one-sided emphasis on classical (triumphal) theory overlooks the fact that God’s holiness (together with his justice and righteousness) must be acknowledged and honoured.

Shepherd: a one-sided emphasis on classical theory suggests “might is right”; i.e., it suggests the exercise of sheer power (everywhere condemned in scrip.)

Shepherd: while the goal of atonement (regardless of theory) is our reconciliation as persons with the Person of God, it must never be thought that such “I-Thou” reconciliation is born simply ofexercising such a relation, born of a simple affirmation, for sinful humankind has no access to a holy God. I.e., pardon presupposes propitiation. Our “going home” presupposes that the barricaded way home (“No thoroughfare!”) has had the barricade removed (by the cross.) Forgiveness is enormously costly!

p159 (bottom). Bl speaks of Christ’s having “made satisfaction for us in a two-fold way.” In the history of Xn thought this has been called the active and passive obedience of Christ.

[A] active obedience: JC alone is the covenant-keeper, the fulfiller of Torah.

[B] passive obedience: JC willingly goes to the cross as sacrifice.

(OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE ATONEMENT)

p162. Both aspects must be held together, both “for us” and “in us.”

[1] If the objective aspect is undervalued, then God’s holiness, righteousness, integrity are disregarded.

[2] If the subjective aspect is undervalued, then we assume that everyone “benefits” from God’s provision in the cross irrespective of faith. We forget that the goal of the cross is a person who lives in intimate relationship with the Person of God. Surrender, obedience, commitment on our part are essential to right-relatedness to God, not merely psychological or cognitive aspects of a “right-relatedness” that is wrought in the cross irrespective of faith.

NB both aspects in 2^nd Cor 5: (a) “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s trespasses against them”; (b) “We beseech you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

p164. (Shepherd) I don’t like Bl’s expression, “In Christ we discover that we have already been forgiven.” We don’t “discover” anything. In Christ we own for ourselves and appropriate the provision God has made for us in the cross, so that what was done “for us” is now done “in us” as we are reconciled to God and live (by faith) a life of trust, love and obedience.

(PARTICULAR AND UNIVERSAL ATONEMENT)

Did Christ die for all or only for some? Can we sincerely say to anyone we meet, “Christ has died for you”?

Bl identifies Calvin with “limited atonement.” Shepherd doesn’t find this in Calvin; Calvin, however, does restrict the application of the atonement to the elect. Ref’d theol. after Calvin restricts theatonement itself to the elect: Jesus died only for those who will not fail to come to faith (because of the decree of election.)

(Shepherd) The best exposition of limited atonement I know is J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness.

He argues, “Its [i.e., the cross’s] saving power does not depend on faith being added to it; its saving power is such that faith flows from it.”

[1] It is unthinkable that sinners can defeat the Saviour (the crucified.)

[2] Therefore all for whom Christ died must submit to him.

[3] Submitting/not submitting isn’t our choice, for then we should be the ones to crown/frustrate the S.

[4] Therefore the faith which embraces the crucified must be generated by the cross.

[5] Since not everyone “puts on Christ” in faith,

[6] Therefore he couldn’t have died for all.

(Shepherd) The issue here is again the nature of God nature of grace and nature of sov’t’y.

Advocates of limited atonement maintain that if Jesus died for more than have been foreordained to faith, then Son and Father aren’t one in their saving purpose and its execution.

(Shepherd) Criticisms: [1] scrip. tells us that God is love, not merely that he loves part of humankind. (If God is love — i.e., love is who he is and not merely what he does — then he cannot love only part of humankind.)

[2] is God’s integrity, his identity (as God) threatened if a mere creature defies him eternally?

[3] is grace a power, an efficacy that operates “irresistibly”?

[4] the humanity of Christ is essential to his atoning work. His humanity is representative; i.e., he represents all humankind in view of the fact that he is human with the humanity with which everyone is human. Then how can the atonement be limited if it presupposes a humanity that is no more divisible in him than in anyone else? How can the full humanity of Christ (there being no partial humanity) issue in a limited atonement?

(Shepherd) [1] scrip. overwhelmingly upholds “Christ died for all.”

[2] Christ’s death is effected in those alone that embrace him in faith.

[3] Our faith isn’t something we generate and then bring to Christ. (Here Packer is correct.)

[4] Christ quickens faith in us, yet we must exercise it ourselves.

[5] a theol. of double predestination entails major inconsistencies w.r.t. doctrines of Christ, Spirit and Trinity. (See Shepherd, The Nature and Function of Faith in the Theology of John Calvin.)

[6] No satisfactory answer can be given as to why some come (not) to faith when all alike are dead coram Deo and God’s mercy is visited upon all through the declaration of the gospel. >> MYSTERY

p166. To be avoided: Barth’s position, “Since Christ has died for all, all are saved now.”

(THE OBLIGATION OF THE CHRISTIAN)

p169. The atonement is complete. To add to it is to detract from it=deny it=repudiate it.

We are to “work out” (Phil. 2:12.13) our salv’n’ i.e., live it.

p169. Bl says works-righteousness is “solidly refuted in Paul’s epistles.” Shepherd: it’s refuted everywhere in scrip. Paul’s criticism of the law as vehicle of self-salv’n (Romans and Galatians) is a criticism of an abuse of the law. See the preface to the decalogue and the nature of Torah.

p169 (bottom.) Bl points out that in the middle ages (in some thinkers; e.g., Gabriel Biel) there was an outer structure of grace and an inner content of works. In such a scheme the “works” aspect is always determinative; i.e., grace merely makes it possible for us to earn our standing with God.

p171. Bl says that JC has suffered the “consequences” of everyone’s sin.

(Shepherd) we should distinguish between sin’s penalty and sin’s consequences.

p172. Substitutionary atonement doesn’t entail “cheap grace” (regardless of how much cavalier people appear to cheapen it.) The pattern of the Xn life is grace>>>gratitude.

NB the structure of the Heidelberg Catechism. There are three sections: (I) humankind’s misery, (II) God’s provision in Christ, (III) the Christian life (discipleship.) The heading of the 3^rd section is simply GRATITUDE.

(MISUNDERSTANDINGS IN MODERN THEOLOGY)

[1] denial of need of propitiation (as barbaric) born of ignorance of God’s holiness.

[2] repudiation of the whole notion of sacrifice as primitive.

[3] forgiveness (if needed at all) arises as we reconcile ourselves to God.

[4] Since God is love, his love meets us and all we need do is simply love him in return.

[5] atonement is replaced by God’s identifying himself with us in our life-situation. (He knows our anxiety, our insecurity, our frailty. He comforts us by sharing our life-situations, but he doesn’t saveus by taking upon himself that condemnation which he must visit upon us.)

p172. With respect to Jesus Christ

[1] Dorothee Soelle: Christ is the representation of God rather than the substitute for humankind.

this means we need a “picture” of God rather than needing our sin dealt with.

a representative of God isn’t God. (She’s denied the incarnation.)

[2] Paul Tillich: Christ is the New Being.

this is correct in what it affirms: Christ is the new man/woman.

this is terrible in what it doesn’t say: Christ is God incarnate.

T’s philosophy around this point renders unnecessary the historical existence of JC. The ideational description that the apostles give is enough to “trigger” our affirmation of such “new being” for ourselves.

[3] Friedrich Schleiermacher: Christ is; he is the pattern of God-consc., which pattern is charged with the capacity to duplicate itself in us. Christ is “mediator” only in the sense of the mediator of God-consciousness

lost here are all the biblical categories for understanding Jesus.

Schl. is the father of theol’l liberalism. Lib’l’m adopts as theology’s starting point the world’s self-und’g. Result: theol. can be only the world talking to itself with a religious vocabulary.

[4] Georg Hegel: Christ is the symbol (pictorial representation) of divine-human unity, which unity is the ultimate truth and reality of the universe.

the radical transcendence of the holy God is lost

the Inc. isn’t denied so much as it’s re-interpreted non-bib’ly.

a modern approximation: New Age movement, albeit without H’s phil’l genius.

p173. Moral/Mystical Influence of Atonement Theories

[1] J.A.T. Robinson: Christ saves us by quickening love in us.

then can’t anyone save us by quickening love in us?

unless Christ is God-incarnate, then X’s death has nothing to do with love.

[2] Wiersinga: Christ’s death shocks us into repentance and conversion.

why is his death any more shocking than anyone else’s?

are repentance & conversion natural occurrences?

[3] de Chardin (an instance of neo-Catholicism): Christ is the climax of humankind’s spiritual evolution.

this is a total inversion of biblical faith.

[4] O’Meara: Christ’s sacrifice moves us to sacrifice.

this is another instance of the merely natural, the psychological.

– – – – –

Essential Points in a Doctrine of the Atonement

[1] atonement is rooted in God’s love, and therefore in his grace as his love meets our sin.

[2] the sacrifice asked of the Son the Father offers himself.

[3] the Son absorbs the wrath/judgement/condemnation of God, as God the Father, being of the same essence as the Son, absorbs all this in himself.

[4] the invitation can now be issued to repent, believe, obey, since the effect of sin on God has now been dealt with.

[5] while [4] is a human affirmation/act/ event, it is all facilitated by the Holy Spirit. There is no suggestion of semi-Pelagianism, or an outer structure of grace with an inner content of works.

[6] before that sacrifice we make there is a sacrifice we are to trust. Still, the sacrifice we trust constrains the sacrifice we make, or else we haven’t trusted Christ and are not bound to him; i.e., we are still living in unbelief (=Sin)

Reverend V. Shepherd

The Consequences of Undervaluing the Older Testament

1] Jesus becomes a wax figure whom we can mould as we wish. Invariably we end up fashioning him after our image. Consider the assorted “Jesus’s” that have appeared in the 20^th century: the Idealist philosopher, the businessman, the existentialist, the liberal humanitarian, the social conservative, the supporter of Nazi ideology.

It is most significant that the only physical description the apostles give us of Jesus is that he was circumcized. I.e., it matters not to our faith what he looked like, but it matters supremely that he is a son of Israel .

2] The gospel becomes ideation, an abstract amateurish philosophy, rather than the power of God unto salvation. ( Rom. 1:16) “The power of God unto salvation” is God himself acting to effect our salvation. The gospel, then, isn’t “news” or a report primarily but rather God himself acting; the gospel as “good news” is news of the event that it is inherently.

3] We become antisemites. The history of the church’s interface with the synagogue is the sorriest chapter in the church’s entire history.

4] We undervalue the people of God and fail to understand the church as the people of God. In the wake of this failure the church is understood principally in terms of the clergy or in terms of an institution.

5] We undervalue history as the theatre of God’s revelation and as the theatre of our discipleship.

6] We undervalue the Fall. The story of the Fall occurs only in the OT. It is a presupposition of everything that follows it in scripture. Insofar as we neglect it we adopt a roseate view of human nature, ourselves, and the world in which the Christian mission unfolds.

7] We substitute the category of religious evolution for the biblical category of God’s promise and its subsequent fulfillment. As a result we adopt North America ‘s myth of progress concerning world-occurrence instead of underlining the patience, faithfulness and undeflectability of God.

In the light of the above-mentioned error we undervalue the need for faithfulness, constancy and consistency in our own discipleship and instead assume that developments in western civilization are co-terminous with the kingdom of God .

8] We lose the Hebrew affirmation of the material, the earthly, the earthy, the sexual, bodily delight, the pleasures of food, drink, physicality, and appropriate the contradiction of all of this in the philosophy of Plato.

9] We fail to grasp the central scriptural motif of holiness, both God’s and ours. (Scripture attests God’s reaffirmation of holiness in the wake of our denial of his and our contradiction of our own.)

Salvation by Grace

Bloesch, Essentials, chapt. viii

(THE GIFT OF GRACE IN BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE)

Bl. says that salv’n is a free gift of God in that our works can’t satisfy “the stringent requirements of God’s law.”
NB: [1] they can’t;
[2] they were never meant to be the basis of our standing with God. Recall [a] the preface to the decalogue, [b] the fact that the OT as a whole attests the gospel rather than contradicts it. (Romans 3)
The law as vehicle of our standing with God is a perversion of the law. If we don’t understand this, [1] we misread and reject the OT; [2] we write off the synagogue. (See Rom. 9:4-5)
Not only are we saved by grace, we are kept by grace.
Bl. correctly denies that when grace comes upon us we remain passive; rather we are “compelled” to respond.” [1] Don’t “thingify” grace;
[2] Don’t overpress “compelled”;
[3] recognize the response to be authentically human.
Bl. is correct: because the woman is forgiven she loves much. God’s mercy is primordial.
In Bl.’s discussion of the parable of sheep and goats: “We are to be judged according to our works, but we are saved despite our works.”
NB [1] the judg’t that the Xn faces cannot condemn us.
[2] our works are to be judged in that our concrete, daily obedience matters.
[3] God’s judg’t also has the force of “vindication”: the Xn will be displayed as “right”.
re: Cornelius, a ‘God-fearer”.
[1] in the synagogue he would hear the declaration of God as in the OT
|[2] he “feared” God. This means (chiefly) he recognized God and honoured God by responding appropriately.
[3] One aspect of his response was his righteous doing.
[4] the “man in bright apparel” = an angel = messenger of God ( or visitation by God himself.)
[5] Corn. recognizes that J of Nazareth embodies the substance of what he had already responded to in “fearing God.”
Note the discussion between Calvin and Bloesch re: Cornelius. Calvin’s point is most important: the one and only Mediator (i.e., the gospel) was known to Israel under the economy of the Torah.
Bl., in the wake of the Calvinist tradition, speaks of “common grace.” Calvin himself spoke of providence. (These aren’t exact synonyms.) Neither is to be confused with prevenient grace.

