Home » Theology of the Reformation

Category Archives: Theology of the Reformation

Anti-Semitism in the Reformation Era

August 18, 2017

[1] “I have had much conversation with many Jews: I have never seen either a drop of piety or a grain of truth or ingenuousness – nay, I have never found common sense in any Jew.” Jews are “profane unholy sacrilegious dogs.” “Now the Jews are cut off like rotten limbs. We have taken their place.” “They [the Jews] renounced the one through whom they could rule over the world, our Lord Jesus Christ, and placed themselves under the tyranny of Satan.”

Who uttered the foregoing? Everyone wants to point the accusing finger at Martin Luther, because Luther’s anti-Jewish pronouncements are common knowledge. My earliest New Testament professor at Emmanuel College (U of T) told me, in 1967, that while the Shoah arose on Lutheran soil, it couldn’t have arisen on Reformed. Alas, John Calvin is the author of the statements I have just read.

“I have never found common sense in any Jew”, Calvin announced. How many Jews had Calvin met in Geneva? Calvin went to Geneva in September 1536. He lived there until he died in 1564 (apart from his sojourn in Strasbourg, 1538-1541). The last Jew was expelled from Geneva in 1491. When Calvin came to the city there hadn’t been a Jewish person in it for 45 years.

[2] Let’s look at another thinker. This one insists that Jews not be allowed to build synagogues in his city. Jews are to be barred from the trades. Jews are to be policed rigorously so as to minimise their “blaspheming Christ”. They are to be engaged in “the humblest, most arduous and most trying tasks”; namely, sweeping chimneys, cleaning sewers, and disposing of deadstock. Their being assigned such tasks will be a “deterrent and a corrective”. The Talmud must be banned. If Jew and Christian are found living together, both must be executed.

The man who insisted on such harsh treatment of the Jewish people admitted Torah to be salvific (Jesus Christ, after all, is Torah incarnate); he also emphasized the cruciality of the Old Testament in Christianizing the social order of his city. The city is Strasbourg; the Reformer is Martin Bucer, whose eirenic demeanour was rivalled only by that of Philip Melanchthon.

And yet Luther is blamed for all things anti-Jewish, and, in popular parlance, blamed exclusively.

[3] Reformation theologians appear to be inherently anti-Semitic. Then did Jewish people receive better treatment at the hands of Renaissance humanists? Since humanism magnifies magnanimity as surely as the Reformers appear to shrink it, could refuge be sought in humanism? Today we shall look at two representative humanists, Reuchlin and Erasmus.

Johann Reuchlin was fully conversant with Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Hugely learned, he condemned the indiscriminate destruction of Talmudic texts. Nevertheless, he soon advertised himself to be no friend of the Jewish people. For he wanted the Talmud preserved only because he had enormous respect for a language of antiquity. In the second place, he insisted on a cabalistic interpretation of the Talmud, and strenuously maintained that knowledge of Hebrew was essential to penetrating cabalistic mysteries.

The Hebrew letters for “El Shaddai”, “The Almighty One”, added up to or otherwise subtly spelt out “Jesuch”, Jesus. Since Jewish readers wouldn’t admit this ‘truth’, it was plain that the Talmud stood between Jews and their conversion.

In Reuchlin there is no suggestion that the Talmud is related to Torah, the salvific covenant-forging Word and Act of God. In Reuchlin, a hugely learned Hebraist, there is no suggestion that Hebrew is the language of that people to whom God has bound himself irrevocably; no suggestion that Hebrew is the language apart from which the New Testament is incomprehensible.

Reuchlin maintained that Jewish misery, undeniable throughout the pre-Christian and Christian eras alike, is God-ordained punishment. Jews can escape such punishment only by converting. The Jews in Reuchlin’s day are fellow-citizens of the Holy Roman Empire. They remain, on the other hand, adversaries of the Kingdom of God. If they refuse to embrace Christ and refuse to refrain from money-lending (the one occupation the church has permitted and assigned them), they will cease to be fellow-citizens of the Empire, and must be expelled.

[4] The second thinker we shall probe is the Crown Prince of humanists, Desiderius Erasmus.

Erasmus was marvellously learned in Greek and Latin. Fluent in half-a-dozen vernacular languages as well, he didn’t know a word of Hebrew, claiming his research agenda left him no time to learn the language. I fear, however, that he knew no Hebrew because he didn’t want to learn any, virulently contemptuous as he was of the Jewish people.

