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Additional Readings

Select Bibliography

Select Bibliography

 

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

Bloesch, Donald G.; Christian Foundations

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

McGrath, Alister E.; Christian Theology: An Introduction

McGrath’s focus is the historical development of doctrine.

 

Essentials of Evangelical Theology

Volume I, Chapter One

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

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

[b] erosion of the authority of scripture

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

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

[a] little seriousness about intellectual matters

[b] loss of confidence in truth (postmodernism)

[c] little concern with history

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

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

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

 

p1  The threat: “syncretistic mysticism and latitudinarianism”

[i] there is a mysticism that is thoroughly biblical

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

anti-incarnational (too narrow and non-intuitional)

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

anti-atonement (too bloody, too primitive)

anti-obedience (too confining)

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

rigorous discipleship, spiritual vigilance and spiritual growth.

Rev. V. Shepherd

 

WHY THEOLOGY?

The Basis of Theology

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

-speculation doesn’t yield knowledge of God.

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

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

Note the nature of biblical “knowing.”

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

 

Objections to Theology

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

 

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

 

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

 

4]  It appears fixated on disputes of earlier centuries.

 

Why Theology is Necessary

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

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

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

 

3]  It provides instruction in faith.

 

4]  It apprehends the totality of the biblical witness.

It apprehends the integration of this totality.

 

5]  It honours the concern for T/truth.

 

 

In Short

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

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

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

 

3]  A church that disdains theology is saying

(i)               there is no substance to the gospel

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

(iii)            intellectual “mush” is God-honouring

(iv)            the past cannot inform us at all.

The Meaning of ‘Evangelical’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Points to Remember

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

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

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

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

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

6] what is old needs to be freshly understood.

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

8] the doctrinally novel is ipso facto heretical.

The Sovereignty of God

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

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

Note Luther’s Theologia Crucis.

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

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

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

-predestination?
-omniscience?
-omnipresence?

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

 

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

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

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

”           ”           ”            adoration and admiration

”           ”           ”              propitiation and expiation

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

 

Reverend V. Shepherd

the Doctrine of the Virgin Birth

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

 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE VB: PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS:

 

I:

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

 

 

 

II:

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

 

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

Still, the outward sign and inward reality belong together.

Outward sign and inward reality are intrinsically or analogically related.

 

 

 

III:

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

THE POSITIVE MESSAGE OF THE VB:

 

I:a:

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

 

I:b:

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

 

 

I:c:

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

 

 

 

II:

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

 

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

 

 

 

III:

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

 

 

 

IV:

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

 

 

V:

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

VI:

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 Professor V.Shepherd

 

The Doctrine of Creation

Lecture Outline

 

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

 

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

nature as God;

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

creation;

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

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

 

 

What the doctrine is not: it is not dualism

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

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

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

spontaneously came into being

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

 

What the doctrine is not: it is not gnosticism

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

-creation is tainted

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

hostile to God)

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

libertinism.

 

 

2]  The doctrine itself:

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

to create)

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

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

 

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

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

 

 

3]  How does God create?

-by the Word

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

 

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

-only by revelation of the Word do we know this

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

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

 

 

 

4]  Creation and covenant are related:

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

sin, God is faithful to us.

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

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

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

meaning of the creation.

 

 

5]  Creation and the kingdom of God:

-the kingdom is the creation healed

-note Jesus’ preoccupation with the kingdom

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

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

 

 

6]  The Creation of humankind:

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

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

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

from scripture as a whole)

-hk. is made steward of the creation

-hk. is sexually differentiated

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

effaced.

 

-faith renders hk. authentically human, but not superhuman

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

i)                 nature-worship has supplanted the worship of God

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

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

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

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

The Doctrine of Creation

(comments on Bloesch text)

 

 

 

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

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

 

 

God wasn’t compelled to create:

[1] no external necessity;

[2] no internal necessity

(e.g., “He couldn’t help creating.”

“He needed to create to be God.”

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

 

Then why did God create?

 

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

 

 

 

 

P25 GOD AS CREATOR AND LORD

[1] “essential goodness of creation”:

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

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

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

but  rather would  change its nature;

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

 

[2] “meaningfulness of history”:

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

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

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

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

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

truly ourselves.

 

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

[b] extreme indulgence.

Luther’s Theologia Crucis

 

A

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

B

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)

 

C

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Since docetic christology can never affirm that in JC God has taken upon himself the human consequences of sin and absorbed these into himself so as to effect atonement (i.e., that in Jesus Christ God and man are inseparably united for our salvation), therefore docetic christology always tends toward speculation or mythological constructs projected onto God.

Note: both Ebionite and Docetic christologies posit an antithesis between divine truth and physical (historical) event. (The apostles, on the contrary, insist that “The Word become flesh, full of grace and truth…”.)
– in both Ebionite and Docetic christologies JC is contrasted with God or placed alongside God, and this the NT never does! According to the apostles, Jesus Christ is the effectual presence of God.

Briefly:
– if JC were not God, he couldn’t reveal God to us, for only through God may we know God.
– if JC were not man, he couldn’t be our saviour, for only as one with us is God savingly at work in our actual human existence.

(To say the same thing)
– if JC wasn’t really God then there was no divine reality in anything he said or did.
– if JC wasn’t really man then what God did in him has no saving relevance for human beings.

Arianism contradicts both of these essential poles, and puts forth both Ebionite and Docetic christologies; i.e., JC is neither unambiguously human with our humanity nor unambiguously God with God’s divinity: JC is a sort of “third thing”.

Athanasius, seeing what Arius was expounding, wrote, “begotten of the Father, only begotten, from the substance of the Father…true God of true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father…”. Just to be sure that everyone knew what was meant, the proponents of the “homoousios” (“same substance”) attached a canon to the Nicene Creed: “It is anathema to say (i) `There was when he (the Son) was not.’ (ii) `Before being begotten he was not.’ (iii) `He came into existence out of nothing.’

In other words, the crucial section of the Nicene Creed mirrored the apostles’ insistence that faith in Christ coincides perfectly with faith in God.

Arius had taught:
– because of the uncompromisable transcendence of God, the being of God is unknowable and incommunicable. Therefore there can be no Son who is eternally of the same nature as the Father himself.

– like all things created out of nothing, the being of the Son is different from the being of the Father. Therefore the Father is incomprehensible to the Son, and therefore the Son cannot have or mediate any authentic knowledge of God, since the Son can only know what the Son has a capacity to know.

– while the Son is a creature, he is unlike all other creatures: the Son is neither properly divine nor properly creaturely.

Arius insisted: “JC is a Son of the Father only by an act of the Father’s will.”
Athanasius insisted: “JC is the Son of the Father from his very being, essential nature and reality as God. “God, in that he ever is, ever is the Father of the Son.”

homoousios versus homoiousios

The Greek letter iota — i — is the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet. How important is it? What is the difference between asking someone to run your business and asking her to ruin it?

(“homo” in Greek means “same’; in Latin “homo” means “man”!)
(“ousia” in Greek means “being”.)
(“homoousios” = “of the same being/nature/substance”; “homoiousios” = “of similar being/nature/substance.”)

The question answered by the Nicene Creed (Athanasius): is the Son of the same nature as the Father, or merely like the Father?” Plainly, if only “like”, the next question is “How much like? A little bit like or a lot like?”

To be sure, “homoousios”is not itself a biblical term. Nevertheless, said Athanasius, “It breathes the spirit of scripture.” In other words, what is really important isn’t the actual words of scripture but the meanings which they convey and the realities to which they point.

Because of the truth of “homoousios”, whatever we say of the Father we can say of the Son, except “Father”; and whatever we say of the Son we can say of the Father, except “Son”.

Any detraction from the Son detracts from the Father, since to deny the deity of the Son is to deny that God is eternally and intrinsically Father. (I.e., the Father is Father in that he is the eternal Father of the eternal Son, not because he is the Father of believers.)

The “homoousios” was a bulwark against both unitarianism (God is eternally triune) and polytheism (because the Father and the Son have the same nature, the Son isn’t a second deity; and because the Father doesn’t need the world to be Father — or to be love — pagan deities tended to need the world to be who they were.)

 

The Gospel-Significance of “Homoousios”

The gospel significance of “h.” is highlighted by one question: “What is implied if F. and S. are not of one being?”

(i) God is utterly unknowable, since (said Arius) no creaturely being can mediate knowledge of God. To say the same thing: it then cannot be held that there is oneness between what the gospel presents as the revelation of God and God himself. “Revelation” would be no more than human fantasizing projected onto “God”.

(ii) The gospel is not the self-communication of God, nor the self-bestowal of God. (I.e., God reveals and bestows “something”, but not himself.)

(iii) In JC God has not condescended to us, and his love (so-called) has stopped short of becoming one with us.

(iv) There is no ontological — and therefore no epistemological — connexion between the love of Jesus and the love of God. The supreme mockery then is that God is said to love us in Jesus, but God is not actually that love in himself. (According to the apostles, to believe in JC is to believe in God himself, not merely in a truth about God.)
There is — or might be — a dark, unknown God behind the back of JC. Athanasius insisted, “The knowledge of the F. through the S., and of the S. from the F., is one and the same.”

(v) The acts of JC are not the acts of God. I.e., if JC is not God, then there is no final authority or validity for anything he said or did for human beings. “No creature can ever be saved by a creature.” (Athanasius)
The giver of grace and the gift of grace are not the same.

(vi) Grace is a created medium between God and man. (In truth, grace is the self-giving of God in the incarnate one, in whom giver and gift are indissolubly one. Otherwise grace is regarded as a detachable quality, a “thing”.)

(vii) On the last day we shall be judged by a God who is arbitrary in that he bears no relation to JC and all that the latter stood for.

(viii) What Jesus does on the cross is simply a judicial transaction that punishes a third party. What Jesus does on the cross is not done by him as representative man, and therefore no provision is made for the humanity of all humankind.

(Athanasius insisted that “The whole Christ (God and man) became a curse for us.” I.e., to save us God cursed our fallen humanity and cursed himself in cursing it. “It was not just a man who suffered and died for us, but the Lord as man; not just the life of a man that was offered to save us, but the life of God as man.” Athanasius’ pithiest statement in this regard was, “Our resurrection is stored up in the cross.”)

Karl Barth maintained that at the time of the Nicene controversy the Athanasian “homoousios” was the most significant theological statement since the apostles.

What do we think? Where is the church today?

In the later 500s Gregory of Nyssa journeyed to Constantinople and found all one hundred congregations there to be Arian. His immediate remark wasn’t a lament or a grumble or a wail; it was, “I have work to do.”

Lecture Outline on The Doctrine of the Trinity

(THE HOLY TRINITY)
The doctrine of the T. isn’t articulated in scripture.
However,
[1] The “raw materials” of the doctrine are there. E.g., Luke 1:28, 31, 35.
 Consider Isaiah 48:16 (God’s Messiah is speaking): “Draw near to me (Messiah)…
from the beginning I have not spoken in secret….And now the Lord God has sent me and
 his Spirit.”
[2] The thrust of scrip. is certainly in the direction of the doctrine.

Note the church’s proclivity to various kinds of unitarianism.
[a] of the Father
     God is one-sidedly sovereign, so very “high and lifted up” as to be remote, inaccessible.
     (Most commonly found in a Magisterial Protestant environment.)
[b] of the Son
     Jesus Christ is our intimate (friend, pal), but never challenges us or rebukes us but rather
        aids and abets our schemes for ourselves and can be summoned to support us.
     (Most commonly found in a Roman Catholic environment, but also in sentimental
        Protestantism.)
[c] of the Spirit
     God is one-sidedly to be experienced (but not adored, not one before whom we prostrate
        ourselves).
     This unitarianism is frequently characterized by emotionalism, frenzy, undervaluation
        of scholarship amounting to mindlessness, corporate and individual disorderliness.
        (Most commonly found in the newer, more effusive churches.)

The heresy of modalism (p.35): God exists as Father, Son and Spirit in different eras, but never as triune.

The necessity of the ontological (or essential or immanent) T.: God is eternally triune. The economic T. maintains that God is triune only in his dealings with us. “Father”, “Son” and “Spirit” are merely three interrelated forms in which divine revelation functions.
We need an ontological T., for God’s revelation isn’t merely a “face” he puts on; rather, his “face” is
 the unambiguous disclosure of his heart, his essence, his being.
The triune revelation of God must point back to, presuppose, a triune being of God (or else we are
 saying that revelation is from God but not of God.)
Unless the economic T. is grounded in the ontological T., the economic T. isn’t a faithful and true
 revelation of the transcendent communion of F, S, and HS — which the eternal being of God is inhimself.

By means of the ordo cognoscendi we come to know the economic T.
Yet the ordo essendi plainly entails the ontological T.
These two interpenetrate each other and regulate each other.
Apart from the ontological T., the economic T. would have only transient significance
 and therefore be without saving power, since only the eternal God can save.

Note (p. 35) that the doctrine of the T. doesn’t mean one God in three manifestations (modalism) nor a triad of separate persons with separable functions.
Rather, the whole God is involved with us at all times.

 

The Arian Heresy
Arianism is a form of subordinationism (Jesus is an inferior sort of deity.)
There are two dangers here:
     [a] polytheism: JC doesn’t disclose the nature of God, since Christ’s being isn’t the being of God.
     [b] agnosticism: if Christ doesn’t disclose God, then who does? How do we know whether anyone does?
Note the subordinationism in all talk of “the God beyond God” or “the God beyond theism.”

 

With respect to Thomas Aquinas’ assertion, “The T. reflects the truth that God is intelligible but not comprehensible” (p.37), the implications are:
     [a] God is intelligible only to faith (God is never naturally intelligible)
     [b] if God weren’t intelligible (albeit to faith), nothing could be known or said of him
     [c] if God were comprehensible (rather than intelligible or apprehensible), then we’d have mastered God, transcended him.
The doctrine of the T.[a] affirms the knowability of God
                                     [b] preserves the mystery of God. (I.e., we know God truly but don’t
know him exhaustively.)

 

(SOLI DEO GLORIA)
God’s glory is the splendour of God turned outward upon us.
Where the glory of God isn’t our motive, then we lapse into a mysticism where we appear to be concerned with God but are chiefly concerned with what God can do for us and how he can nurture our “self” or even by means of whom we can find our “self.”
But in fact I come to my “self” only as I look away from myself to God. In other words, to exalt the glory of God is to find myself both established and exalted. (Here Christians must always disagree with those who say that concern for God’s glory is other-directed and therefore undercuts the foundation of a self even as it diminishes our “self.”)

 

(EROSION OF THE BIBLICAL VIEW OF GOD) p.41
The importation of the “static Absolute” of Platonism, neo-Platonism, and Aristotelian philosophy. (Or
 philosophy in general.)
     e.g., deism during the enlightenment
     e.g., Hegel and Pannenberg
     e.g., Heidegger and Bultmann
     e.g., Plotinus and Tillich

Erigena and emanationism (vs. creation)

The anthropocentric character of religion (p. 42)

A “growing sacramentalism in the church.” (p.43)

The Reformers’ distinction between the revealed will and secret will of God. (p.44)

The influence of Hegel.
The Influence of Schleiermacher
The Influence of Barth

Erosions of God from within Evangelicalism
[i] a sentimentality born of “palsi-walsiness”
[ii] the God who is chiefly concerned with my happiness rather than my holiness
[iii] the exhortation to “make Jesus Lord”
[iv] the tendency to restrict God’s concern to the church, rather than to acknowledge God’s concern with all aspects of the creation (especially the material and the socio-economic)
[v] the failure of Christians to honour God’s claim on their obedience
[vi] (Shepherd) the substitution of “spirituality” for faith
[vii] (Shepherd) the inversion of witness and apologetics

 

The Primacy of Scripture

(ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY)
p.52.     S. is the human witness to divine revelation.
          S. is God’s witness to his own revelation.

Note the nature of revelation (Shepherd)

[1] God acts.
[2] God illumines the people who are the beneficiaries of his action.
His illumining them as to what he has done is his definitive interpretation of what he has done
E.g., What has he done in the cross? How do we know? We know as we are made the
 beneficiary of it. What we know becomes part of the event of his “doing.”

How does he acquaint us with all this? through the human witness of prophets and apostles whom he inspires.
Note here the cruciality of the risen Jesus’s self-interpretation during the forty days between Resurrection and Ascension.

Points to ponder:
[1] S. is not the rev. of God. God doesn’t reveal a book or truth or propositions primarily. God reveals himself, and does so by giving himself. Revelation is from God and of God. God is the author and object of revelation.
[2] God’s act is witnessed by those who are the immediate beneficiaries of it.
[3] Those who are witnesses of it are also summoned and commissioned to be witnesses to it.
[4] The human witness to God’s revelation God owns and blesses as his own witness to himself. What humans write God endorses; God writes “on top of it”, as it were.
If we undervalue the human witness to rev., then we confuse s. with the Lord of s.
If we undervalue s. as God’s witness to himself, then we are left with a s. that is no more than a human document and therefore has no more than human authority.

In short, s. isn’t the rev., but because the R’n of JC includes the witness (testimony) of apostles (i.e., the R’n event is the raising of Jesus PLUS the risen Jesus’s self-interpretation to the apostles PLUS their subsequent writing of all of this), therefore s. is an aspect, even a necessary aspect, of rev. In other words, while rev. isn’t primarily or essentially verbal, since the apostolic testimony is part of the R’n event, rev. always includes a verbal element.

p.52. Bloesch compares deficient view of s. to deficient views of JC:
e.g., docetism (fundamentalist view of s.) and ebionitism (liberal view of s.)

p.52. S. is not rev. itself, but whenever it is read today and vivified by the Holy Spirit, it becomes the occasion of rev. (The work of the HS obviates any deducing or inferring God from s.)
When the HS vivifies s., God himself confronts us as surely as he confronted people in the pre- and post-Easter ministry of JC.
This point is crucial: s.+ HS = the living God’s giving himself to us, addressing us and summoning us.

p.53 Then what is meant by “Word of God”? — the self-utterance of the living God. I.e., “Word of God” = s. + HS.

p.54. Note: because we are fallen and therefore spiritually obtuse, the HS is essential to our finding s. to be the vehicle of God’s self-impartation.

p.55. Rev. is the action whereby God discloses himself. Inspiration is the election and guidance of prophets [and apostles], ensuring the trustworthiness and efficacy of their witness through the ages.
(Shepherd: Be sure to keep rev. primary. Rev. generates inspiration of s.; inspiration doesn’t generate rev. — as in much fundamentalism}

p.55. Note the distinction between inspiration (of writers of s.) and illumination (of readers of s.)

p.56. Insp. is complete; illum. is ongoing; therefore rev. is ongoing in the sense that JC, in the power of the HS, continues to disclose himself to readers/hearers of s. and bind them to himself in the faith he quickens within them.

p.56. JC is the substance of the OT as much as of the NT.
(Shepherd) this point is crucial or else
[1] we think a different deity is spoken of in the OT.
[2] we jettison the OT, thereby forfeiting a doctrine of creation, an understanding of community, the burden of the prophetic protest, the meaning of holiness, etc.
[3] we falsify Jesus. (Without the OT, Jesus becomes whatever we make him.)
[4] we become anti-semitic.

p.56. Historical criticism has its place in helping us uncover the meaning of s., but upholding historical criticism must never become the pretext for importing a non-s.’l philosophy that skews s.
 S. is not the record or evidence of anything evolutionary.