(AN AGE-OLD CONTROVERSY)

Pelagius: by our natural powers we can will ourselves not to sin.

Augustine: fallen humans retain free will w.r.t. creaturely goods, but not w.r.t. the Good: the kingdom of God, the truth of the gospel, the righteousness of Christ. I.e., we can’t will ourselves out ofour fallen state and into right-relatedness with God.
Our every attempt means [1] we haven’t grasped the fact as sinners we’ve violated God;
[2] God seeks not the discharge of our “debt”; he seeks us ourselves, reconciliation;
[3] we’ve lost sight of our predicament: [a] we are blind to our need, to the gospel, to the nature of what God wants for us, [b] we are powerless to alter our condition; to will, in this matter, is to continue willing our depravity. (Prot. Reformers: in se curvatus.)

Semi-Pelagianism: while we don’t author our salv’n, we contribute to it. P,m and Semi-P’m have been condemned at several church councils. Only by grace can we ask for grace or appropriate grace.
p.190. Bl. says that Semi-P’m appears repeatedly “in the Roman church.” It does too in the Prot. church E.g., [1] the liberal ch.>> moral effort
[2] the evan’l ch.>> the “pursuit” of holiness, where the pursuit, understood as simply our striving, is deemed meritorious.
>> inculcation of a psychological (rather than a moral) condition: e.g., we strive to be “yielded.”

w.r.t Bl.’s discussion of Aquinas, Scotus, etc., it’s important to understand that some forms of Prot’m, rightly eschewing synergism, propose monergism: in someone’s coming to faith there is only one will willing: God’s.
Monergism ult’ly makes God the author of evil, sin and damnation.
Synergism ult’ly makes us co-authors of our salvation.
In this matter we must speak of co-operation without synergism. Such co-operation (recall Augustine’s distinction between gratia operans and gratia co-operans) is facilitated by grace but not forced by grace.
NB Biel’s trademark: an outer structure of grace with an inner content of works; i.e., grace makes it possible for us to earn our salvation. (NB the evangel’l Prot. varieties of this.)
  w.r.t Bl’s discussion of the Prot. Reformers, the following points need to be kept in mind:
[1] justification is an instantaneous act: (“once-for-all”, rather than Augustine’s life-long process) whereby God declares or pronounces the sinner righteous. |
[2] we cannot prepare ourselves (by ourselves) for the reception of grace; grace facilitates the reception of grace.
[3] fallen humankind doesn’t seek God but rather flees him; the “seeking” is proof of fleeing, since God hasn’t hidden himself from us.  (Recall Genesis 3: who is hiding?)
[4] all sin is “mortal”.  What we do expresses what we are.  See Romans 14:23.
[5] our good works, like our religiosity, are  [a] that barricade behind which (try to) hide from God,
[b] a bargaining “coin” we think we can use with God.
In 18^th century Anglicanism (Wesley’s era), but not in the 16^th century English Reformation, justification was God’s pronouncement upon (i.e., evaluation of) the sanctity we had achieved at the time of our death.  I.e., it was God’s recognition of us at the end of life rather than the beginning of the Xn life and stable basis for everything in it.
Grace is not simply an “offer”; it is Christ’s embracing us, not his offer to embrace us. (Therefore to reject him is shockingly ungrateful and perverse.)
The Prot. Reformers never denigrate good works, but rather insist they arise from a salvation received and enjoyed, not in order to merit a salvation not yet ours.
The Xn’s motivation is gratitude and filial (non-servile) fear.
Jansenism is the most “Augustinian” of the RC schools of thought on the nature of grace and the human will. (The Jesuits are the least Augustinian.)
Bl’s point is no doubt correct for some areas of “modern Catholicism”, but not all; e.g., Hans Urs von Balthasar: Mary isn’t the prime example of “co-operation” (=synergism); rather she typifies the response of the church to the annunciation of the gospel: “Let it be to me according to your word.”
Karl Rahner’s “anonymous Xn” has been hugely controversial: salv’n is by grace, and grace is imparted by the creaturely order: there is an “implicit saving structure” to religion(s) and ethics and even secularism. Even what appears more-or-less explicitly contradictory w.r.t. the gospel implicitly provides a saving vehicle, the right response to which entails salvation.
NB [1] there’s no biblical sanction for Rahner’s thesis.
[2] if the “world’s great religions” provide the implicit vehicle, what about the “non-great” religions? what about satanism, etc.? then is it only ethics that saves us? All of this denies scripture.
[3] what about irreligious ideologies such as Marxism?
[4] R. confuses his “anonymous Xn” with prevenient grace: the latter fosters our embracing Christ, but never rendering embracing him unnecessary for salv’n.
[5] R. has been criticized severely by RC missionaries who feel he’s undercut their work.
[6] still, we have to ponder the fact that vast numbers of people will live and die without hearing the gospel (one motivation of his “anonymous Xn”)
[7] he correctly sees the problems in Ref. Prot. und’g of the relation of grace, faith and the human.
Bl. returns to a discussion of the ghost of Semi-P’m: e.g., Pietist/Puritan emphasis on the reception of Christ fostered an emphasis on the heart’s inner turbulence as the condition of receiving Christ. Whereas RCm tended toward a volitional condition, Piet./Pur. tended toward a psychol’l cond.
(In 19^th cent. North American evangelistic services the emphasis shifted from the conversion of the sinner as that which glorifies God to the inner vividness of the experience itself of conversion.
Shepherd doesn’t think Bl. is entirely fair to Wesley here. Wesley (like Calvin) admitted there to be repentance both before and after faith. (see Shepherd, The Nature…Calvin, chapt. 5)
Points to remember: [1] we can’t repent apart from grace.
[2] repentance and faith are ultimately one event.
[3] there must always be rep’ce after we’ve come to faith. (See the 1^st of Luther’s 95 theses: “JC…willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”)

(THE PARADOX OF SALVATION)

The genuinely human must be honoured and preserved in the exercise of faith, since faith is a human event, however God-wrought. We lapse into monergism or synergism when we fail to admit the mystery surrounding someone’s coming-to -faith. Faith is neither something God “implants” in us nor a predisposition in us nor that which arises from a predisposition in us.
“…God’s grace appeals to [man’s] deepest yearnings, and therefore when exposed to grace man is intrinsically drawn toward it.” At first Bl. might appear to contradict all he’s said for the last 20 pages, even appear to approach Semi-P’m, even reflect Rahner. But his “intrinsically” is none of the above; rather, he means that grace sets the heart yearning for grace; grace finds the “responsive chord” that grace has first quickened in the human heart. [What is meant by “Jesus the good (kalos rather than agathos) shepherd”?]
Bl. carefully contrasts seeking for God with yearning for God. The latter presupposes something akin to Calvin’s sensum divinitatis; yet because we are fallen, our “seeking” is always a fleeing.
Bl. speaks of Melanchthon’s “liberalizing tendency.” Rather, M. insisted that [1] sin isn’t the essence of fallen humankind (contra Matthias Illyricus.) Sin doesn’t define our humanness even after the Fall. (If it did, redemption could only render us non-human rather than “fulfilledly” human.)
[2] in the life of faith, especially in the decision/act whereby faith begins, our humanness isn’t overridden or denied; faith isn’t merely a human event, even as it most certainly is a human event.

p.204. Edwards attempts to capture this: “God is the only proper author and fountain; we are the only proper actors.” (But why didn’t Edwards speak of God as “actor” too?)

“Irresistible grace”, a concept so important to Reformed Scholasticism, must be weighed carefully. Remember: grace is the attitude and act of God reflecting the heart of the One who is Person. (Consider the foregoing w.r.t. God’s will. His will isn’t an arbitrary decree hidden in depths in him that are inaccessible to us; his will is the expression of his heart or identity.)
(Shepherd) Grace is “irresistible” in the sense that [1] when I met my wife I “couldn’t resist” falling in love with her; [2] (206) grace is that judge whom we can’t avoid and whose final judgement we can’t resist. Grace welcomed is salvation; grace spurned is condemnation. But grace can’t be denatured.

p207. Bl’s twofold caution about the abuses of grace must be heard and heeded:
[1] grace confused with magic. E.g., baptismal regeneration.
[2] grace rendered “cheap”. E.g., thinking we can benefit from Christ’s cross without being commissioned to shoulder our own cross; refusing to acknowledge that the saviour (salvager) who salvages us has an exclusive right to us and claim upon our obedience.

(THE MEANS OF GRACE)

Preaching as a sacrament. (A sacrament is a creaturely event that becomes the occasion of a divine event: the incursion of JC.)
Barth maintains that JC is the means of grace; preaching attests JC but isn’t a vehicle or means of the hearer’s appropriation in faith.
(Shepherd) Barth is right about the first, wrong about the second. See Luke 10:16 and Romans 10:5-14. (Unless preaching is a means of grace, it is purely “informational.”)
Bl. says that only baptism and Lord’s Supper are sacraments. (Symbol+dominical command.)

Compare Hendrikus Berkhof:

1) instruction (catechetics)

2) baptism

3) sermon

4) discussion

5) the meal (Lord’s Supper)

6) diaconate

7) the meeting (worship)

8) office

9) church polity (church order)

Berkhof says #8 and #9 serve to make the other seven operative.

To be sure, the Xn life is a fruit of grace; yet Xns are the sign of X’s presence. (NB: whenever, in Jesus’s public ministry, he is asked for a “sign”, he refuses to give it; we are the sign of God’s manifest presence!)

Reverend V. Shepherd

Marks of the church according to Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith

(i) instruction (i.e., catechetics)

(ii) the washing

(iii) the sermon

(iv) the discussion

(v) the meal

(vi) the diaconate

(vii) the meeting

———————————————-

(viii) office

(ix) church polity (church order)

(Berkhof maintains that these lattermost two serve to make the other seven operative.)

A Note on “Ransom”

A wealth of Hebrew understanding pertaining to “redemption” lies behind lutron (“ransom”), a concept deployed by Jesus himself.

Note the three major Hebrew words for “redemption”:

1] pdh (padah)

2] kpr (kippur)

3] g’l (goel)

1: (pdh) Redemption is a mighty act of God bringing deliverance from oppression, as in the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt and the house of bondage, and also as in deliverance from the power of death.

It stresses both a redemption out of the oppression of evil and out of the judgement of God upon it, but with a special emphasis on

(a) the cost of redemption through the substitutionary offering of life,

(b) the dramatic nature of the redeeming act as a sheer intervention (a “rescue mission”) on the part of God in human affairs.

It is an act of redemption from unlawful bondage, stripping the enthraller of usurped authority and vaunted right.

(There is no suggestion of a ransom being paid to someone. This is a secular concept of redemption not found in scripture.)

2: (kpr) This term speaks of the sacrificial aspect of redemption, the sacrifice by which propitiation is effected and the barrier of sin and guilt between God and humankind done away with (expiated.)

God is always the subject first and the object only secondarily (lest it appear that something other than God can avert God’s wrath.)

The emphasis here is atonement as judgement upon the wrong through the offering of life, as well as restoration to favour and holiness before God.

3: (g’l) This term speaks of redemption out of destitution or forfeited rights or bondage, undertaken by an advocate who is related to the person in need either through kinship or covenant love.

Here the focus is on the person of the redeemer, the “goel.” The redeemer claims the cause of the person in need as his own cause.

In the older testament all three overlap. All three are used to speak of the redemption of Israel out of Egypt. All three are also used in Isaiah 40 (the promise of a new exodus when God will redeem his people through his anointed servant, the servant mediating the covenant, being afflicted with the judgements of God, and bearing the iniquities of the people as he is made an offering for sin.) The newer testament doesn’t make systematic use of these three, but they are all taken for granted and woven together in the apostles’ understanding of Jesus Christ.

Salient Points with respect to the Work of Christ

Christ as Teacher and Exemplar.

In class we’ve pointed out the heresy of regarding Jesus as teacher only or teacher primarily, and underlined the peculiarity of liberal theology’s venerating Jesus as teacher only to have his teaching render him superfluous. At the same time, he is teacher; if we fail to appreciate this then we relax the rigours of discipleship, and detach discipleship from faith. For this reason we ought never to neglect the written gospels. As much can be said about Jesus as example. See John 13:15 and 1 Peter 2:21.

In opposition to some schools of NT study it can be maintained (and must be maintained) that Paul’s understanding of the work of Christ didn’t complicate “the simple Jesus.” Paul’s teaching about the work of Christ didn’t differ fundamentally from that of the early church. And Paul’s teaching about the work of Christ didn’t differ fundamentally from that of Jesus himself. It’s important for us to understand that Paul didn’t invent; the tradition about the force of Jesus’s death is rooted in the utterance of Jesus himself.

Concerning propitiation:

“Propitiation” is the proper translation for the hilasterion word group. Without “propitiation” we deny the wrath of God (as his response to our sin) and the holiness of God.

At the same time, the sacrifice offered to God (Jesus) is first the sacrifice offered by God — or else we’ve landed ourselves in the pagan notion of sacrifice as an attempt at bribing the deity.

Reconciliation is possible only because of propitiation. Our alienation from God is the consequence of God’s judgement on our sin (unbelief). I.e., we aren’t alienated from God in that we’ve distanced ourselves from him; our alienation from him is his judicial act upon us in the face of our sin. (People with a non-biblical, existentialist cast to their theology fail to grasp this point.)

Apart from propitiation we have no grounds for thinking that God loves us.

Christ’s death not only relieves us of sin’s guilt; it also releases us from sin’s grip or power.

Christ’s death has cosmic significance, not merely “terrestrial” or human significance.