Adept, of course, in French, Erasmus relished visiting France. France, he said, was the “purest blossom of Christianity, since she alone is uninfested with heretics, Bohemian schismatics [Hussites], with Jews, and with half-Jewish marranos [pigs].” The marranos, of course, were Spanish Jews who had forcibly been converted to the church under the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. A baptized Jew, Erasmus maintained, never really becomes a Christian; he remains a half-Jew.

Johannes Pfefferkorn, a Jewish convert to Roman Catholicism and a superb scholar, averred that if one were to perform surgery on a Jew, 600 Jews would spring out. Between 1507 and 1521 Pfefferkorn wrote more vitriolic pamphlets concerning the Jewish people than anyone else in the Renaissance and Reformation. And yet so very ingrained was Erasmus’ anti-Semitism that he refused to recognize Pfefferkorn, a Jewish convert, as a Christian.

To sum up the matter, Erasmus wrote, “if to hate the Jews is the proof of genuine Christians, then we are all excellent Christians.”

[5] Since this paper is being delivered in Baptist precincts, we must look at sixteenth-century Anabaptists. (Whether Anabaptism is at least part of the tradition of McMaster Divinity College I shall let my hosts decide.) Balthasar Hubmaier, living in Regensburg, spoke of the Jews as idle, lecherous and greedy. They are a plague, he contended. (We should note the metaphorical force of ‘plague’ in view of the fact that the Black Death killed 40% to 50% of Europe in fourteenth century Europe.) These pestilential people should be expelled. Hubmaier incited city authorities to do just this. In 1519 Hubmaier complained of the (supposed) Jewish defamation of Mary. Immediately the synagogue in Regensburg was torched, and a chapel honouring Mary erected in its place.

[6] It appears we have reached the nadir of Christian contempt for and mistreatment of the Jewish people. However, we haven’t. Pride of place must be accorded Johann Eck, Luther’s formidable Catholic opponent at Leipzig (1519), at Worms (1521), and at Augsburg (1530). Eck’s anti-Semitic toxicity, said Heiko Oberman (a Renaissance and Reformation scholar without peer in his day), outstripped anything the Reformers wrote “in crudity, spleen, and slander.”

Eck upheld the mediaeval blood-myth concerning the Jewish people, and Eck fulminated against Luther since Luther denied the blood-myth.

The blood-myth had many features, three of which we shall mention today.

Jewish people murdered Christian children in order to extract the children’s blood for use as an ingredient in matzo, the unleavened bread Jews ate at Passover.
Jews worked ‘black magic’, hexing the Eucharistic elements so that blood and wine, so far from Christic, were now Satanic.
Jewish males menstruated. No one had ever seen it, but millions believed it anyway.

This lattermost feature of the blood-myth is crucial, for it pronounced Jews to be more than unbelieving, more than Christ-killers, more than murderers; Jews were nothing less than monstrous. After all, a male that menstruates isn’t human; it’s monstrous. Jews, in short, are sub-human monsters.

Eck upheld this notion; he faulted Luther because Luther didn’t – at that time.

[7] At last we have arrived at Luther. He is deemed the bete noire where a Christian approach to the Jewish people is concerned. (Already, however, we have found many who were no better, and some who were far worse.)

Luther penned six anti-Judaistic tracts, haunted as he was by the Jewish presence in Europe and its intractability.

Intractability? Luther had assumed that Jewish people were held off embracing Jesus Christ and entering the church on account of ethical and institutional abuses in the latter. As soon as these abuses were remedied, Luther assumed, Jews would flock to the church. Jews, however, were no more attracted to the church of the Reformation than they had been to the church of Rome. Puzzled at first, Luther eventually became hostile.

The difference in attitude can be seen readily in two major tracts he wrote twenty years apart, That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew (1523) and On the Jews and Their Lies (1543). In 1523 Luther wrote, “If the apostles who were also Jews had dealt with us Gentiles as we Gentiles have dealt with Jews, no Christians would ever have emerged from among the Gentiles.” Johann Eck, Luther’s formidable opponent, riposted, “…right now there is this superficially learned children’s preacher [Luther] with a hoof of the golden calf in his flank, who presumes to defend the bloodthirsty Jews, saying it is not true and not plausible that they murder Christian children….”

In his earlier tract, That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew, Luther recognizes the Jewishness of Jesus; in addition, he is attempting to correct those who did not. He hopes thereby to “win some Jews to the Christian faith.”

Luther acknowledges the centuries-old mistreatment of the Jewish people, and clearly believes that his own attitude towards them is qualitatively different:

They have dealt with the Jews as if they were dogs rather than human beings. They have done little else than deride them and seize their property….When the Jews see that Judaism has such strong support in Scripture and that Christianity has become a mere babble without reliance on Scripture, how can they possibly compose themselves and become right good Christians?