(SCRIPTURAL PRIMACY)

S. takes precedence over tradition. Tradition can “vote” but cannot “veto.” Trad. must always be challenged and corrected by s.

p.58. The church recognizes the canonical collection, but the church doesn’t determine it. (Put differently, the canonical collection delineates “church”; the church doesn’t delineate “s.”

p.59. S. authenticates itself. (I.e., as self-authenticating, s. requires nothing to authenticate it.)
(Shepherd: Calvin’s point is crucial. Jesus Christ authenticates himself to us, and in doing this he consequently authenticates to us that document (s.) by which we learned of him.)

p.59-60. S. always stands above the church, above our experience, above culture.

p. 62-63. Bloesch makes the point again that s. is self-authenticating derivatively in that it is the means whereby I encounter the self-authenticating One.
(Shepherd) Note the way Luther speaks of baby and manger.
(Shepherd) At no time is s. an “Aladdin’s Lamp”: we “rub” it until the genie (JC) “comes out.” The s. we always have in our hands; JC we never have in our hands: he forever remains Lord of his own self-disclosure and Lord of the witness to him. At no time do we control him or that Spirit which he bears and bestows.

 

 

(INFALLIBILITY AND INERRANCY)

p.64. Unquestionably we find culturally conditioned ideas and historically conditioned language in s. Yet by the miracle of God’s s grace that Word is heard which isn’t conditioned.
(Shepherd: s. is “infallible” in that it never fails in doing that for which it is intended: bespeak the fact, nature and offer of salvation.)

p.66. Bloesch speaks of inerrancy. See f.n. #62 p. 83: Inerrancy doesn’t consist in scientific exactness or consistency in detail [Shepherd: Calvin drew up a list of inconsistencies in s.] but in “the faithfulness of God to communicate his Word to his appointed spokespersons and to preserve their testimony as the vehicle of its continual revelation to his children.”

p.69. We are not to treat s. as a source book of revealed truths that we can then extract from s.
(Shepherd)
[1] This would presupposes that God reveals a book.
[2] This would obviate any need for the HS, implying that not HS but our REASON gives us access to ultimate reality. (Note the relationship between ult. reality and the means of apprehending it: The Rational <> reason, versus Spirit<>spirit.)
[3] This would mean that unbelief has the same access to the heart of s. as has faith.
[4] This would deny the relationship of JC to s.: he ever remains Lord of s., is never “locked up” in it.
[5] Gathering up all the above, we must say reason or historical research cannot disclose God. God alone does this, and does this by creating faith in him in the context of our reading s. A miracle of grace is needed. (Since fallen creatures cannot “ascend” to God, any time any person comes to faith, a miracle has occurred.)


(THE HERMENEUTICAL TASK)

p.71. [1] We come to s. as a believer, expecting God to reveal himself and therein reveal us (as opposed to those like Bultmann and Tillich who presuppose a prior self-understanding we bring to s.)
[2] We examine the task critically (since we don’t uphold a “Joseph Smith” approach.)
[3] We read the text in the light of its theological context. For this, spiritual discernment is needed. While we may begin by interpreting the text, we always conclude by having the text “interpret” us.
[4] We relate the text to contemporaneity.
[5] Finally we must grasp the substance of s. as a whole. p.72. (Shepherd: I’d invert 4 and 5.)

 

(MISCONCEPTIONS IN MODERN EVANGELICALISM)

p.74 The s. is not to be identified with rev.
A theory of mechanical dictation is not to be identified with inspiration.
Once s. is no longer grounded in JC and his authority, it is said to be grounded in itself (K. Barth: “a paper pope”). (Shepherd: Why not simply say that when s. is regarded as grounded in itself it has become an idol?)

p.75. Note: much modern evangelicalism assumes a rationalist position and maintains that the Word of God is directly available to human reason.

– – – – – – –

Bloesch: The Future of Evangelical Theology
Bl. discusses three approaches to s.
[1] liberal-modernist. The s. is the written record of the religious history or religious experience of an ancient people.
[2] scholastic-fundamentalist. The s. is identified with rev; the s. is what God has revealed.
[3] sacramental. The s. is the “mirror” that reflects JC, a “channel” which brings Christ to us and us to him, a “vehicle” (think of Luther’s manger) by which the risen One is “conveyed.” We neither identify JC with scripture nor pretend that he can be known (i.e., received) apart from it. Once more, s. isn’t rev. but it ever remains unique and indispensable to our knowing and being the beneficiary of rev.

The Person of Jesus Christ

(THE STRUGGLE WITH LIBERALISM)

p120. Bl. speaks of neo-Protestantism and neo-Catholicism.  Be sure to distinguish these from neo-orthodoxy.
NPr=theol’l liberalism: the world’s self-und’g is the presupposition of theol. and church.
NOr: the retention of scrip’l substance and logic while [1] accommodating hist’l criticism of scrip., [2] moving away from “verbal dictation” approach to scrip., [3] recognizing that rev. is from God and of God; only God can reveal, and God reveals himself (not something, not an abstract truth.)
NCa: RC thought with the same kind of infection as NPr.

Note: for lib. theol. the significance of JC is his being teacher.  This notion, while claiming to exalt the person of JC, actually renders him superfluous.  Note the arbitrariness of the “Quest of the Historical Jesus.”

p120. Harnack: “BOMFOG”.  Christology is the “simple” Jesus rendered complicated by Gk.Phil.
David Strauss: the true God-Man isn’t the Jesus of Nazareth but humanity as a whole: humanity is essentially united to God.  Jesus was the first to perceive this.
Biedermann: redemption arises from huankind’s religious self-consciousness.  (cf. Hegel)
SCHLEIERMACHER (the father of lib. theol.)  Jesus is not Word incarnate but a man whose “God-consciousness” is elevated to the highest degree.  “God-consc.” had to do with feeling (of absolute dependence.)
Note how S. attempted to adapt but came to adopt.
Ritschl: J. is not one with God essentially, but is united to God by the constancy of his will.
All of the above elevate ethics above salvation and end up moralizing the gospel.

Kaehler : the only depiction we have of Jesus is that of the apostles.  It is impossible to go behind the apostles’ testimony and uncover/construct a J. different from the one the apostles’ attest.

Note that all such attempts at reconstructing the “J. of history”
[1] disregard the ressur’n as lacking the status of event.
[2] disregard the miracles.
[3] devalue the cross from atonement to martyrdom.
[4] elevate the significance of J. as teacher.
[5] render his teachings anemic.
[6] discount J.’s Jewishness in favour of cosmopolitanism.
[7] minimize the OT as primitive stage in religious evolution.

Note the perils of neglecting the Older Testament

p121. Bl maintains the J. of hist is the Christ of faith.  “J of hist.” is an invention of scholars whose “tools” aren’t those of the apostles, while “Christ of faith” mustn’t be viewed as an invention of the early church.

  1.   Kierkegaard [1] upheld the Inc. without qualification.
    [2] faith means staking everything on an “objective uncertainty” (can’t be proved prior to faith.)
    [3] such faith means we come to live “in truth”; “Truth is subjectivity” (not subjectivism!)  Note the cruciality of the “between.”
    [4] phil’l speculation opposes faith.
    [5] the fact of original sin cuts off any “maieutic” approach to knowledge (of God.)
    [6] reason(ing) — not the structure of reason —  is damaged by the Fall.

Abraham is the exemplar of faith.

P.T. Forsyth: a British rep. of neo-orthodoxy, but sounder than Barth on such issues as faith and soteriology.

 

(THE N.T. WITNESS)
p124.  NB the difference between gnostics and apostles on Logos.
(Shepherd) Besides the NT passages that explicitly confess JC to be Son of God, the Incarnate One, there are many which implicitly do as much; e.g.,
[1] the manner in which J. speaks of God as “(my) Father.”
[2] his claim to forgive sin
[3] his insistence he will be the final judge of humankind
[4] his giving a new law (Torah)
[5] his use of the emphatic “I”
[6] his claim to satisfy those human needs that God alone can
[7] his unqualified demand of humankind’s allegiance.
p125.  NB the significance of “exalted to the right hand of”  and “giver” and “Lord” “of eternal life”
p125.  “Messiah” doesn’t of itself assume Incarnation; “Son of Man”, however is a Messianic figure who does have divine authority.
p126.  In our insistence on Inc. (in face of liberal erosion) we must always acknowledge the genuine humanity of J.  Recall Athanasius in the face of the Arians: not “the Lord in the form of man” but “the Lord as man”.  “Form of man” is in fact a denial of the Inc, since it reduces the humanity of J to merely apparent humanity. The NT unashamedly speaks of J’s hunger, thirst, fatigue, ignorance, etc.
(Note Shepherd’s disagreement with Bl re: “He was tempted to despair in the Garden of Gethsemane and again at Calvary.” Shepherd doesn’t think that despair is the meaning of the dereliction.)

 

(JESUS CHRIST — TRUE GOD AND TRUE MAN)
Council of Chalcedon (451).  NB the difference between Xn and pagan und’gs of incarnation.
p128.  Assorted heresies; e.g., [1] Arius (see earlier class notes on Trinity.)
[2] Apollinaris: JC has human body but divine soul.  Note the Platonic influence here.
[3] Paul of Samosata: J was Son of God not by nature but was merely united to God by adoption.
[4] Monphysites (“one nature”)  JC’s human nature merges into the divine.  (Not quite the same as Docetism)
The Logos absorbs the humanity so that the latter is dissolved and lost.
[5] Nestorius: J’s humanity and deity are joined adjacently (like two blocks of wood joined at the end.)  This allows people to say, e.g., that J suffered in his humanity but not in his deity.  (Calvin’s Christology has a “whiff” of Nestorianism.)  Nest’m leaves J with two different personalities, one human and one divine.

Note the precise formulations of Chalcedon:
[a] against the Monophysites: the two natures exist without confusion and without change (no absorption)
[b] against the Nestorians: the two natures exist without division and without separation.
Don’t say that Chalcedon is an unnecessary complication of the “simple person of J.”  Without Chalcedon the Inc. is lost and therefore the gospel is lost (as we saw at Nicaea with Ath’s homoousion.)

  1.   Bl: there is no simple equation of J with God, but no separation of J from God.
    (Shepherd) Recall Calvin’s “irreducible minimum”: [1] God is one.
    [2] Jesus is both God and Son of God.
    [3] Our salvation rests with God’s mercy.

(Shepherd) Note the distinction between “Word-flesh” and Word-spirit” Christologies.  (Word-flesh is heretical because in fact a denial of the Inc., even though it is what the church largely believes at any one time.)
p129.  Does Bl commit this heresy when he writes, “God is the acting subject and the manhood of Jesus is the predicate of the Godhead”?
p129.  Bl points out that Jesus differs from other men “in kind and not simply in degree.”  (Shepherd) Of course J differs from us in that he is the Word Incarnate; but his humanity doesn’t differ from ours (apart from sin.)

  1.   Aquinas: the hypostatic union is neither is neither essential nor accidental.
    If essential, then the Word wouldn’t become flesh; the Word would be flesh eternally.
    If accidental, then Nestorianism would be operative.
    Bl: “…human being, even under the conditions of estrangement (i.e., sin) is virtually transparent to divine being.”  What does Bl mean by “virtually”?
  2.   (Bl) “The deity of Christ necessarily entails his sinlessness, for God cannot sin.”
    (Shepherd) Surely the humanity of Christ must not entail his sinlessness necessarily, or else Christ’s temptations weren’t genuine.  Genuine temptation means that sin was a real possibility. (Compare a reader’s objection to Abraham/Isaac story: “so much is depending on the obedience of the man Abraham.”  How much is hanging on the obedience of the man Jesus?)
  3.   The pre-existence of the Word.  This isn’t the pre-existence of the Nazarene.
    The cross is an event in history (and has to be), even as the lamb is “slain from before the foundation of the world.” (1 Peter 1:20).  So J of Nazareth is an event in history even as his humanity is prefigured in the Word; i.e., the Word anticipates his humanity.
  4.   The Virgin Birth doesn’t prove the Inc. but testifies to it.  It is a sign of profound truth.
    Note Luther’s “three Christmas miracles.”
    Note that the NT attestation for VB is much stronger than liberals suggest.  (See T.F. Torrance article.)

 

(AREAS OF TENSION WITHIN THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY)
p132.  RC vs Ref’d (Luth’n) Christologies.
Prot. Xology upholds [1] the sinless humanity of Christ (as does RC.)
[2] the finite humanity of Christ: J. had to learn obedience.

Aquinas: The humanity of J is fully developed at conception.  However, modern RC theol. recognizes this defect and the accompanying Monophysite view of Christ.
p133.  Once the Inc. is only apparent (God using a human body but not God as man), then Mary as co-mediatrix (-redemptrix) appears in order to supply a genuine humanity.
Note: in Prot. Xology, the whole Christ suffers for us, man and God.
Note: in Anglo-Catholic Xology humankind is reconciled to God by the God-man union in the Inc.  Scrip. insists we are reconciled only by the cross, the Inc. being the presupposition of the cross. I.e., the Inc. occurs for the sake of the cross.

Luth’n vs Ref’d Christologies.
Luth’n: communicatio idiomatum = communion of qualities (but not properties) of each nature into the other: whatever we say of Christ’s humanity we say of his deity; e.g, suffering, shame, glory. But beware of Monophysitism!
(Recall Luther’s theologica crucis: the truth of the cross is the opposite of what the world “sees.”
Ref’d: finitum non capax infinti = the finite isn’t capable of the infinite.  And therefore some things prediated of Christ’s deity aren’t predicated of his humanity.  But beware of Nestorianism!

Kenotic Christology
“He emptied himself.” (Phil. 2:6 and 2 Cor. 8:9)  Of what?  If of his deity, then there’s no Inc.  (Shepherd) — He renounced his right to remain remote from the degradation of sin.  He who knew no sin became sin.

 

Rev. V. Shepherd

The Work of Christ

(Bloesch, Essentials, chapt. VII)

(THE BIBLICAL UNDERSTANDING)

(Shepherd) — evang’l theol. always emphasizes the cross. Obviously the cross isn’t mentioned explicitly in the OT, but the sacrificial system is mentioned everywhere. The question is, “How can unholy people approach and be made right with an all-holy God?”

Liberal theol. [1] tends to isolate the prophetic dimension of the OT and ignore the piacular.

[2] therein distort the prophetic (now reduced to left-wing social criticism.)

Forgotten: [1] the sacrificial system is God-ordained.

[2] prophet and priest are allied (see Isaiah and Ezekiel) (…mercy not sacrifice…”?)

Presupposed in the sacrificial system: sin is, among other things, defilement. Evan’l thought has lost this: it’s assumed that if we are now estranged from God, all we need do is understand that we can“go home” and “go.” I.e., much evan’l thought features the cross but fails to understand it.

PROPITIATION is the key concept. Note how it differs from and grounds expiation.

Liberal theol. dismisses prop. as crude or primitive, as if an irascible deity were placated by a 3rd party.

But note [1] prop. is the work of God. A reluctant God isn’t being bribed by a willing Jesus.

[2] God’s wrath isn’t ill-temper or petulance but rather his holy opposition to sin.

[3] Wrath isn’t the opposite of love. (Indifference is.)

[4] Prop., so far from being unrighteous and therefore enlarging injustice, establishes God’s right’s’s: he is both just and justifier.

 

– – – – –

 

Once we understand the above we can proceed to explore other descriptions of the cross; e.g., (149ff)

[1] redemption: in OT, referred to release from slavery; in NT, from enslavement to sin: deliverance. We have to be freed from before we are free for (obedience, service, etc.)

[2] reconciliation: restoration of the alienated to fellowship. (It presupposes prop. and expiation.) Don’t psychologize it!

[3] justification: to be declared “just” (=rightly related.)

[a] Is this a miscarriage of justice? Don’t overpress the forensic metaphor.

Don’t isolate the forensic metaphor from others.

[b] Don’t say “as if”: the guilty sinner is viewed “as if” right’s.

[4]regeneration (This is more commonly spoken of as a work of the Spirit. Plainly, however, it occurs only in those who are beneficiaries by faith of the cross.)

Regen’n is the “new birth.” Note the three meanings of anothen: [1] “one more time” (womb), [2] “from above” (=from God), [3] “from ‘square one'”; i.e., life without the curse of sin.

[5] sanctification: the ever-increasing removal of the arrears of sin and conformity to JC.

(Wesley: justification is the restoration to God’s favour; sanctification, of God’s image.

 

 

 

 

 

(DIFFERING VIEWS ON THE ATONEMENT)

Classic View (p152): the freeing and vindicating of those victimized in the course of evil’s cosmic conflict.

Latin View (p153): the “satisfying” of God who has been offended by the dishonour our sin visits upon him.

Bloesch’s exposition of Anselm isn’t entirely clear. Please note the following:

[1] God must be “recompensed” in view of humankind’s sin. (Our sin has deprived him of what is his.)

[2] What must be paid to God (because owed God) must be greater than every existing thing other than God; i.e., nothing merely creaturely can assuage the outrage to God’s justice and honour.

[3] Since the person who makes this payment must be more than merely creaturely, he must be divine.

[4] Yet only a human ought to make it, since the debt is humankind’s debt.

[5] Therefore someone both God and human is needed to make the necessary satisfaction; i.e., the Incarnate One. JC alone can render God that satisfaction apart from which he remains dishonoured and the entire cosmos disordered.

Strengths in Anselm’s Argument:

[1] it takes sin seriously.

[2] it deplores “cheap grace.”

[3] it upholds scrip’s emphasis on JC as representative humankind.

Questions/Criticisms re: Anselm’s Argument:

[1] Does A’s emphasis on “appropriate”, “fitting”, “honour”, rely on non-scrip’l categories that emerge from a mediaeval social/moral framework?

[2] If “appropriateness”, e.g., is the controlling category, has God’s mercy ceased to be unfathomable? free?

Instead of “God is love” is A left-handedly saying “God is honour”?

[3] While justice is crucial to A’s argument, does he understand it as scrip does (=judgement)?

Aquinas (p153): rightly emphasised that all that Christ has done for us “benefits” us only as we are bound to him in faith; only now all that he has done for us is also done in us.

