Select Bibliography

 

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

Bloesch, Donald G.; Christian Foundations

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

McGrath, Alister E.; Christian Theology: An Introduction

McGrath’s focus is the historical development of doctrine.

 

Volume I, Chapter One

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

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

[b] erosion of the authority of scripture

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

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

[a] little seriousness about intellectual matters

[b] loss of confidence in truth (postmodernism)

[c] little concern with history

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

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

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

 

p1  The threat: “syncretistic mysticism and latitudinarianism”

[i] there is a mysticism that is thoroughly biblical

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

anti-incarnational (too narrow and non-intuitional)

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

anti-atonement (too bloody, too primitive)

anti-obedience (too confining)

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

rigorous discipleship, spiritual vigilance and spiritual growth.

Rev. V. Shepherd

 

The Basis of Theology

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

-speculation doesn’t yield knowledge of God.

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

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

Note the nature of biblical “knowing.”

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

 

Objections to Theology

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

 

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

 

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

 

4]  It appears fixated on disputes of earlier centuries.

 

Why Theology is Necessary

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

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

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

 

3]  It provides instruction in faith.

 

4]  It apprehends the totality of the biblical witness.

It apprehends the integration of this totality.

 

5]  It honours the concern for T/truth.

 

 

In Short

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

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

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

 

3]  A church that disdains theology is saying

(i)               there is no substance to the gospel

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

(iii)            intellectual “mush” is God-honouring

(iv)            the past cannot inform us at all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Points to Remember

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

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

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

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

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

6] what is old needs to be freshly understood.

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

8] the doctrinally novel is ipso facto heretical.

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

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

Note Luther’s Theologia Crucis.

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

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

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

-predestination?
-omniscience?
-omnipresence?

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

 

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

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

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

”           ”           ”            adoration and admiration

”           ”           ”              propitiation and expiation

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

 

Reverend V. Shepherd

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

 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE VB: PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS:

 

I:

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

 

 

 

II:

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

 

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

Still, the outward sign and inward reality belong together.

Outward sign and inward reality are intrinsically or analogically related.

 

 

 

III:

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

THE POSITIVE MESSAGE OF THE VB:

 

I:a:

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

 

I:b:

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

 

 

I:c:

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

 

 

 

II:

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

 

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

 

 

 

III:

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

 

 

 

IV:

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

 

 

V:

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

VI:

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 Professor V.Shepherd

 

Lecture Outline

 

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

 

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

nature as God;

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

creation;

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

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

 

 

What the doctrine is not: it is not dualism

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

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

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

spontaneously came into being

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

 

What the doctrine is not: it is not gnosticism

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

-creation is tainted

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

hostile to God)

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

libertinism.

 

 

2]  The doctrine itself:

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

to create)

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

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

 

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

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

 

 

3]  How does God create?

-by the Word

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

 

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

-only by revelation of the Word do we know this

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

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

 

 

 

4]  Creation and covenant are related:

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

sin, God is faithful to us.

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

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

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

meaning of the creation.

 

 

5]  Creation and the kingdom of God:

-the kingdom is the creation healed

-note Jesus’ preoccupation with the kingdom

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

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

 

 

6]  The Creation of humankind:

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

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

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

from scripture as a whole)

-hk. is made steward of the creation

-hk. is sexually differentiated

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

effaced.

 

-faith renders hk. authentically human, but not superhuman

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

 

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

i)                 nature-worship has supplanted the worship of God

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

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

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

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

(comments on Bloesch text)

 

 

 

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

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

 

 

God wasn’t compelled to create:

[1] no external necessity;

[2] no internal necessity

(e.g., “He couldn’t help creating.”

“He needed to create to be God.”

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

 

Then why did God create?

 

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

 

 

 

 

P25 GOD AS CREATOR AND LORD

[1] “essential goodness of creation”:

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

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

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

but  rather would  change its nature;

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

 

[2] “meaningfulness of history”:

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

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

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

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

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

truly ourselves.

 

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

[b] extreme indulgence.

 

A

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

B

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

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

 

C

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

homoousios versus homoiousios

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The Gospel-Significance of “Homoousios”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do we think? Where is the church today?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Erigena and emanationism (vs. creation)

The anthropocentric character of religion (p. 42)

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

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

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

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

 

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

Note the nature of revelation (Shepherd)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(SCRIPTURAL PRIMACY)

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

(INFALLIBILITY AND INERRANCY)

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

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

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

(THE HERMENEUTICAL TASK)

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

 

(MISCONCEPTIONS IN MODERN EVANGELICALISM)

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

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

– – – – – – –

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

(THE STRUGGLE WITH LIBERALISM)

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

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

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

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

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

Note the perils of neglecting the Older Testament

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

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

Abraham is the exemplar of faith.

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

Rev. V. Shepherd

(Bloesch, Essentials, chapt. VII)

(THE BIBLICAL UNDERSTANDING)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

– – – – –

 

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

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

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

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

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

Don’t isolate the forensic metaphor from others.

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

(DIFFERING VIEWS ON THE ATONEMENT)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strengths in Anselm’s Argument:

[1] it takes sin seriously.

