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Systematic Theology II Course Handouts
ST II Faith Alone Bloesch Vol I
ST II Issues Concerning Holiness
ST II Nature of Systematic Theology
ST II Personal Return of Christ
ST II Preaching Theology of (1)
ST II Preaching Threefold word of God
ST II Priesthood of All Believers
ST II Sc Hol Issues Concerning Holiness
Syllabus
Historical Theology 0536
Department of Theology
Tyndale Seminary
Winter 2005
Wednesdays at 8:30 a.m.
Instructor: Dr. V. Shepherd
416 226 6380 (ext. 6726)
e-mail: victor.shepherd@sympatico.ca
This course endeavours to acquaint students with the development of Christian thought from the post-apostolic period to modernity. As the course progresses students will gain familiarity with the kinds of theological thinking found in different eras; e.g., the patristic, the mediaeval, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the post-Reformation,, the Enlightenment, the modern.
The objectives of the course are
[1] to have students understand the church’s struggle to preserve “the faith once delivered to the saints” throughout the vicissitudes of history;
[2] to have students understand how theology is always written in a context (political, social, philosophical) and is always affected by the context, despite protestations to the contrary;
[3] to acquaint students majoring in church history with theological rigour, and to acquaint students majoring in theology with history’s surge and significance;
[4] to have students appreciate the multi-dimensionality of the gospel as different aspects of the faith are investigated week-by-week;
[5] to promote an appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of the differing traditions that comprise “the household and family of God”;
[6] to reassure students that Christ’s promise to his church, the community of the faithful, is a promise that he invariably keeps;
[7] to emphasise the truth that a Christian, a congregation, or a denomination that is unaware of the past is like people suffering from amnesia: they are to be pitied and feared, not because they can’t remember details but rather because they can’t be trusted.
Text for the course: Olson, Roger E.; The Story of Christian Theology (IVP, 1999) ISBN:0 8308 1505 8
Readings for the course will be supplied in a “Kinkos” volume.
Requirements for the course are
[1] one essay, approximately 3000 words long (the essay may be written in accordance with the APA style manual.)
[2] a final, end-of-semester examination.
Essay and examination will be weighted equally.
Prerequisite for the course is the successful completion of THEO 0531 and 0532 or Theo 0530
For Seminary regulations pertaining to absenteeism, late work or incomplete work, please see the student handbook.
Schedule
Jan 12 THE NATURE OF AND NEED FOR THEOLOGY
Jan 19 GABRIEL BIEL (348-360)* the nature of justification
a foil for the Reformers
Jan 26 MARTIN LUTHER (375-394) the righteousness of God
theologia crucis
Feb 2 JOHN CALVIN (408-413) a doctrine of scripture
Feb 9 COUNCIL OF TRENT (444-449) the path to the Council of Trent
the shape of tridentine theology
Feb 16 PURITANS (493-509) dispelling the myth
Jonathan Edwards on Religious Affections
Feb 23 JOHN WESLEY (510-517) the nature of Christian perfection
Mar 2 ANABAPTISTS (414-428) the protest of the Radical Reformers
Mar 9 ATHANASIUS (144-172) the cruciality of the homoousion
Mar 16 Reading Week – no class
Mar 23 ANSELM (316-3250 Cur Deus Homo?
Mar 30 AQUINAS (331-347) the refutation of Anselm’s ontological argument
the “five proofs”
analogical predication
Apr 6 SCHLEIERMACHER (538-547) the attempt at accommodating “The Cultured
Despisers of Religion”
Apr 13 KARL BARTH (572-586) the “doctor” of the 20th century church
the relation of gospel and law
Apr 20 Final Examination
* The numbers in parentheses refer to pages in Olson, The Story of Christian Theology.
Supplementary Readings :
Biel Oberman, H.; “The Process of Justification”, Part II, 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
Luther Luther, M.; The Freedom of the Christian (Man)
Christian Liberty
Althaus, P. The Theology of Martin Luther
Ebeling, G.; Luther
Rupp, G.; Luther’s Progress to the Diet of Worms
Rupp, G,; The Righteousness of God
Calvin Calvin, J.; The Institutes of the Christian Religion,
Bk. IV, Chapt. I, Sects. 1-11, 22 (keys, church)
Calvin, J.; The Institutes of the Christian Religion,
Bk. III, Chapts. XXI – XXIV (predestination)
Calvin, J.; Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God.
George, T.; Calvin and the Church
Milner, B.; Calvin’s Doctrine of the Church
Parker, T.; Calvin (biography)
Wendel, F.; Calvin
Radical Reformers
Williams, G.; The Radical Reformation
Steinmetz, D.; Reformers in the Wings
Council of Trent
Janelle, P.; The Council of Trent
Jedin, E., History of the Council of Trent
Dickens, A.G.; The Counter-Reformation
Puritans
Daniels, B.; Puritans at Play
Packer, J.; A Quest for Godliness
Wesley The Works of John Wesley (Albert Outler, ed., Abingdon)
Vol 1: “Salvation By Faith”
“Scriptural Christianity”
“The Witness of the Spirit” – I
“The Witness of the Spirit” – II
“The Witness of our own Spirit”
Vol. 2: “Christian Perfection”
“Catholic Spirit”
Vol. 3: “The Danger of Riches”
Lindstrom, H.; Wesley and Sanctification
Maddox, R.; Responsible Grace
Williams, C.; John Wesley’s Theology Today
Athanasius Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word of God
Norris, R. (ed.;) Christology of the Later Fathers
(Library of Christian Classics)
Kelly, J.; Early Christian Doctrine
Anselm Anselm, Cur Deus Homo?
Deane, S.; Saint Anselm, Basic Writings
Hopkins, J.; A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm
Aquinas Gilby, T.; St. Thomas Aquinas, Theological Texts
Chesterton, G.; St. Thomas Aquinas
Copleston, F.; Aquinas
Kenny, A.; Thomas Aquinas
Schleiermacher Schleiermacher, G.; The Christian Faith
Schleiermacher, G.; Lectures
Mackintosh, H.; Types of Modern Theology, Chapts. II & III
Barth, K.; Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, Chapt. 11
Barth Barth, K.; Dogmatics in Outline
Barth, K.; Evangelical Theology
Barth, K.; The Humanity of God
Bloesch, D.; Jesus is Victor!
Bromiley, G.; An Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth
Torrance , T.; Karl Barth
Liberation Theology
Bonino, M.; Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation
Brown, R.; Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with
Third World Eyes
Gonzalez, C. and G.; Liberation Preaching: The Pulpit
and the Oppressed
Armerding, C. (ed.); Evangelicals and Liberation
Essay Topics
- Justification According to the Council of Trent and the Magisterial Reformation. (You may select
one reformer)
- Luther’s Ecclesiology.
- Luther’s Notion of the Two Kingdoms.
- Luther’s Understanding of the Ordained Ministry.
- The Christology of the Radical Reformers. (You may select one reformer)
- Anabaptists, Zwingli and Calvin on the Lord’s Supper.
- Menno Simons’ Understanding of Baptism.
- Menno Simons and Ignatius Loyola: Divergence and Convergence in their Understanding of the
Christian Life.
- Calvin on the Three Uses of the Law.
10. Calvin’s Understanding of Scripture.
11. A Puritan Understanding of the Believer’s Holiness.
12. A Puritan Theologian on Sanctification.
13. A Comparison with respect to Substance and Mood of Luther’s Small Catechism, Calvin’s Geneva
Catechism, The Heidelberg Catechism, and The Westminster Shorter Catechism.
14. Wesley’s Puritan Inheritance.
15. Wesley’s Understanding of Christian Perfection.
16. The Place of the Doctrine of Prevenient Grace in Wesley’s Theology.
17. Wesley’s Understanding of Regeneration and Assurance.
18. The Doctrine of…(Atonement, for instance) in the Hymns of
Charles Wesley.
19. A Comment on Critique of Selected Doctrine(s) in the Thought of Schleiermacher.
20. Barth’s Assessment of Natural Theology.
21. Barth’s Doctrine of the Word of God.
22. Barth’s Appreciation of the Blumhardts.
23. An Exposition and Critique of Athanasius’s Notion of Recapitulation.
24. Thomas Aquinas on Predestination (or Grace, Faith, etc.).
25. The Scriptural Adequacy of Anselm’s Understanding of the Atonement.
26. Roman Catholicism: A Comparison of the Council of Trent and
Vatican II.
- (Any topic approved by the instructor.)
Supplementary Readings
HISTORICAL THEOLOGY
Supplementary Readings:
Biel Oberman, H.; “The Process of Justification”, Part II, 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
Luther Luther, M.; The Freedom of the Christian (Man)
or Christian Liberty
Althaus, P. The Theology of Martin Luther
Ebeling, G.; Luther
Rupp, G.; Luther’s Progress to the Diet of Worms
Rupp, G,; The Righteousness of God
Calvin Calvin, J.; The Institutes of the Christian Religion,
Bk. IV, Chapt. I, Sects. 1-11, 22 (keys)
(church)
Calvin, J.; The Institutes of the Christian Religion,
Bk. III, Chapts. XXI – XXIV
(predestination)
Calvin, J.; Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God.
George, T.; Calvin and the Church
Milner, B.; Calvin’s Doctrine of the Church
Parker, T.; Calvin (biography)
Wendel, F.; Calvin
Radical Reformers
Williams, G.; The Radical Reformation
Steinmetz, D.; Reformers in the Wings
Council of Trent
Janelle, P.; The Council of Trent
Jedin, E., History of the Council of Trent
Dickens, A.G.; The Counter-Reformation
Puritans
Daniels, B.; Puritans at Play
Packer, J.; A Quest for Godliness
Wesley The Works of John Wesley (Albert Outler, ed., Abingdon)
Vol 1: “Salvation By Faith”
“Scriptural Christianity”
“The Witness of the Spirit” – I
“The Witness of the Spirit” – II
“The Witness of our own Spirit”
Vol. 2: “Christian Perfection”
“Catholic Spirit”
Vol. 3: “The Danger of Riches”
Lindstrom, H.; Wesley and Sanctification
Maddox, R.; Responsible Grace
Williams, C.; John Wesley’s Theology Today
Athanasius Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word of God
Norris, R. (ed.;) Christology of the Later Fathers
(Library of Christian Classics)
Kelly, J.; Early Christian Doctrine
Anselm Anselm, Cur Deus Homo?
Deane, S.; Saint Anselm, Basic Writings
Hopkins, J.; A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm
Aquinas Gilby, T.; St. Thomas Aquinas, Theological Texts
Chesterton, G.; St. Thomas Aquinas
Copleston, F.; Aquinas
Kenny, A.; Thomas Aquinas
Schleiermacher Schleiermacher, G.; The Christian Faith
Schleiermacher, G.; Lectures
Mackintosh, H.; Types of Modern Theology, Chapts. II & III
Barth, K.; Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, Chapt. 11
Barth Barth, K.; Dogmatics in Outline
Barth, K.; Evangelical Theology
Barth, K.; The Humanity of God
Bloesch, D.; Jesus is Victor!
Bromiley, G.; An Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth
Torrance, T.; Karl Barth
Liberation Theology
Bonino, M.; Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation
Brown, R.; Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with
Third World Eyes
Gonzalez, C. and G.; Liberation Preaching: The Pulpit
and the Oppressed
Armerding, C. (ed.); Evangelicals and Liberation
Introductory lecture
Historical Theology
Introductory Lecture
Biblical Theology
-it attempts to grasp the specific “angle of vision” of a biblical writer or school of writers;
ultimately of the testament (newer or older) as a whole, seeing the uniqueness, unity and
comprehensiveness of the biblical witness to God’s self-disclosure and self-bestowal in
Jesus Christ.
-e.g., the theology of Paul, John, “Hebrews”, Jeremiah, Deuteronomist.
-e.g., who is Jesus Christ according to each of the gospel writers?
Systematic Theology
Critical Task:[1]
(a) it examines contemporary beliefs about God in the light of Christian sources, especially
scripture.
(b) it assesses beliefs with respect to their importance.
E.g., (i) dogma — the “building blocks” of the Christian faith, departure from which is apostasy.
(ii) doctrine — what a denomination regards as important and a test of fellowship.
(iii) opinion — something deemed advisable but not essential.
Note: There is no universal categorization. Consider the matter of the Virgin Birth.
Constructive Task:
(a) it attempts to grasp the truth of God whole and apprehend it in its interconnectedness; i.e., it seeks to grasp the unity and the coherence of the truth of God.
(b) it attempts to relate the faith of the church to the contemporary world, in the vocabulary and thought forms of the world.
Here it must carefully distinguish “adapting” from “adopting.”
(c) it attempts to preserve catholicity, catholicity consisting of identity plus universality.
Defining the faith preserves identity; defending the faith preserves universality.
Historical Theology
It presupposes that God has never left himself without witnesses throughout the centuries. Therefore
(a) we must ask how the gospel has been articulated, spoken in the thought-forms of each era in such a way as either to elucidate the gospel or to obscure the gospel.
(b) we must probe the place of tradition.
(c) we must ensure that the dead are allowed to vote.
(d) we must understand that while history doesn’t repeat itself exactly, there are very significant overlaps; e.g., there are no new heresies.
[1] See Olson and Grenz, Who Needs Theology?, pp.68ff.
Why Theology?
WHY THEOLOGY?
The Basis of Theology
-the God about whom theol. speaks discloses himself to us: God acts on our behalf, 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.
Gabriel Biel
GABRIEL BIEL
? – 1495
– was born at Speyer during the 1st quarter of the 15th 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 atLeipzig (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 sinfulcreatures. 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 of God .)
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 to dignitas; [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 initiate the 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 16th 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.)
Reverend V. Shepherd
Names and Places Associated with Luther
Names and Places Associated with Luther
Places
Erasmus
Melanchthon
Zwingli
Carlstadt
Huss
Staupitz
Frederick (elector)
Wessel
Tetzel
Leo X (pope)
Cajetan
Von Miltitz
Maximilian (emperor)
Charles V (emperor)
Eck
Amsdorf
Von Sickingen
“Junker Georg” (Luther)
Muentzer
Katarina von Bora (Luther’s wife)
Places
Wittenberg
Eisleben
Magdeburg
Leipzig
Eisenach
Erfurt
Mainz
Ingolstadt
Constance
Cologne
Speyer
Marburg
Hesse
Augsburg
Worms
Luther: Outline of Introductory Lecture
Introduction
Background and Youth
The Monk
The Professor
The Indulgence Controversy
The Disputant
The Victor
(The “Jury Recessed”)
Luther’s Theologia Crucis
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.
Calvin on Scripture
Outline of Lecture on Calvin’s Understanding of Scripture
Note: “Holy men of old knew God only by beholding him in his Son as in a mirror….God has never manifested himself to men in any other way than through the Son, that is, his sole wisdom, light and truth.” (Inst. 4.8.5.)
Question 1: What is the relation of the Son to scripture? I.e., how are they both “Word of God”?
Question 2: How are they different?
Lecture
[1] The necessity of scripture for our knowledge of God 1.6.1.—1.6.4.
– the patriarchs didn’t have s. yet knew God
– after them, however, s. is essential to our knowing God
[2] The nature of scripture’s authority 1.7.1.—1.7.3.
– Calvin contradicts the Roman Catholic notion (of that era) that the church confers
authority on scripture. The church recognises the authority of s.
[3] The role of the witness of the Spirit 1.7.4.
– the Holy Spirit (i.e., God himself) persuades us of s.’s authority by first persuading
us of the authority of Jesus Christ.
– apologetic argument or rational “demonstration” does not elicit our recognition
of s.’s authority. To attempt to ground the auth. of s. in rational demonstration
is to “do things backward.”
[4] The conjunction of Word and Spirit 1.9.1—1.9.3.
– what God has joined together the Anabaptists put asunder, with the result that
“Spirit” becomes the source of “fanaticism.”
A Summary of Calvin’s Doctrine of Scripture
1] “Word of God” is prior to scripture. The patriarchs were the beneficiaries of God’s address and truth prior to any inscripturation.
“Word of God” can’t be equated with S., can’t be reduced to S.
Yet after inscripturation any claim for “Word of God” must be tested by S.
With respect to the patriarchs, Calvin makes the following points.
- God imparted himself to individuals in a way that remains mystery.
- The truth of God was “engraved” on their heart — i.e., it was nothing ephemeral, not a momentary “flash”. This is to be contrasted with the “lightning flash” Calvin speaks of (the evidence of God in the creation) whose flash is so brief that no one can take so much as one step before darkness redescends.
- They were convinced of the truth of God; i.e., they were possessed of certainty concerning the truth and assurance concerning their inclusion in it.
- They understood the meaning of God’s revelation/truth. There was no obscurantism here, nothing akin to the mystics’ vagueness or the radicals’ under-cognitive emotionalism.
- They knew God to be the origin of this truth. (i.e., revelation is of God and by God.)
- This truth (“doctrine”) was committed to writing. [NB: for Calvin “doctrine” characteristically means not doctrine buttruth/inscripturated/expounded]
Note: (i) Points B through E operate every time we read S. in faith and the H.S. illumines us and vivifies the text so as to acquaint the reader with theliving person and truth of Jesus Christ, which acquaintance yields certainty of him and his truth as well as assurance of our inclusion in him.
Note: (ii) Point A isn’t necessarily inoperative today, for God remains free to impart himself to anyone in any way under any circumstances, the entire development remaining a mystery to us. At the same time, scripture (or any similar declaration of the gospel), vivified by the Holy Spirit, is thecustomary means whereby we become acquainted with God, and scripture is ever the measure of any claim to have encountered God elsewhere. This is not to deny that the God who visits us in the person of the Mediator is known “immediately” in so far as he is not inferred from scripture.
Point F is inoperative: contemporary inscripturation is not necessary since the apostolic testimony to the singular Word-made-flesh is sufficient.