In the same tract he will claim that the scriptural support for Judaism in the Old Testament has been superseded by the addition of the New Testament. He does not say that the Old Testament itself has been superseded; he will say, however, that the New Testament, having revealed the true meaning of the Old Testament, has rendered the synagogue obsolete and the Jewish community’s adherence to it a political threat. Luther’s benign regard for the Jews, seemingly genuine, invariably serves the agenda of conversion.

Yet the Jews did not convert in any significant number. When Luther reflected on this matter his vivid apocalyptic sense became more vivid still. Luther had long regarded the world as beset with apocalyptic conflict. Jewish intransigence was nothing less than collaboration with apocalyptic powers, for which collaboration divine punishment would entail blindness and dispersal. Since the Old Testament was an integral part of Christian Scripture, Luther wanted to wrest it out of Jewish hands if only because the Jews persistently and consistently misinterpreted it and thereby threatened the church and the state. His motivation, in other words, was the elimination of falsehood and the protection of Christians.

Unquestionably, the older Luther believed Jewish intransigence to threaten the survival of the gospel. His most virulent statements arose from this notion, and for them he has been vilified ever since. Such statements cannot be ignored, nor their baneful aftermath denied. Listen to some:

Why, even today they [the Jews] cannot refrain from their nonsensical, insane boasting that they are God’s people, although they have been cast out, dispersed and utterly rejected for almost fifteen hundred years.” (1543) “If someone wanted to talk with Jews, it is enough to remind them of the fifteen hundred years as the people forgotten by God.” “[Y]ou have no more bitter, venomous, and vehement foe than a real Jew who earnestly seeks to be a Jew.”

By 1546 Luther had reversed his earlier position and embraced the mediaeval blood myth: “Therefore the history books often accuse them of contaminating wells, of kidnapping and piercing children….Whether it is true or not, I do know that they do not lack the complete, full and ready will to do such things either secretly or openly where possible.” The Jews traffic in witchcraft, continued Luther; and for this “they should be hanged on the gallows seven times higher than other thieves.”

Luther proposed shockingly severe treatment for Jews. His final directive was chilling: “We are at fault for not slaying them.” To reinforce his point, Luther insisted that all pastors should support the government in such an undertaking.

By now Luther had advertised himself as no better than Johann Eck.

[8] There are aspects of Reformation thought that one could expect to mitigate any proclivity to anti-Judaism (defamation of Jewish religion) or anti-Semitism (defamation of Jewish persons). Here we need only recall the Reformers’ grasp of the Old Testament, their appreciation of its logic, and their insistence on its being necessary for faith in Christ. Nowhere in the Reformers is there a hint of Marcionism, the notion that Jesus Christ has rendered Genesis-through-Malachi obsolete, or even an impediment. All the Reformers insist, contra Marcion, that to disregard the Old Testament is to render him a wax figure whom we can mould as we wish, thereby fashioning a deity in our image.

Luther’s first publication was his Lectures on the Psalms. He found the gospel, no less, everywhere in the OT. His last major publication he spent ten years preparing (1535-1545); namely, his eight-volume Lectures on Genesis.

Calvin wrote twice as much on the Old Testament as on the New. While we might expect Calvin to say that all of Scripture is a comment on the gospel, he maintains that all of Scripture is a comment on the law – and can expound this without inconsistency just because Calvin insists that the gospel is the content of the law; Jesus Christ is the content of the Torah; which is to say, Jesus Christ is the substance of both testaments. Calvin frequently reminds his readers that while the gospel as attested by the NT may be “plainer”, the NT adds nothing essentially to that gospel attested throughout the Old Testament.

Both Luther and Calvin insist that God can be known only in Jesus Christ. Calvin avers that apart from Christ nothing can be known of God. Luther, as early as the Heidelberg Disputation (1518), declares uncompromisingly that apart from Christ, God is indistinguishable from the devil. The Reformers, hearing and heeding the apostles, agreed that there is only one Mediator by whom anyone may be saved. Yet the Patriarchs were certainly possessed of saving faith. They were saved by the Nazarene prospectively as surely as the church today is saved retrospectively. Jacob encountered the Mediator as surely as did Peter.

Then what happened to put the Reformers on the trajectory of the anti-Judaism if not anti-Semitism outlined in the first part of this address? Specifically, why does Calvin insist that Israel’s sons and daughters were saved through a Torah whose Incarnation was yet to occur, while denying that contemporary Jews can be saved through a Torah whose Incarnation has already occurred? Why is it that when Calvin speaks of Deborah and Miriam he extols them, but when he refers to contemporary Jews he denounces them?