(Shepherd: we must always hold together the objective dimension of the atonement and the subjective dimension of our appropriating it, without every making faith a subtle form of religious “work”.)

(Please see p155 in text re: Shepherd’s comments on Bl’s reading of Barth.)

Mystical Theory of Atonement (p156): contrast William Law and Phillips Brooks.

Moral Influence Theory of Atonement: the cross is the supreme manifestation of God’s love for us, which manifestation evokes our love for God, and which love for God then reconciles us to God.

Criticisms (Shepherd): [1] How do we know that Christ’s death demonstrates God’s love for us?

[2] Before we consider whether or how our hearts are softened (by beholding the cross), we must consider whether or how God’s judgement on us is to be dealt with.

[3] This theory assumes the root human problem to be that we are unaware that God loves us.

[4] This theory ultimately quickens moralism. (My love, rather than faith as God’s gift that I exercise, binds me to God.)

Governmental Theory of Atonement: the cross is neither satisfaction nor victory, but rather a protracted demonstration that God is “in the right” in his dispute with us. God will forgive us if we simply admit that God is in the right.

Note Bl’s criticisms: [1] here the cross relaxes the Law of God: forgiveness presupposes only our admission that God is in the right. [2] there’s no suggestion that an outrage must be addressed.

Vicarious Repentance Theory of Atonement (p157): the Son of God identifies himself with our sin and “confesses” this before the Father. The cross demonstrates God’s “creative sympathy” with sinful humankind’s predicament.

Overlooked here: [1] God’s law has been violated.

[2] It says more about the human predicament than about God’s (violated) holiness.

[3] The cross is said to attest God’s forgiveness but not effect that forgiveness.

In short, it ignores the whole matter of propitiation.

 

(THREE ASPECTS OF THE ATONEMENT)

p158. The atonement is a triumph over the powers of darkness. JC is not only suffering servant but reigning king. (NB the point Shepherd made at beginning of term in discussion of God’s sov’t’y: “He rules through suffering love, not worldly might.” Bl.)

The “Jesus is Victor” motif appears in many places in scrip.; e.g., Mark’s gospel. (Note the ministry of Johann Christoph Blumhardt.)

p159. Bl’s point: a one-sided emphasis on classical (triumphal) theory overlooks the fact that God’s holiness (together with his justice and righteousness) must be acknowledged and honoured.

Shepherd: a one-sided emphasis on classical theory suggests “might is right”; i.e., it suggests the exercise of sheer power (everywhere condemned in scrip.)

Shepherd: while the goal of atonement (regardless of theory) is our reconciliation as persons with the Person of God, it must never be thought that such “I-Thou” reconciliation is born simply ofexercising such a relation, born of a simple affirmation, for sinful humankind has no access to a holy God. I.e., pardon presupposes propitiation. Our “going home” presupposes that the barricaded way home (“No thoroughfare!”) has had the barricade removed (by the cross.) Forgiveness is enormously costly!

p159 (bottom). Bl speaks of Christ’s having “made satisfaction for us in a two-fold way.” In the history of Xn thought this has been called the active and passive obedience of Christ.

[A] active obedience: JC alone is the covenant-keeper, the fulfiller of Torah.

[B] passive obedience: JC willingly goes to the cross as sacrifice.

 

(OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE ATONEMENT)

p162. Both aspects must be held together, both “for us” and “in us.”

[1] If the objective aspect is undervalued, then God’s holiness, righteousness, integrity are disregarded.

[2] If the subjective aspect is undervalued, then we assume that everyone “benefits” from God’s provision in the cross irrespective of faith. We forget that the goal of the cross is a person who lives in intimate relationship with the Person of God. Surrender, obedience, commitment on our part are essential to right-relatedness to God, not merely psychological or cognitive aspects of a “right-relatedness” that is wrought in the cross irrespective of faith.

NB both aspects in 2nd Cor 5: (a) “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s trespasses against them”; (b) “We beseech you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

p164. (Shepherd) I don’t like Bl’s expression, “In Christ we discover that we have already been forgiven.” We don’t “discover” anything. In Christ we own for ourselves and appropriate the provision God has made for us in the cross, so that what was done “for us” is now done “in us” as we are reconciled to God and live (by faith) a life of trust, love and obedience.

 

(PARTICULAR AND UNIVERSAL ATONEMENT)

Did Christ die for all or only for some? Can we sincerely say to anyone we meet, “Christ has died for you”?

Bl identifies Calvin with “limited atonement.” Shepherd doesn’t find this in Calvin; Calvin, however, does restrict the application of the atonement to the elect. Ref’d theol. after Calvin restricts theatonement itself to the elect: Jesus died only for those who will not fail to come to faith (because of the decree of election.)

(Shepherd) The best exposition of limited atonement I know is J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness.

He argues, “Its [i.e., the cross’s] saving power does not depend on faith being added to it; its saving power is such that faith flows from it.”

[1] It is unthinkable that sinners can defeat the Saviour (the crucified.)

[2] Therefore all for whom Christ died must submit to him.

[3] Submitting/not submitting isn’t our choice, for then we should be the ones to crown/frustrate the S.

[4] Therefore the faith which embraces the crucified must be generated by the cross.

[5] Since not everyone “puts on Christ” in faith,

[6] Therefore he couldn’t have died for all.

(Shepherd) The issue here is again the nature of God nature of grace and nature of sov’t’y.

Advocates of limited atonement maintain that if Jesus died for more than have been foreordained to faith, then Son and Father aren’t one in their saving purpose and its execution.

(Shepherd) Criticisms: [1] scrip. tells us that God is love, not merely that he loves part of humankind. (If God is love — i.e., love is who he is and not merely what he does — then he cannot love only part of humankind.)

[2] is God’s integrity, his identity (as God) threatened if a mere creature defies him eternally?

[3] is grace a power, an efficacy that operates “irresistibly”?

[4] the humanity of Christ is essential to his atoning work. His humanity is representative; i.e., he represents all humankind in view of the fact that he is human with the humanity with which everyone is human. Then how can the atonement be limited if it presupposes a humanity that is no more divisible in him than in anyone else? How can the full humanity of Christ (there being no partial humanity) issue in a limited atonement?

(Shepherd) [1] scrip. overwhelmingly upholds “Christ died for all.”

[2] Christ’s death is effected in those alone that embrace him in faith.

[3] Our faith isn’t something we generate and then bring to Christ. (Here Packer is correct.)

[4] Christ quickens faith in us, yet we must exercise it ourselves.

[5] a theol. of double predestination entails major inconsistencies w.r.t. doctrines of Christ, Spirit and Trinity. (See Shepherd, The Nature and Function of Faith in the Theology of John Calvin.)

[6] No satisfactory answer can be given as to why some come (not) to faith when all alike are dead coram Deo and God’s mercy is visited upon all through the declaration of the gospel. >> MYSTERY

p166. To be avoided: Barth’s position, “Since Christ has died for all, all are saved now.”

 

(THE OBLIGATION OF THE CHRISTIAN)

p169. The atonement is complete. To add to it is to detract from it=deny it=repudiate it.

We are to “work out” (Phil. 2:12.13) our salv’n’ i.e., live it.

p169. Bl says works-righteousness is “solidly refuted in Paul’s epistles.” Shepherd: it’s refuted everywhere in scrip. Paul’s criticism of the law as vehicle of self-salv’n (Romans and Galatians) is a criticism of an abuse of the law. See the preface to the decalogue and the nature of Torah.

p169 (bottom.) Bl points out that in the middle ages (in some thinkers; e.g., Gabriel Biel) there was an outer structure of grace and an inner content of works. In such a scheme the “works” aspect is always determinative; i.e., grace merely makes it possible for us to earn our standing with God.

p171. Bl says that JC has suffered the “consequences” of everyone’s sin.

(Shepherd) we should distinguish between sin’s penalty and sin’s consequences.

p172. Substitutionary atonement doesn’t entail “cheap grace” (regardless of how much cavalier people appear to cheapen it.) The pattern of the Xn life is grace>>>gratitude.

NB the structure of the Heidelberg Catechism. There are three sections: (I) humankind’s misery, (II) God’s provision in Christ, (III) the Christian life (discipleship.) The heading of the 3rd section is simply GRATITUDE.

 

(MISUNDERSTANDINGS IN MODERN THEOLOGY)

[1] denial of need of propitiation (as barbaric) born of ignorance of God’s holiness.

[2] repudiation of the whole notion of sacrifice as primitive.

[3] forgiveness (if needed at all) arises as we reconcile ourselves to God.

[4] Since God is love, his love meets us and all we need do is simply love him in return.

[5] atonement is replaced by God’s identifying himself with us in our life-situation. (He knows our anxiety, our insecurity, our frailty. He comforts us by sharing our life-situations, but he doesn’t saveus by taking upon himself that condemnation which he must visit upon us.)

 

p172. With respect to Jesus Christ

[1] Dorothee Soelle: Christ is the representation of God rather than the substitute for humankind.

this means we need a “picture” of God rather than needing our sin dealt with.

a representative of God isn’t God. (She’s denied the incarnation.)

[2] Paul Tillich: Christ is the New Being.

this is correct in what it affirms: Christ is the new man/woman.

this is terrible in what it doesn’t say: Christ is God incarnate.

T’s philosophy around this point renders unnecessary the historical existence of JC. The ideational description that the apostles give is enough to “trigger” our affirmation of such “new being” for ourselves.

[3] Friedrich Schleiermacher: Christ is; he is the pattern of God-consc., which pattern is charged with the capacity to duplicate itself in us. Christ is “mediator” only in the sense of the mediator of God-consciousness

lost here are all the biblical categories for understanding Jesus.

Schl. is the father of theol’l liberalism. Lib’l’m adopts as theology’s starting point the world’s self-und’g. Result: theol. can be only the world talking to itself with a religious vocabulary.

[4] Georg Hegel: Christ is the symbol (pictorial representation) of divine-human unity, which unity is the ultimate truth and reality of the universe.

the radical transcendence of the holy God is lost

the Inc. isn’t denied so much as it’s re-interpreted non-bib’ly.

a modern approximation: New Age movement, albeit without H’s phil’l genius.

 

p173. Moral/Mystical Influence of Atonement Theories

[1] J.A.T. Robinson: Christ saves us by quickening love in us.

then can’t anyone save us by quickening love in us?

unless Christ is God-incarnate, then X’s death has nothing to do with love.

[2] Wiersinga: Christ’s death shocks us into repentance and conversion.

why is his death any more shocking than anyone else’s?

are repentance & conversion natural occurrences?

[3] de Chardin (an instance of neo-Catholicism): Christ is the climax of humankind’s spiritual evolution.

this is a total inversion of biblical faith.

[4] O’Meara: Christ’s sacrifice moves us to sacrifice.

this is another instance of the merely natural, the psychological.

 

 

– – – – –

 

Essential Points in a Doctrine of the Atonement

[1] atonement is rooted in God’s love, and therefore in his grace as his love meets our sin.

[2] the sacrifice asked of the Son the Father offers himself.

[3] the Son absorbs the wrath/judgement/condemnation of God, as God the Father, being of the same essence as the Son, absorbs all this in himself.

[4] the invitation can now be issued to repent, believe, obey, since the effect of sin on God has now been dealt with.

[5] while [4] is a human affirmation/act/ event, it is all facilitated by the Holy Spirit. There is no suggestion of semi-Pelagianism, or an outer structure of grace with an inner content of works.

[6] before that sacrifice we make there is a sacrifice we are to trust. Still, the sacrifice we trust constrains the sacrifice we make, or else we haven’t trusted Christ and are not bound to him; i.e., we are still living in unbelief (=Sin)

 

 

Reverend V. Shepherd

 

The Consequences of Undervaluing the Older Testament

1]  Jesus becomes a wax figure whom we can mould as we wish.  Invariably we end up fashioning him after our image.  Consider the assorted “Jesus’s” that have appeared in the 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 lose the Hebrew affirmation of the material, the earthly, the earthy, the sexual, bodily delight, the pleasures of food, drink, physicality, and appropriate the contradiction of all of this in the philosophy of Plato.

 

9]  We fail to grasp the central scriptural motif of holiness, both God’s and ours.  (Scripture attests God’s reaffirmation of holiness in the wake of our denial of his and our contradiction of our own.)

 

Salvation by Grace

Bloesch, Essentials, chapt. viii

 

 

(THE GIFT OF GRACE IN BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE)

  1.   Bl. says that salv’n is a free gift of God in that our works can’t satisfy “the stringent requirements of God’s law.”
    NB: [1] they can’t;
    [2] they were never meant to be the basis of our standing with God.  Recall [a] the preface to the decalogue, [b] the fact that the OT as a whole attests the gospel rather than contradicts it. (Romans 3)
  2.   The law as vehicle of our standing with God is a perversion of the law.  If we don’t understand this, [1] we misread and reject the OT; [2] we write off the synagogue. (See Rom. 9:4-5)
  3.   Not only are we saved by grace, we are kept by grace.
  4.   Bl. correctly denies that when grace comes upon us we remain passive; rather we are “compelled” to respond.”  [1] Don’t “thingify” grace;
    [2] Don’t overpress “compelled”;
    [3] recognize the response to be authentically human.
  5.   Bl. is correct: because the woman is forgiven she loves much.  God’s mercy is primordial.
  6.   In Bl.’s discussion of the parable of sheep and goats: “We are to be judged according to our works, but we are saved despite our works.”
    NB [1] the judg’t that the Xn faces cannot condemn us.
    [2] our works are to be judged in that our concrete, daily obedience matters.
    [3] God’s judg’t also has the force of “vindication”: the Xn will be displayed as “right”.
  7.   re: Cornelius, a ‘God-fearer”.
    [1] in the synagogue he would hear the declaration of God as in the OT
    |[2] he “feared” God.  This means (chiefly) he recognized God and honoured God by responding appropriately.
    [3] One aspect of his response was his righteous doing.
    [4] the “man in bright apparel” = an angel = messenger of God ( or visitation by God himself.)
    [5] Corn. recognizes that J of Nazareth embodies the substance of what he had already responded to in “fearing God.”
  8.   Note the discussion between Calvin and Bloesch re: Cornelius.  Calvin’s point is most important: the one and only Mediator (i.e., the gospel) was known to Israel under the economy of the Torah.
  9.   Bl., in the wake of the Calvinist  tradition, speaks of “common grace.”  Calvin himself spoke of providence.  (These aren’t exact synonyms.)  Neither is to be confused with prevenient grace.

 

(AN AGE-OLD CONTROVERSY)

Pelagius: by our natural powers we can will ourselves not to sin.

Augustine: fallen humans retain free will w.r.t. creaturely goods, but not w.r.t. the Good: the kingdom of God, the truth of the gospel, the righteousness of Christ.  I.e., we can’t will ourselves out ofour fallen state and into right-relatedness with God.
Our every attempt means [1] we haven’t grasped the fact as sinners we’ve violated God;
[2] God seeks not the discharge of our “debt”; he seeks us ourselves, reconciliation;
[3] we’ve lost sight of our predicament: [a] we are blind to our need, to the gospel, to the nature of what God wants for us, [b] we are powerless to alter our condition; to will, in this matter, is to continue willing our depravity.  (Prot. Reformers: in se curvatus.)

Semi-Pelagianism: while we don’t author our salv’n, we contribute to it.  P,m and Semi-P’m have been condemned at several church councils.  Only by grace can we ask for grace or appropriate grace.
p.190.  Bl.  says that Semi-P’m appears repeatedly “in the Roman church.”  It does too in the Prot. church  E.g., [1] the liberal ch.>> moral effort
[2] the evan’l ch.>> the “pursuit” of holiness, where the pursuit, understood as simply our striving, is deemed meritorious.
>> inculcation of a psychological (rather than a moral) condition: e.g., we strive to be “yielded.”

  1.   w.r.t Bl.’s discussion of Aquinas, Scotus, etc., it’s important to understand that some forms of Prot’m, rightly eschewing synergism, propose monergism: in someone’s coming to faith there is only one will willing: God’s.
    Monergism ult’ly makes God the author of evil, sin and damnation.
    Synergism ult’ly makes us co-authors of our salvation.
    In this matter we must speak of co-operation without synergism.  Such co-operation (recall Augustine’s distinction between gratia operans and gratia co-operans) is facilitated by grace but not forced by grace.
  2.   NB Biel’s trademark: an outer structure of grace with an inner content of works; i.e., grace makes it possible for us to earn our salvation.  (NB the evangel’l Prot. varieties of this.)
  3.   w.r.t Bl’s discussion of the Prot. Reformers, the following points need to be kept in mind:
    [1] justification is an instantaneous act: (“once-for-all”, rather than Augustine’s life-long process) whereby God declares or pronounces the sinner righteous. |
    [2] we cannot prepare ourselves (by ourselves) for the reception of grace; grace facilitates the reception of grace.
    [3] fallen humankind doesn’t seek God but rather flees him; the “seeking” is proof of fleeing, since God hasn’t hidden himself from us.  (Recall Genesis 3: who is hiding?)
    [4] all sin is “mortal”.  What we do expresses what we are.  See Romans 14:23.
    [5] our good works, like our religiosity, are  [a] that barricade behind which (try to) hide from God,
    [b] a bargaining “coin” we think we can use with God.
    In 18th century Anglicanism (Wesley’s era), but not in the 16th century English Reformation, justification was God’s pronouncement upon (i.e., evaluation of) the sanctity we had achieved at the time of our death.  I.e., it was God’s recognition of us at the end of life rather than the beginning of the Xn life and stable basis for everything in it.
  4.   Grace is not simply an “offer”; it is Christ’s embracing us, not his offer to embrace us.  (Therefore to reject him is shockingly ungrateful and perverse.)
  5.   The Prot. Reformers never denigrate good works, but rather insist they arise from a salvation received and enjoyed, not in order to merit a salvation not yet ours.
    The Xn’s motivation is gratitude and filial (non-servile) fear.
  6.   Jansenism is the most “Augustinian” of the RC schools of thought on the nature of grace and the human will.  (The Jesuits are the least Augustinian.)
  7.   Bl’s point is no doubt correct for some areas of “modern Catholicism”, but not all; e.g., Hans Urs von Balthasar: Mary isn’t the prime example of “co-operation” (=synergism); rather she typifies the response of the church to the annunciation of the gospel: “Let it be to me according to your word.”
  8.   Karl Rahner’s “anonymous Xn” has been hugely controversial: salv’n is by grace, and grace is imparted by the creaturely order: there is an “implicit saving structure” to religion(s) and ethics and even secularism.  Even what appears more-or-less explicitly contradictory w.r.t. the gospel implicitly provides a saving vehicle, the right response to which entails salvation.
    NB [1] there’s no biblical sanction for Rahner’s thesis.
    [2] if the “world’s great religions” provide the implicit vehicle, what about the “non-great” religions?  what about satanism, etc.?  then is it only ethics that saves us?  All of this denies scripture.
    [3] what about irreligious ideologies such as Marxism?
    [4] R. confuses his “anonymous Xn” with prevenient grace: the latter fosters our embracing Christ, but never rendering embracing him unnecessary for salv’n.
    [5] R. has been criticized severely by RC missionaries who feel he’s undercut their work.
    [6] still, we have to ponder the fact that vast numbers of people will live and die without hearing the gospel (one motivation of his “anonymous Xn”)
    [7] he correctly sees the problems in Ref. Prot. und’g of the relation of grace, faith and the human.
  9.   Bl. returns to a discussion of the ghost of Semi-P’m: e.g., Pietist/Puritan emphasis on the reception of Christ fostered an emphasis on the heart’s inner turbulence as the condition of receiving Christ.  Whereas RCm tended toward a volitional condition, Piet./Pur. tended toward a psychol’l cond.
    (In 19th cent. North American evangelistic services the emphasis shifted from the conversion of the sinner as that which glorifies God to the inner vividness of the experience itself of conversion.
  10.   Shepherd doesn’t think Bl. is entirely fair to Wesley here.  Wesley (like Calvin) admitted there to be repentance both before and after faith.  (see Shepherd, The Nature…Calvin, chapt. 5)
    Points to remember: [1] we can’t repent apart from grace.
    [2] repentance and faith are ultimately one event.
    [3] there must always be rep’ce after we’ve come to faith.  (See the 1st of Luther’s 95 theses: “JC…willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”)