2] The church does not judge S.; the church is not an authority above S. The church acknowledges that S. whose authority is as self-authenticating as are the colours and shapes and tastes of objects. (To say the same thing at greater length and more nearly in the spirit of Calvin’s fullest theological logic: S. authenticates itself as through it people are brought to faith in the Lord of whom it speaks and he authenticates himself. I.e., as Jesus Christ authenticates himself in the power of the H.S., the book by which we heard of J.C. is authenticated too.)
3] “God in person speaks in it [S.].” We do not deduce, infer or conclude God from the printed page. For the Reformers, as for the prophets before them, the inferred God or the deduced God is always an idol, since the true God speaks and acts “in person”, thus rendering inference or deduction beside the point. An abstract inference is categorically different from encounter with living person.
4] The internal witness of the H.S. is necessary for S. to bespeak the Word of God (=Jesus Christ).
Since faith is the “proper and entire work of the H.S.” (Inst. 4.14.8), therefore the H.S. secures our trust in S. only as it first secures our trust in Christ. Note that the logical order is always from Christ to S., even as the temporal order of our coming to faith is from S. to Christ.
5] Apologetic arguments for S. (i) merely “do things backward” (1.7.4.), (ii) leave us “uninflamed” to obey God (1.7.5.)
6] Word and Spirit, while distinguishable, are never separated (as opposed to the thought of many of the radicals.) This is bedrock for the Reformed Tradition.
7] Jesus Christ is the substance of both testaments. God manifested himself to the patriarchs through the mediator only. (4.8.5.)
8] Remember Spurgeon’s tiger: why argue (apologetically) about the might of the tiger when all you need do is let the tiger out of the cage?
9] ( The final word for all of us) — so glorious is scripture as that by which we are included in Christ and thereafter formed by him that our articulation of the glory of it all can never do justice to it: “words fall far beneath a just explanation of the matter.” (1.7.5.)
The Council of Trent
THE COUNCIL OF TRENT (1545 – 1563)
Note the prominence of the Holy See in view of the non-universality of the council.
-no representatives from the Russian or Ethiopian or
Protestant churches.
-the appeal to the pope in rendering the council’s decrees
operative effectively ended conciliarism.
-papal authority was needed to (i) curb the divisive
tendencies of nationalism
(ii) condemn (erroneous)
Prot. doctrine and reassert Catholic orthodoxy.
– Christian humanists had been the first to recognize the need for thoroughgoing reform in the church. (the papal court denied any such need until the sack of Rome in 1527)
– following this acknowledgement why wasn’t a council called immediately?
Reasons for the delay:
1] the jealousies of rival European sovereigns.
2] each sov. would promise support only if the pope recognized that sovereign’s political claim.
3] the long-standing dispute between the emperor (of the Holy Roman Empire) and the king of France over Milan.
4] the council could be called only during a time of peace.
5] the emperor needed the Lutherans in his fight against the Turks; he didn’t want to incite hostility among the Lutherans; the emperor wanted to settle religious differences with the Lutherans himself.
6] a strong pope was needed to overcome the resistance of the Roman bureaucracy.
7] previous councils had been a moral disgrace. (E.g., the Council of Constance, 1414-1418)
8] the pope saw the council as the sovereigns’ attempt to deprive him of power.
9] Luther had pleaded for a general council; Prots. now insisted on being admitted on equal terms with Catholics; but this would have legitimated the Prot. understanding of the faith.
10] the humanist critique had found the Catholic church without adequate leadership to implement reform; 30-year wait!
11] material difficulties: e.g., old delegates and slow travel.
12] local conditions at Trent.
ATTEMPTS AT REFORM BEFORE THE COUNCIL OF TRENT
Pope Clement VII (1525) had attempted to eliminate abuses —
e.g., (i) all unqualified secular clergy (i.e., parish priests) should be forbidden to serve.
(ii) ordination, of itself, does not guarantee spiritual suitability.
(iii) simony and pluralities should end.
– at the same time individual reform movements were springing up; older forms of monastic discipline were enforced.
One such leader of reform was Giberti, bishop of Verona, a humanist.
– visited entire diocese.
-required priests to reside in the parish.
-insisted on conduct befitting a clergyman.
-imprisoned priests who were fornicating.
-attempted to restore vital parish life and dignified worship.
-founded catechism classes for children.
-obtained permission from Pope Clement VII for the renovation of orders in his diocese.
-established orphanages, homes for the poor and wayward women.
-welcomed to his diocese humanists whom the sack of Rome had dispersed.
(In all of this Giberti anticipated much of Trent.)
ROLE OF POPE PAUL III (elected 1529)
-consolidated Catholic holdings and rallied the people in the wake of the Turks’ enslavement of south Italians.
-recognized that since bishop-delegates needed their sovereign’s permission to attend council, he might as well call it and see who could come.
– resolved to preside over the council himself.
-stipulated that only bishops could vote.
-left the authority of the papal office undisputed (impossible if Prots. had been present.)
ROLE OF CARDINAL CONTARINI
-presided at a pre-council board (Giberti, Caraffa, and Pole, an Englishman, were on it too) whose report (1537) was stark: the fact that the church has ceased to be a spiritual society and has become a venal administration is the root of all its abuses. (e.g., the practice of priests — who had taken a vow of celibacy — bequeathing their benefices to their children, as well as the practice of exempting clergy from criminal charges.)
CANONS AND DECREES OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT
1] Dogmatic decrees: they refute the new heresies and uncompromisingly assert Catholic orthodoxy.
2] Disciplinary decrees: they deal with moral abuses and with the proper exercise of parish ministry.
THE THEOLOGY OF TRENT CONCERNING JUSTIFICATION
1] As sinner one cannot bridge the chasm between the sinner and God, but one can “draw nigh” to the chasm; i.e., dispose oneself for justification, through co-operating with the initial help of grace.
2] Justification includes remission of sin and regeneration; (i.e., imputed and imparted righteousness.)
3] Justification is not by faith alone.
4] Assurance arises through special, supernatural illumination (i.e., private revelation.)
Decree of the Council of Trent
Summary of
“Touching the Necessity, Authority, Office of Pastors in the Church,
and the Principal Heads of the Christian Doctrine”
DECREE OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT
Q:1 faith is essential to a knowledge of Christ
Q:2 pastors are essential to the quickening of faith, to acquainting people with “a certain and
direct path to the happiness of heaven”
Q:3 without pastors (teachers) Christians will readily be blown off course
Q:4 the presence of the pastor is the mode of the presence of Jesus Christ; the pastor’s
word is the word of Christ
Q:5 more recently and more specifically, pastors are need to spare Christians the spiritual
disaster of Protestantism
Q:6 the Protestant Reformers have written “voluminous works” [e.g., Calvin’s Institutes,
Melanchthon’s Loci Communes, Luther’s Works] whose heresy is open, blatant, and therefore
less dangerous than their smaller works [confessions, catechisms, pamphlets, letters,
occasional pieces] whose heresy is hidden, subtle, and therefore much more dangerous
Q:7 Trent must address this problem
Q:8 there is needed a practical means of ensuring the transmission of the Catholic faith
Q:9 it is recognized that few parish priests are extraordinarily gifted theologically, and
therefore something besides a learned tome is need to help these men
Q:10 both faith and obedience are to be enjoined, love being the goal of the gospel and the
fulfillment of the law, which faith/obedience/love add up to utter, self-forgetful
self-abandonment to God
Q:11 while the “two ends” of faith and obedience are ever to be kept in view, the pastoral
ministry must accommodate itself to the spiritual condition of the parishioner
Q:12 all necessary doctrines are contained in the Word of God, Scripture and Tradition
the four “heads” of Creed, Sacraments, Ten Commandments and Lord’s Prayer provide
the framework for orienting oneself to the gospel, for understanding scripture, and for
remembering the substance of the faith
(Note: the seven sacraments are baptism, eucharist, penance, confirmation, marriage,
extreme unction, ordination)
Q:13 the four “heads” will ensure that the substance of the biblical text will not be overlooked
in any pastor’s exegesis/sermon
What were the original Puritans like?
WHAT WERE THE ORIGINAL PURITANS LIKE?
(Debunking the Myths)
- They were against sex.
- They were opposed to fun.
- They were sartorially ugly.
- They were opposed to sports and recreation.
- They were money-grubbing workaholics who would do anything to get rich.
- They were philistines with respect to the arts.
- They were excessively emotional and undervalued reason.
- They were chiefly older people and were afflicted with the
conservatism of the elderly.
- They were intolerant toward people who disagreed with them.
10. They were excessively strict.
11. They suppressed normal human feelings in the name of religion.
12. They were self-rejecting, self-loathing.
WHO WERE THE PURITANS?
TRAITS OF PURITANISM
- A gospel-oriented movement.
- A movement which viewed life and history as the theatre of spiritual conflict.
- A reform movement.
- A minority movement (English Puritans).
- A movement in which scripture was central to everything.
DIFFERING EMPHASES IN REFORMATION AND PURITAN THEOLOGY
- The mode of expression:
R: a biblical mode
P: a scholastic mode
- The place of Christology:
R: its theology is more Christological in content and outlook
P: its theology is less Christocentric
- The logic of theology:
R: its theology is less rationalistic
P: its theology is controlled more by a determining concept (e.g., covenant)
- The focus of theology:
R: chiefly the Incarnate Word
P: the details of our sanctification
Jonathan Edwards and Religious Affections
JONATHAN EDWARDS AND RELIGIOUS AFFECTIONS
The revivals of 1734 and 1740 were the immediate context of E’s reflections giving rise to RA. RA is an analysis of the role of experience in Christian life and understanding. The book appeared in 1746, two years after E declared that the revival was over.
E can’t be understood if we espouse a traditional head/heart dualism. E insisted, rather, on a unitary self, e.g., concerning his understanding of “affection.”
[1] Affection is not the same as emotion.
Affection is a felt response to an object called forth by an understanding of the nature of the object. Plainly, where there’s no understanding there can be no affection, regardless of how much emotion is present. (There was no shortage of emotion during the revivals.)
[2] Affections differ from passions.
Passions (a) are inclinations that overpower an individual, thus diminishing self-control
(b) captivate people. To be captive to a passion is to be passive. Such passivity is a denial of the active response-aspect of an affection. Whereas passion enslaves the will, affection is an exercise of the will. An affection is a response of the total self as the nature of something (someone) is apprehended.
In the course of the revivals E met people who admitted that previously they had assented to gospel-truth, but who with a new “sense” born of spiritual understanding could “see” the truth and committed themselves to it (Him). [Note the empiricist/intuitionist vocabulary from the Enlightenment: “sense”, “see”.] These people apprehended the nature of God (gospel), were seized by its truth or “excellency” (a favourite word of E’s), and their conviction generated their commitment.
Note the shift from assensus to fiducia, born of apprehending the nature of God. A “sense” or affection was a concomitant of the apprehension.
Note that for E “affection” includes understanding and will. (Here he differs from the older “faculty” notion that understanding, will and affect are related but distinct.)
E wishes to provide people with criteria for exposing counterfeit piety (bodily contortions or jerks, imaginings or visions as such — what he called “negative signs.”
E sought to identify “enthusiasm (in Wesley’s sense), superstition and intemperate zeal.”
E insisted that experience as such was an insufficient criterion; experience must always be measured by scripture.
In RA E identifies true piety with the fruit of the Spirit or holy affections. Positive religion consists in holy affections; these in turn are a means of “testing the spirits.”
E maintains that love (here he has in mind love for God) is (a) the paramount affection, (b) the fountain of all the affections.
Note E’s subtle discernment: Satan is to be seen in both the revivals and in those who oppose revivals. In the revivals, false affections are the tares among the wheat; in those who oppose revivals there is the denial that affections are essential to the Christian life. In other words, since affect-less Christian life is impossible, affect-less revival is equally impossible.
Note E’s two further qualifications:
(i) the Spirit doesn’t everywhere follow the same order of operations. E.g., it mustn’t be assumed that people must first be terrified to the point of despair before they can embrace JC in faith. (Here E differs from much Puritanism.) In the same way, not all fear of judgement is holy; some is mere self-preservation and therefore a manifestation of selfism. (Wesley made this point in Catholic Spirit.)
(ii) other people cannot judge someone’s spiritual state. We can only assess our own, under the God who alone is the ultimate searcher of the heart.
FIRST SIGN: a new inward perception, a new sense of the heart (lacking in unbelievers.)
Here there is a realm or sphere of affection that is not naturally generated. The holy affection is now the new basis to the understanding and will. Genuine believers are aware of the sphere of the spiritual, of the Divine-human encounter as reality. This new inward perception or sense affects the self as a unity: the new self will manifest itself in all that a person thinks, feels, does.
SECOND SIGN: a pure love for God without any utilitarian consideration.
This affection arises entirely from the perception and contemplation of God’s glory. I.e., believers mature beyond loving God for what he has done for them to loving God for who he is in himself; better, what he does for us is an expression of who he is in himself.
E insists that regardless of what Satan can counterfeit, Satan cannot counterfeit an “intrinsic nature”; i.e., Satan cannot counterfeit the intrinsic nature of God or of a holy love to God. Satan cannot simulate holy love just because he has none.
THIRD SIGN: a sense of, “taste” of, the beauty of God’s holiness.
(E understands God’s holiness as God’s “goodness” or “moral excellency”. Is he right in this?)
Not to apprehend the beauty of God’s holiness is to declare oneself spiritually obtuse.
FOURTH SIGN: gracious affections arise from a spiritually enlightened mind.
Spiritual understanding is a spiritual “sense” that apprehends the nature of God in that the one is now a participant rather than an observer. Because of one’s being a “participant”, such understanding is qualitatively different from all natural knowledge.
Definition of “spiritual understanding”: “a sense of the heart for the supreme beauty and sweetness of the holiness of moral perfection of divine things, as well as the discernment and knowledge of things of religion that depends on and flows from such a sense” — e.g., the person of JC, scripture, obedience, prayer. We can apprehend the nature and significance of these only as we have a heart-sense for God’s holiness. E likens this (in a naturalistic analogy) to someone with a musical ear. Such a person can judge spontaneously without making any deductions or hearing any arguments. Such spontaneous judgement is “taste”, and “taste reacts immediately and anticipates all reflection.” Such taste is “a relish of the heart.” This relish means that spiritual understanding already contains inclination and judgement.
FIFTH SIGN: gracious affections “are associated with historical evidence and true conviction.”
The emphasis here is on the conviction that arises from the apprehension of the excellency of God. Conviction arises from a direct (non-speculative, non-balance of probability) apprehension of truth; i.e., there is a “mystical” immediacy.
E uses “historical” in a peculiar way: he means that conviction doesn’t arise from visions and raptures but rather from the spiritual understanding’s grasping God’s glory in the scriptures; i.e.,, the conviction is internal an intrinsic to the gospel itself.
SIXTH SIGN: gracious affections flow from deep awareness of personal insufficiency.
Here E moves beyond Puritan “legal humbling” (the unbeliever’s self-renunciation arising from one’s inability to keep the Law of God) to “evangelical humbling” (the believer’s “sense” of the majesty and awesomeness of God.)
SEVENTH SIGN: gracious affections change us to be more Christ-like.
E emphasizes change of nature; he does not emphasize identifiable moment of conversion.
This new nature perdures.
The unregenerate may be restrained from (outward) sin; the regenerate is restrained from sin because turned toward a life of holiness. [cf. Thomas Chalmers, “the expulsive power of a new affection.”]
EIGHTH SIGN: gracious affections have Christ-like gentleness.
Here E has in mind not spinelessness but rather the biblical meaning of “boldness: strength exercised through gentleness. (The wild horse now tamed and therefore useful but whose spirit remains unbroken; the victorious general who spares a conquered people.)
E opposed “brutal fierceness”, displayed too often by the “fleshly” people in revivals. Such “brutal fierceness”, said E, is (a) indulgence of our depravity, (b) pride.
Zeal is to be exercised against evil, but never against people.
Fervour is always to manifest itself as fervent love.
“An ugly, selfish, angry and contentious spirit” is no sign of the Spirit.
NINTH SIGN: gracious affections soften the heart in Christian tenderness.
Horror at sin (past and present) is a sign of such tenderness; such horror must never recede.
After conversion one’s sense of guilt may be removed, but one’s sensitivity to sin will be intensified.
Here E, like all spiritual counsellors, distinguishes between servile fear and reverential fear. [Ronald Ward: “If we fear God we shall never have to be afraid of him.”]
TENTH SIGN: gracious affections are consistent and constant.
These gracious affections display “beautiful symmetry and proportion.” I.e., the Christian life is balanced.
Counterfeit graces of hypocrites give rise to a “monstrous disproportion in affections.”
E.g., we are to exemplify both love for God and love for neighbour. Our love for neighbour is to embrace both spiritual concern and material concern.
At the same time E is not suggesting perfectionism: the godliest remain “unsteady”, and ultimately aspire to constancy.
ELEVENTH SIGN: gracious affections intensify spiritual longings.
Ever-increasing spiritual appetite is a sign of true piety.
Believers exemplify a hunger for holiness for its own sake.
TWELFTH SIGN: holy practice.
(E discusses signs 1-11 in 200 pages, the 12th sign in 80 pages.)
(i) the believer’s conduct is always to be governed by Christ’s claim
(ii) holy practice is the Christian’s chief business
(iii) obedience to Christ’s claim betokens the genuineness of conviction.
In other words the chief evidence of grace is holy practice, not vivid inner experiences.
A note of the significance of Athanasius’s statement: “…of one substance with the Father…”
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.
Therefore 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 intrinsicallyFather. (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 nothimself.)
(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.”
Reverend V. Shepherd
Athanasius and the Council of Nicaea
ATHANASIUS
and
THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA (325)
1] Introduction
2] Athanasius
3] Arius
4] Arianism Influences upon Arius: Philo Judaeus
Plotinus
Gnosticism*
Lucius of Antioch
Paul of Samosata
5] The Cruciality of Athanasius’s Theology
Docetism
Ebionitism
“HOMOOUSION” versus “HOMOIOUSION”
The hermeneutical significance of H.