The Reformers speak as they do on account of contemporary Jewry’s rejection of Jesus Christ. This notion, coupled with a ‘replacement’ theology, legitimates, in their own understanding at least, their vehement, vitriolic denunciation of Jews.

[9] We should acknowledge that the ‘replacement’ theology on which the Reformers went wrong isn’t peculiar to them; it has always found a ready home in the church, and it remains the operative understanding today of most of the church’s view of the synagogue. Several features of it stand out.

A] RT denies that God’s covenant with Israel is eternal. It affirms that the church has replaced Israel. Israel proved unfaithful; Israel failed. It assumes, it should be noted, that the church has always exemplified covenant-faithfulness; whereas Israel failed, the church has remained a howling success.

B] RT presupposes that covenant-membership depends on the quality of one’s obedience. Disobedience entails God’s rejection and abandonment of covenant-violators. Herein the church, albeit left-handedly and perhaps unwittingly, advertises its confidence in its achievement. Since the church keeps covenant, it no longer has to confess “There is no health in us.” (BCP) Grace, God’s faithfulness to his covenant with us despite our traducing ours with him, has disappeared; grace has been replaced by merit. Covenant has been replaced with contract, the notion that failure on the part of one party releases the other party from any commitment – a notion that covenant denies.

C] RT contradicts the apostles’ understanding of Jesus Christ. The apostles insist that God’s covenant with Israel (ultimately for the sake of all humankind) is fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is the Torah-keeping, covenant-keeping Jew. More to the point, in light of the Incarnation, the apostles confess that humankind’s covenant with God is kept by God as human. Kept by God himself (albeit by God as human), humankind’s covenant with God can now never be undone, its fulfilment never denied.

D] RT reads past Rom. 9:45, where Paul declares, in the present tense, “…to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs.” The present tense obviates any suggestion of past tense: “there used to belong to them” or “there once belonged to them”. In Rom. 11:29 Paul states bluntly, “For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”

E] RT ignores Romans 9-11, the single most sustained exposition of Israel in the New Testament.

i] Paul would give everything (here he’s deploying the vocabulary of Moses) to see his people embrace Jesus as Messiah of Israel.

ii] Still, God’s covenant with Israel remains operative.

iii] Israel’s non-acknowledgement of Jesus as Messiah of Israel (with the exception of relatively few Jews, such as Paul), however, is God-ordained, and ordained for the sake of gathering the Gentiles into the people of God. Exactly how Jewish non-acknowledgement of Jesus is essential to Gentile acknowledgement Paul never specifies. He speaks of this development as a mystery, not as a secret.

iv] When the ‘full number’ of the Gentiles has been admitted, Israel’s non-acknowledgement of the Messiah will be rescinded.

F] RT repudiates the Messiah. The Messiah is always and everywhere the Messiah of Israel. Weaker translations of 1^st Samuel 16:13 state that David, the Messianic prolepsis, was anointed “from among his brothers”. More accurate translations state “in the midst of his brothers”. The difference is crucial. According to Hebrew logic, the Messiah always includes his people with him. In other words, Christians can claim proximity to Christ only as they claim proximity to his people, Israel, the synagogue. Conversely, if Christians distance themselves from the Jewish people they distance themselves from Christ.

G] RT supports the theological aberration that liberal theology is. Liberal theology, while posturing as tolerant, inclusive, humane, etc., is pervasively and perniciously anti-Judaistic. With its cosmopolitan view of the human, liberal theology cannot tolerate Jewish particularity.

Friedrich Schleiermacher, the progenitor of liberal theology, appeared 250 years after the Reformation. Nevertheless, it isn’t anachronistic to speak of him in the context of Reformation-era anti-Semitism, because the Reformation era, in its caricature of Jews, anticipated liberal theology with respect to this issue even as the Reformers disagreed with humanist dilutions of the faith that would reappear in the liberal era.

In his 1799 Address on Religion to its Cultured Despisers Schleiermacher averred that Judaism had long been dead, and that “those who at present still bear its colours are actually sitting and mourning beside the undecaying mummy and weeping over its demise and sad legacy.” Liberal theology regards the faith of Israel as obsolete and now antiquated, attended by those with a penchant for curating museum-pieces. Schleiermacher regarded the Jewish community as a corpse that doesn’t have sense enough to decompose.

The Reformers, tragically, were supersessionists; i.e., they believed that the church had superseded Israel, thereby rendering Israel both obsolete and antiquated. Herein the Reformers failed to read the apostle Paul attentively, despite their veneration for the man.