 

 

(THE PARADOX OF SALVATION)

  1.   The genuinely human must be honoured and preserved in the exercise of faith, since faith is a human event, however God-wrought.  We lapse into monergism or synergism when we fail to admit the mystery surrounding someone’s coming-to -faith.  Faith is neither something God “implants” in us nor a predisposition in us nor that which arises from a predisposition in us.
  2.   “…God’s grace appeals to [man’s] deepest yearnings, and therefore when exposed to grace man is intrinsically drawn toward it.”  At first Bl. might appear to contradict all he’s said for the last 20 pages, even appear to approach Semi-P’m, even reflect Rahner.  But his “intrinsically” is none of the above; rather, he means that grace sets the heart yearning for grace; grace finds the “responsive chord” that grace has first quickened in the human heart.  [What is meant by “Jesus the good (kalos rather than agathos) shepherd”?]
  3.   Bl. carefully contrasts seeking for God with yearning for God.  The latter presupposes something akin to Calvin’s sensum divinitatis; yet because we are fallen, our “seeking” is always a fleeing.
  4.   Bl. speaks of Melanchthon’s “liberalizing tendency.”  Rather, M. insisted that [1] sin isn’t the essence of fallen humankind (contra Matthias Illyricus.)  Sin doesn’t define our humanness even after the Fall.  (If it did, redemption could only render us non-human rather than “fulfilledly” human.)
    [2] in the life of faith, especially in the decision/act whereby faith begins, our humanness isn’t overridden or denied; faith isn’t merely a human event, even as it most certainly is a human event.

p.204.  Edwards attempts to capture this: “God is the only proper author and fountain; we are the only proper actors.”  (But why didn’t Edwards speak of God as “actor” too?)

  1.   “Irresistible grace”, a concept so important to Reformed Scholasticism, must be weighed carefully.  Remember: grace is the attitude and act of God reflecting the heart of the One who is Person.  (Consider the foregoing w.r.t. God’s will.  His will isn’t an arbitrary decree hidden in depths in him that are inaccessible to us; his will is the expression of his heart or identity.)
    (Shepherd) Grace is “irresistible” in the sense that [1] when I met my wife I “couldn’t resist” falling in love with her; [2] (206) grace is that judge whom we can’t avoid and whose final judgement we can’t resist.  Grace welcomed is salvation; grace spurned is condemnation.  But grace can’t be denatured.

p207. Bl’s twofold caution about the abuses of grace must be heard and heeded:
[1] grace confused with magic.  E.g., baptismal regeneration.
[2] grace rendered “cheap”.  E.g., thinking we can benefit from Christ’s cross without being commissioned to shoulder our own cross; refusing to acknowledge that the saviour (salvager) who salvages us has an exclusive right to us and claim upon our obedience.

 

(THE MEANS OF GRACE)

  1.   Preaching as a sacrament.  (A sacrament is a creaturely event that becomes the occasion of a divine event: the incursion of JC.)
  2.   Barth maintains that JC is the means of grace; preaching attests JC but isn’t a vehicle or means of the hearer’s appropriation in faith.
    (Shepherd) Barth is right about the first, wrong about the second.  See Luke 10:16 and Romans 10:5-14.  (Unless preaching is a means of grace, it is purely “informational.”)
  3.   Bl. says that only baptism and Lord’s Supper are sacraments.  (Symbol+dominical command.)

Compare Hendrikus Berkhof:

1)     instruction (catechetics)

2)     baptism

3)     sermon

4)     discussion

5)     the meal (Lord’s Supper)

6)     diaconate

7)     the meeting (worship)

8)     office

9)     church polity (church order)

Berkhof says #8 and #9 serve to make the other seven operative.

  1.   To be sure, the Xn life is a fruit of grace; yet Xns are the sign of X’s presence.  (NB:  whenever, in Jesus’s public ministry, he is asked for a “sign”, he refuses to give it; we are the sign of God’s manifest presence!)

Reverend  V. Shepherd

 

Marks of the church according to Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith

(i)         instruction (i.e., catechetics)

(ii)        the washing

(iii)       the sermon

(iv)       the discussion

(v)        the meal

(vi)       the diaconate

(vii)      the meeting

———————————————-

(viii)     office

(ix)       church polity (church order)

(Berkhof maintains that these lattermost two serve to make the other seven operative.)

A Note on “Ransom”

A wealth of Hebrew understanding pertaining to “redemption” lies behind lutron (“ransom”), a concept deployed by Jesus himself.

 

Note the three major Hebrew words for “redemption”:

1] pdh (padah)

2] kpr (kippur)

3] g’l (goel)

 

1: (pdh)  Redemption is a mighty act of God bringing deliverance from oppression, as in the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt and the house of bondage, and also as in deliverance from the power of death.

 

It stresses both a redemption out of the oppression of evil and out of the judgement of God upon it, but with a special emphasis on

(a)    the cost of redemption through the substitutionary offering of life,

(b)   the dramatic nature of the redeeming act as a sheer intervention (a “rescue mission”) on the part of God in human affairs.

 

It is an act of redemption from unlawful bondage, stripping the enthraller of usurped authority and vaunted right.

 

(There is no suggestion of a ransom being paid to someone.  This is a secular concept of redemption not found in scripture.)

 

 

2: (kpr)  This term speaks of the sacrificial aspect of redemption, the sacrifice by which propitiation is effected and the barrier of sin and guilt between God and humankind done away with (expiated.)

 

God is always the subject first and the object only secondarily (lest it appear that something other than God can avert God’s wrath.)

 

The emphasis here is atonement as judgement upon the wrong through the offering of life, as well as restoration to favour and holiness before God.

 

 

3: (g’l)  This term speaks of redemption out of destitution or forfeited rights or bondage, undertaken by an advocate who is related to the person in need either through kinship or covenant love.

 

Here the focus is on the person of the redeemer, the “goel.”  The redeemer claims the cause of the person in need as his own cause.

 

 

 

In the older testament all three overlap. All three are used to speak of the redemption of Israel out of Egypt.  All three are also used in Isaiah 40 (the promise of a new exodus when God will redeem his people through his anointed servant, the servant mediating the covenant, being afflicted with the judgements of God, and bearing the iniquities of the people as he is made an offering for sin.)  The newer testament doesn’t make systematic use of these three, but they are all taken for granted and woven together in the apostles’ understanding of Jesus Christ.

Salient Points with respect to the Work of Christ

Christ as Teacher and Exemplar.

In class we’ve pointed out the heresy of regarding Jesus as teacher only or teacher primarily, and underlined the peculiarity of liberal theology’s venerating Jesus as teacher only to have his teaching render him superfluous.  At the same time, he is teacher; if we fail to appreciate this then we relax the rigours of discipleship, and detach discipleship from faith.  For this reason we ought never to neglect the written gospels.  As much can be said about Jesus as example.  See John 13:15 and 1 Peter 2:21.

 

In opposition to some schools of NT study it can be maintained (and must be maintained) that Paul’s understanding of the work of Christ didn’t complicate “the simple Jesus.” Paul’s teaching about the work of Christ didn’t differ fundamentally from that of the early church.  And Paul’s teaching about the work of Christ didn’t differ fundamentally from that of Jesus himself.  It’s important for us to understand that Paul didn’t invent; the tradition about the force of Jesus’s death is rooted in the utterance of Jesus himself.

 

Concerning propitiation:

“Propitiation” is the proper translation for the hilasterion word group.  Without “propitiation” we deny the wrath of God (as his response to our sin) and the holiness of God.

 

At the same time, the sacrifice offered to God (Jesus) is first the sacrifice offered by God — or else we’ve landed ourselves in the pagan notion of sacrifice as an attempt at bribing the deity.

 

Reconciliation is possible only because of propitiation.  Our alienation from God is the consequence of God’s judgement on our sin (unbelief).  I.e., we aren’t alienated from God in that we’ve distanced ourselves from him; our alienation from him is his judicial act upon us in the face of our sin.  (People with a non-biblical, existentialist cast to their theology fail to grasp this point.)

 

Apart from propitiation we have no grounds for thinking that God loves us.

 

Christ’s death not only relieves us of sin’s guilt; it also releases us from sin’s grip or power.

 

Christ’s death has cosmic significance, not merely “terrestrial” or human significance.

 

Our suffering doesn’t save us, but our suffering for Christ’s sake identifies us as saved.

 

Christ’s death is a once-for all, finished act.  To add to it is to detract from it is to deny it is to repudiate it is to forfeit one’s “benefit” from it.

 

  1.   Note the two hymns, one reflecting Jewish apocalyptic and the other Christian mysticism, from the pen of Charles Wesley.  This kind of comprehensiveness should be found in all believers.

 

Come, Thou Conqueror of the nations

Now on Thy white horse appear;

Earthquakes, dearths and desolations

Signify Thy kingdom near;

True and faithful!

‘Stablish Thy dominion here.

 

Open, Lord, my inward ear,

And bid my heart rejoice;

Bid my quiet spirit hear

Thy comfortable voice;

Never in the whirlwind found,

Or when earthquakes rock the place,

Still and silent is the sound,

The whisper of Thy grace.

 

Lecture Outline on Total Depravity

 

THE GRANDEUR AND MISERY OF MANKIND
Grandeur: we are the only creature made in the imago Dei, the only creature to whom God speaks.
Misery: as fallen, we “fall short” of that glory (of God) for which we were created, “fall away” from our true nature (i.e., our nature is now perverted), “fall down” into futility and self-contradiction and “fall into” the bondage of sin, from which bondage we cannot extricate ourselves.

Fallen humankind none the less remains human (neither animal nor demonic.)
Still loved by God, we now live under God’s wrath and judgement.
Fallen humankind’s will is enslaved and can will only its perversity (Luther: in se curvatus.)
”               affect is misaligned and now loves/abhors the wrong object.
”                reasoning subserves sin (even as reason’s structure remains intact.)
Fallen humankind can do nothing to save itself, nothing to ascend to God.

TOTAL AND UNIVERSAL CORRUPTION
“Tot. Dep.” never means we are as (morally) bad as possible.
(Bl.) Tot. Dep.: [1] the “control centre” of our being (our heart) is corrupted
[2] every part of our being is affected
[3] we are totally unable to please God or to come to him
[4] all people are equally depraved, even though some appear relatively more virtuous/vicious

(Shep.) [1] the scope of the fall is total: there is no human undertaking that isn’t fallen, sin-riddled and frustrated.
[2] the penetration of the fall is comprehensive: no one part of us can rescue any other part (contra rationalists, “bootstrappers” and romantics.)
[3] neither the individual nor the society can save the other (contra rugged individualists and social collectivists.)

Note, however, that cultural excellence remains (possible.)  While fallen humankind is capable of much good (government, science, engineering, etc.) it is not capable of the good: right-relatedness to God.

Bl. introduces “common grace.”  This notion is found in the Ref’d Trad. but not in Calvin himself.

THE MEANING OF SIN
(Bl.) in scrip. sin isn’t merely privatio boni (privation of the good) but utter rebellion.
(Shep.) this rebellion isn’t an instance of curiosity but is a denial of the goodness of God’s command and therefore a denial of the goodness of God himself.
To forfeit God’s blessing is to live under his curse.  (NB. the meaning of “knowledge of good and evil” and its consequences.)

“The essence of sin is unbelief.” Note the nature of unbelief.  (It isn’t merely a cerebral lack.)
(Shep.) Sin: sins :: unbelief: consequences.
Sins don’t provoke God’s wrath: Sin provokes it, and God then gives us up to (hands us over to) the consequences of our unbelief. (Rom. 1:24 ,26,28) — i.e., sins are that to which God assigns us in his anger at our Sin (unbelief; disdain, disobedience, defiance)
Note: while God “gives us up to” he doesn’t “give up on us.”

THE MEANING OF SIN
Sin’s essence appears as [1] idolatry, [2] hardness of heart.
To be avoided: any (neo)Platonic notion that our “lower” nature corrupts the “higher” or spiritual.
In scrip. [1] “spirit” isn’t a part of us but rather the entire person oriented to God; i.e., spirit is relatedness not substance or “something.”
[2] our spiritual corruption corrupts everything about us.

Sin includes privatio boni, but is this derivatively: essentially sin is (Shep.) [1] ingratitude (for God’s good creation and his provision of all we need to live under his blessing),
[2] rebellion (against his legitimate and benevolent authority),
[3] denial (of the goodness of his command = his longing to bless us).  1+2+3=unbelief.
This unbelief is utterly un-understandable.  Any suggestion that sin can be understood undercuts it as sin.  To the extent that sin could be understood it could be excused.  The utter irrationality of sin is part of its hideousness, incomprehensibility, and inexcusability.

Bl. speaks of the distinction between classical RC and Ref’n understandings as to the “location” of sin.
RC: our “upper storey” is devastated (original right’s’s and the gift of supernatural communion with God), while the “lower storey” remains intact (residual freedom to turn to God, plus “some sense of his moral law” — i.e., as salvifically significant.)
Ref’n: both “storeys” are devastated.  Fallen humans aren’t sick but dead (coram Deo.)  We do retain some sense of the moral law, but this is salvifically worthless.  Our morality (or religion) isn’t the vestibule to the kingdom or its anticipation but rather a monument to our self-right’s’s and the barricade behind which we fend off God.  We sin as much in our morality as in our immorality.

Bl. (94) speaks of Matthias Flaccius versus Philip Melanchthon.  MF was wrong: if sin has become the essence of humankind, then [1] we can’t be held responsible, for then we are merely reflecting our essence, as surely as any other created entity, [2] redemption would render us non-human rather than “fullfilledly” human.  (Sin never becomes the essence of humankind but is rather the distortion of the essence.)

(Shep.) (96) In the discussion of Niebuhr and Schleiermacher I maintain that Jesus was genuinely tempted, or else [1] the temptation stories in scrip. mean nothing (in fact are lies), [2] if Jesus wasn’t tempted then he can’t help us who are, [3] he remained sinless or else his death has no atoning significance (what good is a blemished sacrifice?), [4] he remained sinless for otherwise he isn’t the “new being”, the true human, the destiny to which God has appointed his people.

Does sin remain in Christians? (96)  It resides but does not rule.  (Note the different answers different Christian traditions have given: Ref’d, Anabaptist, Wesleyan, etc.)

JC reveals sin. (96)  I.e., there’s no natural knowledge of sin (since sin is defined with respect to God, and there’s no natural knowledge of God.)

“Legal versus evangelical repentance.” (97)  This is a distinction found in Puritan thought.  Legal repentance alarm quickened through one’s awareness of imminent judgement for one’s having broken God’s law; it anticipates faith.  Ev’l rep’ce is heartbreak quickened through one’s awareness of having broken God’s heart; it occurs within faith.

MANIFESTATIONS AND CONSEQUENCES OF SIN
Bl. speaks of pride and sensuality.  (97) (Here he follows the tradition.)  Then Bl. mentions lovelessness, etc.  These Paul calls “works of the flesh.”  Note the precise understanding of “flesh.”  Then Bl. speaks of “fear and cowardice.”  Cowardice, certainly, but fear only insofar fear is allowed to distract us from our obedience.  (Jesus was unquestionably afraid in Gethsemane .)
Bl. speaks of religiosity. (97)  Cf. K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I, 1, sec. 17: “Revelation as the abolition of religion.”  Note, however, that religiosity is ineradicable, and therefore has to be converted.
Note how much of scrip., for instance, is directed against religion [1] of Baal devotees, etc., [2] of Israel in its self-serving religious perversion.  (Plainly the principal sphere of the sin of Christian religiosity is the church.)
Note that blindness to sin is a major concomitant of sin. (98)  Apart from grace sinners cannot be aware of their predicament.  Blind as we are to our sin, our sin can only lead to more sin.  We are held captive by sin to  sin.

Note the peculiar nature of Christian freedom. (99) Freedom is freedom from sin’s captivity and freedom for obedience alone.

posse non peccare: able not to sin (Edenic human)
         non posse non peccare: not able not to sin (fallen human)
         non posse peccare: not able to sin (glorified human)

As fallen we cannot will faith in ourselves. (101)  As dead (coram Deo) we don’t even have the capacity for faith. Bl. is correct here, but needs to balance his statement with another: [1] we must always recognize mystery in anyone’s coming to faith, [2] since faith is a human event/occurrence, there must always be recognized the place for and need of a genuinely human act/affirmation in faith. (See last class on Council of Trent.)

Bl. is correct to suspect Niebuhr’s greater reliance on uneasy conscience than on the HS to convict.
[1] This presupposes that, thanks to our uneasy conscience, we can precipitate ourselves towards faith.
[2] This suggests we ought to magnify the uneasy conscience.  (Theologically wrong and pastorally/psychologically disastrous.)

MODERN OPTIMISM
The Enlightenment was an era of human optimism, belief in inevitable human (as opposed to technological) progress, confidence in the power of reason to effect social improvement.
Kant, an Enlightenment figure, affirmed radical evil (i.e., a surd element in a world of reason), but not sin. (110)

Note:
[1] Bl.’s insistence that the pastoral psychology movement has turned guilt as state into guilt as feeling. (112)
[2] modern evangelicalism has a weak understanding of the fall (113)
[3] the Reformers’ may have one-sidedly spoken of the continuing sinfulness of Christians so as to undervalue “the triumph of grace in the life of the Christians.” (113)  Wesley’s point here is germane: “God can do something with sin beyond forgiving it.” (deliverance)

 

 

SIN

 

[A]  Note the distinction between Sin  and sins.
     Sin: defiance, ingratitude, rebellion, disdain, “unbelief”, resulting in alienation from God.
     sins: the concrete behavioural manifestations or outcroppings of our underlying condition.