The evangelical significance of H.
The soteriological significance of H
with respect to the Incarnation,
with respect to the Atonement.
Anselm
CUR DEUS HOMO?
Outline Of Argument
I: The attempt at demonstrating the necessity of the Incarnation
II: Unbelievers’ objections concerning the condescension of God
but: (i) the humility and humiliation of God
magnify God’s grace
(ii) it is appropriate for an act of
disobedience to be put right by an act of supreme obedience
III: The inappropriateness of God’s rescuing humankind through deputing human or angel instead of humbling himself
IV: The three-fold imprisonment from which humankind needs to be redeemed:
(i) the enslavement of sin
(ii) the just anger of God
(iii) the power of the devil over sinners
V: The question of the devil’s rights over humankind
VI: The humility of God and the impassibility of God
VII: The apparent injustice and unreasonableness of God’s delivering up the Just Son
VIII: Sin and satisfaction
IX: The (im)possibility of redressing the disorder with the assistance of angels
X: Satisfaction as both the making good of a failure and the assuaging of affront or insult
XI: God’s resolve to fulfil his purposes for us is not a constraint upon God but rather a self-imposed necessity
XII: The role of recompense in God’s salvation
XIII: The mode of the Incarnation
Intellectual ferment around Anselm
Intellectual Ferment around Anselm (1033-1107)
Islamic:
Al Kindi 800-873
Al Farabi 870-950
Avicenna (Ibn Sind) 980-1037
Avempace 1090?-1138
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) 1128-1198
Christian:
Abelard 1079-1142
Bernard of Clairvaux 1090-1153
Albert the Great 1206-1280 (taught Aquinas)
Bonaventure 1217-1274
Aquinas 1224-1274 (was influenced by Islamic
Aristotelianism)
Jewish:
Isaac Israeli ? -950
Judah Halevi 1080-1140
Abraham Ibn Daud 1110-1180
Moses Maimonides 1135-1204
Questions concerning V. Shepherd’s essay on Friedrich Schleiermacher
QUESTIONS CONCERNING V. SHEPHERD’S ESSAY
ON
FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER
- The historic Protestant churches claim that the theological progenitor after whom they are named (Luther, Calvin, Wesley, etc.) informs them and even characterizes them theologically. Nonetheless, the historic Protestant churches have, since Schleiermacher, been influenced considerably by this thinker and his school.
(a) Can as much be said about the newer, smaller,
denominations?
(a) What evidence is there of S.’s influence in your
denomination?
- How has an undervaluation of the “intense joy
to be found in the love of Jesus” precipitated
the liberalism that historic theology opposes?
- In the Faculty of Theology, University of Halle, S. taught every subject except the older testament.
(a) How did this omission affect S.’s theology?
(b) What results from such an omission?
(the plasticine Jesus)
(Christian antisemitism)
(blindness to history as the theatre of God’s activity)
(privatization of the Kingdom of God)
(undervaluation of the creaturely, the earthly,
the earthy, the human.)
- How are biblical concepts (e.g., “father”, “shepherd”, “king”, etc.) used univocally?
analogically?
(multivocally)?
5. What is the connexion between doctrine and truth?
- Why is the doctrine of the Trinity essential to Christian faith?
- What is the difference between an Economic Trinity and
an Immanent Trinity?
- How should we address “cultured despisers” today?
How are we to “adapt” even as we do not “adopt”?
- What does Kierkegaard mean by “Truth is subjectivity”?
10. What is the difference between our apprehension of God
and our (supposed) comprehension of God?
- What did Kierkegaard mean by “Immediacy is paganism”?
- What is the significance of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth?
- What is the difference between creatureliness and sinfulness?
- What is the most telling flaw in liberal theology?
Karl Barth on Gospel and Law
Karl Barth
on
Gospel and Law
Prefatory Comments
B. reverses the traditional Lutheran order: law and gospel.
For L. the law is the instrument of God’s judgement and issues in our condemnation.
the gospel is the instrument of God’s mercy, the word of reconciliation, and leads
to our salvation.
For L. the law is God’s “strange (alien)” work, while the gospel is God’s “proper” work.
For B., however, there can only one Word of God (or else God is two-headed).
The one Word of God is grace. When grace meets out sin it both judges us and saves us.
The one Word, pure gift, then claims us.
The gospel is therefore the content of the law, and the law is the form of the gospel.
Because the gospel is the substance of the law,
(1) theol’l ethics is not accountable to ethics-in-general
(2) theol’l ethics doesn’t reserve one sphere to itself and assign another to phil’l ethics
(3) theol’l ethics must not coordinate itself with general (i.e., natural law) ethics (as is so much RC thought.)
Barth’s Understanding of the Law of God
The Command as the Claim of God
Its basis: God’s self-giving to us in JC, especially in the cross; i.e., his costly salvage operation.
Its content: our restoration to the divine image.
The basis and content together entail
(a) our accepting this as right,
(b) our admitting that we do not belong to ourselves,
(c) our acknowledging specifically the rightness of God’s mercy and righteousness.
Its form: permission, invitation.
Note: because the gospel is the substance of the law, the command of God imposes obligation without legalism and permission without license.
The Command as the Decision of God
In issuing his command God makes the decision of grace. His decision necessitates ours; i.e., we are responsible (antwoertlich).
The commands of God are always God’s personal address to persons.
The Ten Commandments are first commands, and therefore like electrical cables along which God “transmits” specific, personal claim to individuals.
Karl Barth
KARL BARTH
1886-1968
ORIGINS
By his own admission he was made a theologian through the burden of having of having to preach the Word of God while fearful of preaching a merely human word.
INFLUENCES
He was schooled thoroughly in the tradition of theological liberalism (Schleiermacher, Hegel, Ritschl, Harnack, Troeltsch), and abandoned this tradition upon his disillusionment with it in light of its support of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
EARLY DEVELOPMENTS
-his conviction that God is God;
-the 1919 commentary on Romans:
we mustn’t confuse theology with philosophy or psychology;
” faith with religion;
” righteousness with morality;
” the kingdom of God with culture.
-his appreciation of Kierkegaard.
-the 1921 edition of Romans.
-his appointment to Goettingen (1921), Muenster (1925), Bonn (1930).
LATER DEVELOPMENTS
-1927 Christian Dogmatics;
-1931 book on Anselm’s Fides Quaerens Intellectum;
-1932 Church Dogmatics (not Systematic Theology): it is scriptural, Christological, ecumenical.
-characteristic features of CD:
Barth’s consistent point of departure is the Word of God;
his thought always moves from reality to possibility;
his emphasis on reality gives rise to what has been called his “objectivism”;
related to his emphasis on reality and objectivism is his “actualism”;
Liberation Theology
LIBERATION THEOLOGY
- It appears to be a distortion of the gospel with respect to
salvation
faith
sin
church
scripture
- It is appealing inasmuch as
(i) it takes seriously socio-economic history
and its relation to political history
(ii) it lifts up an aspect of scripture too readily
forgotten
(iii) it is related to life, to people, to the
majority of the world’s people,
rather than to academia
- It followed a theology of hope (Moltmann) — hope for the
entire creation — and borrowed heavily from Marx’s
understanding of human distress
- Its basic premises are
(i) people are economically depressed and therefore
dehumanized
(ii) the gospel (re)humanizes people
(iii) the gospel is this vehicle of economic liberation
(iv) Jesus is the paradigm for and the facilitator of the embodiment of such liberation
Question: How thoroughgoing is Liberation Theology’s Marxism?
- Liberation theology magnifies
(i) Hebrew prophetism
(ii) Hebrew messianism
(iii) the exodus tradition
- In addition to traditional Christian vocabulary (albeit retranslated) there is also a new vocabulary:
“conscientization”
“false consciousness’
“praxis”
Question: Are we aware how violent the world is?
- Lessons to be learned from Liberation Theology
(i) we must attend to those whom scripture defends:
the underprivileged.
(ii) more than “charity” is needed
(iii) we must resist colluding with the principalities and powers, and avoid providing religious sanctions for them.
(iv) the gospel must not be falsely spiritualized
(v) to be a-political is impossible
(vi) no church should be subservient to any political arrangement (i.e., no caesaropapism)
(vii) biblical texts which discomfort should not be ignored
(viii) we must re-think the “marks” of the church
(ix) all Christians are called to self-renunciation
(x) who writes history?
(xi) we defend the faith best by living it consistently
- Questions concerning Liberation Theology
(i) Can the gospel be reduced without remainder to social transformation?
(ii) Can socio-economic transformation, however far- reaching, effect human transformation?
(iii) Is Marxist theory the only instrument of social
analysis?
(iv) To what extent does scripture provide the tools
for social analysis?
(v) Is Liberation Theology free from the ideology of
its own praxis?
(vi) If all human reflection is socio-economically determined, then is not Liberation Theology as well?
(vii) Cannot the living God address us, penetrating our
ideological blindness?
(viii) Does Liberation Theology undervalue the doctrine of
justification?
(ix) Is its understanding of original sin weak?
(x) Does it confuse our attempts at “doing justice” with the Kingdom of God?
(xi) Does it say too little about the corruption of all human hearts?
(xii) Does it dismiss too readily the evangelical thrust for social transmutation?
(xiii) Does it tend to use the bible in a way for which it faults other theologies?
Theological Liberalism
THEOLOGICAL LIBERALISM
Its definition
the world’s self-understanding is the starting point and the controlling principle of the church’s (theology’s) self-understanding.
Its inception
it arose as a reaction to rationalist orthodoxy and gained force in the era of the fundamentalist/modernist controversy.
Its characteristics
1] it attempts to take the modern world seriously.
2] it refuses to accept religious belief on authority alone.
3] it owes much to German Idealist philosophy.
4] it massively (one-sidedly) emphasizes God’s transcendence.
5] it replaces the biblical category of promise/fulfilment with that of evolution.
6] it always tends to fall short of an affirmation of the Incarnation, regarding Jesus chiefly as
moral exemplar or as “master” without being LORD.
Herein it emphasizes the “search for the historical Jesus”, thinking it can uncover a “Jesus”
lying behind the testimony of the apostles.
It emphasizes the Bethlehem-to-Golgotha existence of Jesus, but does so (one-sidedly) in order
to provide a paradigm for our imitatio Christi.
7] it ignores the logic of the Older Testament and instead uses the OT illustratively concerning
a theological position that is arrived at independently. (See attached sheet, (Consequences…)
8] it de-emphasizes the doctrine of Original Sin.
9] it emphasizes the social gospel, and enjoins action in the face of racism, sexism, systemic evil,
exploitation, etc. Here it appears to have some affinities with Liberation Theology, but the
latter is controlled by a Marxist pre-understanding lacking in Liberal Theology.
It affirms historical progress and characteristically speaks of “building the kingdom of God .”
Its vulnerabilities
1] is it naïve with respect to human nature, sin, evil, the “principalities and powers”?
does it confuse the human situation with the human condition (Ellul)?
2] did better biblical scholarship undercut its assumptions?
3] is it one-sided, e.g., with respect to the judgement of God?
4] is it simplistic in its confidence in culture?
5] is it ethically flaccid on account of a theology that is primarily ethical?
The Marks of the Church
The Marks of the Church
For the Protestant Reformers there were two notae or “marks” of the church: the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments.
Hendrikus Berkhof, in his Christian Faith, speaks of the following notae:
(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. [“Operative”, not “effective”: Jesus Christ alone, in the power of his Spirit, makes (i) through (vii) effective or “effectual”.]
The Consequences of Undervaluing the Older Testament
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 20th 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 fail to grasp the central scriptural motif of holiness, both God’s and ours.
A Note on “Ransom”
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.
What do the Protestant Reformers Mean by “Total Depravity”?
What do the Protestant Reformers Mean by “Total Depravity”?
“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 mean
[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).
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 thegood: 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 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.
[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.
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.
(Balthasar) A note on reason
A Note on Reason
The distinction between reason (or the rational) and rationalism is crucial.
Rationalism affirms
(i) reason has access to ultimate reality
(ii) ultimate reality is what is naturally intelligible
(iii) reason is the essence of humankind
(iv) reason is unimpaired, or at least so slightly impaired as to be naturally correctable
The Christian faith affirms
(i) faith (i.e., a predicate of grace) has access to ultimate reality (There’s no natural access to ultimate reality.)
(ii) ultimate reality is Spirit or the effectual presence of Jesus Christ
See Balthasar.: “…the word of God is not of this world and hence can never be discovered in
the categories and accepted patterns of human reason.” 61
“I was appointed by God from all eternity to be the recipient of this…eternal
word of love, a word, which, pure grace though it be, is…more rational than
my reason, with the result that this act of obedience in faith is in truth the
most reasonable of acts.” 62
(iii) spirit (i.e., our having been created for relationship with God as the good) is the essence of
humankind
(iv) reason as a source of knowledge of God, of the kingdom of God, of the highest wisdom, has been devastated.
Note the naturalistic criticisms of reason: Freud
Marx
Foucault
postmodernists generally.
Note the theological criticisms of reason:
Paul (“…they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools….” Rom 1:21-22)
(“…the futility of their minds; they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them…..” Eph. 4:18) (Reason is impaired with respect to our life in God [knowledge of God]. This is not to say that reason has become irrational. (This would be a logical contradiction.) Irrationality is the obliteration of reason, not the corruption of reason. There is still an earthly wisdom and an earthly good of which fallen humankind is capable and which we ought not to disdain.)
Jeremiah (“…how long shall your evil thoughts lodge within you?” Jer. 4:14. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt. Who can understand it?” Jer. 17:9)
How much of the rational is rationalisation? The rationality of rationalisation is perfectly rational; it just happens to serve an unconscious end and provide the legitimisation of that end. In the same way the rationality of psychosis is rational.
Reason still functions adequately, e.g., with respect to mathematics. But as soon as reason is deployed in the service of a natural end beyond the relations of logic, the distortion of reason is evident.
The Christian faith affirms that grace alone (faith) frees reason from reason’s captivity and restores reason’s integrity. For this reason the command of God to love him with our minds is not impossible. Not to love God with our minds is both disobedience and idolatry. Faith is not a species of irrationality. Isaac Watts wrote a textbook on logic that was used for 40 years at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale. Wesley too wrote a text on logic. That which mathematics and science probes is the naturally intelligible.
Pascal: “Reason is never more reasonable than when it acknowledges the limits to reason.”
Syllabus
Theology of Luther
Department of Theology
Tyndale Seminary
Winter 2006
Thursday at 1:00 p.m.
Instructor: V. Shepherd
Office Hours as posted
Tel. 416 226 6380 ext. 6726 (office)
905 821 0587 (home)
email: victor.shepherd@sympatico.ca
Objective:
This course is meant to assist students in probing Luther’s theology both extensively and intensively
Aims: The aims of the course are
[1] to familiarize students with the vocabulary and logic of the Magisterial Reformation’s first major thinker;
[2] to understand Luther’s against its immediate philosophical, theological and humanistic background;
[3] to situate Luther’s singular theological expression amidst those of other Reformers and Roman Catholics;
[4] to investigate Luther’s oneness with and departure from the Renaissance;
[5] to appreciate the Magisterial Reformation as part of a movement that included Radical, Elizabethan, Catholic and Counter Reformations;
[6] to appreciate the significance of Luther’s theology for contemporary ecumenism.
Prerequisites:
THEO 05331 and THEO 0532 or THEO 0530
Text:
Timothy Lull, ed., Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings
Assignments:
Essay: Each student is to submit one 3000-word essay on a topic selected from the appended list of essay topics, or on any topic approved by the instructor. The deadline is not negotiable. An extension will not be granted (apart from medically documented illness or family emergencies such as death.) The penalty assigned for late submission will be one-third of a grade for each day late.
Examination: each student is to sit the in-class examination at the conclusion of the semester.
Evaluation:
The essay and the examination are each worth 50%.
Schedule:
| Jan. 12 | Introductions Class assignments The Religious Background to Luther Jan Huss |
| Jan. 19 | Renaissance Humanism Erasmus |
| Jan. 26 | Gabriel Biel and Late Mediaeval Scholasticism |
| Feb. 2 | The early Luther “Disputation Against Scholastic Theology” “The Ninety-Five Theses” “Preface to the Wittenberg Edition of Luther’s German Writings” |
| Feb. 16 | The Righteousness of God “Two Kinds of Righteousness” “A Meditation on Christ’s Passion” |
| Feb. 16 | Freedom in Christ “The Freedom of a Christian” |
| Feb. 23 | The Lord’s Supper (comparisons with Rome, Zwingli and Calvin) “The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ — Against the Fanatics” |
| March 2 | The Bondage of the Will “The Bondage of the Will — Introduction, Part VI, and Conclusion” |
| March 9 | Law and Gospel “A Brief Instruction on what to Look for and Expect in the Gospels” “Preface to the New Testament” “Preface to the Old Testament” |
| March 16 | (Reading Week) |
| March 23 | The Church “On The Council and the Church — Part III” |
| March 30 | Church and State “Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed” |
| April 6 | Marriage and Domestic Life “A Sermon on the Estate of Marriage” |
| April 13 | Antisemitism “Concerning the Jewish People: Was Luther A Son of Paul?” (paper by Victor Shepherd) |
| April 20 | Examination |
Essay Topics
What aspects of Renaissance Humanism most immediately affected the Reformation?
Was Erasmus a Christian? How did his work assist or contradict the Reformation?
What did mediaeval scholasticism mean by “justification”?
How does 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 is 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 does Luther mean by the “Righteousness of God”?
Expound Luther’s understanding of freedom. Contrast it with popular contemporary notions.
How do Luther and Calvin understand the relation of law to gospel?
What is Luther’s Ecclesiology?
What does Luther mean by “Two Kingdoms”?
Discuss the theology of Luther and Eck at the Diet of Worms.
What significance is attached to the following cities during Luther’s lifetime: Worms, Eisenach (the Wartburg), Leipzig, Augsburg, Marburg?