H] Finally, RT renders God not worth believing in. For a God who violates his covenant with us on the grounds that we have violated ours with him is a God who cannot help us. Who needs or wants a God who quits on those who falter before him?

10] Challenges to the church today remain. For instance, the church tends to ignore the only physical description of Jesus that the apostles give us: he was circumcised. In other words, it means everything to our faith that Jesus is a son of Israel. (What we call ‘New Year’s Day’, January 1^st, in the church calendar is the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus. Why does the church make so very much of December 25^th and nothing at all of January 1^st?)

Again, Christians tend to speak of a ‘new covenant’ in the sense of opposed to ‘old’, forgetting that there can only be one covenant. If there were more than one covenant, God would suffer from a Dissociative Identity Disorder (what used to be called a Multiple Personality Disorder). While God’s covenant with humankind has always remained fulfilled, humankind’s covenant with God has now been kept definitively by God as human, on behalf of all humankind.

The Reformers contended that the church was the beneficiary of God’s act under the economy of the gospel, while Israel was the beneficiary of the same under the economy of the Torah, the gospel being the substance of the Torah. Yet when the Christian community arises, the Reformers deny that Jewish people can savingly encounter the Holy One of Israel as surely as the patriarchs could. Why the denial?

I am not denying that the church must bear witness to the synagogue (just as the synagogue bears witness to the church, pre-eminently concerning the faithfulness of God). I am not denying that it is appropriate for the Jew to become a Christian. (To say anything else would eliminate the apostles.)

I am however, haunted by the Reformers’ denial. More to the point, I am haunted that their denial renders impossible the denial that the Reformers contributed prodigiously to the Holocaust – which disaster, say our Jewish friends, is the single largest catastrophe to befall the synagogue; and which disaster, said Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is the single largest catastrophe to befall the church.

Victor A. Shepherd October 2017

Syllabus

May 20, 2014

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

May 20, 2014

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

May 20, 2014

GABRIEL BIEL

? – 1495

– was born at Speyer during the 1^st quarter of the 15^th century.

– is little-known w.r.t. his childhood, youth, or early adulthood.

– was ordained to the priesthood in 1432 and entered Heidelberg University .

– distinguished himself academically and became an instructor in the faculty of arts.

– did further study in 1442-1443 at the U. of Erfurt (where Luther was later to study. Erfurt was the centre of German Humanism, and both Biel and Luther absorbed little of it.)

– enrolled in 1453 in the faculty of theology at U. of Cologne (21 years after his ordination.)

– immersed himself ( Cologne ) in the Nominalist thought of Occam (as contrasted with the “older” thought of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.)

– was engaged in mid-life chiefly in day-to-day matters of church life.

– was cathedral preacher in Mainz, and at this time associated himself with and thereafter remained a member of the Brethren of the Common Life (BCL: a group that pursued devotional depth — what today we call “spirituality” — and ethical rigour in a communal setting, but found nothing at all disagreeable about the church’s theology.)

– was appointed in 1484 (Luther was born in 1483) professor of theology at the U. of Tuebingen .

– was appointed in 1489 rector of U. of Tueb . (Likely he was 75 years old now.)

– died in 1495, having spent his last years exclusively among the BCL.

– Note: one of his theological “grandsons”, Johann Eck, was Luther’s principal opponent and formidable opponent in disputations at Leipzig (1519), Worms (1521) and Augsburg (1530.)

BIEL ON JUSTIFICATION

Presuppositions: (i) the Nominalist understanding of God: chiefly in terms of will or power.

(ii) the Nominalist understanding of grace: God is able to do anything that is not simply contradictory; e.g., God cannot make a square circle. (This is not “something” that God can’t do; rather, it is by definition a “no-thing”, nonsense. In the same way God cannot annihilate himself, since God exists necessarily.)

Note: (i) the Nom’t und’g of grace begins with philosophical speculation.

(ii) the ” ” of grace is characterized by power.

The Prot. Reformers will have much to say on both points.

God is the source of all power, concerning which there are two kinds:

potentia absoluta: metaphysical freedom to do anything at all that isn’t self-conradictory.

potentia ordinata: a limited capacity, power, or freedom which God has because of God’s

self-limitation.

By PA God has willed to create. (He was under no necessity to create.) But once he has created a finite world, then God is bound ( PO ) by his self-imposed order. If he were to violate this order he would be inconsistent.