 

[B]   Note the precise meaning of “the knowledge of good and evil.”
     to “know” xy in Hebrew is to have personal, intimate acquaintance with xy.
     (It is not primarily to have information about xy.

 

[C]  if Sin alone is discussed/preached, then our concrete disobedience is overlooked.
     if sins alone are  ”               ”       , then the human condition is understood moralistically instead of spiritually.

 

          it is a power that enslaves  Gal. 3:22; Rom. 3:9
     it is connected to the Law of God, in the sense that the law lends definition, specificity, to
our sinnership by rendering sin “transgression”.

 

[E]  Words for sin:
hamartia*                      missing the mark, missing the true end of our lives: God

            parabasis                       stepping over a line (transgression)

            parakoe                         disobedience to a voice [obedience is intensified hearing]

            paraptoma                     misstep, stumbling, falling where we should have remained upright

            agnoema                       ignorance of what we should have known

            hettma                           diminishing of what should have been rendered in full measure

            anomia                          lawlessness

            plemmeleia                    a discord in the harmonies of God’s universe

            asebeia                          ungodliness, a deliberate anti-God stance

            adikia                            unrighteousness

 

 

What do the Protestant Reformers Mean by “Total Depravity”?

 

 “Total” doesn’t mean “utter.”  It doesn’t mean that we are as bad as we can possibly be.  The Reformers admit that there is much that fallen humankind can do, and can do superbly well: science, mathematics, government, art, music, painting (“culture” in general), and what Calvin calls “mechanical” arts (i.e., engineering.)

  However, “total depravity” does meanclass=”Apple-converted-space”
[1]  the scope of the fall is total: there is no human undertaking that isn’t fallen, sin-riddled, corrupted.

[2]  the penetration of the fall is comprehensive: there is no aspect of the human being (reason, will, affect) that is unaffected and by which we can restore ourselves.
E.g. (i), we can still reason (or else we shouldn’t be human; the structure of reason survives the fall), but now our reason subserves the wrong end or purpose, particularly as we approach the specifically human or divine.  Reason now applies itself to aggrandizement of ourselves, or exploitation of others, or the legitimization of unconscious motivation (i.e., rationalization).class=”Apple-converted-space”
E.g. (ii), we can still will (to be without will is to have ceased to be human), and can still will moral good, but we cannot will the good: the kingdom of God .  We cannot will ourselves out of our sinnership, cannot will ourselves into the kingdom.  (Note John 3:3: apart from Spirit-regeneration we cannot so much as see the kingdom, much less enter it.)  The will is “bound” or “enslaved” (not free) in that it cannot will righteousness.  But such bondage is never to be confused with philosophical determinism: the Reformers never say that genuine choice is denied us with respect to creaturelymatters.class=”Apple-converted-space”
E.g. (iii), we can still love, but now our affections are misaligned; we love what we ought to hate and hate what we ought to love.  At the very least we love the creature above the Creator; our loves are “disordered affections”: lesser loves (legitimate in themselves) usurp our greater love (for God.)  In addition our creaturely loves are riddled with self-interest.

[3]  No one part of the society can save the rest.  The individual cannot save the society as a whole, or the society the individual.  Economics cannot put right what sociologists identify as the human problem; neither can sociologists put right what economists identify as the human problem.class=”Apple-converted-space”
While Marx reduces all considerations (Freud’s explanation included) to the dialectical laws of materialism (and one’s place in the economic spectrum), and while Freud reduces all considerations (Marx’s explanation included) to intra-psychic unconscious conflict, the doctrine of Total Depravity exposes both as one-sided and short-sighted.

   Note too that culture, however sophisticated (Kulturprotestantismus) is not the kingdom, is not even the vestibule to the kingdom, at the same time that culture remains a creaturely good, albeit fallen.

Wesley insisted that he differed “not a hair’s breadth” from the Reformers on this point.

 

 

 

Syllabus

Reformation Theology (0649)

Department of Theology

Tyndale Seminary

Fall 2012

Office Hours: Wednesday 6:30-9:20pm

Instructor: Victor Shepherd

416 226 6380  ext. 6726

email: vshep@tyndale.ca

 

To access your course materials at the start of the course, please go to  https://www.mytyndale.ca

 

I. COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course chiefly investigates the theology of three foundational foci of Sixteenth Century evangelical understanding: Luther, Calvin and the English Reformers (Ridley and Tyndale.)  In addition Gabriel Biel will be probed as the immediate, late-Mediaeval foil for the Sixteenth Century Reformers, as well as Erasmus, who represents the Humanist alternative to evangelical conviction.

Prerequisites: THEO 531 and THEO 532

II. LEARNING OUTCOMES
This course aims:

1]  to inform students of the theological diversity on the eve of the Reformation;
2]  to enable students to discern convergences and divergences with respect to this diversity;
3]  to acquaint students with the theological substance of major thinkers;
4]  to have students relate major Reformation motifs to contemporary theology;
5]  to enable students to assess Reformation doctrine in light of the history of Christian thought;
6]  to provide students with a tool for evaluating the doctrinal position and ethos of denominations that claim a Reformation root;
7]  to have students grasp why theology that is 500 years old will be read until the parousia;
8]  to acquaint students with the exegetical riches of the Reformation.


III. COURSE REQUIREMENTS

A. REQUIRED TEXTS

Textbooks:
A “Kinkos” volume of selected readings will be purchased from the Tyndale Bookstore.

B. ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING
Note: All written material may be submitted in French

1] Essay – 50%
2] Examination – 50%

The essay is to be approximately 3000 words long.  It is to be submitted no later than the conclusion of the final examination. See below for a list of essay topics.

C. GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR THE SUBMISSION OF WRITTEN WORK

Please note:

1]  Written materials are to be submitted in conformity with academic standards. Consult the  HYPERLINK “http://ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/login?url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/tools_citationguide.html” Chicago-Style Quick Guide (Tyndale e-resource) or the full edition of the  HYPERLINK “http://ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/login?url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/16/contents.html” Chicago Manual of Style Online, especially  HYPERLINK “http://ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/login?url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/16/ch14/ch14_toc.html” ch. 14. For citing scripture texts, refer to sections  HYPERLINK “http://ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/login?url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/16/ch10/ch10_sec046.html” 10.46 to 10.51 and  HYPERLINK “http://ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/login?url=http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.ezproxy.mytyndale.ca:2048/16/ch14/ch14_sec253.html” 14.253 to 14.254.

2]  Students should consult the current Academic Calendar for academic polices on Academic Honesty, Gender Inclusive Language in Written Assignments, Late Papers and Extensions, Return of Assignments, and Grading System (the Academic Calendar is posted at  HYPERLINK “http://tyndale.ca/registrar” http://tyndale.ca/registrar). Integrity in academic work is required of all our students. Academic dishonesty is any breach of this integrity, and includes such practices as cheating (the use of unauthorized material on tests and examinations), submitting the same work for different classes without permission of the instructors; using false information (including false references to secondary sources) in an assignment; improper or unacknowledged collaboration with other students, and plagiarism. Tyndale University College & Seminary takes seriously its responsibility to uphold academic integrity, and to penalize academic dishonesty.


E. SUMMARY OF ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING

Evaluation is based upon the completion of the following assignments [Sample]

Essay
50 %
Exam
50 %
Total Grade
100 %

IV. COURSE SCHEDULE, CONTENT AND REQUIRED READINGS

Sept. 12        Gabriel Biel
Late Mediaeval Scholasticism
“The Circumcision of the Lord”

Sept. 19        Desiderius Erasmus
Renaissance Humanism
“The Handbook of the Militant Christian”

Sept. 26        Martin Luther
The early Luther    
 “Disputation Against Scholastic Theology”
“The Ninety-Five Theses”
“Preface to the Wittenberg Edition of Luther’s German Writings”

Oct. 3            The Righteousness of God
 “Two Kinds of Righteousness”
“A Meditation on Christ’s Passion”

Oct. 10            The Lord’s Supper (comparisons with Rome, Zwingli and Calvin)
“The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ – Against the Fanatics”

Oct. 17             Freedom in Christ
 “The Freedom of a Christian”

Oct. 24            Reading Day: No Class

Oct. 31            John Calvin
Justification     III:11 (Institutes)

Nov. 7            Law and Gospel  II:7,9

Nov. 14          The Mediator and His Work    II:6,12,15

Nov. 21          The Holy Spirit and Faith III:1,2

Nov. 28          Predestination III:21,22 (omit 6-9)

Dec. 5            William Tyndale
A Pathway to the Holy Scripture

Dec. 12        Examination

V. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

A select bibliography will be handed out in class.

 

 

APPENDIX

 

ESSAY TOPICS


What was Erasmus’ Theological Agenda?

Was Erasmus a Christian?  How did his work assist or contradict the Reformation?

What aspects of Renaissance Humanism most immediately affected the Reformation?

How did Luther understand marriage?  How did the Roman Catholics of his time?  Why did he insist that marrying Katarina von Bora was an act of faith?

What was the theology of the ‘Schoolmen’ that upset Luther?

What did mediaeval scholasticism mean by “justification”?

How did Luther understand the Eucharist?

What would any two (or three) of the following have said to each other concerning the Lord’s Supper: Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, the Anabaptists, Rome?

What was Melanchthon’s theological contribution to the Lutheran Reformation?

Compare Melanchthon and Luther on the Law of God.

Write a “Review Article” on the debate between Erasmus and Luther on the bondage of the will.

What did Luther mean by the “Righteousness of God”?

Expound Luther’s understanding of freedom.  Contrast it with popular contemporary notions.

How did Luther and/or Calvin understand the relation of law to gospel?

What was Luther’s Ecclesiology?

What did Luther mean by “Two Kingdoms”?

Discuss the theology of Luther and Eck at the Diet of Worms.

What was the image of the Jew in the late mediaeval and early Reformation eras, and how did this image affect the treatment accorded Jewish people?

How did Luther understand faith? (fides qua creditur)

According to Luther, what was God’s mandate for the state, and how did Luther’s understanding here influence his advice during and subsequent to the peasant revolt?

Expound and comment on Calvin’s understanding of any ONE of the following:
-sanctification
-baptism
-Lord’s Supper
-the Triplex Muni (the three offices of Christ: Prophet, Priest, King)
-the Church
-scripture
-repentance
-sin
-the knowledge of God
-justification
-Holy Spirit

State and comment on the major developments in Ridley’s life and thought.

State and discuss Latimer’s theology of preaching.

Expound Tyndale’s doctrine of scripture OR his doctrine of justification.

Expound the theology of any one of the “articles” in Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer. (Please see the instructor.)

(any topic approved by the instructor)

Supplementary readings

  

Supplementary Readings

 

 

 

Biel

Oberman, H.; The Harvest of Mediaeval Theology

Oberman, H.;  “‘Iustitia Christi’ and ‘Iustitia Dei’: Luther and the Scholastic Doctrine of

Justification”, Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 59 No. 1, Jan. 1966

 

 

 

Erasmus

Augustijn, C.; Erasmus: His Life, Works and Influence

            Bentley-Taylor, D; My Dear Erasmus: The Forgotten Reformer

            McConica, J.; Erasmus

            Tracy, J.; Erasmus of the Low Countries

 

 

 

Luther

Althaus, P. The Theology of Martin Luther

Ebeling, G.; Luther

Rupp, E.; Luther’s Progress to the Diet of Worms

Rupp, E.; The Righteousness of God

 

 

 

Calvin

Hesselink, I.J., On Being Reformed: Distinctive Characteristics and Common Misunderstandings

McKim, D. (ed); The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin

Parker, T.; Calvin (biography)

Wendel, F.; Calvin: Origins and Development of His Religious Thought

           

 

 

 

English Reformers

Dickens, A.; The English Reformation

            Hughes, P.; Theology of the English Reformers

            Lindsay, T.; History of the Reformation, Volume 2: In Lands Beyond Germany

            Powicke, M.; The Reformation in England

Rupp, E.; Studies in the Making of the English Protestant Tradition

 

Gabriel Biel

GABRIEL BIEL

? – 1495

 

–          was born at Speyer during the 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 ofGod .)

Upon such an act of bonitas God freely, gratuitously confers dignitas or reward.

God doesn’t have to (PA), but he has willed himself (PO) to reward bonitas.

The good act, now elevated to dignitas by grace (of Christ), gives the human agent a claim on salvation.

In other words, a morally good act merits grace by “congruent merit” (PO), an instance of God’s mercy. Bonitas, now elevated to dignitas by grace, merits eternal salvation by “condign merit” (PA), an instance of metaphysical necessity.

As already noted, the elevation of bonitas is not strict justice on God’s part, but is rather an instance of God’s generosity.

Once bonitas has been graced and therein elevated to dignitas, however, strict justice applies: God must grant eternal salvation to dignitas (PA) or God contradicts himself, God denies himself — and this is inherently impossible.

 

 

The Presuppositions of Biel’s Understanding

 

 

In a state of nature (i.e., outside the state of grace) humans, trying their utmost, can love God more than anything else.  In other words, people can will themselves to love God above all else.

In a state of nature humans have the capacity to choose both good and evil, without which capacity we should cease to be human.

The will (will is this capacity for choice together with the act of choosing) is blind and has to be guided by reason.

 

Reason is not impaired in the way that will is.

Reason presents the will alternatives for moral action: reason informs the will and advises the will.  The will, acting on this information and advice, produces spontaneously (i.e., the will is not moved by anything else) a morally good act (bonitas.)

 

Yet bonitas, however good, is never good enough to meet the requirements of the holy God.

God gratuitously (PO) infuses the act by grace.  Grace doesn’t infuse any act, only the morally good act; i.e., grace as seed has to be planted in fertile rather than stony ground.  Bonitas alone is such fertile ground.

 

Plainly, for Biel sin has not made it impossible for humans to act “rightly” without the aid of grace; i.e., the will is not devastated in this regard.

When we fail to act rightly, we fail because of improper cognition (i.e., ignorance): reason did not bring forward the proper object of the will’s willing.

The defect lies not in the  will but in reason.  Conversely, not the good will but reason (knowledge) is the foundation and root of all virtues. * Therefore the primary task of the church is not to be the herald and “custodian” of God’s grace (God will always add grace to bonitas), but rather to provide people with the proper information about God and the human good, information that assists people in moral improvement.  I.e., this information apprises people as to which acts genuinely are bonitas.

 

How is such information acquired?

(i)                 partly by a natural knowledge of God and his will;

(ii)               partly by a revealed knowledge of God and his will, accepted on the authority of the church or on the authority of a particular preacher.

These two kinds of knowledge together constitute “acquired faith”, acquired faith being the source of all virtue.

Still, as mentioned earlier, these virtues do not meet the requirements of God.  For this reason there is always needed grace, the middle term that elevates bon. to dign., at which point the requirements of God are met.

Iustitia (“justice”) is the metaphysical necessity of God’s granting eternal salvation to dignitas. (PA)

 

It should be noted in Biel’s scheme that God graces not only the morally good act but also all aspirations; anyone who tries to be “God’s friend” (a mediaeval term) will find God gracing that effort.

For this notion Biel adduces the following scriptural support:

Zechariah 1:3 — “Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you.”

James 4:8: — “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”

Revelation 3:20  — “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens

the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he with me.”

(Biel reads all such texts as supporting human initiative w.r.t. our salvation.)

 

  • For Biel, the essence of biblical Christianity is the congruent elevation of moral act or aspiration.  God elevates such not from any constraint grounded in his being but from his overflowing kindness (i.e., his will.)

“Doing one’s best” (even if that “best” is highly deficient or defective) is at the same a “begging for mercy”; such importunity the gracious, merciful God never spurns.

 

Then for Biel justification is [A] by grace alone, since God alone supplies that grace which elevates bonitas todignitas; [B] by works alone, since we must “do our best.”

The emphasis, of course, always falls on [B].    [A] is the rational, outer structure whose inner content is [B].

The church preaches and teaches [B], leaving God to supply [A]

 

Humankind’s motivation for moral act/aspiration is twofold: (i) fear of judgement

(ii) hope of salvation.

 

Biel explicitly rejects justification sola fide (by faith alone) as “an error of carnal and idle men.”  To believe that we can be saved sola gratia (by grace alone)is to “scorn God’s justice.”  Since genuine love for God is within everyone’s reach even after the fall and in the wake of the fall’s damage to us, it is our responsibility to initiatethe process of justification by making that effort which God will then honour and render worthy (meritum de condigno) of eternal salvation.

 

Despite Biel’s reference to grace, grace merely forms the outer structure whose inner content is human achievement; i.e., grace lends our achievement/aspiration salvific force.  Put differently, grace makes it possible for us to save ourselves.

Plainly Biel’s notion of justification is essentially Pelagian.

 

 

 The 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.)

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reverend V. Shepherd

 

Desiderius Erasmus

                       Desiderius Erasmus

1466-1536

 

-he was the most able Humanist, and the one by whom the movement is popularly identified.

-he was the most productive of the northern humanists.

-he didn’t concern himself much with the inventions (e.g., navigational and astronomical instruments) and discoveries of the age, or with economic and political changes: he was preoccupied with letters.

-he upheld an undogmatic religion and an ethical piety founded on the Sermon on the Mount.  (Herein he is indebted to the Brethren of the Common Life and the Florentine Platonic Academy.)

 

-his father was a priest who fathered him prior to being ordained.

-he was raised as an orphan by relatives who gave him his name. (desiderium: longing, desire,yearning)

-he was educated in Latin.

-during his schooldays he began reading the ancient pagan philosophers (especially Seneca.)

-at 17 his guardians sent him, against his will, to be trained as a monk.

-he moved more deeply into the Latin classics.

-he was ‘taken’ with Lorenzo Valla.

-while he came to be fluent in many vernacular languages, they never appealed to him; rather he became consummately able in Latin and Greek.

 

-ordained and made both a canon and secretary to a bishop, he enrolled (aged 32) in the University of Paris , receiving his B.Th. in 1503.

-at U. of Paris he was steeped in scholastic theology – which theology aroused repugnance in Luther, anger in Calvin, and contemptuous mirth in Erasmus.

-he made no secret of his disdain for theologians.

-he regarded ‘theology’ as that which inspired and structured the Christian life.  Such ‘theology’ was a compend of what he called “The Philosophy of Christ” and the philosophy of the Greeks.

 

-in 1499 he published his Adages.

-he continued to ignore and despise Hebrew and the Hebrew scriptures, thinking his “Philosophy of Christ” to be superior to anything the Older Testament contained.  (“I prefer Christ, even Christ contaminated by Duns Scotus, to this Jewish nonsense.”)