What is 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 does Luther understand faith? (fides qua creditur)
What is God’s mandate for the state, and how does Luther’s understanding here influence his advice during and subsequent to the peasant revolt?
(any topic approved by the instructor)
LUTHER BIBLIOGRAPHY
Althaus, P.; The Ethics of Martin Luther
The Theology of Martin Luther
Atkinson, J.; The Great Light: Luther and the Reformation
Martin Luther and the Birth of Protestantism
Martin Luther: A Prophet to the Church Catholic
Rome and Reformation: How Luther Speaks to the New Situation
d’Aubgine, J.; The Life and Times of Martin Luther
Bainton, R.; Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther
Blackman, H.; Luther, Translator of Paul: Studies in Romans and Galatians
Bornkamm, H.; Luther and the Old Testament
Luther in Mid-Career: 1521-1530
Luther’s World of Thought
Boyle, M.; Rhetoric and Reform: Erasmus’ Civil Dispute with Luther
Bratten, C.E., and Jenson, R.W.; Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther
Brecht, M.; Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, 1483-1521
Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation,1521-1532
Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church, 1532-1546
Brendler, G.; Martin Luther: Theology and Revolution
Crossley, R.; Luther and the Peasants’ War
Dickens, A.; The German Nation and Martin Luther
Martin Luther and the Reformation
Ebeling, G.; Luther: And Introduction to his Thought
Edwards, M.; Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics
Green, L.; How Melanchthon Helped Luther Discover the Gospel
Green, V.; Luther and the Reformation
Grisar, H.; Martin Luther: His Life and Work
Gritsch, E.; Martin Luther — God’s Court Jester
Gritsch, E., and Jenson, R.W.; Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and its Confessional Writings
Haendler, G.; Luther on Ministerial Office and Congregational Function
Haile, H.; Luther, An Experiment in Biography
Harran, H.; Luther on Conversion: The Early Years
Headley, J.; Luther’s View of Church History
Hendrix, S.; Luther and the Papacy: Stages in a Reformation Conflict
Hoffman, B.; Der Franckforter: The Theologica Germanica of Martin Luther
Luther and the Mystics
Hordern, W.; Experience and Faith: The Significance of Luther
For Understanding Today’s Experiential Religion
Jensen, D.; Confrontation at Worms: Martin Luther and the Diet of Worms
Jungel, E.; The Freedom of A Christian: Luther’s Significance for Contemporary Theology
Kittelson, J.; Luther the Reformer: The Study of the Man and his Career
Koeningsberger, H. (ed); Luther: A Profile
Kooiman, W.; Luther and the Bible
Leaver, R.; Luther on Justification
Lienhard, M.; Luther, Witness to Jesus Christ: Stages and Themes of the Reformer’s Christology
Lindsay, T.; Luther and the German Reformation
Loewen, H.; Luther and the Radicals
Loewenich, W.; Luther’s Theology of the Cross
Martin Luther: The Man and his Work
Lohse, B.; Martin Luther: And Introduction to his Life and Work
Mackinnon, J.; Luther and the Reformation
Marius, R.; Luther
McDonough, T.; The Law and the Gospel in Luther
McGoldrick, J.; Luther’s English Connection: The Religious Thought of Robert Barnes and William Tyndale
McGrath, A.; Luther’s Theology of the Cross: The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation
McSorley, H.; Luther: Right or Wrong?
Oberman, H.; The Dawn of the Reformation
The Impact of the Reformation
Martin Luther: Man Between God and the Devil
The Reformation: Roots and Ramifications
Olin, J., Smart, J., McNally, R.; Luther, Erasmus and the Reformation
Olivier, D.; The Trial of Luther
Pascal, R.; The Social Basis of the German Reformation
Pelikan, J.; Spirit Versus Structure: Luther and the Institutions of the Church
Pinomaa, L.; Faith Victorious: An Introduction to Luther’s Theology
Ritter, G.; Luther: His Life and Work
Rupp, E.; Luther’s Progress to the Diet of Worms
The Righteousness of God
Russell, W.R.; The Schmalkald Articles: Luther’s TheologicalTestament
Sasse, H.; This is My Body
Sessions, K. (ed); Reformation and Authority:
The Meaning of the Peasants’ Revolt
Sider, R. (ed); Karlstadt’s Battle with Luther
Siemen-Netto, U.; The Fabricated Luther: The Rise and Fall of the Shirer Myth.
Steinmetz, D.; Luther and Staupitz: An Essay in the Intellectual Origins of the Protestant Reformation
Luther in Context
Swihart, A.; Luther and the Lutheran Church
Tavard, G.; Justification: An Intellectual Study
Todd, J.; Luther, A Life
Martin Luther, A Biographical Study
Volkmar, L.; Luther’s Response to Violence
Watson, P.; Let God Be God!
Wood, A.; Captive to the Word
Zachman, R.; The Assurance of Faith
Background to the Reformation
Background to the Reformation
I
Did Luther tear apart a united Christendom?
Were the Reformers impatient? immoderate? unfaithful? simply wrong?
There were many tensions and crises on many fronts:
princes akin to warlords;
towns in tension with rural dwellers;
the Holy Roman Emperor in tension with kings and princes;
tension within the church between
(1) conciliarists and papalists,
(2) scholastics and humanists,
(3) those who sought greater spiritual depth and those contented with
e.g., masses for the dead and indulgences.
a shift from agricultural economy to an urban entrepreneurial economy.
II
Features of the turbulence:
[A] Religious upheaval:
Hussite movement
Waldensians
Late mediaevalists who sought simpler expression of the Christian faith
devoid of pomp and perversity
[B] Objections to Papal Power:
Erastianism
The question of Rome’s primacy
The precedent of France and England
Germany’s objection despite its political fragmentation
[C] Renaissance Humanism (see next week)
[D] Ecclesiastical corruption and public perception of it
III
The nature of the clergy
a: higher clergy
b: lower clergy
c: public perception
IV
The religious life of the common people
a: the prevalence of fear
b: the propensity for “revelations”
c: the place and proliferation of relics
d: the traffic in indulgences
e: the primacy of Jesus the Judge
f: the godliness of, e.g., the Brethren of the Common Life
g: mysticism
h: the nature of, e.g., the Devotio Moderna
V
The religious consequences of urbanization
VI
The influence of Occam
The authority of the church
The Council of Constance
VII
Other Forces:
[A] economic
[B] social unrest
[C] printing press
a: theological tomes
b: tracts and treatises, “occasional” writings
c: pamphlets
[D] new universities
Reverend V. Shepherd
A Note on Humanism
A Note on Humanism
I
The Renaissance was a transition from the mediaeval to the modern world, and this transition entailed a startlingly new “world-view.”
E.g., the rise of modern science as the “old science” was freed from the restrictions of philosophy that had attempted to deduce what had to happen in the naturalworld instead of having observers draw conclusions from what did.
E.g, the era of geographic exploration, presupposing a mindset of risk-taking, cutting loose from the safe/conventional, eagerness to be rid of what one regarded as inhibiting (i.e., the exploration and self-insertion into what was thought to entail greater human significance.)
E.g., a new impetus w.r.t. trade and commerce, entailing cultural and intellectual cross-fertilization.
E.g., the appreciation of and rewarding of individual effort as the guild system (a collectivity of sorts) dissolved. (Collectivism never produces outstanding culture; culture atrophied under Stalin and Hitler.)
II
The Renaissance involved political concentration. Even though in Germany and Italy the pope and emperor were strong enough to prevent a melding of nation-states (there were 300 fiefdoms in Germany alone, each governed by a prince), national forces were rising everywhere in Europe. Everywhere princes, newly confident, were attempting to free themselves from papal control, one consequence of which was the jettisoning of an ecclesiastical mindset. Underlying this was the “right” of the individual to revolt against tyranny or against anything that suppressed the full flowering of one’s humanity.
III
The Renaissance was enormously abetted by paper and printing. The massive emphasis on the literature of antiquity, not to mention the production of vernacular scriptures, as well as the huge tomes of the Reformers was possible only with paper and press. (Erasmus handled a book reverently.)
IV
The Renaissance, recovering antiquity, provided new raw materials for thought and new vistas and visions for self-making. What it meant to be a human being was to be forged in light of what was now regarded as the human good. Here the move was away from heteronomy and towards autonomy.
Religion was a part of this movement: a shift from submission to an extraneous authority that cramped self-enrichment, a shift towards a more autonomous, classically informed human self-expression and self-projection.
V
Ancient learning and art were crucial here. Latin had never perished during the middle ages (it was the language of every educated person), nor had all familiarity with Greek literature. Now, however, there was a new zeal for the language and literature of antiquity. Whereas, for instance, Latin had always been the language of the church, government (diplomacy) and law, Latin was now recognized to facilitate an authentically human wealth. (Knowledge of a language — any language — always admits the knower to a world.) A study of the classics was deemed necessary not merely to gain access to content but also to appreciate (and reproduce) the beauty of literary form.
It was felt that classical thought was both more rational (i.e., freed from mediaeval superstition and thought-forms) and more life-affirming. Greater scope was admitted for intellect (i.e., beyond philosophy and theology), affect, aesthetics, as well as an affirmation of sensuousness: the sheer exuberance of impassioned living. At first the church saw nothing inimical here, looking upon early humanism as a fresh appreciation of the manifold riches of the creation. Soon, however, an attempt was made to reconcile Christian thought with ancient philosophy. (Since humanism was chiefly a literary rather than a phil’l movement, it didn’t develop its own phil’l thought.) The “partner” with whom reconciliation was effected was Platonism. The Xn Platonists (whose greatest representative was likely Pico della Mirandola) shaped the Xn outlook in the direction of Platonism’s intellectual presuppositions, ethics, and human self-exaltation. These Xn Platonists insisted that not only is Israel the progenitor of Christ, so is Hellenism. (NB humanism’s undervaluation of the OT and its wicked antisemitism.)
VI
At first the papacy supported the humanist resurgence. The biggest ecclesiastical boost came from Pope Nicholas V (1447-55). A great lover of books, he founded the Vatican library and gathered around himself both scholars and artisans. (Humanists were always concerned with beauty.) Julius II (1503-13) stated that the head of the church was also to demonstrate leadership in intellectual and cultural developments. He instructed Michelangelo to represent him as Moses: Julius II saw himself as the leader who brings the church out of intellectual/cultural oppression, through a wilderness, and into a promised land. This was not a concern with mereaesthetics; aesthetics were regarded as facilitating union with God, enjoyment of God.
As humanism spread north from Italy, its birthplace, it found the German universities resistant: the scholasticism not of Aquinas but of Occam and Biel had a firm hold. The ghost of Aristotle remained, however, and it was deemed necessary to rid the university of Aristotle if humanist learning was to thrive. Anyone assisting the overthrow was deemed an ally –like Luther. (Soon the humanists saw that Luther was setting aside Ar., as well as Occam and Biel, for a very different reason. At this point the Renaissance and the Reformation parted.)
When the new learning did penetrate Germany it did so chiefly through people who had been trained in the schools of the Brethren of the Common Life. They regarded the new learning not so much as cultural enhancement to be appropriated immediately (as happened outside Germany) but rather as a tool of educational reform, and thence a tool to reform the church and improve social life. (Later humanists didn’t care about reforming the church.)
VII
At the same time humanism was spreading among the middle class people of the cities, especially Strassburg, Augsburg and Nuernburg. (NB how largely the first two will figure in the Reformation.) Among these urban humanists were German poets and teachers who didn’t magnify ancient paganism but rather insisted that all of life could be elevated and be found to have profounder significance as the mediaeval distinction between sacred and profane was collapsed.
Erfurt was the centre of German university humanism. Rufus Mutianus was its most prominent representative. Note his convictions, and note how they differed from the use that people from the BCL schools had wanted to make of humanism:
-Xy began a long time before the advent of Christ.
-the true Christ is not the God-man but the discarnate wisdom of God. (The true Christ can’t be seized by human hands.) this discarnate wisdom is the true son of God, and it alights equally on Jews, Greeks and Germans.
-the natural law is written on our hearts and makes us partakers of heaven.
-scripture is “fabulous”=full of fables (like Aesop), and teaches moral truths.
-“There is but one god and goddess; but there are man forms and many names: Jupiter, Sol, Apollo, Moses, Luna, Proserpina, Mary.” Humanists are aware of this; the ill-educated aren’t, and therefore should continue to be told the fables.
-Mutianus denounced the veneration of relics, fasts, auricular confession, masses for the dead.
-he wanted to be rid of intellectual strait-jackets, but didn’t want to break decisively with the church (like Erasmus); he (like most humanists) had no interest in the question that preoccupied the Reformers, righteousness=right-relatedness to God.
VIII
Ulrich von Hutten, intellectually precocious, wanted above all a united Germany under a “reformed” emperor. While he didn’t specify what such a person was to exemplify, no doubt it would be something other than what Luther had in mind. Hutten would support anyone who curbed the power of the papacy and ended papal siphoning of money out of Germany. Regarding himself Luther’s ally after the Leipzig debate, in fact he was poles removed from L’s theological and spiritual depth. Finally he could only express amazement at L’s passion for the gospel, which gospel L. knew to be qualitatively distinct from anything the humanists offered.
A most glorious exception to the above was Philip Melanchthon. He was a superbly trained humanist as well as the first systematic theologian of the Reformation. (After the death of Erasmus [1531] P.M. was the finest Greek scholar in all of Europe.)
IX
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.
X
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 important in the formation of Christians and clergy!
Reverend V. Shepherd
Gabriel Biel
GABRIEL BIEL
? – 1495
was born at Speyer during the 1st quarter of the 15th 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 of God.)
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?
partly by a natural knowledge of God and his will;
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. todign., 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 to dignitas; [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 toinitiate the 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 16th 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.
faith is not knowledge in the sense of information (see #5), even as there is always a cognitive content to faith.
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.
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.
Rev. Victor Shepherd
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
denial of natural theology
denial of the scholastic method of theology
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.)
Reverend V. Shepherd
Luther and “Mystical” Experience
Luther and “Mystical” Experience
I
In his note on Rom. 5 Luther wrote, “Once I was carried away to the third heaven.”
Yet L. never based his theological authority on special revelations or mystical experiences.
Still, he knew that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit meant that God draws us into God’s own life, thus giving rise to our experience.
L. distanced himself from the mediaeval mystics with their “ladder:” purgatio, illuminatio, unio.
L. insists we encounter God but are never absorbed into God so as to blur the distinction between creature and Creator.
II
Three kinds of mysticism have been identified:
Dionysian. It sidesteps the incarnation and speculates about God.
Latin. It emphasizes the earthly Christ and mysticism as experience rather than as doctrine. However it sidesteps spiritual Anfechtung and deploys an erotic vocabulary while upholding an ecstatic union with the uncreated world.
German. It maintains that the true purgatory is self-despair, and such despair is an experience, a genuine foretaste, of hell.
Luther: (a) Dionysian mysticism is rejected.
(b) Latin mysticism is accepted with qualifications: its emphasis on the earthly Christ, plus
its recognition that Christ is known ultimately in experience rather than merely as
doctrine.
Its denial of the place of Anfechtung, its erotic vocabulary/conceptuality, and its
ecstatic union with the uncreated world are all rejected.
(c) German mysticism is accepted without qualification. (A proper understanding of the
Law drives us to self-despair.)
Luther repudiates all speculation, insisting that it belongs inherently to a theology of glory rather than to a theology of the cross.
At the same time Luther never denies the validity of an experience of God so deep and vivid that no words can do justice to it. Just as Paul, in 2nd Cor. 12, speaks of his ecstatic experience (plainly it’s important to him) yet never proclaims it instead of the “Word of the cross”, so Luther insists that “proper theology should precede mystical theology.”
L.’s point is that accessus has priority over raptus; i.e., we are granted access to God through justifying faith-clinging grasp of the crucified; only Christ-crucified (and faith’s seizing him) gives us access to God, not mystical rapture. I.e., faith is our accessus to the raptus.
L. always repudiated the notion that our love for God (or Jesus Christ) is the bond that unites us to him. Those mystics who said it is also spoke of Christ’s “sweet” embrace and of the delights of all this. L. insists that Christ’s embrace isn’t merely sweet but also deadly: to be embraced by Christ is to be embraced by one who knows most profoundly God-forsakenness, the feeling of which (but not, of course, the actuality) will torment the Christian many times over in his or her life. The Christian, identified with the crucified, is henceforth immersed in the turbulent, treacherous world and never flees it for “sweetness.”
L. disagrees with the radical reformers on the grounds that they aren’t radical enough: they separate faith in the heart from Christ in heaven, when these can never be separated. The believer’s identification with Christ is “not an imagined but a real matter,” never a metaphorical but a real way of speaking.
III
For L. the venue of our profoundest experience of God is conflict, tribulation, Anfechtung. (Shepherd: The risen one is the crucified one: Jesus is raised wounded. The resurrection is the triumph and efficacy of the still-bleeding Christ, not the transcending of his crucifiedness.)
Just as Christ moves history towards its fulfillment by means of the cross, so he moves Christians toward theirs by means of their suffering.
The “groaning” as in Rom. 8 describes the complete identification with Christ. Then just as simul (totus) iustus et peccator describes the Christian, so does simul gemitus et raptus.
Reverend Victor Shepherd
Freedom of a Christian
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.
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.)
“Word of God” in the Thought of Martin Luther
“Word of God” in the Thought of Martin Luther
Its Sevenfold Sense
1] the essential content of the gospel, where “gospel” is “the promise of God fulfilled in our midst (i.e., in Jesus Christ.)
L’s five-word summary: “Christus Gottesohn ist unser Heiland. (Cf. the early church’s acrostic, Iesous Christos Theou Huios Soter.)
“Promise” for L always implies “fulfilled in Christ.” E.g., “The promise is the content of the Lord’s Supper” or “We cling to the promise in dark moments.”
2] the medium or vehicle of revelation: Christ’s redeeming work benefits us only as it is communicated to us. E.g., “The Word conveys, pours out, proffers and gives to me the forgiveness won on the cross.” The Word “administers” what Christ has wrought for us.