E.g., God has willed that pain follow injury ( PO ). There is no metaphysical reason for this; of his own unconstrained will he has willed it. God could have (PA) created the world in any way he wanted, but in fact has created it as we have it. (Note here the Nominalist stress on the “freedom” of God.)

By PO God has imposed upon himself a way or pattern of dealing with us his finite creatures, and (more tellingly) with us his sinful creatures. Therefore it is of utmost importance that we recognize his way of dealing with us and conform ourselves to it.

A question that theology has always asked is, “How do sinners get right with the all-holy God?” I.e., how do people who are wrongly related to God come to be rightly related? How are sinners “justified”, set in the right with God?

An Overview of Biel ‘s Understanding of Justification

Biel casts his answer in terms of the respective roles that God and humans play in justification and final glorification.

Our role has to do chiefly with the nature of the human act.

Any human act can be evaluated w.r.t. its bonitas or goodness. (Here “goodness” is a moral category not a theological category. The Reformers will dispute this and insist that “goodness” is the good, the Kingdom ofGod .)

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Presuppositions of Biel’s Understanding

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

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

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

Reason is not impaired in the way that will is.

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

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

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

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

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

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

How is such information acquired?

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

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

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

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

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

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

For this notion Biel adduces the following scriptural support:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(ii) hope of salvation.

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

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

Plainly Biel’s notion of justification is essentially Pelagian.

The 16^th Century Reformers’ Disagreements

1] Outside the state of grace humankind cannot love God at all (never mind love God above all.)

Humans can certainly be religious, but religiosity as such is simply idolatry, a barrier

behind which people flee God in the guise of seeking God.

In the wake of the fall our will is in se curvatus. We are afflicted with “concupiscence”,

rendering ourselves the centre of ourselves and the measure of everyone (-thing) else.

2] Instead of reason guiding the will, the will (the human “heart”) warps reason.

With respect to God, reason is perverted and largely of the order of rationalization.

We can never reason our way to God’s truth or God’s way with us: the cross.

3] While morally good act/aspiration is always possible (even actual), it is neither a sign of grace nor a step toward grace.

Morality is not the vestibule to the kingdom. The harlots and the tax-collectors enter the

kingdom ahead of the morally upright.

In the light of the kingdom (grace), morality has the same significance as religion: an

abomination to God.

4] The entire discussion of condign versus congruent merit contradicts the logic of scripture.

The only “merit” is that of Jesus Christ. His obedience to his Father is imputed to

(reckoned to) those who cling to him in faith.

5] We do not fail to act rightly merely because of improper information/cognition.

The root human problem is not ignorance but perverseness. Humankind wills to

make itself its own lord.

God’s giving us what we want (this is also his curse) — “You shall be as gods, knowing good

and evil” (Genesis 3:5) — means that we extend ourselves into areas of life that God has

marked “off limits”, and so marked for our blessing. No amount of information can overturn

the human predicament. (This is not to denigrate the informational content of the gospel. It is,

however, to deny that even the gospel as information can rectify us.)

People ultimately need not information but deliverance.

Our root problem is not that we are deprived (lacking something) but rather depraved

(perverse.)

6] The primary task of the church is NOT to provide people with proper moral information about
God and goodness (so as left-handedly to foster concupiscence) but

to attest Jesus Christ in the totality of his reality as attested by prophet and apostle,

to embody his truth and reality amidst the world’s life.

Plainly there is a truth-claim to the gospel and therefore a truth-content as well. However, in

articulating the truth of the gospel the Reformers do not provide that vehicle in terms of which

we achieve something meritorious before God. The truth/reality of the gospel isn’t naturally

intelligible, and therefore not the information on the basis of which we initiate the process

of salvation.

7] The grace of Jesus Christ does not pertain (only) to bonitas, thereby elevating it, while the grace of God is that which fashions the overall scheme of salvation.

There is no distinction between the grace of Christ and the grace of God and God himself;

i.e., grace is God himself in his presence and efficacy. Put differently, grace is the effectual

presence of God.

8] Iustitia (justice) is NOT (i) that by which we are measured, an abstract standard or code,

(ii) the metaphysical necessity of God’s rewarding dignitas.

Justice is the same as justification: God’s putting us in the right with himself, and thereby

vindicating himself and his people, relieving the oppressed, clearing the slander of

opprobrium heaped on those deemed “beyond the pale.” (I.e., all that HITZDIQ — the

hiphel of ZADAQ — and DIKAIOUN entail in Isaiah, the psalms, and the NT)

9] “Doing one’s best” is not synonymous with begging for mercy, but is rather disdaining and spurning the mercy that God has wrought in the Son (the cross) and visits upon his people through the Spirit.

