The More of God, the More of Me!

The more of God does not mean the less of me. Jeremy Begbie argues that music provides a key way to understand how we can follow God and be more free than ever. "God wants to re-humanize us, not de-humanize us."

Thoughts of an Evangelical Covenanter on why a line of "In Christ Alone" isn't biblical

Okay, it's more than you ever wanted to know, I’m sure, : ) but here’s my understanding of why Covenanters don’t usually sing “the wrath of God was satisfied” :

“The Scriptures teach that no change took place in God's disposition towards man in consequence of his sin; that, therefore, it was not God who needed to be reconciled to man, but that it was man who needed to be reconciled to God; and that, consequently, reconciliation is a work which proceeds from God and is directed towards man, and aims not to appease God, but to cleanse man from sin, and to restore him to a right relation with God.”  

–P.P. Waldenstrom (a “father” of the Evangelical Covenant Church)

The grammatical problem revolves around the meaning of the words “hilasterion/ “hilasmos” which have been translated as “propitiation” and “expiation.” This is a thorny one, with scholars lining up on opposite sides regarding the proper translation. According to Theopedia,

Propitiation literally means to make favorable and specifically includes the idea of dealing with God’s wrath against sinners. Expiation literally means to make pious and implies either the removal or cleansing of sin.

The idea of propitiation includes that of expiation as its means; but the word “expiation” has no reference to quenching God’s righteous anger. The difference is that the object of expiation is sin, not God. One propitiates a person, and one expiates a problem.

We do not read scripture (or translate it!) alone, but rather as part of a community--­a tradition. (Acts 25:30-31) Depending upon our tradition, we will interpret scripture differently, and “hilasterion/ “hilasmos” is just one of those instances."

I’ve written some other Covenant pastors, to see how they deal with the issue in regard to “In Christ Alone.” Some have  changed the line in question:

‘the love of God was glorified’
‘Till on that cross as Jesus died
The love of God was magnified’
‘the love of God was satisfied" 

while others do not sing the song, period. 

Bottom line: All this pretty much challenges the popular Substitutionary Theory of the Atonement, which will not sit well with those traditions that are grounded in Anselm's theory.

Want to dig deeper?

1. You can read about Waldenstrom here

Waldenstrom was famous for his question, “Where is it written?” This was the motivation for his exploration of the doctrine of the atonement.

2. Here is Waldenstrom’s sermon, “Be Ye Reconciled to God,” which is the classic statement of Waldenstrom’s position.

http://www.gospeltruth.net/recon_walden.htm

In keeping with his conviction that doctrine must be grounded in scripture, Waldenstrom presents scriptural arguments for his theory of the atonement, and addresses criticisms of his interpretation.

3. This site gives some historical background for Waldenstrom’s teaching: “P.P. Waldenstrom and the Atonement.”

http://www.mv.com/ipusers/concov/Covenant%20Heritage%202.htm

Here’s a relevant passage:

One of the topics that Waldenström turned his biblical lenses on was that of the atonement, the way that we are made right with God, the way in which our broken and shattered state is made acceptable to God.

In his monumental tome on Covenant history, Karl Olsson tells it this way:

In 1870, young Waldenström was having some conversation about the atonement with some fellow pastors. They were talking about the official Lutheran position called in Latin, satifactio vicaria, the idea that "the suffering and death of Christ had been the means of satisfying God’s wrath. Justice demanded that God punish man eternally for his sin against the majesty of God, but Christ had intervened between God’s justice and man, had appeased God’s wrath, and how his (Christ’s) righteousness could be imputed to man for the latter’s justification" (Olsson, Karl, By One Spirit, Covenant Press, Chicago, 1962, p. 109). So as the pastors where talking about this, Waldenström asks his famous question, "Var står det skrivet?" Where is it written?, the pastors laughed! (By One Spirit, p. 110). Waldenström conducted a lengthy search of scripture and found no where in the Old or New Testament that God was the one reconciled. God’s position did not change in the atonement. Rather, our position did.