3] that which makes past and present contemporaneous Here L has in mind the force of “remember” in Hebrew. The Word renders a past event the determinant of my existence now.
4] that alone which can be received by faith, even as faith is that which the Word, in its intrinsic militancy and efficacy, forges in cold and stony hearts.
5] that which quickens a faith which is inherently personal and individual yet also necessarily social The scope of the word is not merely a renewed heart but also a renewed cosmos.
1519 — L’s first published sermon on the sacrament contains “brotherhood” in the title
1521 — L writes on the cancellation of private masses
1526 — L speaks of the Lord’s Supper as rendering fellow-believers ein Kuechen , a cake whose ingredients interpenetrate each other
In short, the Word fosters that faith which anticipates the Messianic banquet.
6] that which witnesses to the “absurdity” of Christian truth, pre-eminently in L’s theologia crucis.
The truth is neither a species of rationalism nor philosophical speculation nor a superstructure added to an Aristotelian foundation.
What besides absurdity is a crucified Messiah? a dying conqueror of death? The Word never dovetails with human categories but rather forges the categories in terms of which alone the Word can be understood. Luther relished all the paradoxes and seeming contradictions of the gospel. These paradoxes paradoxically bring us the reality, blessing, miracle, solidity and efficacy of our redemption and renewal in Christ, while non-absurd rationalism brings nihilitudo, a neo-logism L coined to express rationalism’s ultimate nothingness.
7] Scripture (L never wrote a treatise on the authority of Scripture.)
Note the contrast between Luther and later Lutheran Orthodoxy:
L the canon of Scripture is to be found within Scripture.
LLO the canon is equated with the text.
L the authority of Scripture derives from the authority of the gospel (i.e., of Christ.)
LLO the authority of Scripture derives from its having been “verbally
dictated.”
L Scripture is revelatory in that it is the unique, normative witness to
him who is the revelation of God, Jesus Christ.
LLO Scripture itself is revealed. There is no distinction between “Word
of God” and “Scripture.”
For L there is a distinction but never separation or confusion.
Note Luther’s insistence: Since the gospel is the sword of the Spirit (Eph. 6:17), “We will not long preserve the gospel without the languages [i.e., Hebrew and Greek]. The languages are the sheath in which this sword of the Spirit is contained.”
Reverend Victor Shepherd
Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Anabaptists On The Lord’s Supper
Luther (1483 – 1546), Calvin (1509 – 1564) and Zwingli (1484 – 1531) and Anabaptists
On The Lord’s Supper
LUTHER
The conceptual “tools” in his toolbox were those of mediaeval Aristotelianism: substance and accident.
Substance: a thing’s definition, its “whatness”; e.g., that which renders bread bread.
Accident: a thing’s appearance; e.g, bread’s colour, taste, smell, texture.
Luther objected to Rome’s notion of transubstantiation (promulgated at the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215). It presupposed
priestly powers vested in a man by virtue of ordination at the hands of an institution defined by its hierarchical order of priest, bishop, cardinal, pope;
the sacrifice of the mass.
Luther maintained
the mass is not a sacrifice;
ordination (by church of Rome) does not confer power to effect transubstantiation.
the clergy do not constitute the church;
all Christians are “priests”, ordained through baptism;
there is no distinction before God between clergy and laity; therefore the cup should be given to the laity (and clergy should be allowed to marry);
Christ is “really” present in the sacrament. “Before I drink mere wine with the Swiss I shall drink blood with the pope”;
the manner of Christ’s presence is consubstantiation, since the substance of Christ’s body and bloody (i.e, Christ himself) is present with the substance of bread and wine;
while Christ’s ubiquity means he is present everywhere, he is received “sacramentally” on account of the promise attending the institution;
Since Christ is “in” the elements, all communicants receive him; believers to their blessing, unbelievers to their destruction.
CALVIN
Superbly trained as a humanist (like Zwingli) Calvin’s toolbox contained the tools of Renaissance humanism rather than mediaeval philosophy. (The Renaissance wrote much literature, very little philosophy.)
Calvin objected to Luther’s consubstantiation, finding it no improvement on transubstantiation, and regarding it as cannibalism in any case.
Calvin maintained
Jesus Christ is not ubiquitous throughout the universe but rather is “located” in heaven;
by the strength, power (vis, vires [plural], Latin) of the Holy Spirit, believers are drawn up to heaven whereby they receive Christ to their blessing; (this position, following the Latin, is sometimes called “virtualism”. However, “virtualism” has nothing to do with modern notions of “virtual”, “as if”);
faith alone receives Christ (everywhere in Calvin, because everywhere in scripture); unbelievers do not receive him, since the Saviour cannot be received to anyone’s destruction;
communicants receive Christ in the totality of his reality: body and blood; i.e., they do not receive something “spiritual” in the sense of a disembodied spectre. At the same time, they do not “chew his flesh” (Luther). Concerning this viewpoint Calvin said, “Every time Luther mentions the Lord’s Supper he has in mind something that a butcher handles”;
the primary purpose of the sacrament is to strengthen weak faith (i.e., strengthen in Christ those who remain sinners in themselves); the secondary purpose is to pledge publicly our loyalty to our Lord.
ZWINGLI
Zwingli, following the Latin meaning of sacramentum (the oath whereby a Roman soldier pledged his loyalty to his commanding officer), puts first what Calvin put second.
Zwingli is everywhere falsely accused of “bare memorialism”– e.g., “For Calvin the elements exhibit a Saviour who is present; for Zwingli they recall one who is absent.”
Zwingli, the most woodenly literal of the Reformers in his reading of scripture, yet the least literal on the Lord’s Supper, maintained
in Hoc est meum corpus the word est means not “is” but “signifies” (as in “I am the door” — i.e., Jesus isn’t telling us he is rectangular and made of wood);
in the Supper believers do receive Christ, but they don’t eat him; i.e., Jesus is the diner but not the dinner. (Three months before his death Z. wrote, “Jesus Christ is received in conjunction with the elements”);
Calvin was wrong in accusing him of proffering an empty sacrament (“naked and empty signs”);
Calvin was correct in points (i) through (v) above;
Calvin was deficient in not recognizing the sacrament to bind believers to one another in the congregation as well as to their Lord. {NB}
ANABAPTISTS
There were many Anabaptist spokespersons, the best-known of whom is Menno Simons. In general they maintained
a “thing-holiness” is indefensible ; holiness does not pertain to things (books, bread, wine, vestments, candles, bells) but rather to relationships. Here the Magisterial Reformers are no better than Rome — both are wrong — in discussing the Lord’s Supper in terms of a holiness that attends elements. (Shepherd: I think it can be asked fairly if the Magisterial Reformers ever upheld what the Anabaptists imputed to them.)
they are unjustly accused of promoting “bare memorialism”; Christ is “really” present not to inert elements but rather to the congregation. In other words, the fellowship of believers rather than the elements is the vehicle of Christ’s continual self-bestowal. (I.e., they too do not believe in the “real absence”);
the church consists of Christians who are sinless by definition [here the Magisterial Reformers disagree totally: sinless people would have no need of the supper]; the supper maintains them in their sinlessness;
the supper pledges believers in the Anabaptist congregation/community to give up their lives for each other as Christ gave up his for them. {NB}
Note: Everything said above with respect to the Lord’s Supper could be said of preaching; namely, how is a creaturely item (a sermon delivered by a human being and a sinner as well) become the vehicle of Christ’s self-utterance and self-bestowal?
(It is assumed that no one will admit to believing in the transubstantiation of the sermon, the unqualified identification of the words of the preacher with the self-utterance of God.)
An Overview of Luther’s Understanding Of The Bondage of the Will
An Overview of Luther’s Understanding
Of
The Bondage of the Will
Systemic Sinnership (not merely actual sins committed) is the primal predicament of humankind before God. ThisSin is unbelief. Unbelief isn’t cerebral agnosticism but rather the ungrateful, contemptuous denial of God’s goodness and repudiation of his command (gift). “Unbelief is not one of the grosser passions, but sits and holds sway at the summit — the citadel of the will and reason, just like its opposite, faith.” (214)
The human predicament is universal: there are no exceptions to it or modifications of it or alternatives to it.
While the structure of reason survives the Fall (otherwise fallen humans would no longer be human), the integrity of reason does not (otherwise fallen humans could reason themselves out of their predicament.)
To assert “free choice” (i.e., the freedom or non-bondage of the will) is insist that we can will ourselves out of our predicament, and therefore to affirm self-justification.
Perforce the righteousness we need but cannot furnish for ourselves has to be gift.
The gift of righteousness isn’t the gift of something but is rather the self-bestowal of Jesus Christ, the Righteous One himself.
This gift has to be revealed to us, since humankind cannot anticipate the nature of its depravity or the nature of righteousness or the means by which it is wrought for us (the cross) or the nature of our coming to possess it. I.e., because Sin not only corrupts us but also blinds us we cannot foresee the nature of our predicament, the nature of its cure, or the nature of the application of the cure.
Since the gift is gift, it can only be owned in faith, faith being, amidst much else, the admission that “Nothing in our hands we bring.”
Since we live in sin, and therein come to apprehend that sin lives in us, we can live in Christ (and live out of Christ, live from Christ) only as Christ lives in us.
To say we contribute, however slightly, to our justification is to claim a residual capacity, however slight, for reason or will with respect to our “rightwising” before God.
In sum, the affirmation of “free choice” eliminates every aspect of the gospel: “the purpose of grace, the promise of God, the meaning of the law, original sin, divine election.” (203)
Reverend V. Shepherd
Luther and Marriage
Outline of Lecture on
Luther and Marriage
Reformation conviction supported justification by faith, communion in both kinds, and clerical marriage.
The Protestant understanding of marriage contradicted late mediaeval estimations:
marriage is an unhappy estate
marriage is vitiated by the depravity of women.
Luther was the 16th century’s chief critic of Aristotle concerning marriage
women are botched males
if copulation and conception were error-free, a male would result every time.(Aristotle regarded a woman as halfway between an animal and a man.)
L faulted the church having written nothing good about marriage (e.g., Jerome, Cyprian, Augustine, Gregory.)
A 1494 vernacular catechism maintained that laity “sin in the marital duty” (i.e., commit the 3rd deadly sin) by [1] unnatural positions for intercourse (any position that maximizes pleasure while
minimizing the likelihood of conception), contraception or masturbation,
[2] fantasizing about a non-spouse while performing with spouse,
[3] fantasizing about a non-spouse while not performing with spouse,
[4] withholding sex for no acceptable reason, thus precipitating one’s spouse to
adultery,
[5] having sex during forbidden seasons (any season of Penance), menstruation, final
weeks of pregnancy, while one’s wife was lactating,
[6] by continuing to have sex with one’s spouse when (s)he was known to be
adulterous,
[7] having sex for sheer pleasure of it.
L transferred the mediaeval praise of monastic life to marriage. (Contrast Jerome’s scale [0-100]: 100 for virginity, 60 for widowhood, 30 for marriage.)
Modern feminists criticize the Reformers for regarding women chiefly in their roles as wife and mother. Feminists argue that women had far more autonomy in the cloister and the bordello. Still, the Reformers implicitly recognized women as persons in insisting that there was no self-respect for women in a bordello, and many women had been placed in cloisters against their will, and could there be easily bullied by superiors.
L encouraged families to removed daughters from convents and encouraged the publication of testimonies of escaped nuns.
L opposed the “dishonest” arrangements that the mediaeval church had encouraged:
e.g., secret marriages,
e.g., forbidding marriage for exaggerated rules of consanguinity and “spiritual affinity”
(between candidate for marriage and siblings of godparents)
e.g., forbidding marriage for defective eyesight or speech
e.g., forbidding marriage between Christian and non-Christian.
Note: marriage is a “creation mandate”, an order of
creation and a commandment of God. It is not a sacrament,
since (i) it doesn’t have dominical institution, (ii) a
means of grace shouldn’t be accessible to married people
only.
L preferred that parental permission be secured, but didn’t require it.
L extolled marriage, and endlessly praised his wife, Katarina von Bora.
L broke new ground in “estate planning” by willing everything to his wife.
L insisted that physical attraction might initiate a relationship, but it would never bet he ground of it. The “cement” in marriage is the persistent willingness to make sacrifices.
“It’s when the spouse is sick that one learns the meaning of marriage.”
L permitted the re-marriage of divorced people, and permitted secret bigamy to divorce/re-marriage in cases involving impotence.
L opposed harsh penalties for adultery lest the estranged couple be driven further apart.
L loved his six children (Hans, Elizabeth, Magdalene, Marta, Paul, Margaretha), and was disconsolate at the deaths of Elizabeth (18 months) and Magdalene (13 years.)
Syllabus
The Theology of John Calvin (THEO 0632)
Department of Theology
Tyndale Seminary
Winter 2004
Instructor: Victor Shepherd
Office Hours as Posted
Thursday from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Tel. 416 226 6380 (6726) or 905 821 0587
E-mail: vshepherd@tyndale.ca or victor.shepherd@sympatico.ca
Prerequisite: THEO 0531 and THEO 0532 or THEO 0530
Description: The course endeavours to acquaint students with the major aspects of Calvin’s theology as organized in the final edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559).
Objectives:
1. to examine in detail the doctrines that are commonly recognized as major “building blocks” of the
Christian faith;
2. to have the student understand how these doctrines are related to each other and how their
relationship illustrates the unity and coherence of Calvin’s thought;
3. to situate Calvin’s theological understanding in the history of the Church, in the sixteenth century
Reformation, and in Reformed developments subsequent to the Reformation;
4. to grasp the variegated background (social, political, ecclesiastical) of Calvin in particular and the
Reformation in general;
5. to assess critically the adequacy and consistency of Calvin’s theological expression.
6. to perceive the pastoral sensitivity of the Institutes
7. to understand Calvin as pastor, churchman and civic official, all with a view to informing the student’s
own life, ministry and witness.
Requirements:
– readings: of selected passages from the Institutes
– essay: a theologically critical exposition of and commentary upon Sadoleto’s Letter to the Genevans
and Calvin’s Reply to Sadoleto (approximately 2000 words)
– examination (in class.)
Textbooks:
To be purchased: Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (Library of Christian Classics. editor,
John T. McNeill; translator, Ford Lewis Battles.)
: A Reformation Debate: Sadoleto’s Letter to the Genevans and Calvin’s Reply
(John C. Olin, editor.)
To be consulted: Francois Wendel, Calvin: The Origins and Development of his Religious Thought.
Evaluation:
essay: 40%
examination: 60%
| Jan. 22 | Introductions, Requirements; Calvin Biography | |
| Jan. 29 | Knowledge of God | Book I: chapters 1-5 |
| Feb. 5 | Scripture | I: 6,7,9,10 |
| Feb. 12 | Providence | I: 16,17,18 |
| Feb. 19 | Trinity | I: 13 |
| Feb. 26 | Law and Gospel | II: 7,9-11 |
| Mar. 4 | The Mediator and His Work | II: 6,12,13,15,16 |
| Mar. 11 | The Holy Spirit and Faith | III: 1,2 |
| Mar. 18 | No Class: Reading Week | |
| Mar. 25 | Justification | III: 11,14 |
| Apr. 1 | Predestination | III: 21,22 (omit 6-9), 23,24 |
| Apr. 8 | Church and Ministry | IV: 1,8 |
| Apr. 15 | Sacraments, Baptism | IV: 14,15,17 |
| Apr. 22 | Lord’s Supper | “ |
| Apr. 29 | Examination |
A bibliography will be distributed in class.
Law & Gospel
Law and Gospel
[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 means 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)
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.
The Mediator and His Work
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 the homooousion.)
[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.)
The Holy Spirit and Faith
The Holy Spirit and Faith
Note C’s fullest definition of faith:
“A firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence towards us,
founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ,
both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts
through the Holy Spirit.” 3.2.7.
While the foregoing may appear abstract, faith (which is the “putting on” of Christ or the bond that unites us with Christ) bespeaks utmost personal intimacy:
“We ought not to separate Christ from ourselves or ourselves from him. Rather we ought to hold fast bravely with both hands to that fellowship by which he has bound himself to us.” 3.2.24.
Faith is never a human achievement, but it is always a human event, a human affirmation, a human act. Faith is a gift (from God) that must always be humanly exercised. As the bond by which we are bound to Christ faith is that “fellowship” to which we must hold fast bravely with both hands.
I
A: Book III is the climax (in my opinion) of the Institutes; books I and II are for the sake of book III, “The Way in which We Receive the Grace of Christ: What Benefits Come to Us from It, and What Effects Follow.”
The place of faith in C’s theology cannot be overemphasised: apart from our “putting on” Christ in faith we don’t “benefit” from him. All he has done for us is “in vain” unless it is also done in us through faith.
B: The discussion of justification (always related to faith in the Reformers) lands us in some of the most impassioned writing of the Reformation. (Justification and the eucharist were the occasion of greater controversy than anything else. Concerning sanctification, for instance, there was little controversy.) Unlike us modern degenerates who see theology as little more than pointless head-games, the 16thcentury recognised Truth to be at issue, and with Truth (i.e., reality as opposed to error, delusion or falsehood), truths as well.
What is the relation between Truth and truths?
II
Holy Spirit
(i) In C the HS is always conjoined to the Word, for “there is a permanent relation between faith and the Word.” 3.2.6.
(ii) Faith is the principal work of the HS. 3.1.4. Faith is the proper and entire work of the HS. 4.14.8.
We cannot quicken faith in ourselves or predispose ourselves for it in any way. “There is not in us any commencement of faith or any preparation of it.” Comm. John 6:45
(iii) Faith is always determined by its author and its object (the Word.) The Word is Jesus Christ, but not this figure alone. The Word is Jesus Christ together with the apostolic recognition of the truth concerning him. I.e., the Christ we are to receive is always and only “as he is offered by the Father: namely, clothed with his gospel.” 3.2.6.