Our suffering doesn’t save us, but our suffering for Christ’s sake identifies us as saved.

Christ’s death is a once-for all, finished act. To add to it is to detract from it is to deny it is to repudiate it is to forfeit one’s “benefit” from it.

Note the two hymns, one reflecting Jewish apocalyptic and the other Christian mysticism, from the pen of Charles Wesley. This kind of comprehensiveness should be found in all believers.

Come, Thou Conqueror of the nations

Now on Thy white horse appear;

Earthquakes, dearths and desolations

Signify Thy kingdom near;

True and faithful!

‘Stablish Thy dominion here.

Open, Lord, my inward ear,

And bid my heart rejoice;

Bid my quiet spirit hear

Thy comfortable voice;

Never in the whirlwind found,

Or when earthquakes rock the place,

Still and silent is the sound,

The whisper of Thy grace.

Lecture Outline on Total Depravity

THE GRANDEUR AND MISERY OF MANKIND
Grandeur: we are the only creature made in the imago Dei, the only creature to whom God speaks.
Misery: as fallen, we “fall short” of that glory (of God) for which we were created, “fall away” from our true nature (i.e., our nature is now perverted), “fall down” into futility and self-contradiction and “fall into” the bondage of sin, from which bondage we cannot extricate ourselves.

Fallen humankind none the less remains human (neither animal nor demonic.)
Still loved by God, we now live under God’s wrath and judgement.
Fallen humankind’s will is enslaved and can will only its perversity (Luther: in se curvatus.)
” affect is misaligned and now loves/abhors the wrong object.
” reasoning subserves sin (even as reason’s structure remains intact.)
Fallen humankind can do nothing to save itself, nothing to ascend to God.

TOTAL AND UNIVERSAL CORRUPTION
“Tot. Dep.” never means we are as (morally) bad as possible.
(Bl.) Tot. Dep.: [1] the “control centre” of our being (our heart) is corrupted
[2] every part of our being is affected
[3] we are totally unable to please God or to come to him
[4] all people are equally depraved, even though some appear relatively more virtuous/vicious

(Shep.) [1] the scope of the fall is total: there is no human undertaking that isn’t fallen, sin-riddled and frustrated.
[2] the penetration of the fall is comprehensive: no one part of us can rescue any other part (contra rationalists, “bootstrappers” and romantics.)
[3] neither the individual nor the society can save the other (contra rugged individualists and social collectivists.)

Note, however, that cultural excellence remains (possible.) While fallen humankind is capable of much good (government, science, engineering, etc.) it is not capable of the good: right-relatedness to God.

Bl. introduces “common grace.” This notion is found in the Ref’d Trad. but not in Calvin himself.

THE MEANING OF SIN
(Bl.) in scrip. sin isn’t merely privatio boni (privation of the good) but utter rebellion.
(Shep.) this rebellion isn’t an instance of curiosity but is a denial of the goodness of God’s command and therefore a denial of the goodness of God himself.
To forfeit God’s blessing is to live under his curse. (NB. the meaning of “knowledge of good and evil” and its consequences.)

“The essence of sin is unbelief.” Note the nature of unbelief. (It isn’t merely a cerebral lack.)
(Shep.) Sin: sins :: unbelief: consequences.
Sins don’t provoke God’s wrath: Sin provokes it, and God then gives us up to (hands us over to) the consequences of our unbelief. (Rom. 1:24 ,26,28) — i.e., sins are that to which God assigns us in his anger at our Sin (unbelief; disdain, disobedience, defiance)
Note: while God “gives us up to” he doesn’t “give up on us.”

THE MEANING OF SIN
Sin’s essence appears as [1] idolatry, [2] hardness of heart.
To be avoided: any (neo)Platonic notion that our “lower” nature corrupts the “higher” or spiritual.
In scrip. [1] “spirit” isn’t a part of us but rather the entire person oriented to God; i.e., spirit is relatedness not substance or “something.”
[2] our spiritual corruption corrupts everything about us.

Sin includes privatio boni, but is this derivatively: essentially sin is (Shep.) [1] ingratitude (for God’s good creation and his provision of all we need to live under his blessing),
[2] rebellion (against his legitimate and benevolent authority),
[3] denial (of the goodness of his command = his longing to bless us). 1+2+3=unbelief.
This unbelief is utterly un-understandable. Any suggestion that sin can be understood undercuts it as sin. To the extent that sin could be understood it could be excused. The utter irrationality of sin is part of its hideousness, incomprehensibility, and inexcusability.

Bl. speaks of the distinction between classical RC and Ref’n understandings as to the “location” of sin.
RC: our “upper storey” is devastated (original right’s’s and the gift of supernatural communion with God), while the “lower storey” remains intact (residual freedom to turn to God, plus “some sense of his moral law” — i.e., as salvifically significant.)
Ref’n: both “storeys” are devastated. Fallen humans aren’t sick but dead (coram Deo.) We do retain some sense of the moral law, but this is salvifically worthless. Our morality (or religion) isn’t the vestibule to the kingdom or its anticipation but rather a monument to our self-right’s’s and the barricade behind which we fend off God. We sin as much in our morality as in our immorality.

Bl. (94) speaks of Matthias Flaccius versus Philip Melanchthon. MF was wrong: if sin has become the essence of humankind, then [1] we can’t be held responsible, for then we are merely reflecting our essence, as surely as any other created entity, [2] redemption would render us non-human rather than “fullfilledly” human. (Sin never becomes the essence of humankind but is rather the distortion of the essence.)

(Shep.) (96) In the discussion of Niebuhr and Schleiermacher I maintain that Jesus was genuinely tempted, or else [1] the temptation stories in scrip. mean nothing (in fact are lies), [2] if Jesus wasn’t tempted then he can’t help us who are, [3] he remained sinless or else his death has no atoning significance (what good is a blemished sacrifice?), [4] he remained sinless for otherwise he isn’t the “new being”, the true human, the destiny to which God has appointed his people.

Does sin remain in Christians? (96) It resides but does not rule. (Note the different answers different Christian traditions have given: Ref’d, Anabaptist, Wesleyan, etc.)

JC reveals sin. (96) I.e., there’s no natural knowledge of sin (since sin is defined with respect to God, and there’s no natural knowledge of God.)

“Legal versus evangelical repentance.” (97) This is a distinction found in Puritan thought. Legal repentance alarm quickened through one’s awareness of imminent judgement for one’s having broken God’s law; it anticipates faith. Ev’l rep’ce is heartbreak quickened through one’s awareness of having broken God’s heart; it occurs within faith.

MANIFESTATIONS AND CONSEQUENCES OF SIN
Bl. speaks of pride and sensuality.  (97) (Here he follows the tradition.)  Then Bl. mentions lovelessness, etc.  These Paul calls “works of the flesh.”  Note the precise understanding of “flesh.”  Then Bl. speaks of “fear and cowardice.”  Cowardice, certainly, but fear only insofar fear is allowed to distract us from our obedience.  (Jesus was unquestionably afraid in Gethsemane .)
Bl. speaks of religiosity. (97)  Cf. K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I, 1, sec. 17: “Revelation as the abolition of religion.”  Note, however, that religiosity is ineradicable, and therefore has to be converted.
Note how much of scrip., for instance, is directed against religion [1] of Baal devotees, etc., [2] of Israel in its self-serving religious perversion.  (Plainly the principal sphere of the sin of Christian religiosity is the church.)
Note that blindness to sin is a major concomitant of sin. (98)  Apart from grace sinners cannot be aware of their predicament.  Blind as we are to our sin, our sin can only lead to more sin.  We are held captive by sin to  sin.

Note the peculiar nature of Christian freedom. (99) Freedom is freedom from sin’s captivity and freedom for obedience alone.

posse non peccare: able not to sin (Edenic human)
non posse non peccare: not able not to sin (fallen human)
non posse peccare: not able to sin (glorified human)

As fallen we cannot will faith in ourselves. (101) As dead (coram Deo) we don’t even have the capacity for faith. Bl. is correct here, but needs to balance his statement with another: [1] we must always recognize mystery in anyone’s coming to faith, [2] since faith is a human event/occurrence, there must always be recognized the place for and need of a genuinely human act/affirmation in faith. (See last class on Council of Trent.)

Bl. is correct to suspect Niebuhr’s greater reliance on uneasy conscience than on the HS to convict.
[1] This presupposes that, thanks to our uneasy conscience, we can precipitate ourselves towards faith.
[2] This suggests we ought to magnify the uneasy conscience. (Theologically wrong and pastorally/psychologically disastrous.)

MODERN OPTIMISM
The Enlightenment was an era of human optimism, belief in inevitable human (as opposed to technological) progress, confidence in the power of reason to effect social improvement.
Kant, an Enlightenment figure, affirmed radical evil (i.e., a surd element in a world of reason), but not sin. (110)

Note:
[1] Bl.’s insistence that the pastoral psychology movement has turned guilt as state into guilt as feeling. (112)
[2] modern evangelicalism has a weak understanding of the fall (113)
[3] the Reformers’ may have one-sidedly spoken of the continuing sinfulness of Christians so as to undervalue “the triumph of grace in the life of the Christians.” (113) Wesley’s point here is germane: “God can do something with sin beyond forgiving it.” (deliverance)

SIN

[A]  Note the distinction between Sin  and sins.
     Sin: defiance, ingratitude, rebellion, disdain, “unbelief”, resulting in alienation from God.
     sins: the concrete behavioural manifestations or outcroppings of our underlying condition.

[B]   Note the precise meaning of “the knowledge of good and evil.”
     to “know” xy in Hebrew is to have personal, intimate acquaintance with xy.
     (It is not primarily to have information about xy.

[C] if Sin alone is discussed/preached, then our concrete disobedience is overlooked.
if sins alone are ” ” , then the human condition is understood moralistically instead of spiritually.

it is a power that enslaves Gal. 3:22; Rom. 3:9
it is connected to the Law of God, in the sense that the law lends definition, specificity, to
our sinnership by rendering sin “transgression”.

[E] Words for sin:
hamartia* missing the mark, missing the true end of our lives: God

parabasis stepping over a line (transgression)

parakoe disobedience to a voice [obedience is intensified hearing]

paraptoma misstep, stumbling, falling where we should have remained upright

agnoema ignorance of what we should have known

hettma diminishing of what should have been rendered in full measure

anomia lawlessness

plemmeleia a discord in the harmonies of God’s universe

asebeia ungodliness, a deliberate anti-God stance

adikia unrighteousness

What do the Protestant Reformers Mean by “Total Depravity”?

Plato Questions from First Reading

“Total” doesn’t mean “utter.” It doesn’t mean that we are as bad as we can possibly be. The Reformers admit that there is much that fallen humankind can do, and can do superbly well: science, mathematics, government, art, music, painting (“culture” in general), and what Calvin calls “mechanical” arts (i.e., engineering.)

However, “total depravity” does meanclass=”Apple-converted-space”
[1] the scope of the fall is total: there is no human undertaking that isn’t fallen, sin-riddled, corrupted.

[2]  the penetration of the fall is comprehensive: there is no aspect of the human being (reason, will, affect) that is unaffected and by which we can restore ourselves.
E.g. (i), we can still reason (or else we shouldn’t be human; the structure of reason survives the fall), but now our reason subserves the wrong end or purpose, particularly as we approach the specifically human or divine.  Reason now applies itself to aggrandizement of ourselves, or exploitation of others, or the legitimization of unconscious motivation (i.e., rationalization).class=”Apple-converted-space”
E.g. (ii), we can still will (to be without will is to have ceased to be human), and can still will moral good, but we cannot will the good: the kingdom of God .  We cannot will ourselves out of our sinnership, cannot will ourselves into the kingdom.  (Note John 3:3: apart from Spirit-regeneration we cannot so much as see the kingdom, much less enter it.)  The will is “bound” or “enslaved” (not free) in that it cannot will righteousness.  But such bondage is never to be confused with philosophical determinism: the Reformers never say that genuine choice is denied us with respect to creaturelymatters.class=”Apple-converted-space”
E.g. (iii), we can still love, but now our affections are misaligned; we love what we ought to hate and hate what we ought to love.  At the very least we love the creature above the Creator; our loves are “disordered affections”: lesser loves (legitimate in themselves) usurp our greater love (for God.)  In addition our creaturely loves are riddled with self-interest.

[3] No one part of the society can save the rest. The individual cannot save the society as a whole, or the society the individual. Economics cannot put right what sociologists identify as the human problem; neither can sociologists put right what economists identify as the human problem.class=”Apple-converted-space”
While Marx reduces all considerations (Freud’s explanation included) to the dialectical laws of materialism (and one’s place in the economic spectrum), and while Freud reduces all considerations (Marx’s explanation included) to intra-psychic unconscious conflict, the doctrine of Total Depravity exposes both as one-sided and short-sighted.

Note too that culture, however sophisticated (Kulturprotestantismus) is not the kingdom, is not even the vestibule to the kingdom, at the same time that culture remains a creaturely good, albeit fallen.

Wesley insisted that he differed “not a hair’s breadth” from the Reformers on this point.