[2] it deplores “cheap grace.”

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

Questions/Criticisms re: Anselm’s Argument:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In short, it ignores the whole matter of propitiation.

 

(THREE ASPECTS OF THE ATONEMENT)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

(OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE ATONEMENT)

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

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

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

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

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

 

(PARTICULAR AND UNIVERSAL ATONEMENT)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

(THE OBLIGATION OF THE CHRISTIAN)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

(MISUNDERSTANDINGS IN MODERN THEOLOGY)

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

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

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

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

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

 

p172. With respect to Jesus Christ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

lost here are all the biblical categories for understanding Jesus.

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

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

the radical transcendence of the holy God is lost

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

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

 

p173. Moral/Mystical Influence of Atonement Theories

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

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

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

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

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

are repentance & conversion natural occurrences?

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

this is a total inversion of biblical faith.

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

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

 

 

– – – – –

 

Essential Points in a Doctrine of the Atonement

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Reverend V. Shepherd

 

1]  Jesus becomes a wax figure whom we can mould as we wish.  Invariably we end up fashioning him after our image.  Consider the assorted “Jesus’s” that have appeared in the 20^th century: the Idealist philosopher, the businessman, the existentialist, the liberal humanitarian, the social conservative, the supporter of Nazi ideology.

 

It is most significant that the only physical description the apostles give us of Jesus is that he was circumcized.  I.e., it matters not to our faith what he looked like, but it matters supremely that he is a son of Israel .

 

 

2]  The gospel becomes ideation, an abstract amateurish philosophy, rather than the power of God unto salvation. ( Rom. 1:16)  “The power of God unto salvation” is God himself acting to effect our salvation.  The gospel, then, isn’t “news” or a report primarily but rather God himself acting; the gospel as “good news” is news of the event that it is inherently.

 

 

3]  We become antisemites.  The history of the church’s interface with the synagogue is the sorriest chapter in the church’s entire history.

 

 

4]  We undervalue the people of God and fail to understand the church as the people of God.  In the wake of this failure the church is understood principally in terms of the clergy or in terms of an institution.

 

 

5]  We undervalue history as the theatre of God’s revelation and as the theatre of our discipleship.

 

 

6]  We undervalue the Fall.  The story of the Fall occurs only in the OT.  It is a presupposition of everything that follows it in scripture.  Insofar as we neglect it we adopt a roseate view of human nature, ourselves, and the world in which the Christian mission unfolds.

 

 

7]  We substitute the category of religious evolution for the biblical category of God’s promise and its subsequent fulfillment.  As a result we adopt North America ‘s myth of progress concerning world-occurrence instead of underlining the patience, faithfulness and undeflectability of God.

 

In the light of the above-mentioned error we undervalue the need for faithfulness, constancy and consistency in our own discipleship and instead assume that developments in western civilization are co-terminous with the kingdom of God .

 

8]  We lose the Hebrew affirmation of the material, the earthly, the earthy, the sexual, bodily delight, the pleasures of food, drink, physicality, and appropriate the contradiction of all of this in the philosophy of Plato.

 

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

 

Bloesch, Essentials, chapt. viii

 

 

(THE GIFT OF GRACE IN BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE)

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

 

(AN AGE-OLD CONTROVERSY)

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

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

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

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

 

 

(THE PARADOX OF SALVATION)

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

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

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

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

 

(THE MEANS OF GRACE)

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

Compare Hendrikus Berkhof:

1)     instruction (catechetics)

2)     baptism

3)     sermon

4)     discussion

5)     the meal (Lord’s Supper)

6)     diaconate

7)     the meeting (worship)

8)     office

9)     church polity (church order)

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

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

Reverend  V. Shepherd

 

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

(ii)        the washing

(iii)       the sermon

(iv)       the discussion

(v)        the meal

(vi)       the diaconate

(vii)      the meeting

———————————————-

(viii)     office

(ix)       church polity (church order)

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

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

 

Note the three major Hebrew words for “redemption”:

1] pdh (padah)

2] kpr (kippur)

3] g’l (goel)

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

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

Christ as Teacher and Exemplar.

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

 

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

 

Concerning propitiation:

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Come, Thou Conqueror of the nations

Now on Thy white horse appear;

Earthquakes, dearths and desolations

Signify Thy kingdom near;

True and faithful!

‘Stablish Thy dominion here.

 

Open, Lord, my inward ear,

And bid my heart rejoice;

Bid my quiet spirit hear

Thy comfortable voice;

Never in the whirlwind found,

Or when earthquakes rock the place,

Still and silent is the sound,

The whisper of Thy grace.

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

            parabasis                       stepping over a line (transgression)

            parakoe                         disobedience to a voice [obedience is intensified hearing]

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

            agnoema                       ignorance of what we should have known

            hettma                           diminishing of what should have been rendered in full measure

            anomia                          lawlessness

            plemmeleia                    a discord in the harmonies of God’s universe

            asebeia                          ungodliness, a deliberate anti-God stance

            adikia                            unrighteousness

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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