(Word as subject or author) Only Jesus Christ can direct faith to Christ; i.e., the Word alone creates access to the Word. While Jesus Christ is the “goal” of our faith, the gospel (ultimately, JC as attested by the apostles in the power of the Spirit) must “go before us.” 3.2.6. The gospel alone admits (and invites) people to the gospel. “Hence we infer that faith is not in one’s power, but is divinely conferred.” Comm. 1 Cor. 2:14
(iv) Mercy is that aspect of the Word which quickens faith. In fact, so thoroughly does mercy determine the Word that Calvin doesn’t hesitate to say that the Word is mercy. (We seek God after we know ourselves to be the beneficiary of God’s mercy [salvation]. 3.2.7.) While God addresses many words to us, the Word (of mercy) gathers them up and melds them into that which subserves the one, determinative word of mercy; i.e., everything that God says and visits upon us is ultimately an expression of his mercy – even as penultimately it may be anything else at all: rebuke, warning, anger, denunciation, testing, encouragement, gentleness, severity, etc. See Comm. Psalms 40:10; 25:10; 86:5; 103:8; 145:9; Rom. 10:8. In Inst. 3.2.29 C maintains that mercy is the “proper” goal of faith. The Latin text reads, fidei in proprium scopum. Proprium means “characteristic”, “essential”, “exclusive”, all of which are stronger than Battles’ “proper.” Mercy is that in God upon which we can “rest.” Comm. Hebrews 11:7
(v) Faith, while not reducible to understanding doctrinal assertions (notitia, if found alone, is what C calls “empty notions flitting in the brain”) is none the less knowledge. Faith is a singular kind of knowing, not an alternative to knowing or a vagueness that falls short of knowing.
(vi) Faith entails assurance. “Where there is no assurance of faith there is no faith.” Comm. Rom. 8:16 “As assurance of this nature is a thing that is above the capacity of the human mind, it is the part of the Holy Spirit to confirm within what God promises in his Word.” Comm. 2 Cor. 1:22
Note: Since faith is the entire work of the HS, then the HS imparts assurance only by imparting faith in Christ, which faith brings assurance with it. “The Spirit of God gives us such testimony that when he is our guide and teacher our spirit is made sure of the adoption of God; for our mind, of itself, without the preceding testimony of the Spirit, could not convey to us this assurance.” Comm. Rom. 8:16
(vii) Faith is always to be distinguished from “implicit faith” and “unformed faith.” “Implicit faith” is lending assent to what the church (of Rome ) teaches without understanding any of it. Something of the gospel has to be understood or faith is indistinguishable from superstition. Calvin opposes any notion that the church can “do our thinking and believing for us.” At the same time he admits that there is a legitimate “implicit faith”: even as we embrace Christ truly, we never know him exhaustively. At every stage of our discipleship our understanding and experience of Christ now, however profound (and Calvin’s point is that it’s never very profound) is “implicit” compared to the vastly “more” that is to be rendered explicit.
Unformed faith, says Calvin, is no faith at all. Roman Catholic thought maintained that faith is formed by love. If faith is formed by love then faith requires supplementation (and our supplementation at that!) in order to be faith. Faith that requires supplementation is not faith. Calvin prefers to say that faith is active in love. Yet Calvin is aware of how little love is frequently found active in faith. Vide his Comm. John 13:17: “Since…there are many who are cold and slow in the duties of love…it shows us how far we still are from the light of faith.”
(viii) Calvin’s notion of faith does not support the Weber/Tawney thesis at all. Faith is aware that “God will never fail”, even as “faith does not certainly promise itself either length of years or honour or riches in this life, since the Lord willed that none of these things be appointed for us.” 3.2.28
Luther’s Theologia Crucis
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 oral (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 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 pietism) 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 trail is to have no trial, for trial keeps faith alive and vibrant.
Supra- (and Infra)lapsarianism
Supra- (and Infra)lapsarianism
Su=supralapsarian(ism)
In=infralapsarian(ism)
Su: The decree of election precedes the decrees of creation and fall.
The fall is decreed. Its being decreed magnifies God’s glory, since
(i) nothing happens apart from God’s will,
(ii) that fall which God decrees ultimately renders even more splendid the splendour of redemption.
In: The decree of election follows creation (which God wills) and fall (which God permits.)
Comments and Criticisms
Su:
(i) puts grace at the head of all Christian knowledge and understanding,
(ii) affirms God to be utterly unconditioned, since his redeeming activity is not something brought in as if the fall had (for the moment) obstructed his plans,
(iii) accuses In. of impugning the omniscience and omnipotence of God (since something happened – the fall – that God didn’t will),
(iv) affirms that creation is the venue or theatre by which God concretises the twofold decree (election and reprobation.) (QUESTION: Is this a biblical understanding of creation?)
————————
In:
(i) subordinates election/reprobation to providence (as Calvin did in 1536 Inst. but “corrected” in 1559 Inst.)
(ii) insists that God permits evil; God makes use of evil in the course of God’s glorifying himself. But God doesn’t will evil in positing the decree of election.
Note I: Since election is subordinate to providence, (i.e., since providence precedes election), therefore the God who wills a people for himself in Jesus Christ cannot be the God with whom we have to do. Then who is God? I.e., who is God if God isn’t he who elects in Christ from eternity a people for himself? Is God a deity whose nature remains unknown to us in that whatever his nature, fashioning a people for himself is tangential to his nature? Is the heart of God something other than mercy?
Note II: Because humankind was not created as elect in Christ, infralapsarian anthropology tended not to be a predicate of Christology, and therefore degenerated into a naturalistic doctrine of humankind.
Su. was accused constantly of making God the author of sin. I.e., Su. exalted the sovereignty of God in such a way as to demystify the mystery of evil and to make the irrational rational – all in the course of making evil a part of the divine world-order and therefore a necessity.
In. was accused of being dualist, because something exists (evil) that isn’t God-willed.
In. defended itself
(i) evil is real as evil, not as an aspect of good. (It would have to be an aspect of good if God (who is good) decreed it.)
(ii) God foreordains no one to perdition, the reprobate receiving the justice of God. They merit this on account of their fall, but their fall isn’t God-ordained.
(iii) to say that God’s purpose includes evil for a the sake of election/reprobation is to excuse evil.
The strength of Su: God is he who elects a people for himself from all eternity in Jesus Christ. Everything else subserves this truth.
The strength of In: God is not the author of that which contradicts him and against which his face is set.
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 17th 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 publi c
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 achievemement
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 whichatonement (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
On The Lord’s Supper
Luther (1483 – 1546), Calvin (1509 – 1564) and Zwingli (1484 – 1531) and Anabaptists
On The Lord’s Supper
LUTHER
The conceptual “tools” in his toolbox were those of mediaeval Aristotelianism: substance and accident.
Substance: a thing’s definition, its “whatness”; e.g., that which renders bread bread.
Accident: a thing’s appearance; e.g, bread’s colour, taste, smell, texture.
Luther objected to Rome’s notion of transubstantiation (promulgated at the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215). It presupposed
(i) priestly powers vested in a man by virtue of ordination at the hands of an institution defined by its hierarchical order of priest, bishop, cardinal, pope;
(ii) the sacrifice of the mass.
Luther maintained
(i) the mass is not a sacrifice;
(ii) ordination (by church of Rome) does not confer power to effect transubstantiation.
(iii) the clergy do not constitute the church;
(iv) all Christians are “priests”, ordained through baptism;
(v) there is no distinction before God between clergy and laity; therefore the cup should be given to the laity (and clergy should be allowed to marry);
(vi) Christ is “really” present in the sacrament. “Before I drink mere wine with the Swiss I shall drink blood with the pope”;
(vii) the manner of Christ’s presence is consubstantiation, since the substance of Christ’s body and bloody (i.e, Christ himself) is present with the substance of bread and wine;
(viii) while Christ’s ubiquity means he is present everywhere, he is received “sacramentally” on account of the promise attending the institution;
(ix) Since Christ is “in” the elements, all communicants receive him; believers to their blessing, unbelievers to their destruction.
CALVIN
Superbly trained as a humanist (like Zwingli) Calvin’s toolbox contained the tools of Renaissance humanism rather than mediaeval philosophy. (The Renaissance wrote much literature, very little philosophy.)
Calvin objected to Luther’s consubstantiation, finding it no improvement on transubstantiation, and regarding it as cannibalism in any case.
Calvin maintained
(i) Jesus Christ is not ubiquitous throughout the universe but rather is “located” in heaven;
(ii) by the strength, power (vis, vires [plural], Latin) of the Holy Spirit, believers are drawn up to heaven whereby they receive Christ to their blessing; (this position, following the Latin, is sometimes called “virtualism”. However, “virtualism” has nothing to do with modern notions of “virtual”, “as if”);
(iii) faith alone receives Christ (everywhere in Calvin, because everywhere in scripture); unbelievers do not receive him, since the Saviour cannot be received to anyone’s destruction;
(iv) communicants receive Christ in the totality of his reality: body and blood; i.e., they do not receive something “spiritual” in the sense of a disembodied spectre. At the same time, they do not “chew his flesh” (Luther). Concerning this viewpoint Calvin said, “Every time Luther mentions the Lord’s Supper he has in mind something that a butcher handles”;
(v) the primary purpose of the sacrament is to strengthen weak faith (i.e., strengthen in Christ those who remain sinners in themselves); the secondary purpose is to pledge publicly our loyalty to our Lord.
ZWINGLI
Zwingli, following the Latin meaning of sacramentum (the oath whereby a Roman soldier pledged his loyalty to his commanding officer), puts first what Calvin put second.
Zwingli is everywhere falsely accused of “bare memorialism”– e.g., “For Calvin the elements exhibit a Saviour who is present; for Zwingli they recall one who is absent.”
Zwingli, the most woodenly literal of the Reformers in his reading of scripture, yet the least literal on the Lord’s Supper, maintained
(i) in Hoc est meum corpus the word est means not “is” but “signifies” (as in “I am the door” — i.e., Jesus isn’t telling us he is rectangular and made of wood);
(ii) in the Supper believers do receive Christ, but they don’t eat him; i.e., Jesus is the diner but not the dinner. (Three months before his death Z. wrote, “Jesus Christ is received in conjunction with the elements”);
(iii) Calvin was wrong in accusing him of proffering an empty sacrament (“naked and empty signs”);
(iv) Calvin was correct in points (i) through (v) above;
(v) Calvin was deficient in not recognizing the sacrament to bind believers to one another in the congregation as well as to their Lord. {NB}
ANABAPTISTS
There were many Anabaptist spokespersons, the best-known of whom is Menno Simons. In general they maintained
(i) a “thing-holiness” is indefensible ; holiness does not pertain to things (books, bread, wine, vestments, candles, bells) but rather to relationships. Here the Magisterial Reformers are no better than Rome — both are wrong — in discussing the Lord’s Supper in terms of a holiness that attends elements. (Shepherd: I think it can be asked fairly if the Magisterial Reformers ever upheld what the Anabaptists imputed to them.)
(ii) they are unjustly accused of promoting “bare memorialism”; Christ is “really” present not to inert elements but rather to the congregation. In other words, the fellowship of believers rather than the elements is the vehicle of Christ’s continual self-bestowal. (I.e., they too do not believe in the “real absence”);
(iii) the church consists of Christians who are sinless by definition [here the Magisterial Reformers disagree totally: sinless people would have no need of the supper]; the supper maintains them in their sinlessness;
(iv) the supper pledges believers in the Anabaptist congregation/community to give up their lives for each other as Christ gave up his for them. {NB}
Note: Everything said above with respect to the Lord’s Supper could be said of preaching; namely, how is a creaturely item (a sermon delivered by a human being and a sinner as well) become the vehicle of Christ’s self-utterance and self-bestowal?
(It is assumed that no one will admit to believing in the transubstantiation of the sermon, the unqualified identification of the words of the preacher with the self-utterance of God.)
Syllabus
THE THEOLOGY OF JOHN WESLEY
Tyndale Seminary
Winter 2004
Instructor: Reverend Victor Shepherd
416 226 6380 (ext. 6726)
Tuesdays at 8:30 a.m.
Office Hours as posted
e-mail: vshep@tyndale.ca or victor.shepherd@sympatico.ca
Prerequisite: successful completion of THEO 053 and 0532 or Theo 0530.
Course Description:
This course examines major aspects of Wesley’s theology as expounded chiefly in his Sermons on Several Occasions. Theological, ecclesiastical, social and intellectual environments will be probed, as well as developments in post-Wesley Wesleyanism. Attention will be given to the nuances of the denominations represented by those enrolled in the course
Course Objectives:
[1] to acquaint students with representative material from Wesley himself;
[2] to have students appreciate the multiform context (social, intellectual, religious and theological) in which Wesley wrote theology;
[3] to have students understand how theology, for Wesley, was always “practical divinity”; i.e., how it subserved the proclamation and exemplification of the Kingdom of God rather than subserving speculative concerns;
[4] to have students locate Wesley in the tradition of the church catholic;
[5] to have Wesley contribute to the students’ theological formation.
Text: Outler and Heitzenrater (eds.), John Wesley’s Sermons: An Anthology
(Numbers opposite readings refer to pages in the text.)
Course Requirements:
(1)Examination
(2)Essay (3000 words approximately, due July 12.) The essay is to be written in conformity with any accepted style manual.
(Essay and Examination are weighted equally.)
Weekly Classes (numbers opposite readings refer to pages in the text.)
Jan. 20
Discussion of bibliography
Overview of Wesley’s Life and Work
Wesleyan “Quadrilateral”
Jan. 27
(Quadrilateral, continued)
V. Shepherd, “Catholic Spirit”
Feb. 3
“The Image of God” 13
“The Circumcision of the Heart” 23
“The One Thing Needful” 33 (Before 1738)
Feb. 10
“Salvation By Faith” 39
“Free Grace” 49
“The Almost Christian” 61 (After 1738)
Feb. 17
“Awake, Thou That Sleepest” 85
“Scriptural Christianity” 97
“Justification by Faith” 111
Feb. 24
“The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption” 133
“The Witness of the Spirit (I)” 145
“The Witness of the Spirit (II)” 393
March 2
“The New Birth” 335
“The Marks of the New Birth” 173
“The Great Privilege of Those That Are Born of God” 183
March 9
“The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law” 255
“The Law Established Through Faith, I” 267
“The Law Established Through Faith, II” 277
March 16
No Class Reading Week
March 23
“The Means of Grace” 157
“The Duty of Constant Communion” 501
March 30
“The Use of Money” 347
“The Good Steward” 419
“The Danger of Riches” 45
April 6
“On Sin in Believers” 359
“The Repentance of Believers” 405
April 13
“Christian Perfection” 69
“Can You Conceive Anything More Amiable Than This?”
Anything More Desirable?”
A Note on Wesley’s Challenge Concerning Christian Perfection
(Paper by V. Shepherd)
April 20
“Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, V” 207
“Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, VIII” 239
April 27
Examination
Essay Topics
1] The Social Background of the 18th Century Revival
2] The Political Background……………………….
3] The Religious or Theological or Ecclesiastical Background…
4] The Puritans and Wesley: Convergence and Divergence
5] Wesley’s Theological Debt to the Church of England
6] Wesley and Whitefield on Predestination
7] Wesley and Whitefield on the New Birth
8] Wesley’s Understanding of Sanctification (Perfection)
9] Theological Differences between John and Charles Wesley
10] Wesley and the Church Fathers (Patristics)
11] Wesley’s Understanding of Prevenient Grace
12] Wesley on Faith or Justification or Repentance or Assurance
13] An Aspect of Charles Wesley’s Hymnody
14] Wesley’s Disputes with the Calvinists
15] Wesley’s Spiritual Pilgrimage: From Mysticism and Moralism to Saving Faith (Aldersgate)
16] Wesley’s Horror at Material Prosperity
17] An Overview of and Comment on “And Earnest Appeal to Men of
Reason and Religion” (1743)
18] Wesley’s Understanding of Holy Communion
19] Wesley’s Soteriology
20] Wesley and Calvin on the Law of God
21] Wesley’s Ecclesiology
22] The Wesley Brothers’ Understanding of the Lord’s Supper from an examination of Hymns on the Lord’s Supper or J.E. Rattenbury’s The Eucharistic Hymns of John and Charles Wesley.
(Any topic approved by Professor Shepherd)
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, F.; Charles Wesley’s Verse
” From Wesley to Asbury
” John Wesley and the Church of England
Borgen, O; John Wesley on the Sacraments
Bready, J.; England Before and After Wesley
Brown-Lawson, A.; John Wesley and the Evangelicals of the Eighteenth Century
Campbell, T.; John Wesley and Christian Antiquity
Campbell, T.; Gunter, S,; Jones, S,; Madddox, R,; Miles, R,; Wesley and the Quadrilateral
Clifford, A.C.; Atonement and Justification
(Wesley and the Puritans compared with the Ref.)
Collins, K.; A Real Christian: The Life of John Wesley
A Faithful Witness: John Wesley’s Homiletical Theology
” The Scripture Way of Salvation
” John Wesley: A Theological Journey
Coppedge, A.; John Wesley in Theological Debate
Dallimore, A.; A Heart Set Free: The Life of Charles Wesley
” Susanna Wesley
Davies, R.; Methodism
Davies, R., George, R. and Rupp, G., eds.; A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain (4 vols.)
Deschner, J.; Wesley’s Christology
Green, J.B.; John Wesley and William Law
Gunter, Scott, Gunter, W.; The Limits of “Love Divine”
Harper, S.; John Wesley’s Message for Today
Heitzenrater, R.; Mirror and Memory: Reflections on Early Methodism,
The Elusive Mr. Wesley (2 vols.),
” Wesley and the People Called Methodists
Hildebrandt, F.; Christianity According to the Wesleys
Jennings , T.W.; Good News to the Poor: John Wesley’s Evangelical Economics
Jones, S.; John Wesley’s Conception and Use of Scripture
Kimbrough, S.; Charles Wesley: Poet and Theologian
Langford, T.; Practical Divinity
Lindstrom, H.; Wesley and Sanctification
Maddox, R.; Responsible Grace ****
“(ed.); Aldersgate Reconsidered
“(ed.); Rethinking Wesley’s Theology For Contemporary Methodism
Marquardt, M.; John Wesley’s Social Ethics
Newton , J.; Susanna Wesley and the Puritan Tradition in Methodism
” John Wesley: His Puritan Heritage
Oden, T.; Doctrinal Standards in the Wesleyan Tradition
” John Wesley’s Scriptural Christianity ****
(Note the references at end of each chapter.)