Course Notes on Philosophy for Understanding Theology

Plato I Lecture Outline

Plato Questions from Second Reading Sun, Line, Cave

Plato Questions 1 re Text

Plato Questions 2 re text

Plato I Plato I Reincarnation

Plato I diagram Timaeus

Cynics and Stoics Questions

Plotinus (Exposition of text)

Plotinus and Emanationism

Aristotle (Reading) Four Causes

Aquinas TFT natural theology

Aquinas and Analogy

William of Ockham on God

humanism

hume

Kant Lecture Outline

Kant Idealism vs Realism

Kant Questions

Hegel Introduction

Hegel Dialectic History of the Term

Hegel Synopsis of Lordship and Bondage

Kierkgaard Introduction

Kierkegaard Definitions

Kierkegaard Phil revised

Martin Buber on Jean Paul Sartre

Marx’s Philosophy

MarxSummaryOfTerms

Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach

Bibliography

Syllabus

Reformation Theology (0649)

Department of Theology

Tyndale Seminary

Fall 2012

Office Hours: Wednesday 6:30-9:20pm

Instructor: Victor Shepherd

416 226 6380 ext. 6726

email: vshep@tyndale.ca

To access your course materials at the start of the course, please go to https://www.mytyndale.ca

I. COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course chiefly investigates the theology of three foundational foci of Sixteenth Century evangelical understanding: Luther, Calvin and the English Reformers (Ridley and Tyndale.) In addition Gabriel Biel will be probed as the immediate, late-Mediaeval foil for the Sixteenth Century Reformers, as well as Erasmus, who represents the Humanist alternative to evangelical conviction.

Prerequisites: THEO 531 and THEO 532

II. LEARNING OUTCOMES
This course aims:

1] to inform students of the theological diversity on the eve of the Reformation;
2] to enable students to discern convergences and divergences with respect to this diversity;
3] to acquaint students with the theological substance of major thinkers;
4] to have students relate major Reformation motifs to contemporary theology;
5] to enable students to assess Reformation doctrine in light of the history of Christian thought;
6] to provide students with a tool for evaluating the doctrinal position and ethos of denominations that claim a Reformation root;
7] to have students grasp why theology that is 500 years old will be read until the parousia;
8] to acquaint students with the exegetical riches of the Reformation.

III. COURSE REQUIREMENTS

A. REQUIRED TEXTS

Textbooks:
A “Kinkos” volume of selected readings will be purchased from the Tyndale Bookstore.

B. ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING
Note: All written material may be submitted in French

1] Essay – 50%
2] Examination – 50%

The essay is to be approximately 3000 words long. It is to be submitted no later than the conclusion of the final examination. See below for a list of essay topics.

C. GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR THE SUBMISSION OF WRITTEN WORK

Please note:

1] Written materials are to be submitted in conformity with academic standards. Consult the HYPERLINK “http://ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/login?url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/tools_citationguide.html” Chicago-Style Quick Guide (Tyndale e-resource) or the full edition of the HYPERLINK “http://ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/login?url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/16/contents.html” Chicago Manual of Style Online, especially HYPERLINK “http://ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/login?url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/16/ch14/ch14_toc.html” ch. 14. For citing scripture texts, refer to sections HYPERLINK “http://ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/login?url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/16/ch10/ch10_sec046.html” 10.46 to 10.51 and HYPERLINK “http://ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/login?url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/16/ch14/ch14_sec253.html” 14.253 to 14.254.

2] Students should consult the current Academic Calendar for academic polices on Academic Honesty, Gender Inclusive Language in Written Assignments, Late Papers and Extensions, Return of Assignments, and Grading System (the Academic Calendar is posted at HYPERLINK “http://tyndale.ca/registrar” http://tyndale.ca/registrar). Integrity in academic work is required of all our students. Academic dishonesty is any breach of this integrity, and includes such practices as cheating (the use of unauthorized material on tests and examinations), submitting the same work for different classes without permission of the instructors; using false information (including false references to secondary sources) in an assignment; improper or unacknowledged collaboration with other students, and plagiarism. Tyndale University College & Seminary takes seriously its responsibility to uphold academic integrity, and to penalize academic dishonesty.

E. SUMMARY OF ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING

Evaluation is based upon the completion of the following assignments [Sample]

Essay
50 %
Exam
50 %
Total Grade
100 %

IV. COURSE SCHEDULE, CONTENT AND REQUIRED READINGS

Sept. 12        Gabriel Biel
Late Mediaeval Scholasticism
“The Circumcision of the Lord”

Sept. 19        Desiderius Erasmus
Renaissance Humanism
“The Handbook of the Militant Christian”

Sept. 26        Martin Luther
The early Luther
“Disputation Against Scholastic Theology”
“The Ninety-Five Theses”
“Preface to the Wittenberg Edition of Luther’s German Writings”

Oct. 3            The Righteousness of God
“Two Kinds of Righteousness”
“A Meditation on Christ’s Passion”

Oct. 10 The Lord’s Supper (comparisons with Rome, Zwingli and Calvin)
“The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ – Against the Fanatics”

Oct. 17 Freedom in Christ
“The Freedom of a Christian”

Oct. 24 Reading Day: No Class

Oct. 31 John Calvin
Justification III:11 (Institutes)

Nov. 7 Law and Gospel II:7,9

Nov. 14 The Mediator and His Work II:6,12,15

Nov. 21 The Holy Spirit and Faith III:1,2

Nov. 28 Predestination III:21,22 (omit 6-9)

Dec. 5 William Tyndale
A Pathway to the Holy Scripture

Dec. 12 Examination

V. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

A select bibliography will be handed out in class.

APPENDIX

ESSAY TOPICS

What was Erasmus’ Theological Agenda?

Was Erasmus a Christian? How did his work assist or contradict the Reformation?

What aspects of Renaissance Humanism most immediately affected the Reformation?

How did Luther understand marriage? How did the Roman Catholics of his time? Why did he insist that marrying Katarina von Bora was an act of faith?

What was the theology of the ‘Schoolmen’ that upset Luther?

What did mediaeval scholasticism mean by “justification”?

How did Luther understand the Eucharist?

What would any two (or three) of the following have said to each other concerning the Lord’s Supper: Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, the Anabaptists, Rome?

What was Melanchthon’s theological contribution to the Lutheran Reformation?

Compare Melanchthon and Luther on the Law of God.

Write a “Review Article” on the debate between Erasmus and Luther on the bondage of the will.

What did Luther mean by the “Righteousness of God”?

Expound Luther’s understanding of freedom. Contrast it with popular contemporary notions.

How did Luther and/or Calvin understand the relation of law to gospel?

What was Luther’s Ecclesiology?

What did Luther mean by “Two Kingdoms”?

Discuss the theology of Luther and Eck at the Diet of Worms.

What was the image of the Jew in the late mediaeval and early Reformation eras, and how did this image affect the treatment accorded Jewish people?

How did Luther understand faith? (fides qua creditur)

According to Luther, what was God’s mandate for the state, and how did Luther’s understanding here influence his advice during and subsequent to the peasant revolt?

Expound and comment on Calvin’s understanding of any ONE of the following:
-sanctification
-baptism
-Lord’s Supper
-the Triplex Muni (the three offices of Christ: Prophet, Priest, King)
-the Church
-scripture
-repentance
-sin
-the knowledge of God
-justification
-Holy Spirit

State and comment on the major developments in Ridley’s life and thought.

State and discuss Latimer’s theology of preaching.

Expound Tyndale’s doctrine of scripture OR his doctrine of justification.

Expound the theology of any one of the “articles” in Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer. (Please see the instructor.)

(any topic approved by the instructor)

Supplementary readings

Supplementary Readings

Biel

Oberman, H.; The Harvest of Mediaeval Theology

Oberman, H.; “‘Iustitia Christi’ and ‘Iustitia Dei’: Luther and the Scholastic Doctrine of

Justification”, Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 59 No. 1, Jan. 1966

Erasmus

Augustijn, C.; Erasmus: His Life, Works and Influence

Bentley-Taylor, D; My Dear Erasmus: The Forgotten Reformer

McConica, J.; Erasmus

Tracy, J.; Erasmus of the Low Countries

Luther

Althaus, P. The Theology of Martin Luther

Ebeling, G.; Luther

Rupp, E.; Luther’s Progress to the Diet of Worms

Rupp, E.; The Righteousness of God

Calvin

Hesselink, I.J., On Being Reformed: Distinctive Characteristics and Common Misunderstandings

McKim, D. (ed); The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin

Parker, T.; Calvin (biography)

Wendel, F.; Calvin: Origins and Development of His Religious Thought

English Reformers

Dickens, A.; The English Reformation

Hughes, P.; Theology of the English Reformers

Lindsay, T.; History of the Reformation, Volume 2: In Lands Beyond Germany

Powicke, M.; The Reformation in England

Rupp, E.; Studies in the Making of the English Protestant Tradition

Gabriel Biel

GABRIEL BIEL

? – 1495

– was born at Speyer during the 1^st quarter of the 15^th century.

– is little-known w.r.t. his childhood, youth, or early adulthood.

– was ordained to the priesthood in 1432 and entered Heidelberg University .

– distinguished himself academically and became an instructor in the faculty of arts.

– did further study in 1442-1443 at the U. of Erfurt (where Luther was later to study. Erfurt was the centre of German Humanism, and both Biel and Luther absorbed little of it.)

– enrolled in 1453 in the faculty of theology at U. of Cologne (21 years after his ordination.)

– immersed himself ( Cologne ) in the Nominalist thought of Occam (as contrasted with the “older” thought of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.)

– was engaged in mid-life chiefly in day-to-day matters of church life.

– was cathedral preacher in Mainz, and at this time associated himself with and thereafter remained a member of the Brethren of the Common Life (BCL: a group that pursued devotional depth — what today we call “spirituality” — and ethical rigour in a communal setting, but found nothing at all disagreeable about the church’s theology.)

– was appointed in 1484 (Luther was born in 1483) professor of theology at the U. of Tuebingen .

– was appointed in 1489 rector of U. of Tueb . (Likely he was 75 years old now.)

– died in 1495, having spent his last years exclusively among the BCL.

– Note: one of his theological “grandsons”, Johann Eck, was Luther’s principal opponent and formidable opponent in disputations at Leipzig (1519), Worms (1521) and Augsburg (1530.)

BIEL ON JUSTIFICATION

Presuppositions: (i) the Nominalist understanding of God: chiefly in terms of will or power.

(ii) the Nominalist understanding of grace: God is able to do anything that is not simply contradictory; e.g., God cannot make a square circle. (This is not “something” that God can’t do; rather, it is by definition a “no-thing”, nonsense. In the same way God cannot annihilate himself, since God exists necessarily.)

Note: (i) the Nom’t und’g of grace begins with philosophical speculation.

(ii) the ” ” of grace is characterized by power.

The Prot. Reformers will have much to say on both points.

God is the source of all power, concerning which there are two kinds:

potentia absoluta: metaphysical freedom to do anything at all that isn’t self-conradictory.

potentia ordinata: a limited capacity, power, or freedom which God has because of God’s

self-limitation.

By PA God has willed to create. (He was under no necessity to create.) But once he has created a finite world, then God is bound ( PO ) by his self-imposed order. If he were to violate this order he would be inconsistent.

E.g., God has willed that pain follow injury ( PO ). There is no metaphysical reason for this; of his own unconstrained will he has willed it. God could have (PA) created the world in any way he wanted, but in fact has created it as we have it. (Note here the Nominalist stress on the “freedom” of God.)

By PO God has imposed upon himself a way or pattern of dealing with us his finite creatures, and (more tellingly) with us his sinful creatures. Therefore it is of utmost importance that we recognize his way of dealing with us and conform ourselves to it.

A question that theology has always asked is, “How do sinners get right with the all-holy God?” I.e., how do people who are wrongly related to God come to be rightly related? How are sinners “justified”, set in the right with God?

An Overview of Biel ‘s Understanding of Justification

Biel casts his answer in terms of the respective roles that God and humans play in justification and final glorification.

Our role has to do chiefly with the nature of the human act.

Any human act can be evaluated w.r.t. its bonitas or goodness. (Here “goodness” is a moral category not a theological category. The Reformers will dispute this and insist that “goodness” is the good, the Kingdom ofGod .)

Upon such an act of bonitas God freely, gratuitously confers dignitas or reward.

God doesn’t have to (PA), but he has willed himself (PO) to reward bonitas.

The good act, now elevated to dignitas by grace (of Christ), gives the human agent a claim on salvation.

In other words, a morally good act merits grace by “congruent merit” (PO), an instance of God’s mercy. Bonitas, now elevated to dignitas by grace, merits eternal salvation by “condign merit” (PA), an instance of metaphysical necessity.

As already noted, the elevation of bonitas is not strict justice on God’s part, but is rather an instance of God’s generosity.

Once bonitas has been graced and therein elevated to dignitas, however, strict justice applies: God must grant eternal salvation to dignitas (PA) or God contradicts himself, God denies himself — and this is inherently impossible.

The Presuppositions of Biel’s Understanding

In a state of nature (i.e., outside the state of grace) humans, trying their utmost, can love God more than anything else. In other words, people can will themselves to love God above all else.

In a state of nature humans have the capacity to choose both good and evil, without which capacity we should cease to be human.

The will (will is this capacity for choice together with the act of choosing) is blind and has to be guided by reason.

Reason is not impaired in the way that will is.

Reason presents the will alternatives for moral action: reason informs the will and advises the will. The will, acting on this information and advice, produces spontaneously (i.e., the will is not moved by anything else) a morally good act (bonitas.)

Yet bonitas, however good, is never good enough to meet the requirements of the holy God.

God gratuitously (PO) infuses the act by grace. Grace doesn’t infuse any act, only the morally good act; i.e., grace as seed has to be planted in fertile rather than stony ground. Bonitas alone is such fertile ground.

Plainly, for Biel sin has not made it impossible for humans to act “rightly” without the aid of grace; i.e., the will is not devastated in this regard.

When we fail to act rightly, we fail because of improper cognition (i.e., ignorance): reason did not bring forward the proper object of the will’s willing.