The greater the sincerity in moral effort, the stronger the bastion that our pride has built

and to which we point in defiance of Jesus Christ.

10] Fallen humankind does not (because cannot) “unlock the door” to God. Any unlocking is possible only by grace.

The Reformed tradition will invoke here a doctrine of election.

The Wesleyan tradition will invoke here a doctrine of prevenient (pre=before;

venire=to come) grace.

11] In the wake of the fall no one seeks God. We flee God. When we think we are seeking him we are in fact fleeing him. God is “sought” in faith, not in unbelief.

The gospel is the declaration that the God (who never was lost or difficult to locate) has of his

mercy found us. God seeks a rebellious race; that race does not seek him.

12] There is no natural knowledge of God. We pervert the “revelation” found in the creation (e.g., Romans 1) as fast as it is “beamed” upon us. The apprehension of God available through the creation serves only to condemn us.

13] There is no natural knowledge of sin. Since knowledge of sin is a predicate of knowledge of God, and since God is known only in Jesus Christ (this is bedrock for the Reformers), the existence and nature of sin have to be revealed to us.

Only in the presence of Jesus Christ (the cure for sin) is the ailment seen for what it is.

When the psalmist cries, “Against Thee only have I sinned” (Ps. 51:4) he isn’t denying

that sin violates others besides God. He is acknowledging, however, that sin is defined

to be such by reference to God and revealed to be such by God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ.

In other words, the revelation of God entails revelation of the nature and disgrace of

humankind. Until we know God (where such knowledge is always participation — by faith — in God’s own life), we can’t know the fact or nature of a defective relationship with God.

For the Reformers, knowledge of sin is always a predicate of grace (knowledge of Christ.)

Where this fact is not recognized, sin will always be misunderstood as immorality or vice

or the violation of taboo. Jesus dies for the ungodly, not for the immoral.

14] “Acquired Faith”, a compend of natural knowledge and revealed knowledge, is wholly wide of the mark.

(i) faith is not knowledge in the sense of information (see #5), even as there is always a cognitive content to faith.

(ii) faith, rather, is fellowship with Jesus Christ. He embraces us by grace, and in the power of his embrace we find ourselves both able to embrace him and eager to embrace him. Faith is always the grace-facilitated response to the action of the person of Christ.

(iii) faith is never acquired in any case but is rather always a gift (exercised.)

15] To affirm that salvation is sola fide is not to scorn God’s justice (i.e., his judgement), but rather to submit to that judgement and receive/affirm the provision of righteousness that the judging/rightwising God has made.

God’s justifying us always includes his judging us. God’s judgement is the converse of his mercy (he bothers to judge us only because he longs to save us) and aims at our restoration. God’s justifying us presupposes his judging us. Then sola fide, an acknowledgement that we can only receive what God has fashioned for us in our need, endorses God’s judgement rather than scorning it.

16] The will is not free to choose but rather is bound.

It isn’t denied that we can choose among creaturely goods; e.g., to eat hotdogs rather than hamburgers, or to study rather than watch TV. But as fallen creatures we can’t “choose” Jesus Christ; i.e., we can’t will ourselves into the righteousness of God. What we most sorely need has to be wrought for us and pressed upon us; it isn’t something that we can choose to effect in ourselves. We can choose (“embrace”) JC only as a result of his having “embraced” us.

17] The distinction between an outer structure of grace and an inner content of (meritorious) work is unbiblical and therefore impermissible.

18] To embrace Jesus Christ in faith and therein become a beneficiary of his righteousness is at the same time to be the beneficiary of God’s; i.e., JUSTIFICATION IN THE PRESENT FORMS THE STABLE BASIS AND NOT THE UNCERTAIN GOAL OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.

Victor Shepherd January 2000

The Nominalism of Gabriel Biel

May 20, 2014

The Nominalism of Gabriel Biel

Aquinas is a “realist”, preoccupied with being (being itself), following Aristotle.

God is understood chiefly in terms of being or existence: that which is (necessarily),

the one whose essence is his existence.

Occam is a “nominalist”, preoccupied with willing or power. Less concerned than Aquinas

with metaphysics, he is less concerned with reasoning towards God. Therefore faith isn’t

built on what reason “demonstrates” to be a metaphysical foundation, but rather on what

God has willed.

Result: the scholastic method of relating theology to philosophy (grace perfects nature), is
undercut. Natural theology is devalued.

God’s will determines our faith, not God’s being or our reason.