Oden, T. and Longden, L, eds.; The Wesleyan Theological Heritage: Essays of Albert Outler
Peters, J.; Christian Perfection and American Methodism
Pollock, J.; George Whitefield
” John Wesley
Rack, H.; Reasonable Enthusiast ****
Rowe, K., ed.; The Place of Wesley in the Christian Tradition
Rudolph, L.; Francis Asbury
Runyon, T.; The New Creation: John Wesley’s Theology Today
Rupp, E.G.; Religion in England , 1688-1791
Ryle, L.; Select Sermons of George Whitefield
Sangster, W.; The Path to Perfection
Smith, T.; Whitefield and Wesley on the New Birth
Snyder, H.; The Radical Wesley
Stacey, J., ed.; John Wesley in Contemporary Perspectives
Tabraham, Barrie W.; The Making of Methodism
Tuttle, R.; John Wesley: His Life and Theology
” Mysticism in the Wesleyan Tradition
Tyson, J.; Charles Wesley on Sanctification
Wainwright, G.,; Geoffrey Wainwright on Wesley and Calvin
Watson, D.L.; The Early Methodist Class Meeting
Watson, P.; The Message of the Wesleys
Williams, C.; John Wesley’s Theology Today
Wiseman, P., ed,; John Fletcher’s Checks to Antinomianism
The Sources of Authority for Wesley
The Sources of Authority for Wesley
(see lecture # 1 and 2)
1] Scripture
“I receive the written word as the whole and sole rule of my faith.” (Letter to John Smith. 26:155)
“From the very beginning, from the time that four young men united together, each of them was homo unius libri…. They had one, and only one, rule of judgement with which to regard all their tempers, words and actions; namely, the oracles of God. They were one and all determined to be Bible-Christians. They were continually reproached for this very thing; some terming them in derision Bible-bigots; others, Bible-moths….unto this day it is their constant endeavour to think and speak as the oracles of God.” (3:504)
Note: scripture is the un-normed norm of our knowledge of God.
Note: homo unius libri — what it means and what it doesn’t mean.
Points in W’s understanding of S:
1: Revelation precedes inscripturation.
2: The writings are inspired.
3: God used human agents in this process.
4: S. is devoid of mistakes.
“The whole S” or “the general tenor of S” is internally coherent and consistent.
The focus of “the general tenor” is soteriology.
The substance of S comprises “three grand doctrines”: original sin, justification by faith, holiness (perfection, sanctification, “present, inward salvation.”)
W’s rules for interpreting S:
1: Wherever possible, use S’l language to express S’l ideas.
2: Assume the literal sense unless doing so contradicts another S or suggests absurdity.
3: Interpret the text with regard to its literary context.
4: Interpret S by S. (“the analogy of faith”)
5: Know that the commandments are covered promises.
6: Interpret literary devices literarily, not literally.
7: Seek the most original text and the best translation.
2] Tradition (Wesley cherished the wisdom of the church through the ages, even though as a thorough going Protestant, he didn’t use the word “tradition.”)
(i) English Reformers and Anglican theology of 17th century
(ii) Puritans
(iii) English Moralists
(iv) Patristics (W favoured the eastern fathers over the western.)
(v) Roman Catholic Mystics from the Counter-Reformation
(vi) Eastern Orthodoxy
(vii) Continental Reformers
3] Reason “It is a fundamental principle with us [i.e., Methodists] that to renounce reason is to renounce religion, that religion and reason go hand in hand, and that all irrational religion is false religion.” (Letter to Dr. Rutherford: 28th March 1768)
“I would as soon put out my eyes to secure my faith as lay aside my reason.”
(Jackson, 10:267)
Note the difference between reason and rationalism.
Note Wesley’s emphasis on study, Latin, biblical languages, natural science, philosophy, logic.
For W reason is a tool, not a source; W doesn’t speculate theologically.
The three aspects of reason add up to “understanding.”
a: simple apprehension
b: judgement
c: discourse
4] Experience
(1) Assurance for Discipleship. Note where W differs from Enlightenment empiricists.
(2) Guidance for our spiritual pilgrimage. Note the “conference” with present and past.
(3) Public Evidence of Core Christian Teachings.
a: Exp. has a substantive role but never a solitary role.
b: Exp. helps clarify the intended meaning of S or T.
c: Exp. tests applications of the truths of S.
d: Exp. settles issues in church/Christian life that S doesn’t address.
e: Exp. is a corporate/communal validation of the gospel and its implications.
Justification by Faith Alone
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH ALONE
(see lecture #4 and following)
After the “Aldersgate experience” of 1738, Wesley never went back on his insistence on justification by grace through faith. He is uncompromisingly Protestant. There have been several attempts at pretending that he espoused a “works-righteousness” as late as the controversial “Minute” of the Conference in 1770, or that he proposed a via media between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Wesley always maintained that he was an Anglican, that the Church of England’s doctrine neither needed nor admitted of any “improvement”, and that the Church of England was undeniably Protestant.
Wesley is utterly consistent with the Magisterial Reformers in maintaining that justification by (grace through) faith is the material principle of the Reformation. (The formal principle is sola scriptura.)
Note:
(i) justification by faith is “the very foundation of our Church [i.e., Anglican]…and indeed the fundamental [doctrine] of the Reformed Churches.” (Sermon # 150, “Hypocrisy in Oxford”)
Plainly Wesley understood just’n by faith to be the fundamental doctrine of the Church of England (Anglican), and he understood said church to be “Reformed.”
Wesley would never have agreed with the notion that “Methodism is neither Protestant nor Catholic.”
(ii) the place of justification in Wesley’s theology and in the faith of the church. “I have not known ten Quakers in my life whose experience went so far as justification.” (Letter, 1780)
(iii) where justification isn’t held up, the church doesn’t exist. (Minutes, 1745)
(iv) the faith connected to justification isn’t assent to a proposition (not even the proposition that justification is by faith) but rather trust in a person, the Person of Jesus Christ the Justifier. At the same time, Wesley never denied the “assent” element in faith, never denied its necessity.
(v) atonement is the ground of justification.
Wesley denounced mysticism because of its undervaluation of the atonement.
Wesley insisted on propitiation. (God must be appeased; his wrath must be averted.)
(vi) Wesley believed in just’n by faith from the day of his conversion.
“I believe justification by faith alone as much as I believe there is a God….I have never varied from it, no, not an hair’s breadth from 1738 to this day.” (1766)
Mediaeval/Reformation Schema of Faith
Mediaeval/Reformation Schema of Faith
(see lecture #4)
Notitia: understanding
Assensus: assent
Fiducia: trust
Note 1: For the Protestant reformers faith (fides qua creditur rather than fides quae creditur) occurs only at the level of fiducia. Still, the previous two aspects are included in fiducia. Understanding is essential or “faith” is mere idolatry.
Note 2: At notitia only there is what Wesley calls mere “notional faith” and Calvin “empty ideas flitting about in the brain.”
Note 3: The reformers reject the “implicit faith” of 16th century Roman Catholicism wherein it was asserted that to assent to “the faith of the church” was sufficient (since for the reformers fiducia included assurance, and this assurance many people felt they lacked.)
Calvin’s Fullest Definition of Faith
“Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Institutes 3.2.7
Note the following:
“…if faith turns away even in the slightest degree from this goal toward which it should aim [i.e., the Word that creates faith], it does not keep its own nature but becomes uncertain credulity and vague error of mind.” Institutes3.2.6
“It is after we have learned that our salvation rests with God that we are attracted to seek him.”
Institutes 3.2.7.
Wesley’s Objection to the Scholastic Protestant Ordo Salutis
He felt that the ordo salutis implied a series of atomistic states wherein the person moved from one “link in the chain” to another. The schema suggested a set of transitions rather than a developing relationship with God as Holy Spirit and quickened spirit “breathed” into each other.
He felt that the order in ordo suggested a direction that could never be reversed; i.e., the Dordt’s insistence on final perseverance denied the possibility of regression or apostasy.
He felt that the ordo was highly abstract as befits scholastic method, lacking the concreteness of pastoral concern.
For this reason Wesley should be understood in terms of a via salutis rather than an ordo salutis.
The Witness of the Spirit
This paper first appeared in Theological Digest & Outlook (Burlington) in July of 1995
JOHN WESLEY
and
THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT
Abingdon Press’s 35-volume annotated edition of Wesley’s Works (14 of which have been completed) begins with four volumes of sermons. Yet as soon as newly interested readers open Volume I of Sermons On Several Occasions they know that the form of these “sermons” has to differ from the form of Wesley’s marketplace utterances. The crowds of thousands who heard Wesley preach included many who were minimally literate, more than a few who were not even that, and scarcely anyone who possessed Wesley’s sophistication in theology, philosophy and literature. The published sermons, on the other hand, are replete with references that presuppose no little erudition. In addition the published sermons are devoid of the illustrations and the rhetorical devices that preachers employ to retain the attention of those unaccustomed to the relatively abstract medium of an oral address lacking the advantage of repeated examination. Plainly the form of the printed sermon is better suited to discussion in the classroom or perusal in the study.
In fact for the most part the sermons are the unillustrated distillate of Wesley’s daily pronouncements; unillustrated, that is, compared to the sort of preaching necessary to attract and hold throngs. The sermons, then, were essentially tracts written for people who needed a compendium of the doctrines which underlay the Revival. In addition the sermons attempted to defuse the hostile attacks of those who misunderstood Wesley and his movement, falsely accusing them of theological dilution, social destabilization, psychological exploitation, and even sedition.
While the sermons were not preached verbatim as they appear in Wesley’s Works, they were yet “preached” inasmuch as Wesley’s ceaseless itinerating found him constantly expanding, illustrating, repeating and subtly reshaping them. (According to his Journal, for instance, he preached on Ephesians 2:8 — “For by grace you have been saved through faith” — no fewer than 60 times.)
There is another sense in which some sermons were “preached”: the theological substance of the sermon was found in Wesley’s public proclamation while the sermon itself was never preached on any one occasion. In other words the sermon was made public only in written form, even though its content leavened Wesley’s oral pronouncements on assorted topics. The two sermons, “The Witness of the Spirit (I and II)” belong to this latter category. Today we should simply designate them essays.
As is evident from even a casual reading of the Works, Wesley had to contend on several fronts throughout his ministry. One front was the Scylla/Charybdis of “formality” and “enthusiasm”. Formalism was an intellectual frigidity that confined itself to doctrinal refinement (or speculation) without impact on life. Enthusiasm (which Wesley defined as the elevation of experience above scripture) was a superheated emotionalism that disdained doctrine only to gush and gurgle in a mindless sentimentality devoid of morality and a religious romanticism devoid of righteousness. Head and heart were always to complement one another.
Wesley refers to these two pitfalls in his Preface as he states once again the purpose of his work:
And herein it is more especially my desire, first to guard those who are just setting their faces toward heaven…from formality, from mere outside religion, which has almost driven heart-religion [Wesley’s Journal entry of 2nd August, 1771, speaks of heart-religion as “righteousness and joy in the Holy Ghost … the gate of it, justification … the life of God in the soul of man.”] out of the world; and secondly, to warn those who know the religion of the heart … lest at any time they make void the law through faith, and so fall back into the snare of the devil.
When Christians of Methodist conviction spoke of the witness of the Spirit they were instantly accused of an enthusiasm amounting to fanaticism. Wesley, however, steadfastly refused to be stampeded. He knew that the indefensible vagaries found in those who valued heat above light did not discredit the gospel-quickened faith of those who cherished St.Paul’s legacy: God’s children are permitted and privileged to know themselves such. Wesley steadfastly maintained that the witness of God’s Spirit, assuring believers of their standing in Christ, had everything to do with their salvation, their comfort, their holiness (and therefore their temporal and eternal happiness, since he consistently linked holiness and happiness — “None but the holy are finally happy”); everything as well to do with an undeviating discipleship that eschews both formalism and fanaticism; everything to do, for preachers especially, with urgency and zeal in the fulfilment of their vocation.
Wesley always regarded the Sermons On Several Occasions as his major theological statement. At the same time the major statement never precluded many minor. He supplemented the Sermons with other treatises as situations arose, in the unfolding of the 18th century Evangelical Revival, that required additional comment. (One thinks immediately of A Plain Account of Christian Perfection [1777] bracketed by two sermons, “Christian Perfection [1741] and “On Perfection” [1784]. Rather oddly, then, the Sermons On Several Occasionswere considerably less “occasional” than the supplementary materials, the sermons functioning as the theological primer of Wesleyan Methodism. At the same time they were a theological grid that provided the interpretative framework needed to prevent Methodist Christians — and preachers especially — from suffering doctrinal disorientation. (In this regard the Sermons functioned much as Calvin’sInstitutes had in the 16th century Reformation in Geneva, even as Calvin continued to write occasional pieces in response to crises.)
THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT
“… it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spiritthat we are children of God.”
(Romans 8:16)
The inclusion of the “The Witness of the Spirit” (I&II) in SOSO indicates the place Wesley gave to assurance in his understanding of the Christian life. For several years his critics had insisted that the Revival merely fanned the “enthusiasm” that the 18th Century Enlightenment despised. While the same critics regarded assurance as merely one more aspect of the despicable, Wesley himself insisted that the spiritually needy who looked to the gospel yet were devoid of assurance had therein had their everyday anxiety exacerbated by a peculiarly religious anxiety. At the same time he admitted that those who prattled cavalierly of assurance even as they undervalued the specificity of gospel-truth plainly were enthusiasts and merited being exposed as such. He wanted to help his people along the fine line between the two distortions. He knew that failure to identify and walk the fine line would leave his people meandering and flip-flopping.
In the first paragraph of Part I Wesley identifies the pitfall of subjectivism. “How many have mistaken the voice of their own imagination” for the witness of God’s Spirit, only to assume they were children of God when in fact they continued to behave in conformity to their actual father, the evil one! This lack of self-perception (born of presumption) is “truly and properly” enthusiasm. As lack of self-perception is protracted it sets like concrete. In addition to their initial mistake the enthusiasts confuse their vehemence and impetuosity and intractability with obedience to the command of God to “contend for the faith.” (Jude 3)
In view of the widespread abuse of such a “witness” Wesley concedes that nervous observers might wish to dismiss the contemporary application of the doctrine, relegating the “testimony” to those extraordinary gifts that were said to cease with the close of the apostolic age. His reading of scripture, however, does not permit this facile evasion — even though he will have to spend the rest of his life disowning the distortions surrounding this one theological conviction. Wesley could never deny that the “testimony of the Spirit” looms large in scripture, “a truth revealed therein not once only, not obscurely, not incidentally, but frequently, and that in express terms … as denoting one of the peculiar privileges of the children of God.”
In discussing the relation of the Spirit’s testimony to our spirit’s, Wesley carefully avoids collapsing one into the other. The text (not to mention the corroborating experience of believers) speaks of both the testimony of God’s Spirit and the testimony of ours concerning our adoption.
With respect to the testimony of our spirit Wesley maintains that scripture is unambiguous. It states repeatedly, for instance, that the children of God keep the commandments of God (1 John 2:5) even as they love fellow-children of God (1 John 3:14). Upon examining themselves believers conclude that they do keep the commandments of God and love fellow-Christians, and therefore rightly conclude that they are indeed God’s children. Wesley admits that “this is no other than rational evidence: the ‘witness of our spirit’, our reason or understanding.”
If self-doubt besets believers and they ask themselves how they know whether they truly love fellow-Christians or keep God’s commandments, Wesley attempts to succour them by resorting to an intuitionist epistemology, as valid in the realm of Christian existence as it is in the realm of sense-experience.
How does it appear that to you that you are alive? And that you are now in ease and not in pain? Are you not immediately conscious of it? By the same immediate consciousness you will know if your soul is alive to God; if you are saved from the pain of proud wrath …. By the same means you cannot but perceive if you love, rejoice, and delight in God. …. Your conscience informs you from day to day if you do not take the name of God within your lips unless with seriousness and devotion, with reason and godly fear…”
The foregoing is the testimony of our spirit. “It is a consciousness of having received, in and by the Spirit of adoption, the tempers mentioned in the Word of God as belonging to his adopted children.”
Plainly, the testimony of our spirit is an inference-following-reflection. Self-examination concerning our conformity to the command of God leaves our conscience unaroused; we conclude that the Spirit of God has effected such transmutation within us as to give rise to those marks that constrain us to thank God for his self-evidencing work of grace.
Admittedly, Wesley is placing no little emphasis on the assumption that self-examination yields self-perception. He did not deny the submerged currents of sin in humankind, as his unqualified endorsement of the 16th century Reformers’ doctrines of Original Sin and Total Depravity attests. At the same time, he always insisted on holding out hope for those discouraged by the submerged currents (which, sorry to say, are never merely submerged). He knew that hope, in order to be biblical hope and not natural wishful thinking, had to be grounded in the actuality of deliverance. Throughout his ministry Wesley reminded his people that God could do something with sin beyond forgiving it. (According to Wesley, deliverance from the power of sin was confirmation that one had been pardoned from the guilt of sin.) The blaspheming substance-abuser, now possessed of God-fearing sobriety and social usefulness, could legitimately conclude that by the grace of God he was a child of God.
Having discussed briefly the testimony of our spirit so as to distinguish it from the testimony of God’s Spirit, Wesley proceeds to consider the latter.