The defect lies not in the will but in reason. Conversely, not the good will but reason (knowledge) is the foundation and root of all virtues. * Therefore the primary task of the church is not to be the herald and “custodian” of God’s grace (God will always add grace to bonitas), but rather to provide people with the proper information about God and the human good, information that assists people in moral improvement. I.e., this information apprises people as to which acts genuinely are bonitas.

How is such information acquired?

(i) partly by a natural knowledge of God and his will;

(ii) partly by a revealed knowledge of God and his will, accepted on the authority of the church or on the authority of a particular preacher.

These two kinds of knowledge together constitute “acquired faith”, acquired faith being the source of all virtue.

Still, as mentioned earlier, these virtues do not meet the requirements of God. For this reason there is always needed grace, the middle term that elevates bon. to dign., at which point the requirements of God are met.

Iustitia (“justice”) is the metaphysical necessity of God’s granting eternal salvation to dignitas. (PA)

It should be noted in Biel’s scheme that God graces not only the morally good act but also all aspirations; anyone who tries to be “God’s friend” (a mediaeval term) will find God gracing that effort.

For this notion Biel adduces the following scriptural support:

Zechariah 1:3 — “Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you.”

James 4:8: — “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”

Revelation 3:20 — “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens

the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he with me.”

(Biel reads all such texts as supporting human initiative w.r.t. our salvation.)

For Biel, the essence of biblical Christianity is the congruent elevation of moral act or aspiration. God elevates such not from any constraint grounded in his being but from his overflowing kindness (i.e., his will.)

“Doing one’s best” (even if that “best” is highly deficient or defective) is at the same a “begging for mercy”; such importunity the gracious, merciful God never spurns.

Then for Biel justification is [A] by grace alone, since God alone supplies that grace which elevates bonitas todignitas; [B] by works alone, since we must “do our best.”

The emphasis, of course, always falls on [B]. [A] is the rational, outer structure whose inner content is [B].

The church preaches and teaches [B], leaving God to supply [A]

Humankind’s motivation for moral act/aspiration is twofold: (i) fear of judgement

(ii) hope of salvation.

Biel explicitly rejects justification sola fide (by faith alone) as “an error of carnal and idle men.” To believe that we can be saved sola gratia (by grace alone)is to “scorn God’s justice.” Since genuine love for God is within everyone’s reach even after the fall and in the wake of the fall’s damage to us, it is our responsibility to initiatethe process of justification by making that effort which God will then honour and render worthy (meritum de condigno) of eternal salvation.

Despite Biel’s reference to grace, grace merely forms the outer structure whose inner content is human achievement; i.e., grace lends our achievement/aspiration salvific force. Put differently, grace makes it possible for us to save ourselves.

Plainly Biel’s notion of justification is essentially Pelagian.

The 16^th Century Reformers’ Disagreements

1] Outside the state of grace humankind cannot love God at all (never mind love God above all.)

Humans can certainly be religious, but religiosity as such is simply idolatry, a barrier

behind which people flee God in the guise of seeking God.

In the wake of the fall our will is in se curvatus. We are afflicted with “concupiscence”,

rendering ourselves the centre of ourselves and the measure of everyone (-thing) else.

2] Instead of reason guiding the will, the will (the human “heart”) warps reason.

With respect to God, reason is perverted and largely of the order of rationalization.

We can never reason our way to God’s truth or God’s way with us: the cross.

3] While morally good act/aspiration is always possible (even actual), it is neither a sign of grace nor a step toward grace.

Morality is not the vestibule to the kingdom. The harlots and the tax-collectors enter the

kingdom ahead of the morally upright.

In the light of the kingdom (grace), morality has the same significance as religion: an

abomination to God.

4] The entire discussion of condign versus congruent merit contradicts the logic of scripture.

The only “merit” is that of Jesus Christ. His obedience to his Father is imputed to

(reckoned to) those who cling to him in faith.

5] We do not fail to act rightly merely because of improper information/cognition.

The root human problem is not ignorance but perverseness. Humankind wills to

make itself its own lord.

God’s giving us what we want (this is also his curse) — “You shall be as gods, knowing good

and evil” (Genesis 3:5) — means that we extend ourselves into areas of life that God has

marked “off limits”, and so marked for our blessing. No amount of information can overturn

the human predicament. (This is not to denigrate the informational content of the gospel. It is,

however, to deny that even the gospel as information can rectify us.)

People ultimately need not information but deliverance.

Our root problem is not that we are deprived (lacking something) but rather depraved

(perverse.)

6] The primary task of the church is NOT to provide people with proper moral information about
God and goodness (so as left-handedly to foster concupiscence) but

to attest Jesus Christ in the totality of his reality as attested by prophet and apostle,

to embody his truth and reality amidst the world’s life.

Plainly there is a truth-claim to the gospel and therefore a truth-content as well. However, in

articulating the truth of the gospel the Reformers do not provide that vehicle in terms of which

we achieve something meritorious before God. The truth/reality of the gospel isn’t naturally

intelligible, and therefore not the information on the basis of which we initiate the process

of salvation.

7] The grace of Jesus Christ does not pertain (only) to bonitas, thereby elevating it, while the grace of God is that which fashions the overall scheme of salvation.

There is no distinction between the grace of Christ and the grace of God and God himself;

i.e., grace is God himself in his presence and efficacy. Put differently, grace is the effectual

presence of God.

8] Iustitia (justice) is NOT (i) that by which we are measured, an abstract standard or code,

(ii) the metaphysical necessity of God’s rewarding dignitas.

Justice is the same as justification: God’s putting us in the right with himself, and thereby

vindicating himself and his people, relieving the oppressed, clearing the slander of

opprobrium heaped on those deemed “beyond the pale.” (I.e., all that HITZDIQ — the

hiphel of ZADAQ — and DIKAIOUN entail in Isaiah, the psalms, and the NT)

9] “Doing one’s best” is not synonymous with begging for mercy, but is rather disdaining and spurning the mercy that God has wrought in the Son (the cross) and visits upon his people through the Spirit.

The greater the sincerity in moral effort, the stronger the bastion that our pride has built

and to which we point in defiance of Jesus Christ.

10] Fallen humankind does not (because cannot) “unlock the door” to God. Any unlocking is possible only by grace.

The Reformed tradition will invoke here a doctrine of election.

The Wesleyan tradition will invoke here a doctrine of prevenient (pre=before;

venire=to come) grace.

11] In the wake of the fall no one seeks God. We flee God. When we think we are seeking him we are in fact fleeing him. God is “sought” in faith, not in unbelief.

The gospel is the declaration that the God (who never was lost or difficult to locate) has of his

mercy found us. God seeks a rebellious race; that race does not seek him.

12] There is no natural knowledge of God. We pervert the “revelation” found in the creation (e.g., Romans 1) as fast as it is “beamed” upon us. The apprehension of God available through the creation serves only to condemn us.

13] There is no natural knowledge of sin. Since knowledge of sin is a predicate of knowledge of God, and since God is known only in Jesus Christ (this is bedrock for the Reformers), the existence and nature of sin have to be revealed to us.

Only in the presence of Jesus Christ (the cure for sin) is the ailment seen for what it is.

When the psalmist cries, “Against Thee only have I sinned” (Ps. 51:4) he isn’t denying

that sin violates others besides God. He is acknowledging, however, that sin is defined

to be such by reference to God and revealed to be such by God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ.

In other words, the revelation of God entails revelation of the nature and disgrace of

humankind. Until we know God (where such knowledge is always participation — by faith — in God’s own life), we can’t know the fact or nature of a defective relationship with God.

For the Reformers, knowledge of sin is always a predicate of grace (knowledge of Christ.)

Where this fact is not recognized, sin will always be misunderstood as immorality or vice

or the violation of taboo. Jesus dies for the ungodly, not for the immoral.

14] “Acquired Faith”, a compend of natural knowledge and revealed knowledge, is wholly wide of the mark.

(i) faith is not knowledge in the sense of information (see #5), even as there is always a cognitive content to faith.

(ii) faith, rather, is fellowship with Jesus Christ. He embraces us by grace, and in the power of his embrace we find ourselves both able to embrace him and eager to embrace him. Faith is always the grace-facilitated response to the action of the person of Christ.

(iii) faith is never acquired in any case but is rather always a gift (exercised.)

15] To affirm that salvation is sola fide is not to scorn God’s justice (i.e., his judgement), but rather to submit to that judgement and receive/affirm the provision of righteousness that the judging/rightwising God has made.

God’s justifying us always includes his judging us. God’s judgement is the converse of his mercy (he bothers to judge us only because he longs to save us) and aims at our restoration. God’s justifying us presupposes his judging us. Then sola fide, an acknowledgement that we can only receive what God has fashioned for us in our need, endorses God’s judgement rather than scorning it.

16] The will is not free to choose but rather is bound.

It isn’t denied that we can choose among creaturely goods; e.g., to eat hotdogs rather than hamburgers, or to study rather than watch TV. But as fallen creatures we can’t “choose” Jesus Christ; i.e., we can’t will ourselves into the righteousness of God. What we most sorely need has to be wrought for us and pressed upon us; it isn’t something that we can choose to effect in ourselves. We can choose (“embrace”) JC only as a result of his having “embraced” us.

17] The distinction between an outer structure of grace and an inner content of (meritorious) work is unbiblical and therefore impermissible.

18] To embrace Jesus Christ in faith and therein become a beneficiary of his righteousness is at the same time to be the beneficiary of God’s; i.e., JUSTIFICATION IN THE PRESENT FORMS THE STABLE BASIS AND NOT THE UNCERTAIN GOAL OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.

Victor Shepherd January 2000

The Nominalism of Gabriel Biel

The Nominalism of Gabriel Biel

Aquinas is a “realist”, preoccupied with being (being itself), following Aristotle.

God is understood chiefly in terms of being or existence: that which is (necessarily),

the one whose essence is his existence.

Occam is a “nominalist”, preoccupied with willing or power. Less concerned than Aquinas

with metaphysics, he is less concerned with reasoning towards God. Therefore faith isn’t

built on what reason “demonstrates” to be a metaphysical foundation, but rather on what

God has willed.

Result: the scholastic method of relating theology to philosophy (grace perfects nature), is
undercut. Natural theology is devalued.

God’s will determines our faith, not God’s being or our reason.

The command of God is grounded only in the will of God, not in the nature of God

Luther will agree with nominalism’s

(i) denial of natural theology

(ii) denial of the scholastic method of theology

(iii) affirmation of a God whom philosophy can’t control.

Luther will disagree with nominalism’s

(i) insistence that God is to be understood chiefly in terms of power

(ii) insistence that God’s command is rooted only in God’s will.

(The latter notion inevitably causes God(‘s will) to appear arbitrary. Unless God’s will is God’s nature, God’s will has nothing to do with his being; God’s will is the capricious exertion of sheer power.)

The Nominalism of Gabriel Biel

Aquinas is a “realist”, preoccupied with being (being itself), following Aristotle.

God is understood chiefly in terms of being or existence: that which is (necessarily),

the one whose essence is his existence.

Occam is a “nominalist”, preoccupied with willing or power. Less concerned than Aquinas

with metaphysics, he is less concerned with reasoning towards God. Therefore faith isn’t

built on what reason “demonstrates” to be a metaphysical foundation, but rather on what

God has willed.

Result: the scholastic method of relating theology to philosophy (grace perfects nature), is
undercut. Natural theology is devalued.

God’s will determines our faith, not God’s being or our reason.

The command of God is grounded only in the will of God, not in the nature of God

Luther will agree with nominalism’s

(i) denial of natural theology

(ii) denial of the scholastic method of theology

(iii) affirmation of a God whom philosophy can’t control.

Luther will disagree with nominalism’s

(i) insistence that God is to be understood chiefly in terms of power

(ii) insistence that God’s command is rooted only in God’s will.

Reverend V. Shepherd

Desiderius Erasmus

Desiderius Erasmus

1466-1536

-he was the most able Humanist, and the one by whom the movement is popularly identified.

-he was the most productive of the northern humanists.

-he didn’t concern himself much with the inventions (e.g., navigational and astronomical instruments) and discoveries of the age, or with economic and political changes: he was preoccupied with letters.

-he upheld an undogmatic religion and an ethical piety founded on the Sermon on the Mount. (Herein he is indebted to the Brethren of the Common Life and the Florentine Platonic Academy.)

-his father was a priest who fathered him prior to being ordained.

-he was raised as an orphan by relatives who gave him his name. (desiderium: longing, desire,yearning)

-he was educated in Latin.

-during his schooldays he began reading the ancient pagan philosophers (especially Seneca.)

-at 17 his guardians sent him, against his will, to be trained as a monk.

-he moved more deeply into the Latin classics.

-he was ‘taken’ with Lorenzo Valla.

-while he came to be fluent in many vernacular languages, they never appealed to him; rather he became consummately able in Latin and Greek.

-ordained and made both a canon and secretary to a bishop, he enrolled (aged 32) in the University of Paris , receiving his B.Th. in 1503.

-at U. of Paris he was steeped in scholastic theology – which theology aroused repugnance in Luther, anger in Calvin, and contemptuous mirth in Erasmus.

-he made no secret of his disdain for theologians.

-he regarded ‘theology’ as that which inspired and structured the Christian life. Such ‘theology’ was a compend of what he called “The Philosophy of Christ” and the philosophy of the Greeks.

-in 1499 he published his Adages.

-he continued to ignore and despise Hebrew and the Hebrew scriptures, thinking his “Philosophy of Christ” to be superior to anything the Older Testament contained. (“I prefer Christ, even Christ contaminated by Duns Scotus, to this Jewish nonsense.”)

-in 1502 he was transferred to Louvain ( Belgium ) where he wrote Dagger of the Christian Knight.