The command of God is grounded only in the will of God, not in the nature of God

Luther will agree with nominalism’s

(i) denial of natural theology

(ii) denial of the scholastic method of theology

(iii) affirmation of a God whom philosophy can’t control.

Luther will disagree with nominalism’s

(i) insistence that God is to be understood chiefly in terms of power

(ii) insistence that God’s command is rooted only in God’s will.

(The latter notion inevitably causes God(‘s will) to appear arbitrary. Unless God’s will is God’s nature, God’s will has nothing to do with his being; God’s will is the capricious exertion of sheer power.)

The Nominalism of Gabriel Biel

Aquinas is a “realist”, preoccupied with being (being itself), following Aristotle.

God is understood chiefly in terms of being or existence: that which is (necessarily),

the one whose essence is his existence.

Occam is a “nominalist”, preoccupied with willing or power. Less concerned than Aquinas

with metaphysics, he is less concerned with reasoning towards God. Therefore faith isn’t

built on what reason “demonstrates” to be a metaphysical foundation, but rather on what

God has willed.

Result: the scholastic method of relating theology to philosophy (grace perfects nature), is
undercut. Natural theology is devalued.

God’s will determines our faith, not God’s being or our reason.

The command of God is grounded only in the will of God, not in the nature of God

Luther will agree with nominalism’s

(i) denial of natural theology

(ii) denial of the scholastic method of theology

(iii) affirmation of a God whom philosophy can’t control.

Luther will disagree with nominalism’s

(i) insistence that God is to be understood chiefly in terms of power

(ii) insistence that God’s command is rooted only in God’s will.

Reverend V. Shepherd

Desiderius Erasmus

May 20, 2014

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

May 20, 2014

ERASMUS

1466-1536

“Lack of culture is not holiness.”

Introductory Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Areas of Theological Divergence from the Reformers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, “total depravity” does mean

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

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

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

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

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

[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.)

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

May 20, 2014

Plato and the Christian Faith

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

Is this assessment correct?

What happens when Israel is undervalued?

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

How extensive is the affinity?

What is the relation of classical learning to biblical faith?

Is the “discarnate Logos” the Logos of John?

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

How is a metaphysical system “chosen?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How would prophet and apostle comment on this notion?

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

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

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

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

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

Humanism and Luther

May 20, 2014

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

May 20, 2014

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

May 20, 2014

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

May 20, 2014

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

May 20, 2014

“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

May 20, 2014

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.”

May 20, 2014

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

Valentius Loescher, a 17^th century Lutheran, insisted, Iustificatio est articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae. (articulus: article, point, crisis, division, hinge {thumb})

Most religions repudiate this articulus formally (e.g., Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses); most church folk repudiate it informally – i.e., operatively.

Those who would never repudiate it formally are often found repudiating it subtly and thereby fall into one or another form of self-justification insofar as

we are justified by our grasp of the doctrine of justification

by our ability to articulate the doctrine in private or public

by faith as the substance of our justification

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

whose inner content is our achievement

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

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

Christ.

Calvin on Justification

May 20, 2014

Calvin on Justification

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Valentius Loescher, a 17^th century Lutheran, insisted, Iustificatio est articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae. (articulus: article, point, crisis, division, hinge {thumb})

Most religions repudiate this articulus formally (e.g., Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses); most church folk repudiate it informally – i.e., operatively.

Those who would never repudiate it formally are often found repudiating it subtly and thereby fall into one or another form of self-justification insofar as

we are justified by our grasp of the doctrine of justification

by our ability to articulate the doctrine in private or public

by faith as the substance of our justification

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

whose inner content is our achievement

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

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

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

Christ.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3.11.11 and 3.11.21.

[10] Note the following in the 3.11.11:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[16] The sum of the doctrine is

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

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

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

forth”. 3.14.17.

Professor V. Shepherd

Law and Gospel According to Calvin

May 20, 2014

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

May 20, 2014

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

May 20, 2014

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

May 20, 2014

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 16^th 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

Sermons & Writings of Victor Shepherd

Category Archives: Theology of the Reformation

Start here

Anti-Semitism in the Reformation Era

Syllabus

Supplementary readings

Gabriel Biel

The Nominalism of Gabriel Biel

Desiderius Erasmus

Erasmus exposition

Plato and the Christian Faith

Humanism and Luther

Martin Luther

Indulgences

Luther’s Theologia Crusis

Righteousness According to Luther

The Freedom of a Christian

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

Calvin on Justification

Law and Gospel According to Calvin

The Mediator

Christ as Prophet (revealer), King (ruler), Priest (redeemer)

The Ascension

Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination

The Holy Spirit and Faith

I

II