Wesley knows he is probing mystery in this matter. Mystery, according to the author of this paper, is not something bizarre or Hallowe’enish or occultish. Mystery is an everyday phenomenon (e.g., being in love) that is therefore ordinary or commonplace even as it is profound. It is inexpressibly profound; no vocabulary can do justice to it. Mystery may be described but never explained, let alone explained away. Mystery may be pointed to, commended, urged upon others, above all experienced. Yet before it language can finally only stammer. Definition and explanation are impossible; description is inadequate, description being the inarticulate attempt at having others undergo the same experience even as everyone recognizes the poverty of the words which have to be employed.
Wesley knows there are unfathomably mysterious depths to our encounter with God that leave our speech halting. The fact of the Spirit’s testimony does not leave Wesley tongue-tied at all; yet when he attempts to describe the how of it he first cautions us, “It is hard to find words in the language of men to explain ‘the deep things of God’. Indeed there are none that will adequately express what the children of God experience.” Nonetheless, since the alternative to semi-functional articulation is non-communication born of silence, Wesley steps forward. His initial assertion is unambiguous.
The testimony of the Spirit is an inward impression on the soul whereby the Spirit of God directly ‘witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God’; that Jesus Christ hath loved me and given himself for me; that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God.
The substance of the Spirit’s testimony is readily understood: believers have been reconciled to God through the love of that God who sacrificed himself in his Son, with the result that their condemnation is rescinded. The “how” of the Spirit’s testimony, says Wesley, requires much greater explication even as adequate explanation is finally impossible.
In his initial statement Wesley’s use of “inward impression on the soul” and “directly” indicates clearly where the Spirit’s testimony differs from our spirit’s. Whereas the latter is inference-following-reflection, the former is entirely non-inferential — at the same time as it isnecessarily related to the gospel. The testimony of the Spirit is an idiogenic “mediated immediacy”. The immediacy of the Spirit is not the immediacy that Kierkegaard rightly denounced. (“Immediacy is paganism”, since immediacy disdains the particularity and historicity of the Incarnate one, whereas the immediacy of the Spirit is always “mediated” through the gospel.) At the same time, the testimony of the Spirit is not a conclusion drawn from premises. It is that “stamp” of the Spirit who presses and impresses himself upon us in such wise that he authenticates himself, and does so indisputably. In other words, the self-authentication of the Spirit is necessary (there being nothing outside of God that is able to authenticate him) and sufficient (there being nothing outside of God that is needed to authenticate him).
Next Wesley is careful to remind us that while he discussed the testimony of our spirit before that of God’s Spirit, in fact the latter precedesthe former. “We must be holy of heart and holy in life before we can be conscious that we are so…. But we must love God before we can be holy at all; this being the root of all holiness. Now we cannot love till we know he loves us…. And we cannot know his pardoning love till his Spirit witnesses to our spirit.”
Several matters invite comment here. Wesley’s “know” is plainly more than “have correct information about”. He refers here not to the “head-knowledge” of an intellectual (doctrinal) apprehension of the meaning of “God is love”, but rather to “heart-knowledge”, the “inward impression on the soul”, the innermost conviction and assurance that the theological assertion concerning God’s love adequately describes the reality of the cosmocrator’s benevolent seizure of me.
The subtlety of Wesley’s dialectic in this discussion is profound. While the testimony of God’s Spirit plainly has to do with the “heartfelt-ness” of immediacy, Wesley judiciously directs believers away from themselves, away from a preoccupation with introspection. Evidently he fears fostering an introspection amounting to obsession; an obsession wherein believers think they can discern the testimony of God’sSpirit by ransacking themselves. First we must love God; we are directed away from ourselves to God, only then to find that God so honours our looking to him as to vouchsafe to us the assurance that he has pardoned us. In other words, reality always precedes apprehension of reality. At the same time, it is the nature of this reality (God) to forge within humankind an apprehension of the reality. The logical priority of the Spirit (i.e., the logical priority of God) does not entail divine remoteness. In fact the proximity (proximity of such a degree as to generate an “impression on the soul”) of God simultaneously facilitates the categories for apprehending the selfsame proximity. It is not the case that an impression is made on the soul even as beneficiaries of it are left puzzled as to its nature, origin and meaning. (Much as primitive people might be aware of the phenomena of a thunderstorm yet remain ignorant as to its origin and significance.) Wesley has carefully distinguished the transcendence of God from the testimony of God’s Spirit, and these in turn from a projection or fantasy that would leave him defenceless against the charge of enthusiasm.
The logical order of his discussion is inviolable: we must be reconciled to God through becoming the recipients of God’s pardon before we can be conscious of this.
So very concerned is Wesley to minimize misunderstanding on this matter that he looks at the topic now from this angle, now from another, much as a gemmologist observes scintillations reflecting off a precious stone as the stone is viewed from several different angles. Succinctly he comments, “It is he [i.e., the Holy Spirit] that not only worketh in us every manner of thing that is good, but also shines upon his own work, and clearly shows what he has wrought.” God enlightens us as to what God is doing in us. Were God to effect his salvific work in us and not enlighten us concerning this work within us, Wesley reminds us, we should then be left without awareness of “the things which are freely given to us of God” (1 Corinthians 2:12), and to this extent the testimony of our spirit would be enfeebled, in fact rendered impossible. Because God illumines us with respect to his work within us through the testimony of his Spirit, we are never left (i) wondering incessantly whether we are “in the boat” with Jesus or have missed it, (ii) attempting to impart an ersatz “assurance” by means of “enthusiasm”. The testimony of God’s Spirit, in concert with the testimony of our spirit, obviates both anguished insecurity and groundless bravado.
Once again Wesley turns the gem over in his hand. Anticipating a query from someone who is afflicted with doubt concerning her adoption, Wesley reverts to his intuitionist epistemology. When, in the normal course of our lives, we delight in something creaturely that pleases us, the immediacy of our delight is as much assurance as we need (or can have) as to the actuality of our delight. (In the same way, he adds, someone in pain needs no argument to persuade her she is in pain. To love God, delight in God, rejoice in God is to knowincontrovertibly that one loves, delights, and rejoices. And to know that God is the author and object of all this is to know that one is a child of God.
Then, in his sermon, “The Witness of the Spirit”, Wesley advances for our consideration what seems only a redundant instance of his oft-illustrated assertion, “A Christian…has as full an assurance [of his being a child of God] as he has that the scriptures are of God” — when in fact he has reached back into Calvin’s doctrine of scripture and borrowed its logic concerning the work of the Spirit. In a pregnant passage much cherished throughout the Reformed tradition Calvin writes, “…scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their colour, or sweet and bitter things do of their taste.” (Institutes, 1.7.2) Just as scripture needs no external authentication of its truth, so believers need no external authentication of their standing in Christ. Calvin’s point is this: to the extent that the Spirit is used of God to bind us to Jesus Christ (i.e., to the extent that the Spirit authenticates Jesus Christ and our inclusion in him), the Spirit by that fact also authenticates the means by which our Lord and we became fused. Wesley’s point is that as the gospel-truth concerning the Spirit’s witness is promulgated, the Spirit confirms the adoption of believers so as to leave them no doubt concerning the truth that is now “impressed” upon their heart. Since God alone authenticates himself to believers (the 16th century Reformers were fond of saying, “God is the only fit witness to himself”), the demand for the criteria of such authentication Wesley pronounces an “idle demand”.
Wesley concludes his overview of the Spirit’s testimony by reminding readers that the mystery surrounding this unique work of the Spirit precludes definition and explication.
The manner how the divine testimony is manifested to the heart I do not take upon myself to explain…. But the fact we know: namely, that the Spirit of God does give a believer such a testimony of his adoption that while it is present to the soul he can no more doubt the reality of his sonship than he can doubt the shining of the sun while he stands in the full blaze of his (sic) glory.
In Part II of “The Witness of the Spirit” Wesley amplifies this point, arguing that the moment Paul heard the voice of God on the Damascus road he knew it to be such, even though the apostle himself could never have proposed criteria by which to deem any one “voice” to be the voice of God. Wesley simply states, “But how he knew this who is able to explain?”. In the same way, when God speaks forgiveness to believers of any era they know themselves pardoned beyond refutation or extrinsic confirmation.
Yet lest any “enthusiast” claim hallucination or any other species of subjectivism to be the word of God Wesley carefully distinguishes once more between the joint testimony (of Spirit and spirit) and presumption or delusion. The unrepentant sinner, upon hearing of this “privilege of true Christians,…is prone to work himself up into a persuasion that he is already possessed” of it. Nonetheless, scripture consistently points out that conviction of sin always precedes assurance of pardon. Drawing on his experience as spiritual director, Wesley notes that humility is one concomitant of the testimony of the Spirit, while the presumptuous invariably exalt themselves. In the same vein the presumptuous are cavalier concerning the commandments of God, especially the command enjoining self-denial or cross-bearing, the presumptuous loftily announcing that they have “…found an easier path to heaven.” Moreover, those who have deluded themselves in the matter of the Spirit’s testimony undervalue scripture’s insistence on the joint testimony; their “discipleship” fails to display the fruits of the Spirit. In any case the vehemence of the self-deluded’s expostulations does not obviate the veridicality of the Spirit’s work in others, just “as a madman’s imagining himself a king does not prove that there are no real kings.”
Calvin had said that when even the children of God look into their own heart what they find there is enough to horrify them; they find pathetically little evidence of their renewal at God’s hand. Is Calvin correct? Is Wesley naive where the Genevan may have been realistic? In Part II, written in the light of 20 years’ pondering Part I and 20 years’ evaluating the spiritual condition of the Methodist people, Wesley concurs with Calvin’s assessment. There are episodes in the Christian’s life when the residues of sin becloud the testimony of our spirit. At such times only divine testimony can attest that we are a child of God in the face of our inner whisperings to the contrary. For this reason Wesley now states as a spiritual director of greater maturity, “…we contend that the direct witness may shine clear, even while the indirect one is under a cloud.” (It is noteworthy that while Calvin doesn’t use the vocabulary of “the testimony of our spirit” he does recognize the effect of believers’ residual sin upon their assurance of their standing in Christ. In his commentaries on Hebrews 10:22 and 2 Corinthians 1:21 Calvin speaks of the subordinate assurance of faith that the love engendered in believers lends them. However, Calvin strictly understands such assurance — born of the fact that the “good tree” is now producing “good fruit” — to be subordinate. It can never be theground of assurance. Love is defective even in believers, he reminds us in his commentary on 1 John 4:13, and the good deeds of even believers ever remain sin-tainted.) Commensurate with his greater maturity Wesley shifts his emphasis so as to link the testimony of the Spirit explicitly to justification: assurance chiefly confirms believers in their forgiveness at God’s hand and their acceptance with God despite the arrears of their sin. Indeed, since we cannot believe ourselves justified, on account of our lingering proclivity to sin, apart from the witness of the Spirit, to deny the testimony is “in effect to deny justification by faith.” This, of course, Wesley will never do, thoroughgoing son of the Reformation that he is. As if to remind his readers of his confessional standing he borrows the vocabulary of this 17th century Puritan forebears: the Spirit attests the “imputation” of Christ’s righteousness.
Even so, episodes of the sort mentioned above do not last forever. The clouds that becloud the indirect witness part, and Wesley returns to his characteristic insistence that the testimony which assures believers is finally a joint testimony as the fruits of the Spirit appear, however slenderly, in Christ’s people.
For as long as breath remained in him Wesley rejoiced that “this great evangelical truth has been recovered, which had been for many years wellnigh lost and forgotten.”
Who had recovered it? And who has been mandated to safeguard it? Wesley’s conviction here was ironfast.
It more clearly concerns the Methodists, so called, clearly to understand, explain, and defend this doctrine, because it is one grand part of the testimony which God has given them to bear to all mankind.
The mandate has never been revoked.
Victor A. Shepherd
The Witness of the Spirit: An Overview
The Witness of the Spirit: An Overview
1746
1] We are in bondage to sin, yet ignorant of it. We are complacent in our sinnership, and simultaneously sincere in our goodness, humility, etc., naively thinking that our sincerity is sufficient before God.
2] We are awakened to our predicament by any means God chooses, ultimately, however, being shocked through the law of God. Herein we are made aware that (i) we have violated God’s law, and (ii) in violating his law we have violated God himself.
3] We repent and believe the gospel.
4] We seek the witness of our own spirit; i.e., we gain assurance of our life in Christ by deducing our spiritual vitality from the fruits of the Spirit we find in us.
5] The testimony of God’s Spirit is qualitatively different. Here God speaks to us directly as he “impresses” himself upon us so as to eclipse our indirect, inferential operation.
6] This testimony of God’s Spirit is logically antecedent to the testimony of our spirit, and must be so or else the testimony of our spirit is finally a delusion, since the testimony of our spirit is the deduction that we are holy, while we can rightly deduce this only if we are holy.
7] The dialectic here is as follows:
(i) God loves us.
(ii) We are aware that God loves us with a pardoning love (mercy) only as God’s Spirit testifies to us of his mercy and our inclusion in it.
(iii) We then love God.
(iv) The ongoing dynamic reciprocity of God’s love for us and our swelling love for him issues in holiness of heart and life.
(v) We become aware of God’s work of grace within us.
The key is #(ii). This is the hinge on which there turns everything in the Christian life. In the wake of #(ii), #(v) is legitimate — otherwise #(v) would be “enthusiasm.”
8] The manner of the Spirit’s testimony can’t be explained even as the fact of it can’t be denied.
9] The testimony is finally the joint testimony of the Spirit and our spirit.
10] To safeguard ourselves against natural presumption and devilish delusion we must measure ourselves against Scripture.
11] Ultimately, however, if we were left looking to Scripture only we’d have returned to an inferential operation. Therefore the immediate witness of the Spirit is essential to our assurance.
1767
12] Upon searching our hearts, we may conclude that we see only sin.
13] Therefore the witness of the Spirit must assure us of justification or pardon rather than of fruit-bearing sanctity.
14] The witness of the Spirit is essential to justification by faith, for without the witness of the Spirit we’d have no evidence of our justification, justification by works having been ruled out.
15] The direct witness of the Spirit may be vivid while the witness of our spirit is slight.
16] Not only residual sin but also trials may beset the Christian so that only the witness of the Spirit maintains our “filial confidence” in God.
17] If we claim the witness of the Spirit without possessing the fruits of the Spirit we are fanatics (enthusiasts.) If we claim to possess the fruits of the Spirit without the witness of the Spirit we are formalists.
Mysticism
MYSTICISM
(see lecture #3)
Wesley espoused a mysticism/moralism in 1725, and then explicitly repudiated mysticism in 1738, maintaining that it “stabbed religion in the vitals.” However, his post-Aldersgate theology has an unmistakable mystical dimension in it. He continued to reject mystical “dross” even as the experiential dimension of his thought reflected mystical “gold.”
| DROSS | GOLD | |
| God: | absorption/union | communion |
| Christ: | moral/spiritual exemplar | incarnate one/atoning one |
| Sin: | undervaluation of original sin, impairment but not bondage of will | original sin, will bound, all of this remedied only by grace |
| Righteousness: | internal works righteousness (often complemented by external) | justification by faith |
| God’s “absence”: | “dark night of the soul” | sin |
| Attitude: | stillness | attend upon means of grace, affirm the affirmations of faith, obey concretely |
What Wesley Esteemed In The Mystics
total preoccupation with God
heart-experience
spiritual discipline
self-renunciation
holy living
perfection/purity of intention/love
A Note on Reason
A Note on Reason
(see lecture # 1, 2, 12)
The distinction between reason (or the rational) and rationalism is crucial.
Rationalism affirms
(i) reason has access to ultimate reality
(ii) ultimate reality is what is naturally intelligible
(iii) reason is the essence of humankind
(iv) reason is unimpaired, or at least so slightly impaired as to be naturally correctable
The Christian faith affirms
(i) faith (i.e., a predicate of grace) has access to ultimate reality (There’s no natural access to ultimate reality.)
(ii) ultimate reality is Spirit or the effectual presence of Jesus Christ
See Balth.: “…the word of God is not of this world and hence can never be discovered in the categories and accepted patterns of human reason.” 61 “I was appointed by God from all eternity to be the recipient of this…eternal word of love, a word, which, pure grace though it be, is…more rational than my reason, with the result that this act of obedience in faith is in truth the most reasonable of acts.” 62
(iii) spirit (i.e., our having been created for relationship with God as the good) is the essence of humankind reason as a source of knowledge of God, of the kingdom of God, of the highest wisdom, has been devastated.
Note the naturalistic criticisms of reason:
Freud
Marx
Foucault
postmodernists generally.
Note the theological criticisms of reason:
Paul (“…they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools….” Rom 1:21-22)
(“…the futility of their minds; they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them…..” Eph. 4:18) (Reason is impaired with respect to our life in God [knowledge of God]. This is not to say that reason has become irrational. (This would be a logical contradiction.) Irrationality is the obliteration of reason, not the corruption of reason. There is still an earthly wisdom and an earthly good of which fallen humankind is capable and which we ought not to disdain.)
Jeremiah (“…how long shall your evil thoughts lodge within you?” Jer. 4:14. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt. Who can understand it?” Jer. 17:9)
How much of the rational is rationalisation? The rationality of rationalisation is perfectly rational; it just happens to serve an unconscious end and provide the legitimisation of that end. In the same way the rationality of psychosis is rational.
Reason still functions adequately, e.g., with respect to mathematics. But as soon as reason is deployed in the service of a natural end beyond the relations of logic, the distortion of reason is evident.
The Christian faith affirms that grace alone (faith) frees reason from reason’s captivity and restores reason’s integrity. For this reason the command of God to love him with our minds is not impossible. Not to love God with our minds is both disobedience and idolatry. Faith is not a species of irrationality. Isaac Watts wrote a textbook on logic that was used for 40 years at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale. Wesley too wrote a text on logic. That which mathematics and science probes is the naturally intelligible.
Pascal: “Reason is never more reasonable than when it acknowledges the limits to reason.”