-he travelled to England at least six times, being introduced to Thomas More (Utopia) in 1499. (More was the unrelenting foe of William Tyndale.)

-in 1509 he was given the Chair of Divinity at Cambridge , where Tyndale was one of his pupils.

-while in England he and Colet visit Canterbury and saw the relics of St.Thomas Becket (to his disgust), and then moved on to the shrine of our Lady of Walsingham.

-he moved to the University of Turin where he completed a doctorate in theology, then moved back to England where he wrote his most famous book, The Praise of Folly.

-his major contribution (and essential contribution) to the Reformation remains his Textus Receptus.

-while he and Luther hailed each other at first, by 1525 (Luther’s Bondage of the Will) it was apparent that they were not theological allies.

-while Luther faced the worst of ecclesiastical opposition, Erasmus wriggled away from it.

-Erasmus had never supported Luther publicly after L’s Babylonian Captivity of the Church 1520).

-Erasmus wrote Diverse Letters in which he attempted to rescind his earlier, pro-Luther sympathies and to declare himself a true son of Rome . Luther commented, “Erasmus is far from the kingdom of grace. He looks not at the cross but at peace in all his writings.”

-Erasmus died peacefully at Basle in 1536 – (the year the first edition of Calvin’s Institutes appeared.)

Erasmus exposition

ERASMUS

1466-1536

“Lack of culture is not holiness.”

Introductory Comments

A] Erasmus is often regarded as a Reformer, but in fact he died saying he had always been Catholic.

At first Protestants cherished him because he criticized “Monastic” reliance on rituals. In addition he denied that scripture mandated auricular confession. (Here he earned the ire of confessors who profited financially from hearing confessions.) Only his stomach was “Lutheran.”

He adopted mediaeval Catholicism’s understanding of the relation of nature and grace, even as he repudiated utterly its scholasticism.

B] Erasmus was the most brilliant in the firmament of humanist scholars. His talents in the areas of languages (both classical and modern-vernacular), linguistics and philology are prodigious.

He aimed at promoting Christian civility. The humanist deployment of language soothes savage passions and promotes sociability.

He saw secular clergy as allies (or at least not inimical) to the humanist agenda, and ordered priests (“Mendicant Tyrants”) as its sworn enemy. Concerning the Franciscan Observants he maintained they took a fourth vow: “to have no shame whatever.”

C] His greatest gift to the Reformation was the Textus Receptus, the best Greek New Testament without which the Reformation wouldn’t have been possible.

Note, however, that he wanted a better Greek Testament not for the sake of the best vernacular translation (he despised common people – “When the wine goes in, the grease comes out”) but for the sake of a Latin translation better than the Vulgate had been. Despite his “Tyndale-sounding” remark that the farmer behind the plough should be equipped with the gospel, his New Testament Paraphrases were written and published in Latin.

Latin should be learned not by appropriating the rules of grammar but by immersing oneself in the Latin usage of the greatest Latinists: Cicero to Quintilian (106 BCE – 95 CE.)

D] In his era he was without peer in Greek and Latin. (Upon his death Philip Melanchthon was the acknowledged prince of humanists.) He loathed Hebrew and didn’t learn it. (Luther, if alive today, would be Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature. Calvin was a superb Hebraist and expounded huge areas of the Older Testament.)

E] The humanists, supposedly the prosecutors of “tolerance” and the arch-enemies of prejudice, were the worst anti-Semites in Europe . Erasmus was considered the most vehement of all. While he admitted there could be exceptions among the “Mendicant Tyrants” he loathed, no exception pertained to Jews: their leader was Satan. Consider Erasmus’ “fondness” for Paris : there one “couldn’t find even one living Jew.”

F] Erasmus’ Philosophia Christi never approached the logic of the gospel. He remained a religious moralist. He thought Origen worth ten of Augustine on account of Origen’s less severe understanding of the Fall (Original Sin.) He borrowed Origen’s tri-partite understanding of the human misunderstanding Paul on flesh/spirit.

G] His dispute with Luther (1525: cf. L’s Bondage of the Will) displayed his failure to grasp the heart of the Reformation: is the righteousness we sorely need gift or achievement?

H] He derided abuses and superstitions; however he never criticized either the institution of the Catholic church or its theology. He saw little or no point in doctrinal disagreement. He never grasped the Reformers’ perception: regardless of how many institutional and moral abuses are remedied, elements of Catholic theology obscure the gospel. Therefore doctrine has to be re-forged.

It remains fashionable in some circles to pine for a might-have-been “Reformation along Erasmian lines.” Those who wish for this appear not to understand that “Erasmian Reformation” spells no Reformation at all.

I] While the Reformers repudiated scholasticism because its theology stifled the gospel, Erasmus repudiated it because it stifled the “new learning.” Aristotle in particular was suffocating. Scholasticism in general aimed at contention, dispute, refutation. Erasmus preferred a theology nourished by a rhetorical rather than a dialectical culture. Contention doesn’t yield edification.

J] His undisputed gift to the world is the boost he gave humanist studies and the foundation he and others laid for modern education.

K] He never lacked self-confidence. “Please explain to her {Anna van Borssele, Belgian patroness} how much greater is the glory she can acquire from me, by my writings, than from the other theologians in her patronage. They merely deliver humdrum sermons; I am writing books that may last forever.”

“I would rather win a fame that is a little delayed, but endures, than a speedier reputation which I must afterward regret.”

Areas of Theological Divergence from the Reformers

Erasmus maintains the content of pagan morality and Christian exhortation to be similar. Certainly there is a phenomenological similarity. But is the essence of each identical?

The Reformers differ markedly from Erasmus with respect to the nature of ‘obligation.’

(a) God’s characteristic work is not the dissemination of instructions.

(b) God gives himself to us in grace, then insists we give ourselves to him in gratitude. (God wants the heart-obedience of those whom he has called into personal relationship with him; he does not want conformity to a code.)

Erasmus looks upon the New(er) testament as a sourcebook for ethics.

(i) Does the New(er) testament itself support this understanding?

(ii) Why does Erasmus undervalue the Old(er) testament? With what consequences?

Erasmus seldom speaks of grace, concupiscence, or the bondage of the will. Why?

What do the Reformers mean by “Total Depravity?” “Total” doesn’t mean “utter.” It doesn’t mean that we are as bad as we can be. The Reformers admit that there is much that fallen humankind can do, and can do superbly well: science, mathematics, government, art, music, painting (“culture” in general), and what Calvin calls “mechanical” arts (i.e., engineering.)

However, “total depravity” does mean

[A] the scope of the fall is total: there is no human undertaking that isn’t fallen, sin-riddled, corrupted.

[B] the penetration of the fall is comprehensive: there is no aspect of the human being (reason, will, affect) that is unaffected and by which we can restore ourselves.

E.g. (i), we can still reason (or else we shouldn’t be human; the structure of reason survives the fall), but now our reason subserves the wrong end or purpose, particularly as we approach the specifically human or divine. Reason now applies itself to aggrandizement of ourselves, or exploitation of others, or the legitimization of unconscious motivation (i.e., rationalization).

E.g. (ii), we can still will (to be without will is to have ceased to be human), and can still will moralgood, but we cannot will the good: the kingdom of God . We cannot will ourselves out of our sinnership, cannot will ourselves into the kingdom. (Note John 3:3: apart from Spirit-regeneration we cannot so much assee the kingdom, much less enter it.) The will is “bound” or “enslaved” (not free) in that it cannot will righteousness. But such bondage is never to be confused with philosophical determinism: the Reformers never say that genuine choice is denied us with respect to creaturely matters.

E.g. (iii), we can still love, but now our affections are misaligned; we love what we ought to hate and hate what we ought to love. At the very least we love the creature above the Creator; our loves are “disordered affections:” lesser loves (legitimate in themselves) usurp our greater love (for God.) In addition our creaturely loves are riddled with self-interest.

While Marx reduces all considerations (Freud’s explanation included) to the dialectical laws of materialism (and one’s place in the economic spectrum), and while Freud reduces all considerations (Marx’s explanation included) to intra-psychic unconscious conflict, the doctrine of Total Depravity exposes both as one-sided and short-sighted.

(Wesley insisted that he differed “not a hair’s breadth” from the Reformers on this point.)

Erasmus differs from the Reformers in that the latter insist that

(i) redemption, not ethical instruction, is the content of revelation.

(ii) scripture logically begins with redemption, not with creation (with exodus/cross rather than with creation).

(iii) the ordo salutis governs the ordo cognoscendi. In other words, if salvation is from God to us, then the knowledge of God (an implicate of salvation) must also be from God to us. Neither natural theology nor speculative theology may obscure the gospel (revelation).

(iv) religion, so far from being the vestibule or antechamber or anticipation of the kingdom of God , is the contradiction of the gospel. The harlots and tax- collectors enter the kingdom ahead of the Pharisees.

(v) Coram Deo (before God) humankind is dead, not merely sick. We need resurrection, not assistance.

(vi) the sphere of God and the sphere of humankind (i.e., the spheres of Creator and the creaturely) are distinctand are united by grace, not by ontology (being).

The Reverend Dr. V. Shepherd

Plato and the Christian Faith

Plato and the Christian Faith

Apologists and fathers in the early church saw many affinities between Plato and biblical thought, as did Christian humanists in the Renaissance. Christian Platonists, for instance, maintained that Hellenism is as much the progenitor of Jesus Christ as is Israel . Some spoke of a discarnate Logos found in Greek philosophy.

Is this assessment correct?

What happens when Israel is undervalued?

Is ancient Greek philosophy as important for Christians as the Hebrew bible?

How extensive is the affinity?

What is the relation of classical learning to biblical faith?

Is the “discarnate Logos” the Logos of John?

In the Timaeus Plato wants to link the ethics of the Republic and the order of the natural world. It appears that ethics presupposes metaphysics.

How is a metaphysical system “chosen?”

If modernity shuns both biblical faith and metaphysics, then what is the ground of modernity’s ethics?

How is modernity’s concern with “values” related to ethics and metaphysics?

Can “values” be distinguished from mere preferences or whims?

Plato says that the order of nature provides order for both the city-state and the individual.

What (dis)similarities are there between the order of nature and what theology has called “laws of nature” or “orders of creation?” between the order of nature and the apostolic assertion that all things were made through Christ? (John 1, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1.)

The fundamental issue in Greek philosophy is Being (i.e., Being-itself as opposed to beings.) Being is grasped by “intelligence” or “reason.”

What is the fundamental issue in scripture? How is it “grasped?”

How does Plato’s understanding of creation differ from creatio ex nihilo?

What are (dis)similarities between the chaos of the creation and the chaos referred to in scripture (e.g., Genesis 1, Noah stories, Christ’s stilling of the storm)?

Where does the doctrine of the Trinity disagree with Plato’s notion that “the father of all this universe is past finding out?”

How do Plato and scripture respectively account for the perduring “frustration” of the created order?

How do Plato and the church differ on the role of matter in creation?

Plato maintains that the human soul, in order to attain its true destiny, must leave the sensible world and return to a supersensible world.

How would prophet and apostle comment on this notion?

How do Greek and Hebrew minds differ on the meaning of “soul?”

Both Plato and scripture say little about space but much about time.

Where do they differ with respect to time? to history?

While the bible begins with the creation story (Genesis), the logic of scripture indicates that Israel knew God as creator only after it knew God as the one who had rescued it from slavery in Egypt and had disclosed himself to it at Sinai. Plainly, then, according to the logic of scripture, knowledge of God the redeemer precedes knowledge of God the creator.

What happens in Christian thought when knowledge of the creator is said to precede knowledge of the redeemer?

Humanism and Luther

Humanism and Luther

In each of the major countries of the north there were three generations of humanists.

[1] “pioneers” — they acquired classical learning and absorbed a classical mindset.

[2] “consolidators” — they integrated and developed the rich materials the pioneers unearthed,

creating the high point of humanist learning.

[3] “doers” — they were a younger generation who cherished humanism not so much for its

intellectual excellence as for its providing tools for social change.

Between 1510 and 1520 many of these third generation humanists gathered around L., eager to do something about abuses in church and society. These people were the “runners” who disseminated L’s Ninety-Five Theses throughout Germany .

Luther profited from a humanist environment but was not especially humanist trained (despite having attended Erfurt U. ) and was never interested in humanism as such. Yet there were discernible affinities between Luther and the humanists.

[1] rejection of scholasticism:

H: scholastic theology is unnecessarily complex, obscure, unintelligible; a more elegant

theological formulation is needed.

L: scholastic theology is intelligible — and therefore should be recognized readily as anti-

gospel.

[2] desire to return to patristics:

H: Patristics is a simple, understandable statement of Christian faith, devoid of fruitless

speculation and incomprehensible scholastic Latin.

L: Patristics is closer to the NT era than is the mediaeval period, less distorted, less

warped by a non-biblical logic.

Note: since the humanists esteemed antiquity, no one father was to be elevated (exception: Erasmus

and Jerome.) For the Wittenberg theologians, Augustine was pre-eminent.

[3] desire to return to scripture:

H: sola scriptura = “not without scripture”

L: sola scriptura = “scripture as unnormed norm” (singularly used by the Spirit

to acquaint us with the living Lord Jesus Christ.)

[4] interest in rhetoric:

H: an interest in eloquence as a cultural excellence.

L: an interest in preaching the gospel.

After 1520 the Reformation stood out in starker contrast with humanism. Humanists finally realized that their purposes and the Reformation’s were not the same.