 

-in 1502 he was transferred to Louvain ( Belgium ) where he wrote Dagger of the Christian Knight.

 

-he travelled to England at least six times, being introduced to Thomas More (Utopia) in 1499.  (More was the unrelenting foe of William Tyndale.)

-in 1509 he was given the Chair of Divinity at Cambridge , where Tyndale was one of his pupils.

-while in England he and Colet visit Canterbury and saw the relics of St.Thomas Becket (to his disgust), and then moved on to the shrine of our Lady of Walsingham.

-he moved to the University of Turin where he completed a doctorate in theology, then moved back to England where he wrote his most famous book, The Praise of Folly.

 

-his major contribution (and essential contribution) to the Reformation remains his Textus Receptus.

 

-while he and Luther hailed each other at first, by 1525 (Luther’s Bondage of the Will) it was apparent that they were not theological allies.

-while Luther faced the worst of ecclesiastical opposition, Erasmus wriggled away from it.

-Erasmus had never supported Luther publicly after L’s Babylonian Captivity of the Church 1520).

-Erasmus wrote Diverse Letters in which he attempted to rescind his earlier, pro-Luther sympathies and to declare himself a true son of Rome .  Luther commented, “Erasmus is far from the kingdom of grace.  He looks not at the cross but at peace in all his writings.”

-Erasmus died peacefully at Basle in 1536 – (the year the first edition of Calvin’s Institutes appeared.)

 

Erasmus exposition

                                           ERASMUS

1466-1536

 

“Lack of culture is not holiness.”

                                                                                                       

Introductory Comments

 

 

A] Erasmus is often regarded as a Reformer, but in fact he died saying he had always been Catholic.

At first Protestants cherished him because he criticized “Monastic” reliance on rituals.  In addition he denied that scripture mandated auricular confession.  (Here he earned the ire of confessors who profited financially from hearing confessions.)  Only his stomach was “Lutheran.”

He adopted mediaeval Catholicism’s understanding of the relation of nature and grace, even as he repudiated utterly its scholasticism.

 

B] Erasmus was the most brilliant in the firmament of humanist scholars.  His talents in the areas of languages (both classical and modern-vernacular), linguistics and philology are prodigious.

He aimed at promoting Christian civility.  The humanist deployment of language soothes savage passions and promotes sociability.

He saw secular clergy as allies (or at least not inimical) to the humanist agenda, and ordered priests (“Mendicant Tyrants”) as its sworn enemy.  Concerning the Franciscan Observants he maintained they took a fourth vow: “to have no shame whatever.”

 

C] His greatest gift to the Reformation was the Textus Receptus, the best Greek New Testament without which the Reformation wouldn’t have been possible.

Note, however, that he wanted a better Greek Testament not for the sake of the best vernacular translation (he despised common people – “When the wine goes in, the grease comes out”) but for the sake of a Latin translation better than the Vulgate had been.  Despite his “Tyndale-sounding” remark that the farmer behind the plough should be equipped with the gospel, his New Testament Paraphrases were written and published in Latin.

Latin should be learned not by appropriating the rules of grammar but by immersing oneself in the Latin usage of the greatest Latinists: Cicero to Quintilian (106 BCE – 95 CE.)

 

D] In his era he was without peer in Greek and Latin.  (Upon his death Philip Melanchthon was the acknowledged prince of humanists.)  He loathed Hebrew and didn’t learn it.  (Luther, if alive today, would be Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature.  Calvin was a superb Hebraist and expounded huge areas of the Older Testament.)

 

E] The humanists, supposedly the prosecutors of “tolerance” and the arch-enemies of prejudice, were the worst anti-Semites in Europe .  Erasmus was considered the most vehement of all.  While he admitted there could be exceptions among the “Mendicant Tyrants” he loathed, no exception pertained to Jews: their leader was Satan.  Consider Erasmus’ “fondness” for Paris : there one “couldn’t find even one living Jew.”

 

F] Erasmus’ Philosophia Christi never approached the logic of the gospel.  He remained a religious moralist.  He thought Origen worth ten of Augustine on account of Origen’s less severe understanding of the Fall (Original Sin.)  He borrowed Origen’s tri-partite understanding of the human misunderstanding Paul on flesh/spirit.

 

G] His dispute with Luther (1525: cf. L’s Bondage of the Will) displayed his failure to grasp the heart of the Reformation: is the righteousness we sorely need gift or achievement?

 

H] He derided abuses and superstitions; however he never criticized either the institution of the Catholic church or its theology.  He saw little or no point in doctrinal disagreement.  He never grasped the Reformers’ perception: regardless of how many institutional and moral abuses are remedied, elements of Catholic theology obscure the gospel.  Therefore doctrine has to be re-forged.

It remains fashionable in some circles to pine for a might-have-been “Reformation along Erasmian lines.” Those who wish for this appear not to understand that “Erasmian Reformation” spells no Reformation at all.

 

I] While the Reformers repudiated scholasticism because its theology stifled the gospel, Erasmus repudiated it because it stifled the “new learning.”  Aristotle in particular was suffocating.  Scholasticism in general aimed at contention, dispute, refutation.  Erasmus preferred a theology nourished by a rhetorical rather than a dialectical culture.  Contention doesn’t yield edification.

 

J] His undisputed gift to the world is the boost he gave humanist studies and the foundation he and others laid for modern education.

 

K] He never lacked self-confidence.  “Please explain to her {Anna van Borssele, Belgian patroness} how much greater is the glory she can acquire from me, by my writings, than from the other theologians in her patronage.  They merely deliver humdrum sermons; I am writing books that may last forever.”

“I would rather win a fame that is a little delayed, but endures, than a speedier reputation which I must afterward regret.”

 

 

 

 

 

Areas of Theological Divergence from the Reformers

 

  1.   Erasmus maintains the content of pagan morality and Christian exhortation to be similar.  Certainly there is a phenomenological similarity.  But is the essence of each identical?

 

The Reformers differ markedly from Erasmus with respect to the nature of ‘obligation.’

(a) God’s characteristic work is not the dissemination of instructions.

(b) God gives himself to us in grace, then insists we give ourselves to him in gratitude.  (God wants the heart-obedience of those whom he has called into personal relationship with him; he does not want conformity to a code.)

 

 

  1.   Erasmus looks upon the New(er) testament as a sourcebook for ethics.

(i) Does the New(er) testament itself support this understanding?

(ii) Why does Erasmus undervalue the Old(er) testament?  With what consequences?

 

 

  1.   Erasmus seldom speaks of grace, concupiscence, or the bondage of the will.  Why?

 

 

  1.  What do the Reformers mean by “Total Depravity?”  “Total” doesn’t mean “utter.”  It doesn’t mean that we are as bad as we can be.  The Reformers admit that there is much that fallen humankind can do, and can do superbly well: science, mathematics, government, art, music, painting (“culture” in general), and what Calvin calls “mechanical” arts (i.e., engineering.)

 

However, “total depravity” does mean

[A]  the scope of the fall is total: there is no human undertaking that isn’t fallen, sin-riddled, corrupted.

 

[B]  the penetration of the fall is comprehensive: there is no aspect of the human being (reason, will, affect) that is unaffected and by which we can restore ourselves.

E.g. (i), we can still reason (or else we shouldn’t be human; the structure of reason survives the fall), but now our reason subserves the wrong end or purpose, particularly as we approach the specifically human or divine.  Reason now applies itself to aggrandizement of ourselves, or exploitation of others, or the legitimization of unconscious motivation (i.e., rationalization).

E.g. (ii), we can still will (to be without will is to have ceased to be human), and can still will moralgood, but we cannot will the good: the kingdom of God .  We cannot will ourselves out of our sinnership, cannot will ourselves into the kingdom.  (Note John 3:3: apart from Spirit-regeneration we cannot so much assee the kingdom, much less enter it.)  The will is “bound” or “enslaved” (not free) in that it cannot will righteousness.  But such bondage is never to be confused with philosophical determinism: the Reformers never say that genuine choice is denied us with respect to creaturely matters.

E.g. (iii), we can still love, but now our affections are misaligned; we love what we ought to hate and hate what we ought to love.  At the very least we love the creature above the Creator; our loves are “disordered affections:” lesser loves (legitimate in themselves) usurp our greater love (for God.)  In addition our creaturely loves are riddled with self-interest.

 

 

[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.)

 

 

  1.   Erasmus differs from the Reformers in that the latter insist that

 

(i) redemption, not ethical instruction, is the content of revelation.

 

(ii) scripture logically begins with redemption, not with creation (with                                                           exodus/cross rather than with creation).

 

(iii) the ordo salutis governs the ordo cognoscendi.  In other words, if salvation is                                       from God to us, then the knowledge of God (an implicate of salvation)                                             must also be from God to us.  Neither natural theology nor speculative                                                             theology may obscure the gospel (revelation).

 

(iv) religion, so far from being the vestibule or antechamber or anticipation of the                                        kingdom of God , is the contradiction of the gospel.  The harlots and tax-                                          collectors enter the kingdom ahead of the Pharisees.

 

(v)  Coram Deo (before God) humankind is dead, not merely sick.  We need                                               resurrection, not assistance.

 

(vi)             the sphere of God and the sphere of humankind (i.e., the spheres of Creator and the creaturely) are distinctand are united by grace, not by ontology (being).

 

 

 

The Reverend Dr. V. Shepherd

 

 

Plato and the Christian Faith

Plato and the Christian Faith

 

  1. Apologists and fathers in the early church saw many affinities between Plato and biblical thought, as did Christian humanists in the Renaissance.  Christian Platonists, for instance, maintained that Hellenism is as much the progenitor of Jesus Christ as is Israel .  Some spoke of a discarnate Logos found in Greek philosophy.

 

Is this assessment correct?

What happens when Israel is undervalued?

Is ancient Greek philosophy as important for Christians as the Hebrew bible?

How extensive is the affinity?

What is the relation of classical learning to biblical faith?

Is the “discarnate Logos” the Logos of John?

 

  1. In the Timaeus Plato wants to link the ethics of the Republic and the order of the natural world.  It appears that ethics presupposes metaphysics.

 

How is a metaphysical system “chosen?”

If modernity shuns both biblical faith and metaphysics, then what is the ground of modernity’s ethics?

How is modernity’s concern with “values” related to ethics and metaphysics?

Can “values” be distinguished from mere preferences or whims?

 

  1. Plato says that the order of nature provides order for both the city-state and the individual.

 

What (dis)similarities are there between the order of nature and what theology has called “laws of nature” or “orders of creation?” between the order of nature and the apostolic assertion that all things were made through Christ? (John 1, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1.)

 

  1. The fundamental issue in Greek philosophy is Being (i.e., Being-itself as opposed to beings.)  Being is grasped by “intelligence” or “reason.”

 

What is the fundamental issue in scripture?  How is it “grasped?”

 

  1. How does Plato’s understanding of creation differ from creatio ex nihilo?

 

  1. What are (dis)similarities between the chaos of the creation and the chaos referred to in scripture (e.g., Genesis 1, Noah stories, Christ’s stilling of the storm)?

 

  1. Where does the doctrine of the Trinity disagree with Plato’s notion that “the father of all this universe is past finding out?”

 

  1. How do Plato and scripture respectively account for the perduring “frustration” of the created order?

 

  1. How do Plato and the church differ on the role of matter in creation?

 

  1. Plato maintains that the human soul, in order to attain its true destiny, must leave the sensible world and return to a supersensible world.

 

How would prophet and apostle comment on this notion?

 

  1. How do Greek and Hebrew minds differ on the meaning of “soul?”

 

  1. Both Plato and scripture say little about space but much about time.

Where do they differ with respect to time? to history?

 

  1. While the bible begins with the creation story (Genesis), the logic of scripture indicates that Israel knew God as creator only after it knew God as the one who had rescued it from slavery in Egypt and had disclosed himself to it at Sinai.  Plainly, then, according to the logic of scripture, knowledge of God the redeemer precedes knowledge of God the creator.

 

What happens in Christian thought when knowledge of the creator is said to precede knowledge of the redeemer?

 

Humanism and Luther

                     Humanism and Luther

 

In each of the major countries of the north there were three generations of humanists.

[1] “pioneers” — they acquired classical learning and absorbed a classical mindset.

[2] “consolidators” — they integrated and developed the rich materials the pioneers unearthed,

creating the high point of humanist learning.

[3] “doers” — they were a younger generation who cherished humanism not so much for its

intellectual excellence as for its providing tools for social change.

 

Between 1510 and 1520 many of these third generation humanists gathered around L., eager to do something about abuses in church and society.  These people were the “runners” who disseminated L’s Ninety-Five Theses throughout Germany .

 

Luther profited from a humanist environment but was not especially humanist trained (despite having attended Erfurt U. ) and was never interested in humanism as such.  Yet there were discernible affinities between Luther and the humanists.

 

[1] rejection of scholasticism:

H: scholastic theology is unnecessarily complex, obscure, unintelligible; a more elegant

theological formulation is needed.

L: scholastic theology is intelligible — and therefore should be recognized readily as anti-

gospel.

 

[2] desire to return to patristics:

H: Patristics is a simple, understandable statement of Christian faith, devoid of fruitless

speculation and incomprehensible scholastic Latin.

L: Patristics is closer to the NT era than is the mediaeval period, less distorted, less

warped by a non-biblical logic.

Note: since the humanists esteemed antiquity, no one father was to be elevated (exception: Erasmus

and Jerome.)  For the Wittenberg theologians, Augustine was pre-eminent.

 

[3] desire to return to scripture:

H: sola scriptura = “not without scripture”

L: sola scriptura = “scripture as unnormed norm” (singularly used by the Spirit

to acquaint us with the living Lord Jesus Christ.)

 

[4] interest in rhetoric:

H: an interest in eloquence as a cultural excellence.

L: an interest in preaching the gospel.

 

 

After 1520 the Reformation stood out in starker contrast with humanism.   Humanists finally realized that their purposes and the Reformation’s were not the same.

 

But note: non-humanistically trained pastors were the foot soldiers of the Reformation, dutiful church functionaries.  Yet they never provided intellectual or organizational leadership for the Reformation. Subsequently they became the most rigidly scholastic Protestants, re-introducing an utterly scholastic mindset only with a Protestant vocabulary.

 

Humanist education remains crucial in the formation of Christians and clergy.

V. Shepherd

 

Martin Luther

Martin Luther

1483 – 1546

(Married Katarina von Bora, 1525: six children)

 

 

I: Introduction

 

II: Background and youth

elementary schooling at Breslau, Magdeburg and Eisenach .

began university studies at Erfurt , 1501.

 

III: The Monk

joined Augustinian (Reformed) order, 1505.

ordained to priesthood, 1507.

lectured at Wittenberg , 1508.

visited Rome , 1510.

 

IV: The Professor

appointed to chair of theology, 1510.

lectured on Psalms, 1513-15.

lectured on Romans, 1515-16.

lectured on Galatians, 1516-17 9 (and again in 1541.)

lectured on Hebrews, 1517-18.

 

V: The Indulgence Controversy

the Ninety-Five Theses, 1517.

 

VI: The Disputant

disputed with Johann Eck at Leipzig , 1519.

wrote three great tracts, 1520.

An Address to the Nobility of the German Nation for the Improvement of the

                                    Christian Estate

                        On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church

                        On the Freedom of the Christian

disputed with Johann Eck at Worms , 1521.  (From this moment until he died there was a

price on Luther’s head.)

completed translation of NT into German, 1522.

 

VII: The Social Conservative

supported the peasants’ grief but not their methods in the Peasant War, 1524.

 

VIII: The Victor

Diet of Speyer , 1526

Second Diet of Speyer , 1529

The Colloquy of Marburg , 1529.  (Does est mean “is” or “signifies”?)

Diet of Augsburg , 1530.  (Luther remained nearby in Cobourg.  The Lutheran cause was

represented by Philip Melanchthon, since the emperor feared Luther’s physical presence would provoke a riot.)

 

IX: The Shamed?

Luther and the Jewish people.

 

Indulgences

Indulgences: The Rescinding of Temporal Punishment

 

Note 1: eternal punishment, damnation, is not affected by indulgences.

 

Note 2: “plenary” indulgence: all temporal punishment is rescinded.

 

 

 

 

We sin.  We repent before God and are forgiven.

 

As sinners we need to make reparation, make satisfaction, and receive temporal  punishment for our sin.

 

Penance is prescribed.

 

However, at life’s end we can still be wondering whether our penance exactly counterbalances our lifetime’s sins.  Temporal punishment for sin may still be owing.

 

The remaining debt must then be paid after death; ie, in purgatory.

 

Having received the sacrament of penance we can be released from the outstanding temporal punishment — ifour penance is exactly commensurate with the punishment due us.

 

We can ensure that it is by obtaining an indulgence, which indulgence releases penitents from the rigours of purgatory.  (An indulgence can be procured through the performance of good works or through a cash-payment.)

 

All of this is deemed to be in harmony with “the power of the keys” vested in the church.

 

 

                            The Treasury of Merits

 

Jesus Christ and the saints have gained merit far above what is necessary to avoid damnation and gain heaven.

 

This superfluity of merit is calculated and “deposited” in the merit-book.

 

The treasury of merits isn’t essential to the theory of indulgences, but psychologically it helps people who understand that they are purchasing accumulated merit.  (I.e., “good works” indulgences can be prescribed that allow us to “work off” and therein be rid of any otherwise-remaining purgatorial rigours.)

 

(Eventually there overtook the church the notion that by cash-payment one could purchase release from purgatory.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                              Luther’s Objections

 

1]  the crass materialism of it all

 

2]  the effrontery of usurping the prerogative of God with respect to temporal punishment (today we should say the consequences of sin)

 

3]  the sub-personal, mechanical notion of merit and merit-book

 

4]  the role of the saints as co-redeemers

 

5]  Rome ‘s view of the nature of the keys  (NB: for the Reformers, the power of the keys is simply the efficacy of the WORD.  The church attests the WORD; the church’s authority with respect to the forgiveness of sins is precisely that the church claims no authority for itself but points away from itself to him who is uniquely authoritative, Jesus Christ (= WORD).

 

6]  Rome ‘s view of the nature of the church:

-that Jesus Christ inheres the church

-that God has relegated his authority to the church (of Rome )

-that the church “rules” instead of being a servant

-that the church “controls” purgatory

 

 

The early Luther insisted that the pope could only remit those penances that the church had itself canonically applied.  The later Luther distanced himself entirely from the logic of indulgences.

(Note the difference between the penalty for sin and the consequences of sin.)