But note: non-humanistically trained pastors were the foot soldiers of the Reformation, dutiful church functionaries. Yet they never provided intellectual or organizational leadership for the Reformation. Subsequently they became the most rigidly scholastic Protestants, re-introducing an utterly scholastic mindset only with a Protestant vocabulary.

Humanist education remains crucial in the formation of Christians and clergy.

V. Shepherd

Martin Luther

Martin Luther

1483 – 1546

(Married Katarina von Bora, 1525: six children)

I: Introduction

II: Background and youth

elementary schooling at Breslau, Magdeburg and Eisenach .

began university studies at Erfurt , 1501.

III: The Monk

joined Augustinian (Reformed) order, 1505.

ordained to priesthood, 1507.

lectured at Wittenberg , 1508.

visited Rome , 1510.

IV: The Professor

appointed to chair of theology, 1510.

lectured on Psalms, 1513-15.

lectured on Romans, 1515-16.

lectured on Galatians, 1516-17 9 (and again in 1541.)

lectured on Hebrews, 1517-18.

V: The Indulgence Controversy

the Ninety-Five Theses, 1517.

VI: The Disputant

disputed with Johann Eck at Leipzig , 1519.

wrote three great tracts, 1520.

An Address to the Nobility of the German Nation for the Improvement of the

Christian Estate

On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church

On the Freedom of the Christian

disputed with Johann Eck at Worms , 1521. (From this moment until he died there was a

price on Luther’s head.)

completed translation of NT into German, 1522.

VII: The Social Conservative

supported the peasants’ grief but not their methods in the Peasant War, 1524.

VIII: The Victor

Diet of Speyer , 1526

Second Diet of Speyer , 1529

The Colloquy of Marburg , 1529. (Does est mean “is” or “signifies”?)

Diet of Augsburg , 1530. (Luther remained nearby in Cobourg. The Lutheran cause was

represented by Philip Melanchthon, since the emperor feared Luther’s physical presence would provoke a riot.)

IX: The Shamed?

Luther and the Jewish people.

Indulgences

Indulgences: The Rescinding of Temporal Punishment

Note 1: eternal punishment, damnation, is not affected by indulgences.

Note 2: “plenary” indulgence: all temporal punishment is rescinded.

We sin. We repent before God and are forgiven.

As sinners we need to make reparation, make satisfaction, and receive temporal punishment for our sin.

Penance is prescribed.

However, at life’s end we can still be wondering whether our penance exactly counterbalances our lifetime’s sins. Temporal punishment for sin may still be owing.

The remaining debt must then be paid after death; ie, in purgatory.

Having received the sacrament of penance we can be released from the outstanding temporal punishment — ifour penance is exactly commensurate with the punishment due us.

We can ensure that it is by obtaining an indulgence, which indulgence releases penitents from the rigours of purgatory. (An indulgence can be procured through the performance of good works or through a cash-payment.)

All of this is deemed to be in harmony with “the power of the keys” vested in the church.

The Treasury of Merits

Jesus Christ and the saints have gained merit far above what is necessary to avoid damnation and gain heaven.

This superfluity of merit is calculated and “deposited” in the merit-book.

The treasury of merits isn’t essential to the theory of indulgences, but psychologically it helps people who understand that they are purchasing accumulated merit. (I.e., “good works” indulgences can be prescribed that allow us to “work off” and therein be rid of any otherwise-remaining purgatorial rigours.)

(Eventually there overtook the church the notion that by cash-payment one could purchase release from purgatory.)

Luther’s Objections

1] the crass materialism of it all

2] the effrontery of usurping the prerogative of God with respect to temporal punishment (today we should say the consequences of sin)

3] the sub-personal, mechanical notion of merit and merit-book

4] the role of the saints as co-redeemers

5] Rome ‘s view of the nature of the keys (NB: for the Reformers, the power of the keys is simply the efficacy of the WORD. The church attests the WORD; the church’s authority with respect to the forgiveness of sins is precisely that the church claims no authority for itself but points away from itself to him who is uniquely authoritative, Jesus Christ (= WORD).

6] Rome ‘s view of the nature of the church:

-that Jesus Christ inheres the church

-that God has relegated his authority to the church (of Rome )

-that the church “rules” instead of being a servant

-that the church “controls” purgatory

The early Luther insisted that the pope could only remit those penances that the church had itself canonically applied. The later Luther distanced himself entirely from the logic of indulgences.

(Note the difference between the penalty for sin and the consequences of sin.)

Luther’s Theologia Crusis

Luther’s Theologia Crucis

The hidden God is the revealed God

and

The revealed God is the hidden God

The world perceives The truth is

shame glory

weakness strength

folly wisdom

condemnation acquittal

sin righteousness

death life

In order to “benefit” from the gospel (i.e., be a beneficiary of Jesus Christ and all that he has wrought for us) we must “shut our eyes and open our ears.” (Luther)

“The gospel is essentially aural.” (Luther)

The theologia crucis is always to be distinguished from a theologia gloriae.

Theologia gloriae is found

(i) when God is identified with metaphysical speculation

(ii) when the church becomes triumphalistic

(iii) when it is thought that the truth and nature of God can be read off nature

(iv) when it is thought that the truth and nature of God can be read off the face of history, of world-occurrence.

Implicates of a theologia crucis:

(i) the Christian life can never be identified with our evident life, whether public or private.

(ii) the Christian life can never surrender its incognito.

(iii) the hidden life of a Christian is real but isn’t perceived; it is hidden so deeply that it isn’t fully perceived by the Christian herself.

(iv) the Christian necessarily incurs the hostility of the world.

(v) peace is ours through faith as a gift of Christ in the midst of turbulence; to seek the peace (of the world – here Luther includes the peace of religiosity) is to “tempt” God.

(vi) God’s promises are the cause of joy; the Christian’s joy is determined (ultimately) eschatologically.

(vii) in our “trial” (Anfechtung) the Christian must cling to the Word (Jesus Christ).

(viii) the “turning point” in the trial has arrived when faith recognises the trial as an alien work (of God). (God conceals himself under the devil’s hostility.)

(ix) once we have recognised the hidden God in his alien work, we find the revealed God in his proper work, and therein know unspeakable comfort.

(x) the worst kind of trial is to have no trial, for trial keeps faith alive and vibrant.

Righteousness According to Luther

“So, too, it is not yet knowledge of the gospel when you know these doctrines and commandments, but only when the voice comes that says, ‘Christ is your own, with his life, teaching, works, death, resurrection, and all that he is, has, does, and can do.’”

Luther, Preface to the New Testament – emphasis Shepherd’s.

(Timothy F. Lull, Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, p. 116)

Knowledge of the gospel (for Luther, ‘gospel’ = the promise of God fulfilled in our midst) is the same as knowledge of Christ, where ‘knowledge’, understood in terms of Hebrew logic, always means ‘intimate personal participation in Christ himself giving rise to the transformation of the believer.’

Knowledge of the gospel can’t be reduced to an apprehension of doctrines and commandments; neither can it be reduced to (although it must always include) Christ’s

Life: his rendering God the obedience humans are supposed to;

Teaching: his delineation of and pioneering of the ‘Way’ of discipleship;

Works: his instantiating God’s incursion into the world and into our lives;

Death: his propitiation and expiation;

Resurrection: his victory on our behalf, and his rulership arising from his victory.

We can ‘know’ all this in the sense of understand it and endorse it and assent to it, yet we know the gospel (are intimately acquainted with Jesus Christ himself) only as we hear (and heed) the voice of the Person who is present to us.

In the history of Christian thought God’s impassivity has always been connected with God’s immutability.

According to Jaroslav Pelikan, in Hebrew understanding “the immutability of God was seen as the trustworthiness of his covenanted relation to his people in the concrete history of his judgement and mercy rather than as a primarily ontological category.” (The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. I, p.22.)

The Freedom of a Christian

THE FREEDOM OF A CHRISTIAN

1520

Luther: “To make the way smoother for the unlearned — for only them do I serve — I shall set down

the following two propositions concerning the freedom and bondage of the spirit:

A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.

A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”

The first power of faith:

The Word (=Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit) confers righteousness upon believers

as the “happy exchange” (2 Cor. 5) occurs:

my shame for his glory,

my condemnation for his acceptance with the Father,

my sin for his righteousness.

The second power of faith:

Believers honour God by vesting all their trust in God. To honour God and trust him in this

way is to obey him. God can be obeyed only in faith.

Note Luther’s understanding here of the kind of obedience the Decalogue enjoins: not conformity to a moral code but rather eager, glad, grateful self-abandonment to the “character” God wills for me. My gratitude is born of the fact that God has redeemed me at measureless cost to himself.

E.g., the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal” is violated if I merely refrain from stealing.

God wants not external conformity from me but rather a living relationship (faith) with him wherein I cheerfully embrace the shape he ordains for my life. He ordains this shape for my good

(i.e., as blessing.) I gladly endorse it out of gratitude for what he has already done for me and

promises yet to do for me. My not-stealing is my faith-quickened abandonment of my selfist self

as I “put on” the “new man (woman)” he wills for my good.

In other words, the Decalogue never encourages moralism but always faith and the Christ-shaped

“new creature” that faith glories in.

The third power of faith:

We are united with Christ. (Actually the third is logically prior to and the ground of the first

two.)

Since faith “puts on” Christ, believers are free from sin, death, the world and the devil as Christ was free from the domination of sin, death, world and devil.

Since faith “puts on” Christ, believers are bound to the needy as Christ bound himself to them.

When Luther’s opponents told him that his elevation of faith underserved the neighbour, Luther replied that faith always serves the neighbour in love. Such love is love only if it disregards the neighbour’s ingratitude and one’s own loss.

Finally Luther insists that faith is the (only) cure for anxiety. Anxiety is a form of self-preoccupation. The Christian doesn’t live in herself but in another: in Christ through faith, in the neighbour through love.

Paradoxically, she finds herself, discovers her identity, to the extent that she doesn’t seek it but rather forgets herself through her immersion in Christ (faith) and neighbour (love.)

[Loving the neighbour entails sharing the neighbour’s material scarcity, suffering and disgrace.]

Justification if the “main hinge on which religion turns.”

Justification is the “main hinge on which religion turns.” (Calvin, Institutes 3.11.1.)

Valentius Loescher, a 17^th century Lutheran, insisted, Iustificatio est articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae. (articulus: article, point, crisis, division, hinge {thumb})

Most religions repudiate this articulus formally (e.g., Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses); most church folk repudiate it informally – i.e., operatively.

Those who would never repudiate it formally are often found repudiating it subtly and thereby fall into one or another form of self-justification insofar as

we are justified by our grasp of the doctrine of justification

by our ability to articulate the doctrine in private or public

by faith as the substance of our justification

by “grace” and “works” in that grace by provides an outer framework

whose inner content is our achievement

by (in modernity with its psychological preoccupation and its emphasis on ego- strength, etc.) our awareness that “we need do nothing to be accepted.”

In other words, modernity tends to abstract justification from its rootage in

Christ.

Calvin on Justification

Calvin on Justification

All of the magisterial reformers recognise that “justification by faith” is shorthand for “justification by grace through faith in Christ”; i.e., faith “puts on” Christ and he (alone) is our justification. There is no quality inhering faith that renders “my faith” “my justification.” If a quality inhering faith is thought to justify, then faith becomes another form of self-justification. Barth insisted that the point of “justification by faith” is that it is God who justifies us rather than we who justify ourselves.

We are justified by grace (alone) through faith (alone) on account of Christ (alone.) Note that when Paul speaks of justification “by” (“through”) faith, he writes dia pisteos not dia pistin. In Romans 3 Paul does not use “alone” when he speaks of justification, but Luther correctly saw that this was the meaning of the text; hence L’s “alone” was not out of place.

[1] Faith puts on Christ who is both our justification and our sanctification. Justification plus sanctification together are the grand sum of the gospel. Calvin repeats this in his work passim. 3.11.1

[2] Since Christ can’t be divided, justification and sanctification can never be separated even though they must always be distinguished.

[3] Neither justification nor sanctification is the ground of the other.

[4] Justification means that ultimately the believer has to do with the gracious Father rather than the just (and therefore undeflectable) judge. 3.11.1.

[5] Justification is the “main hinge on which religion turns.” 3.11.1.

Valentius Loescher, a 17^th century Lutheran, insisted, Iustificatio est articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae. (articulus: article, point, crisis, division, hinge {thumb})

Most religions repudiate this articulus formally (e.g., Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses); most church folk repudiate it informally – i.e., operatively.

Those who would never repudiate it formally are often found repudiating it subtly and thereby fall into one or another form of self-justification insofar as

we are justified by our grasp of the doctrine of justification

by our ability to articulate the doctrine in private or public

by faith as the substance of our justification

by “grace” and “works” in that grace by provides an outer framework

whose inner content is our achievement

by (in modernity with its psychological preoccupation and its emphasis on ego-

strength, etc.) our awareness that “we need do nothing to be accepted.”

In other words, modernity tends to abstract justification from its rootage in

Christ.

[6] To be justified is to be both “reckoned righteous” and to be “accepted.” 3.11.2

“Reckoned” echoes Paul’s forensic model; “accepted” adds the relational (personal) dimension.

Again, one must be aware of the secularisation of the doctrine today. God, however, “sees” in Christ only those who are in Christ (by faith in Christ.) 3.11.3.

[7] Dispute with Osiander. (See class notes on “The Mediator and His Work.”)

O. documents from scripture that Christ is one with believers, yet fails to grasp the nature of this oneness: by faith we are bound to Christ in utmost intimacy, but Christ is never transfused into us thereby obliterating the distinction between us, obliterating our identity, and rendering us incarnations as well. 3.11.5.