 

Luther’s Theologia Crusis

Luther’s Theologia Crucis

 

The hidden God is the revealed God

and

The revealed God is the hidden God

 

 

The world perceives                                        The truth is

 

shame                                                  glory

weakness                                             strength

folly                                                     wisdom

condemnation                                      acquittal

sin                                                        righteousness

death                                                    life

 

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

“The gospel is essentially aural.” (Luther)

 

 

 

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

 

Theologia gloriae is found

(i)                 when God is identified with metaphysical speculation

(ii)               when the church becomes triumphalistic

(iii)             when it is thought that the truth and nature of God can be read off nature

(iv)             when it is thought that the truth and nature of God can be read off the face of history, of world-occurrence.

 

 

 

Implicates of a theologia crucis:

 

(i)                 the Christian life can never be identified with our evident life, whether public or private.

(ii)               the Christian life can never surrender its incognito.

(iii)             the hidden life of a Christian is real but isn’t perceived; it is hidden so deeply that it isn’t fully perceived by the Christian herself.

(iv)             the Christian necessarily incurs the hostility of the world.

(v)               peace is ours through faith as a gift of Christ in the midst of turbulence; to seek the peace (of the world – here Luther includes the peace of religiosity) is to “tempt” God.

(vi)             God’s promises are the cause of joy; the Christian’s joy is determined (ultimately) eschatologically.

(vii)           in our “trial” (Anfechtung) the Christian must cling to the Word (Jesus Christ).

(viii)         the “turning point” in the trial has arrived when faith recognises the trial as an alien work (of God). (God conceals himself under the devil’s hostility.)

(ix)             once we have recognised the hidden God in his alien work, we find the revealed God in his proper work, and therein know unspeakable comfort.

(x)               the worst kind of trial is to have no trial, for trial keeps faith alive and vibrant.

 

Righteousness According to Luther

“So, too, it is not yet knowledge of the gospel when you know these doctrines and commandments, but only when the voice comes that says, ‘Christ is your own, with his life, teaching, works, death, resurrection, and all that he is, has, does, and can do.’”

 

Luther, Preface to the New Testament – emphasis Shepherd’s.

(Timothy F. Lull, Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, p. 116)

 

 

 

Knowledge of the gospel (for Luther, ‘gospel’ = the promise of God fulfilled in our midst) is the same as knowledge of Christ, where ‘knowledge’, understood in terms of Hebrew logic, always means ‘intimate personal participation in Christ himself giving rise to the transformation of the believer.’

 

Knowledge of the gospel can’t be reduced to an apprehension of doctrines and commandments; neither can it be reduced to (although it must always include) Christ’s

Life: his rendering God the obedience humans are supposed to;

Teaching: his delineation of and pioneering of the ‘Way’ of discipleship;

Works: his instantiating God’s incursion into the world and into our lives;

Death: his propitiation and expiation;

Resurrection: his victory on our behalf, and his rulership arising from his victory.

 

We can ‘know’ all this in the sense of understand it and endorse it and assent to it, yet we know the gospel  (are intimately acquainted with Jesus Christ himself) only as we hear (and heed) the voice of the Person who is present to us.

 

 

 

 

In the history of Christian thought God’s impassivity has always been connected with God’s immutability.

 

According to Jaroslav Pelikan, in Hebrew understanding “the immutability of God was seen as the trustworthiness of his covenanted relation to his people in the concrete history of his judgement and mercy rather than as a primarily ontological category.”  (The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. I, p.22.)

 

The Freedom of a Christian

THE FREEDOM OF A CHRISTIAN

1520

 

Luther: “To make the way smoother for the unlearned — for only them do I serve — I shall set down

the following two propositions concerning the freedom and bondage of the spirit:

A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.

A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”

 

 

 

The first power of faith:

The Word (=Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit) confers righteousness upon believers

as the “happy exchange” (2 Cor. 5) occurs:

my shame for his glory,

my condemnation for his acceptance with the Father,

my sin for his righteousness.

 

 

The second power of faith:

Believers honour God by vesting all their trust in God.  To honour God and trust him in this

way is to obey him.  God can be obeyed only in faith.

Note Luther’s understanding here of the kind of obedience the Decalogue enjoins: not conformity to a moral code but rather eager, glad, grateful self-abandonment to the “character” God wills for me.  My gratitude is born of the fact that God has redeemed me at measureless cost to himself.

 

E.g., the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal” is violated if I merely refrain from stealing.

God wants not external conformity from me but rather a living relationship (faith) with him wherein I cheerfully embrace the shape he ordains for my life.  He ordains this shape for my good

(i.e., as blessing.)  I gladly endorse it out of gratitude for what he has already done for me and

promises yet to do for me.  My not-stealing is my faith-quickened abandonment of my selfist self

as I “put on” the “new man (woman)” he wills for my good.

In other words, the Decalogue never encourages moralism but always faith and the Christ-shaped

“new creature” that faith glories in.

 

 

The third power of faith:

We are united with Christ.  (Actually the third is logically prior to and the ground of the first

two.)

 

Since faith “puts on” Christ, believers are free from sin, death, the world and the devil as Christ was free from the domination of sin, death, world and devil.

Since faith “puts on” Christ, believers are bound to the needy as Christ bound himself to them.

 

When Luther’s opponents told him that his elevation of faith underserved the neighbour, Luther replied that faith always serves the neighbour in love.  Such love is love only if it disregards the neighbour’s ingratitude and one’s own loss.

 

Finally Luther insists that faith is the (only) cure for anxiety.  Anxiety is a form of self-preoccupation.  The Christian doesn’t live in herself but in another: in Christ through faith, in the neighbour through love.

Paradoxically, she finds herself, discovers her identity, to the extent that she doesn’t seek it but rather forgets herself through her immersion in Christ (faith) and neighbour (love.)

[Loving the neighbour entails sharing the neighbour’s material scarcity, suffering and disgrace.]

Justification if the “main hinge on which religion turns.”

Justification is the “main hinge on which religion turns.” (Calvin, Institutes 3.11.1.)

 

Valentius Loescher, a 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 public

by faith as the substance of our justification

by “grace” and “works” in that grace by provides an outer framework

whose inner content is our achievement

by (in modernity with its psychological preoccupation and its emphasis on    ego- strength, etc.) our awareness that “we need do nothing to be accepted.”

In other words, modernity tends to abstract justification from its rootage in

Christ.

 

Calvin on Justification

Calvin on Justification

 

All of the magisterial reformers recognise that “justification by faith” is shorthand for “justification by grace through faith in Christ”; i.e., faith “puts on” Christ and he (alone) is our justification.  There is no quality inhering faith that renders “my faith” “my justification.”  If a quality inhering faith is thought to justify, then faith becomes another form of self-justification.  Barth insisted that the point of “justification by faith” is that it is God who justifies us rather than we who justify ourselves.

 

We are justified by grace (alone) through faith (alone) on account of Christ (alone.)  Note that when Paul speaks of justification “by” (“through”) faith, he writes dia pisteos not dia pistin.  In Romans 3 Paul does not use “alone” when he speaks of justification, but Luther correctly saw that this was the meaning of the text; hence L’s “alone” was not out of place.

 

 

[1]  Faith puts on Christ who is both our justification and our sanctification.  Justification plus sanctification together are the grand sum of the gospel.  Calvin repeats this in his work passim.  3.11.1

 

 

[2]  Since Christ can’t be divided, justification and sanctification can never be separated even though they must always be distinguished.

 

 

[3]  Neither justification nor sanctification is the ground of the other.

 

 

[4]  Justification means that ultimately the believer has to do with the gracious Father rather than the just (and therefore undeflectable) judge.  3.11.1.

 

 

[5]  Justification is the “main hinge on which religion turns.” 3.11.1.

Valentius Loescher, a 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 public

by faith as the substance of our justification

by “grace” and “works” in that grace by provides an outer framework

whose inner content is our achievement

by (in modernity with its psychological preoccupation and its emphasis on ego-

strength, etc.) our awareness that “we need do nothing to be accepted.”

In other words, modernity tends to abstract justification from its rootage in

Christ.

 

 

[6]  To be justified is to be both “reckoned righteous” and to be “accepted.” 3.11.2

“Reckoned” echoes Paul’s forensic model; “accepted” adds the relational (personal) dimension.

Again, one must be aware of the secularisation of the doctrine today.  God, however, “sees” in Christ only those who are in Christ (by faith in Christ.)  3.11.3.

 

 

[7]  Dispute with Osiander.  (See class notes on “The Mediator and His Work.”)

O. documents from scripture that Christ is one with believers, yet fails to grasp the nature of this oneness: by faith we are bound to Christ in utmost intimacy, but Christ is never transfused into us thereby obliterating the distinction between us, obliterating our identity, and rendering us incarnations as well. 3.11.5.

 

Osiander’s errors: we are justified inasmuch as we are made righteous through the impartation of holiness. (Problem: no believer is sufficiently holy to secure his own righteousness.)

: Christ is our righteousness simply in virtue of his deity.  (Problem: our sin isn’t seen as serious enough to be that for which atonement (propitiation) is needed.  We merely need to be elevated (divinised.)  Note the affinities here with modernity.

 

 

[8]  While C retains “imputation” in that he feels it essential to the truth of justification, he rejects the accusation that such terminology suggests iciness, sterility, the mechanistic or the impersonal.  For when we “put on” Christ we cease “contemplating him from afar”; we are “engrafted into his body”; we are “made one with him”; we “glory that we have fellowship of righteousness with him.” 3.11.10.

 

 

[9]  “Justification”, “forgiveness’, “free remission”, “reconciliation with God” are all synonyms.

3.11.11 and 3.11.21.

 

 

[10]  Note the following in the 3.11.11:

(i)                 Since justification is never separated from sanctification, and sanctification is never separated from mortification, C can’t be accused of “cheap grace.”

(ii)               Battles’ “traces” (of sin) for reliquae (remainder) is much too weak.  Reliquum means “remainder”, “arrears”, “debt”, “outstanding (sum)”, “residue”, “subsequent.”

(iii)             Reformation of life is gradual (and frequently slow.)

(iv)             At all times Christians, of themselves, merit condemnation.  (See 3.11.21.)

 

 

 

[11]  The Spirit reforms the justified person (i.e., advances her in holiness) not directly but through the Son. 3.11.12

Since the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, C endeavours here to disavow what he regards as Anabaptist vagaries concerning the Spirit; on the other hand, he endeavours here to disavow what he regards as RC vagaries concerning holiness: holiness consists in adopted sons/dtrs being conformed to their elder brother.

At no point does justification mean that we are deemed righteous on the ground of Spirit-wrought fruits of regeneration in believers. 3.11.14.

 

 

[12]  For C assurance is always assurance of our standing with God, which standing is grounded in Christ (not ourselves).  For “papists and schoolmen”, on the other hand, assurance is assurance of conscience that their Spirit-inspired quest for holiness merits God’s recognition and reward.  (Hence C speaks of them as “doubly deceived.”) 3.11.14.

Justification by faith, rather, directs our contemplation away from ourselves in all respects to “God’s mercy” and “Christ’s perfection” alone.  3.11.16.

 

 

[13]  While always aware that justification is the antithesis of moralism, C recognises moral distinctions.  Not to do is both silly and a threat to social order.  3.14.2.  Still, moral virtue is qualitatively distinct from the Kingdom.  Here C parts company with modern liberalism, mediaeval scholasticism, and some forms of contemporary RCm.  (E.g., Karl Rahner’s “anonymous Christian.”) 3.14.3.

 

When C speaks of the “sheer disgrace of need and emptiness” he is not speaking morally but rather theologically.  His point is that the moral people are yet un-graced.  Neither is he speaking psychologically.  C thinks theologically throughout the discussion. 3.14.5.

 

Justification is the beginning of love for God.  (What “righteousness” could ever precede it?)  Our works-righteousness, so far from exemplifying love for God, is actually defiance of him.  Only the justified person loves God.  3.14.6.

 

 

[14]  The justified person has “regard not for the work of the law but for the commandment of God.” 3.14.10. Luther is magnificent on this matter.  Every commandment can be fulfilled only in faith.  Commandments 2 through 10 are properly and profoundly obeyed only if the first is; i.e., only in faith.

 

 

[15]  Remember: to undervalue justification by faith means that we do “not realise what an execrable thing sin is in God’s sight.”  3.14.13.

 

 

[16]  The sum of the doctrine is

“we are received into grace by God out of sheer mercy”,

“this comes about by Christ’s intercession and is apprehended by faith”,

“all things exist to the end that the glory of divine goodness may fully shine

forth”.  3.14.17.

 

 

 

 

Professor V. Shepherd

Law and Gospel According to Calvin

 

Law and Gospel According to Calvin

 

[1]  Jesus Christ is the substance of the law.  (Compare C. on scripture: JC is the substance of both testaments) – otherwise, God speaks with a forked tongue.

 

Note C’s characteristic remarks throughout his commentaries:

e.g., the law was given for the purpose “of keeping the ancient people in the faith of Christ.” (Gal. 3:19;
Heb. 8:5)

e.g., the design of the law is that through it we should come to know “God’s paternal favour” (Jer.
31:33), which paternal favour is known only in Christ (passim in C.)

e.g., “God brings forward in the gospel nothing new but what the law contains.” (Jer. 31:33)

e.g., the New Testament contains “nothing but a simple and natural explanation of the law and the
prophets.”  (2 Tim. 3:17; 1 Cor. 14:21)

 

The cult (ceremonial law), no mere “holding action” to differentiate Israel from absorbing the surrounding paganism, was to “foster hope of salvation in Christ” (Inst. 2.7.title)

 

 

Since the law aims at quickening faith in the Mediator, therefore legalism and moralism were never the purpose of the law.  (Torah isn’t essentially a code.)

 

 

 

 

[2]   First Use of the Law

 

Law, like gospel, is both gift and claim.

 

To whom is the law given?  “We are so driven by the power of sin that our whole mind, our whole heart and all our actions are inclined to sin….We are so addicted to sin that we can do nothing of our own accord but sin.” (Rom. 7:14 )  (NB the Reformers’ understanding of Total Depravity.)

 

When the law meets our sin, the nature of the law doesn’t change but its function does.

Now the law renders us aware of our condition and our condemnation.

This function of the law is “accidental”; yet even as “accidental” it is part of the purpose of the law. (Deut. 10:12)

 

But since JC is blessing only, and since he is the substance of the law, therefore the law, even in its “slaying” function, is given for life.  (Even though the sinner, terrified by the law, may not come to life.)

 

When C speaks of law and gospel as contradictory he always has in mind the law denatured, abstracted from the gospel, reduced to a code by which we attempt to achieve our own righteousness: “the bare law in a narrow sense.” (2.7.2.)

This misrepresentation of the law C speaks of as “letter”: the letter is the law minus the grace of adoption. (James 1:25)

 

 

[3]  The Second Use of the Law  (First for Luther)

 

The second use is to inculcate fear of punishment so as to constrain malfeasance and therein promote social order.

By schooling people in civil obedience (i.e., obedience to a code) it acquaints them with a form of obedience which they will then fill with the specific content of obedience to the person of Jesus when they come to faith.

 

 

 

 

[4]  The Third Use of the Law  (Philip Melanchthon was the first to speak of this.)

 

The third use is the chief use: that by which believers obey JC and are conformed to him.

 

 

The believer is motivated twice over to obey the law;

(a)    as creatures we are under obligation to the Creator

(b)    as beneficiaries of God’s mercy we are everlastingly grateful.

 

 

Note: while the command of God ever remains command (not suggestion or recommendation), since mercy is the ground of God’s claim, believers find the claim not an imperious demand but an invitation: “God chooses rather to invite his people by kindness than to compel them to obedience from terror. (Deut. 7:9)

while we are “alarmed by the majesty of God” we are also “gently attracted, so that the law might be more precious than gold or silver, and at the same time sweeter than honey.” (Exod. 20:1)

 

 

[5]  Do Believers Need the Law?

 

While sin doesn’t rule believers (Christ reigns in them), sin is still present.

 

Believers continue to need the law as “bridle” and “spur”. (Gal. 3:25)

We venerate Christ only to the extent that we venerate the law. (2.7.15)

Not to be serious about the law is to reject Christ’s love (John 15:10), because [a] we can’t have Christ’s love without Christ’s law, Christ being indivisible, [b] the law, however irksome (at times), is an expression of his love.

 

Either we aspire with all our heart to obey the law, or we are fixed in a “deadly sleep”. (2 Tim.2:25)

 

Believers love the law (because they love JC, its substance) and “embrace” the law “with sincere affection” (Deut. 11:18 ), with “prompt and cheerful affection” (Psalm 19:7)

 

 

[6]  This Obedience is not Conformity to a Code

 

The nature of our obedience (to the law) is appraised by the “character” (ingenium, disposition) of God.  God’s “character” is not that of legislator (in the legal sense) or codifier, but self-giving love.  Then self-giving love is what believers must render to the person of God through their obedience to the law.

 

Law, for C, is a standard impersonally only when it is abstracted from Christ.  “God himself” guides believers. (Psalm 119:59)

 

 

[7]  The Rewards of the Law

 

Since no one observes the law wholly, do believers forfeit the rewards promised to law-keeping?

The rewards promised to law-keeping accrue to believers inasmuch as they cling to the obedience of Christ; i.e., inasmuch as they cling to the obedience that Jesus Christ, as covenant-keeper (the only covenant-keeper), renders his Father.

Reverend V. Shepherd

 

 

The Mediator

The Mediator

 

[1]        All humankind “perished” in the fall and is now dead (not merely ill) coram Deo. 2.6.1.

 

 

[2]        In the wake of the fall there is no saving knowledge of God apart from the Mediator.  2.6.1

 

 

[3]        Only that worship whose object is Jesus Christ pleases God.  (I.e., all other “worship” is superstition.) The godly hope in Christ alone.  (I.e., Christ renders hope hope as opposed to wishful thinking.)  2.6.1.

 

 

[4]        The foregoing presupposes that faith in Christ is the same as faith in God.  (2.6.4)  (Recall thehomooousion.)

 

 

[5]        All talk of worshipping “the Supreme Majesty” or the “Maker of heaven and earth” bespeaks idolatry, for only by means of the Mediator do we “taste” (experience) God’s mercy and thereby become persuaded that he is our Father.  (2.6.4.)  Apart from our experience of God’s mercy (apart from our intimate acquaintance with him as Father) we are ignorant of God and exposed to his judgement despite all talk of “Supreme Majesty” etc.

 

 

[6]        We can be admitted to such intimacy with God inasmuch as the Mediator, in his provision for us, has effected an “exchange” concerning us and God. (2.12.2.)  (This motif, important in Calvin, is huge in Luther.)

 

 

[7]        Propitiation, not merely expiation, is the heart of the atonement. (2.12.3.)

 

 

[8]        The Father chose us in Christ from before the foundation of the world.  Calvin upholds supralapsarianism rather than infralapsarianism. (2.12.5.)

 

 

[9]        “Christ”, therefore, implies “reconciliation” (“grace”).  There is no speculative purpose intended or permitted in the Christ event.  The one act of God in Christ propitiates God, expiates sin, calls sinners, and effects their salvation. (2.12.5.)

 

 

[10]      Marcion denies the Jewishness of Jesus and all that this entails. (2.12.6)

Osiander undervalues (denies) humankind’s essential creatureliness. (2.12.6.)

Menno Simons undervalues (denies) Christ’s essential creatureliness. (2.13.4.)

 

[11]      The truth is, Christ took on our humanity under the conditions of sin while remaining sinless himself. The Virgin Birth attests this truth; namely, that the redeemer of human history can’t be generated by that history, for human history, sin-riddled, cannot generate that which is sin-free. (2.13.4.)

 

[12]      In all of this it must remembered that humankind’s corruption is “accidental” and not “essential” (contra the Gnesio-Lutherans.) (2.13.4.)

 

 

Christ as Prophet (revealer), King (ruler), Priest (redeemer)

 

 

[13]      The anointing Christ received in order to teach is the anointing wherewith he anoints the church so that it might teach in the selfsame power of the Spirit. (2.15.2.)

 

Since Christ is effectual prophet, he concludes the line of prophets (contra the ABTSTs.) (2.15.2.)

 

 

[14]      Christ’s kingship is spiritual (contra RCs and ABTSTs.) (2.15.3.)

 

Christ rules and preserves the church insofar as it is properly “church”; i.e., insofar as it attests him and looks to him alone as the subject and object of its faith. (2.15.3.)

 

While Christ’s kingship is spiritual, the world’s savagery is temporal.  Therefore Christians live by “hope of a better life” and “await the full fruit of this grace in the age to come.” (2.15.3.)  I.e., believers know they will be vindicated only in the eschaton. (2.15.5.)

 

 

[15]      Christ’s intercession for us is relentless, for we need the continuing efficacy of his once-for-all sacrifice. (2.15.6.)  At the same time, faith must be humanly exercised; we must “repose in him voluntarily.” (2.15.6.)  (We must exercise faith as a deliberate act of the will.  Voluntas=will)

 

“Voluntarily” clinging to Christ, we are blessed twice over: we are freed from bondage to death and our flesh is (to be) mortified.” (2.16.7.)

 

 

 

The Ascension

(Note: Christ’s resurrection means he was victorious over sin and death; his ascension means the victorious one rules.)

 

[16]      Christ “truly inaugurated his kingdom only as his ascension into heaven.” (2.16.14.)  His ascension, however, never means that he is now absent. (2.16.14.)  On the contrary, as ascended Jesus Christ is now always “majestically” (i.e., effectively) present to us. (2.16.14.)

 

 

[17]      Even so, such “majestic” presence doesn’t mean his effectual rulership can be read off the face of world-occurrence. (2.16.17.)  Note Calvin’s reminder: “[W]hile God spares the most wicked for a time, even shows them kindness, he tries his servants like gold and silver.” (Preface, Commentary on Daniel.)

 

 

[18]      In sum, “we see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ….[S]ince rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.” (2.16.18.)

Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination

Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination

 

Question: concerning this doctrine Calvin was accused of imputing to God “a cruelty quite alien to his nature.”

Is this accusation correct?

 

 

I: — “The Three Great Benefits”

1)      A magnification of God’s mercy

2)      A magnification of God’s glory

3)      A magnification of believers’ humility

 

 

 

II: — Practical Consequences of the Fact that our Salvation Rests Entirely with God

 

1)      Perseverance

2)      Assurance

3)      Security

4)      Effectiveness of witness

5)      Encouragement in the face of apostasy

6)      Avoidance of spiritual presumptuousness

 

 

 

III: — The Doctrine Itself

 

1)      The place of human responsibility (and the counter-theme)

2)      Election as the one decree of Father and Son

3)      The contradiction

4)      The attempted acquittal

 

 

 

IV: — Major Theological Difficulties

 

1)      with respect to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit

2)      with respect to the doctrine of the Trinity

3)      with respect to the doctrine of the Incarnation

4)      with respect to Calvin’s understanding of preaching

5)      with respect to Calvin’s understanding of faith

6)      with respect to the “mirror” role of Jesus Christ

The Holy Spirit and Faith

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 16th century recognisedTruth 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 ofknowing, 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

Syllabus

 

Course Syllabus

Fall 2014

THEOLOGY OF KARL BARTH

THEO 0670

WEDNESDAYS 6:45 p.m. – 9:35 p.m.

INSTRUCTOR: THE REVEREND DR V. SHEPHERD

Telephone number: 416 226 6380 ext. 6726

Email: vshepherd@tyndale.ca

Office Hours: As posted

 

Description: The course endeavours to acquaint students with the major topics of the most significant theologian since the Sixteenth Century Reformation.  It presupposes theological zeal and a willingness to read closely and consistently material that is admittedly dense yet equally rich.

Prerequisite: THEO 0531 and THEO 0532

Outcomes: Students will be equipped to

 [1] understand the “Copernican Revolution” in Barth’s theology with respect to his understanding of revelation: God alone is both the subject and object of revelation even as he remains Lord of it;

[2] appreciate Barth’s theological background: the anthropocentric liberalism articulated most eloquently by Friedrich Schleiermacher;

[3] see how Barth stands in the tradition of the Reformation yet also moves beyond it at key points (e.g., the doctrine of election);

[4] probe specific items in Barth that have rendered him notorious; e.g., revelation as the “abolition of religion”;

[5] understand how Barth combines simultaneously faithfulness to the logic of Scripture and self-exposure to contemporaneity;

[6] appreciate how Barth has informed recent theologians of the Reformed tradition in both the English-speaking and German-speaking theatres; e.g., Thomas Torrance and Eberhard Juengel;

[7] assess Barth’s fruitfulness for subsequent theological work;

[8] apprehend the force of Barth’s theology for preaching, pastoral conversation, and formal counselling.

Texts:

Required

R. Michael Allen, Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics: An Introduction and Reader

(London: T&T Clark, 2012.)  ISBN: 97805670 (paperback)

This book is the major resource for the course, and will be read and expounded in each class.

Recommended

Eberhard Busch, The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth’s Theology

(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010)  ISBN: 9780802866547 (paperback)

This book is a fine exposition of the major themes in Barth’s thought.

Geoffrey Bromiley, Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth

(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979) ISBN: 080281804

This book provides a trustworthy, chapter-by-chapter exposition of Barth’s Church Dogmatics.     

                 

Evaluation:

[1] The ten (10) best of eleven (11) 400-word papers reflecting the student’s theological engagement with the reading of the day, beginning with the reading for September 17.

Note 1: The paper may articulate the student’s critical appreciation of a theological point in Barth or in Barth’s reading of the history of doctrine, or disagreement with same.

It may also articulate a comparison between Barth and another single major thinker with whom the student is familiar; e.g., Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, Calvin, Bullinger, Melanchthon, Menno Simons, Schleiermacher, Tillich, Moltmann, etc.

Note 2:  Since one purpose of the paper is to ensure that the student has read the material assigned for class, this paper must be submitted at the commencement of the class; it may not be submitted any time thereafter.

    Note 3: Students should come to class prepared to discuss with the class the substance of their written paper.

[2] A final “take-home” examination/paper that expounds at greater length (2000 words each) any two topics discussed in class, or any two topics in Barth’s theology not discussed in class; e.g., Barth’s understanding of the Holy Spirit, or his exposition of baptism.  [Please see the instructor concerning the latter.]  For this assignment a bibliography should be attached, indicating that the student has consulted at least five substantive resources on the topic under discussion.

Note: All written work may be submitted in French.

Bibliography:

A thorough, up-to-date bibliography is available at Tyndale Online:

 HYPERLINK “http://www.tyndale.ca/seminary/mtsmodular/reading-rooms/theology/barth” http://www.tyndale.ca/seminary/mtsmodular/reading-rooms/theology/barth

A briefer bibliography pertaining to overviews of Barth’s s theology is attached below.

Schedule:

Sep 10Introduction

Outline of Barth’s Life and Work

Sep 17“The Word of God in its Threefold Form”Allen, chapt. 2

Sep 24“The Trinity”chapt. 3

Oct 1“The Word Heard and Testified”chapt. 4

Oct 8“The Perfect God”chapt. 5

Oct 15“The Election of Jesus Christ”chapt. 6

Oct 22 Reading Day: No Class

Oct 29 “Theological Ethics”chapt. 7

Nov 5“Creation and Covenant”chapt. 8

Nov 12“Nothingness: Sin as the Impossible Possibility”chapt. 10

Nov 19“Reconciliation in Christ”chapt. 11

Nov 26“Justification and Sanctification”chapt. 12

Dec 3“Vocation and Witness” chapt. 14

Dec 10Final Assignment To Be Submitted by 9:35 p.m.

Bibliography of Karl Barth

The secondary literature on Barth is vast.  The following titles are intended to help students who are beginning their study of Barth’s theology.

BIOGRAPHIES

Busch, E.; Karl Barth

This huge work is considered the definitive biography of Barth.  It is highly recommended and can be used as a reference tool for all areas of Barth’s thought and the development thereof.

Parker, T.H.L.; Karl Barth

This is a much smaller, more manageable work for neophytes.  It acquaints the reader with an overview of Barth’s life and work. Its brevity does not sacrifice accuracy.  (Parker is also a superb Calvin scholar.)

DISCUSSIONS OF BARTH’S THEOLOGY

Berkouwer, G.; The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth

The book delivers what it promises: a critical exposition of Barth in the light of Barth’s conviction concerning the triumph of God’s grace.

Bromiley, G.; Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth  ****

Bromiley’s work is everywhere lucid and accurate.  His book is the best guide to reading Barth in the order of the succeeding volumes of the Church Dogmatics.

This book is highly recommended for those who are approaching CD for the first time.

Busch, Eberhard; Barth

This small book is a useful overview of Barth’s thought, but of course cannot substitute for the much more detailed exposition of The Great Passion.

Busch, Eberhard; The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth’s Theology ****

This book is much more than an introduction; it is nothing less than a penetrating exploration and exposition of all the major loci in Barth’s thought.

Dorrien, G.; The Barthian Revolt in Modern Theology

This book unfolds the manner in which Barth put 20th Century theology on a new course.

Hart, T.; Regarding Karl Barth: Toward a Readindg of His Theology

The fact that this book is published by IVP indicates the recognition of IVP, together with that of  its supporters, Barth’s thought.

Hartwell, H.; The Theology of Karl Barth

Hartwell’s book is one of the older discussions of Barth’s theology. It treats Barth topically rather than in the order of CD.  It can always be relied on to provide a clear, succinct statement of major aspects of Barth’s thought.

Hunsinger, G.; Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth

This book comments on Barth’s relationship to political, doctrinal and ecumenical theology.

Hunsinger, G.; How to Read Karl Barth

This work acquaints readers with the logic of Barth’s thought in the course of expounding Barth’s approach to major doctrines.

McCormack, B.; Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology

This book explores both the immediate antecedents to Barth’s theology and unfolding of Barth’s “Copernican Revolution” in theology.

Torrance, T.; Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian.

Torrance discusses several features of Barth’s thought from the perspective of Barth’s faithfulness to the logic of the gospel.

 Torrance, T.; Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Thought: 1910-1931

This is a fine exploration of the theo-logic of Barth’s move to a genuinely “scientific” (wissenschaftlich) theology. (See McCormack above for disagreement as to ‘developmen’ in Barth’s theology.)

von Balthasar, H.; The Theology of Karl Barth

Von Balthasar is a major Roman Catholic reader of Karl Barth.  Bruce McCormack’s book, however, is a sustained argument against von Balthasar.

Webster, J.; Barth ****

Webster is undoubtedly one of the finest Barth scholars in the English-speaking world.  His work provides a very readable introduction to Barth’s thought.

Webster, J. (ed.); The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth

A compilation of essays on assorted topics by assorted scholars, this book examines in greater depth areas of Barth where his theology has proved unusually fruitful.

 

Bibliography

Bibliography of Karl Barth

 

The secondary literature on Barth is vast.  The following titles are intended to help students who are beginning their study of Barth’s theology.

BIOGRAPHIES

Busch, E.; Karl Barth
This huge work is considered the definitive biography of Barth.  It is highly recommended and can be used as a reference tool for all areas of Barth’s thought and the development thereof.

Parker, T.H.L.; Karl Barth
This is a much smaller, more manageable work for neophytes.  It acquaints the reader with an overview of Barth’s life and work.  Its brevity does not sacrifice accuracy.  (Parker is also a superb Calvin scholar.)

 

DISCUSSIONS OF BARTH’S THEOLOGY

Berkouwer, G.; The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth
The book delivers what it promises: a critical exposition of Barth in the light of Barth’s conviction concerning the triumph of God’s grace.

Bromiley, G.; Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth
Bromiley’s work is everywhere lucid and accurate.  His book is the best guide to reading Barth in the order of the succeeding volumes of the

Church Dogmatics
This book is highly recommended for those who are approaching CD for the first time.

Dorrien, G.; The Barthian Revolt in Modern Theology
This book unfolds the manner in which Barth put 20th Century theology on a new course.

Hart, T.; Regarding Karl Barth: Toward a Readindg of His Theology
The fact that this book is published by IVP indicates the recognition of IVP, together with that of  its supporters, Barth’s thought.

Hartwell, H.; The Theology of Karl Barth
Hartwell’s book is one of the older discussions of Barth’s theology. It treats Barth topically rather than in the order of CD.  It can always be relied on to provide a clear, succinct statement of major aspects of Barth’s thought.

Hunsinger, G.; How to Read Karl Barth
This work acquaints readers with the logic of Barth’s thought in the course of expounding Barth’s approach to major doctrines.

McCormack, B.; Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology
This book explores both the immediate antecedents to Barth’s theology and unfolding of Barth’s “Copernican Revolution” in theology.

Torrance , T.; Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian.
Torrance discusses several features of Barth’s thought from the perspective of Barth’s faithfulness to the logic of the gospel.

Torrance , T.; Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Thought: 1910-1931
This is a fine exploration of the theo-logic of Barth’s move to a genuinely “scientific” (wissenschaftlich) theology.

Von Balthasar, H.; The Theology of Karl Barth
Von Balthasar is a major Roman Catholic reader of Karl Barth.

Webster, J.; Barth
Webster is undoubtedly one of the finest Barth scholars in the English-speaking world.  His work provides a very readable introduction to Barth’s thought.

Webster, J. (ed.); The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth
A compilation of essays on assorted topics by assorted scholars, this book examines in greater depth areas of Barth where his theology has proved unusually fruitful.

 

The Life and Work of Karl Barth

The Life and Work of Karl Barth

An Introduction

 

Barth’s theocentric (Christocentric) thought is a startling contrast to

1: Schleiermacher’s theology of feeling

2: Hegel’s theology of philosophical speculation

3: Ritschl’s theology of moral judgments

4: Troeltsch’s theology of the history of religions.

 

 

Early Developments

1: God is GOD.

            2: in recent (i.e., 19th Century) theology “God” is humankind speaking to itself in a loud voice.

3: God alone can facilitate the knowledge of God.

 

 

 

1919 – Commentary on Romans

1921 – 2nd edition of Romans

1921 – professor of theology at Goettingen

1922 – professor of theology at Muenster

1930 – professor of theology at Bonn

 

1927 – Christian Dogmatics

 

1931 – Fides Quarens Intellectum

 

1932 – Church Dogmatics (his great work)

1: scriptural

2: Christological

3: ecumenical

 

Its Characteristic Features

1: the Word of God is its constant point of departure

2: it moves from reality to possibility

3: as it does so it gives rise to “objectivism” (but not to remoteness or that which                                                                                     humans can domesticate: in this                                                                                                regard it lies between Idealism and                                                                                          Realism.)

 

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.

 

 

The Command as the Judgement of God

 

The presupposition of the divine judgement: God wills us to belong to himself, and his judging us is his first step in making us his people.

 

The execution of the divine judgement in Jesus Christ: it proves us to be sinners and proves our situation to be hopeless.  We are totally in the wrong before God yet also totally justified.

 

The purpose of the divine judgement: our sanctification.

 

Course Notes on The Theology of the Human Person

Syll Winter 2011 revised

Anderson Chapt One Outline Toward a Theol Anthrop

Anderson Chapt Two Outline

Anderson Chapt Three Outline

Anderson Chapt Four Outline

Anderson Chapt Five Outline

Anderson Chapt Six Outline

Anderson Chapt Seven Outline

Anderson Chapt Eight Outline

Anderson Chapt Nine Outline

Anderson Chapt Ten Outline

Anderson Chapt Eleven

OutlineAnderson Chapt Twelve

OutlineCreation Outline

Origin of the Person

Paul Women Glossary

Predestination

Suicide Rate Birth Rate

Two Kinds of Knowing 

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

 

  1.   Justification According to the Council of Trent and the Magisterial Reformation.  (You may select
    one reformer)

 

  1.   Luther’s Ecclesiology.

 

  1.   Luther’s Notion of the Two Kingdoms.

 

  1.   Luther’s Understanding of the Ordained Ministry.

 

  1.   The Christology of the Radical Reformers.  (You may select one reformer)

 

  1.   Anabaptists, Zwingli and Calvin on the Lord’s Supper.

 

  1.   Menno Simons’ Understanding of Baptism.

 

  1.   Menno Simons and Ignatius Loyola: Divergence and Convergence in their Understanding of the
    Christian Life.

 

  1.   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.

 

  1.   (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.

 

  1.   God imparted himself to individuals in a way that remains mystery.

 

  1.   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.

 

  1.   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.

 

  1.   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.

 

  1.   They knew God to be the origin of this truth.  (i.e., revelation is of God and by God.)

 

  1.   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)

 

 

  1.   They were against sex.

 

  1.   They were opposed to fun.

 

  1.   They were sartorially ugly.

 

  1.   They were opposed to sports and recreation.

 

  1.   They were money-grubbing workaholics who would do anything to get rich.

 

  1.   They were philistines with respect to the arts.

 

  1.   They were excessively emotional and undervalued reason.

 

  1.   They were chiefly older people and were afflicted with the

conservatism of the elderly.

 

  1.   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

 

  1.   A gospel-oriented movement.

 

 

  1.   A movement which viewed life and history as the theatre of                                                 spiritual conflict.

 

  1.   A reform movement.

 

 

  1.   A minority movement (English Puritans).

 

 

  1.   A movement in which scripture was central to everything.

 

 

 

 

      DIFFERING EMPHASES IN REFORMATION AND PURITAN THEOLOGY

 

 

  1.   The mode of expression:

R: a biblical mode

P: a scholastic mode

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1.   The place of Christology:

R: its theology is more Christological in content and                                                            outlook

P: its theology is less Christocentric

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1.   The logic of theology:

R: its theology is less rationalistic

P: its theology is controlled more by a determining                                           concept (e.g., covenant)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1.   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.