Osiander’s errors: we are justified inasmuch as we are made righteous through the impartation of holiness. (Problem: no believer is sufficiently holy to secure his own righteousness.)

: Christ is our righteousness simply in virtue of his deity. (Problem: our sin isn’t seen as serious enough to be that for which atonement (propitiation) is needed. We merely need to be elevated (divinised.) Note the affinities here with modernity.

[8] While C retains “imputation” in that he feels it essential to the truth of justification, he rejects the accusation that such terminology suggests iciness, sterility, the mechanistic or the impersonal. For when we “put on” Christ we cease “contemplating him from afar”; we are “engrafted into his body”; we are “made one with him”; we “glory that we have fellowship of righteousness with him.” 3.11.10.

[9] “Justification”, “forgiveness’, “free remission”, “reconciliation with God” are all synonyms.

3.11.11 and 3.11.21.

[10] Note the following in the 3.11.11:

(i) Since justification is never separated from sanctification, and sanctification is never separated from mortification, C can’t be accused of “cheap grace.”

(ii) Battles’ “traces” (of sin) for reliquae (remainder) is much too weak. Reliquum means “remainder”, “arrears”, “debt”, “outstanding (sum)”, “residue”, “subsequent.”

(iii) Reformation of life is gradual (and frequently slow.)

(iv) At all times Christians, of themselves, merit condemnation. (See 3.11.21.)

[11] The Spirit reforms the justified person (i.e., advances her in holiness) not directly but through the Son. 3.11.12

Since the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, C endeavours here to disavow what he regards as Anabaptist vagaries concerning the Spirit; on the other hand, he endeavours here to disavow what he regards as RC vagaries concerning holiness: holiness consists in adopted sons/dtrs being conformed to their elder brother.

At no point does justification mean that we are deemed righteous on the ground of Spirit-wrought fruits of regeneration in believers. 3.11.14.

[12] For C assurance is always assurance of our standing with God, which standing is grounded in Christ (not ourselves). For “papists and schoolmen”, on the other hand, assurance is assurance of conscience that their Spirit-inspired quest for holiness merits God’s recognition and reward. (Hence C speaks of them as “doubly deceived.”) 3.11.14.

Justification by faith, rather, directs our contemplation away from ourselves in all respects to “God’s mercy” and “Christ’s perfection” alone. 3.11.16.

[13] While always aware that justification is the antithesis of moralism, C recognises moral distinctions. Not to do is both silly and a threat to social order. 3.14.2. Still, moral virtue is qualitatively distinct from the Kingdom. Here C parts company with modern liberalism, mediaeval scholasticism, and some forms of contemporary RCm. (E.g., Karl Rahner’s “anonymous Christian.”) 3.14.3.

When C speaks of the “sheer disgrace of need and emptiness” he is not speaking morally but rather theologically. His point is that the moral people are yet un-graced. Neither is he speaking psychologically. C thinks theologically throughout the discussion. 3.14.5.

Justification is the beginning of love for God. (What “righteousness” could ever precede it?) Our works-righteousness, so far from exemplifying love for God, is actually defiance of him. Only the justified person loves God. 3.14.6.

[14] The justified person has “regard not for the work of the law but for the commandment of God.” 3.14.10. Luther is magnificent on this matter. Every commandment can be fulfilled only in faith. Commandments 2 through 10 are properly and profoundly obeyed only if the first is; i.e., only in faith.

[15] Remember: to undervalue justification by faith means that we do “not realise what an execrable thing sin is in God’s sight.” 3.14.13.

[16] The sum of the doctrine is

“we are received into grace by God out of sheer mercy”,

“this comes about by Christ’s intercession and is apprehended by faith”,

“all things exist to the end that the glory of divine goodness may fully shine

forth”. 3.14.17.

Professor V. Shepherd

Law and Gospel According to Calvin

Law and Gospel According to Calvin

[1] Jesus Christ is the substance of the law. (Compare C. on scripture: JC is the substance of both testaments) – otherwise, God speaks with a forked tongue.

Note C’s characteristic remarks throughout his commentaries:

e.g., the law was given for the purpose “of keeping the ancient people in the faith of Christ.” (Gal. 3:19;
Heb. 8:5)

e.g., the design of the law is that through it we should come to know “God’s paternal favour” (Jer.
31:33), which paternal favour is known only in Christ (passim in C.)

e.g., “God brings forward in the gospel nothing new but what the law contains.” (Jer. 31:33)

e.g., the New Testament contains “nothing but a simple and natural explanation of the law and the
prophets.” (2 Tim. 3:17; 1 Cor. 14:21)

The cult (ceremonial law), no mere “holding action” to differentiate Israel from absorbing the surrounding paganism, was to “foster hope of salvation in Christ” (Inst. 2.7.title)

Since the law aims at quickening faith in the Mediator, therefore legalism and moralism were never the purpose of the law. (Torah isn’t essentially a code.)

[2] First Use of the Law

Law, like gospel, is both gift and claim.

To whom is the law given? “We are so driven by the power of sin that our whole mind, our whole heart and all our actions are inclined to sin….We are so addicted to sin that we can do nothing of our own accord but sin.” (Rom. 7:14 ) (NB the Reformers’ understanding of Total Depravity.)

When the law meets our sin, the nature of the law doesn’t change but its function does.

Now the law renders us aware of our condition and our condemnation.

This function of the law is “accidental”; yet even as “accidental” it is part of the purpose of the law. (Deut. 10:12)

But since JC is blessing only, and since he is the substance of the law, therefore the law, even in its “slaying” function, is given for life. (Even though the sinner, terrified by the law, may not come to life.)

When C speaks of law and gospel as contradictory he always has in mind the law denatured, abstracted from the gospel, reduced to a code by which we attempt to achieve our own righteousness: “the bare law in a narrow sense.” (2.7.2.)

This misrepresentation of the law C speaks of as “letter”: the letter is the law minus the grace of adoption. (James 1:25)

[3] The Second Use of the Law (First for Luther)

The second use is to inculcate fear of punishment so as to constrain malfeasance and therein promote social order.

By schooling people in civil obedience (i.e., obedience to a code) it acquaints them with a form of obedience which they will then fill with the specific content of obedience to the person of Jesus when they come to faith.

[4] The Third Use of the Law (Philip Melanchthon was the first to speak of this.)

The third use is the chief use: that by which believers obey JC and are conformed to him.

The believer is motivated twice over to obey the law;

(a) as creatures we are under obligation to the Creator

(b) as beneficiaries of God’s mercy we are everlastingly grateful.

Note: while the command of God ever remains command (not suggestion or recommendation), since mercy is the ground of God’s claim, believers find the claim not an imperious demand but an invitation: “God chooses rather to invite his people by kindness than to compel them to obedience from terror. (Deut. 7:9)

while we are “alarmed by the majesty of God” we are also “gently attracted, so that the law might be more precious than gold or silver, and at the same time sweeter than honey.” (Exod. 20:1)

[5] Do Believers Need the Law?

While sin doesn’t rule believers (Christ reigns in them), sin is still present.

Believers continue to need the law as “bridle” and “spur”. (Gal. 3:25)

We venerate Christ only to the extent that we venerate the law. (2.7.15)

Not to be serious about the law is to reject Christ’s love (John 15:10), because [a] we can’t have Christ’s love without Christ’s law, Christ being indivisible, [b] the law, however irksome (at times), is an expression of his love.

Either we aspire with all our heart to obey the law, or we are fixed in a “deadly sleep”. (2 Tim.2:25)

Believers love the law (because they love JC, its substance) and “embrace” the law “with sincere affection” (Deut. 11:18 ), with “prompt and cheerful affection” (Psalm 19:7)

[6] This Obedience is not Conformity to a Code

The nature of our obedience (to the law) is appraised by the “character” (ingenium, disposition) of God. God’s “character” is not that of legislator (in the legal sense) or codifier, but self-giving love. Then self-giving love is what believers must render to the person of God through their obedience to the law.

Law, for C, is a standard impersonally only when it is abstracted from Christ. “God himself” guides believers. (Psalm 119:59)

[7] The Rewards of the Law

Since no one observes the law wholly, do believers forfeit the rewards promised to law-keeping?

The rewards promised to law-keeping accrue to believers inasmuch as they cling to the obedience of Christ; i.e., inasmuch as they cling to the obedience that Jesus Christ, as covenant-keeper (the only covenant-keeper), renders his Father.

Reverend V. Shepherd

The Mediator

The Mediator

[1] All humankind “perished” in the fall and is now dead (not merely ill) coram Deo. 2.6.1.

[2] In the wake of the fall there is no saving knowledge of God apart from the Mediator. 2.6.1

[3] Only that worship whose object is Jesus Christ pleases God. (I.e., all other “worship” is superstition.) The godly hope in Christ alone. (I.e., Christ renders hope hope as opposed to wishful thinking.) 2.6.1.

[4] The foregoing presupposes that faith in Christ is the same as faith in God. (2.6.4) (Recall thehomooousion.)

[5] All talk of worshipping “the Supreme Majesty” or the “Maker of heaven and earth” bespeaks idolatry, for only by means of the Mediator do we “taste” (experience) God’s mercy and thereby become persuaded that he is our Father. (2.6.4.) Apart from our experience of God’s mercy (apart from our intimate acquaintance with him as Father) we are ignorant of God and exposed to his judgement despite all talk of “Supreme Majesty” etc.

[6] We can be admitted to such intimacy with God inasmuch as the Mediator, in his provision for us, has effected an “exchange” concerning us and God. (2.12.2.) (This motif, important in Calvin, is huge in Luther.)

[7] Propitiation, not merely expiation, is the heart of the atonement. (2.12.3.)

[8] The Father chose us in Christ from before the foundation of the world. Calvin upholds supralapsarianism rather than infralapsarianism. (2.12.5.)

[9] “Christ”, therefore, implies “reconciliation” (“grace”). There is no speculative purpose intended or permitted in the Christ event. The one act of God in Christ propitiates God, expiates sin, calls sinners, and effects their salvation. (2.12.5.)

[10] Marcion denies the Jewishness of Jesus and all that this entails. (2.12.6)

Osiander undervalues (denies) humankind’s essential creatureliness. (2.12.6.)

Menno Simons undervalues (denies) Christ’s essential creatureliness. (2.13.4.)

[11] The truth is, Christ took on our humanity under the conditions of sin while remaining sinless himself. The Virgin Birth attests this truth; namely, that the redeemer of human history can’t be generated by that history, for human history, sin-riddled, cannot generate that which is sin-free. (2.13.4.)

[12] In all of this it must remembered that humankind’s corruption is “accidental” and not “essential” (contra the Gnesio-Lutherans.) (2.13.4.)

Christ as Prophet (revealer), King (ruler), Priest (redeemer)

[13] The anointing Christ received in order to teach is the anointing wherewith he anoints the church so that it might teach in the selfsame power of the Spirit. (2.15.2.)

Since Christ is effectual prophet, he concludes the line of prophets (contra the ABTSTs.) (2.15.2.)

[14] Christ’s kingship is spiritual (contra RCs and ABTSTs.) (2.15.3.)

Christ rules and preserves the church insofar as it is properly “church”; i.e., insofar as it attests him and looks to him alone as the subject and object of its faith. (2.15.3.)

While Christ’s kingship is spiritual, the world’s savagery is temporal. Therefore Christians live by “hope of a better life” and “await the full fruit of this grace in the age to come.” (2.15.3.) I.e., believers know they will be vindicated only in the eschaton. (2.15.5.)

[15] Christ’s intercession for us is relentless, for we need the continuing efficacy of his once-for-all sacrifice. (2.15.6.) At the same time, faith must be humanly exercised; we must “repose in him voluntarily.” (2.15.6.) (We must exercise faith as a deliberate act of the will. Voluntas=will)

“Voluntarily” clinging to Christ, we are blessed twice over: we are freed from bondage to death and our flesh is (to be) mortified.” (2.16.7.)

The Ascension

(Note: Christ’s resurrection means he was victorious over sin and death; his ascension means the victorious one rules.)

[16] Christ “truly inaugurated his kingdom only as his ascension into heaven.” (2.16.14.) His ascension, however, never means that he is now absent. (2.16.14.) On the contrary, as ascended Jesus Christ is now always “majestically” (i.e., effectively) present to us. (2.16.14.)

[17] Even so, such “majestic” presence doesn’t mean his effectual rulership can be read off the face of world-occurrence. (2.16.17.) Note Calvin’s reminder: “[W]hile God spares the most wicked for a time, even shows them kindness, he tries his servants like gold and silver.” (Preface, Commentary on Daniel.)

[18] In sum, “we see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ….[S]ince rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.” (2.16.18.)

Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination

Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination

Question: concerning this doctrine Calvin was accused of imputing to God “a cruelty quite alien to his nature.”

Is this accusation correct?

I: — “The Three Great Benefits”

1) A magnification of God’s mercy

2) A magnification of God’s glory

3) A magnification of believers’ humility

II: — Practical Consequences of the Fact that our Salvation Rests Entirely with God

1) Perseverance

2) Assurance

3) Security

4) Effectiveness of witness

5) Encouragement in the face of apostasy

6) Avoidance of spiritual presumptuousness

III: — The Doctrine Itself

1) The place of human responsibility (and the counter-theme)

2) Election as the one decree of Father and Son

3) The contradiction

4) The attempted acquittal

IV: — Major Theological Difficulties

1) with respect to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit

2) with respect to the doctrine of the Trinity

3) with respect to the doctrine of the Incarnation

4) with respect to Calvin’s understanding of preaching

5) with respect to Calvin’s understanding of faith

6) with respect to the “mirror” role of Jesus Christ

The Holy Spirit and Faith