In a famous sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, 1872, published in The Pietist, Waldenström used our gospel text for the day and outlined the reasons why the official Lutheran belief in the atonement was all wrong for those who live as citizens of the Kingdom of God. He had five points in his core argument:
1) "That through our fall no change has entered the heart of God.
2) That because of this it was no severity or anger against man which through the fall rose up in the way of man’s redemption
3) That the change, which occurred in the fall, was a change in man alone, in that he became sinful and thus fell away from God and from the life which is in him.
4) That for this reason an atonement indeed is needed for man’s salvation, but not an atonement which appeases God and presents him as being once again gracious but (an atonement) which removes man’s sin and makes him once again righteous, and
5) That this atonement is in Jesus Christ." (Covenant Roots: Sources &; Affirmations. p. 119-120).

In other words, the death of Christ does not change God from a wrathful God to a loving God. God has always been gracious and loving. And yes, God has hated sin but God has not hated us! It wasn’t humanity that God was wrathful about, but sin.

Now, one could argue that if one read everything Martin Luther wrote that one would not find a consistent message about God being wrathful against humanity. Luther talks a lot about grace, and he also talks about our inability to see God’s love due to our own sin, therefore we see wrath. Luther speaks in this way to encourage people to try Christ, who alone can put away this wrath of God. (Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, Fortress Press, 1966, p. 171) But Luther does talk an incredible amount about the wrath of God, the law which we can never keep and which therefore leads us to despair and sin, and therefore, deeper into God’s wrath (Althaus, p. 177).

In the Swedish church of the day, the Lutheran teaching was that of a wrathful, angry God who needed the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ to be merciful. Waldenström investigated this thoroughly, and decided that it was not God who moved in the atonement, but humanity which is made righteous as before the fall. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and each of those personae is love. Waldenström defines the role of Christ as the representative of God "to take away our sin," rather than "our substitute in order to take away the wrath of God." (Covenant Roots: Sources & Affirmations. p. 123)

Doesn’t Paul make it very clear that "we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son" (Rom 5:10) rather than the "God was reconciled to us through the death of his Son?" Waldenström points out verse after verse in which God is doing the reconciling, not being reconciled himself. In the Old Testament it is clear that the many references for the need for atonement is remove the sin of the people, not to change God (Lev 16). From Leviticus, "For on this day atonement shall be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins you shall be clean before the LORD" (Lev 16:30).

And clean we must be if we wish to approach God, who is righteous. Christ’s death and resurrection allows us to be made clean, giving us fellowship with God.

4. Finally, I think many Covenanters would agree with N.T. Wright here:

http://www.ntwrightpage.com/sermons/Word_Cross.htm

“Face it: to deny God’s wrath is, at bottom, to deny God’s love. When God sees humans being enslaved – and do please go and see the film Amazing Grace as soon as you get the chance – if God doesn’t hate it, he is not a loving God. (It was the sneering, sophisticated set who tried to make out that God didn’t get angry about that kind of thing, and whom Wilberforce opposed with the message that God really does hate slavery.) When God sees innocent people being bombed because of someone’s political agenda, if God doesn’t hate it, he isn’t a loving God. When God sees people lying and cheating and abusing one another, exploiting and grafting and preying on one another, if God were to say, ‘never mind, I love you all anyway’, he is neither good nor loving. The Bible doesn’t speak of a God of generalized benevolence. It speaks of the God who made the world and loves it so passionately that he must and does hate everything that distorts and defaces the world and particularly his human creatures. And the Bible doesn’t tell an abstract story about people running up a big debit balance in God’s bank and God suddenly, out of the blue, charging the whole lot to Jesus. The Bible tells a story about the creator God calling a people through whom he would put the world right, living with that covenant people even when they themselves went wrong, allowing them to become the place where the power of evil would do its worst, and preparing them all through for the moment when, like the composer finally stepping on stage to play the solo part, he would come and take upon himself, in the person of his Son, the pain and shame, yes, the horror and darkness, yes, but also, in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, in Paul and Acts and Hebrews and 1 Peter and Revelation, in Ignatius and Irenaeus and Augustine and Aquinas, in Luther and Calvin and Cranmer and Hooker, in Herbert and Donne and Wesley and Watts – he would take upon himself the condemnation which, precisely because he loves us to the uttermost, he must pronounce over that deadly disease we call sin. To deny this, as some would do today as they have for hundreds of years, is to deny the depth and weight of sin and the deeper depth and heavier weight of God’s redeeming love. The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

I’m grateful that our freedom in Christ allows us to consider multiple ways of expressing the mystery of His work on the cross, and trust that our fellowship in Him will not be broken over this issue. The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. May Christ’s blood bind us together in His Spirit!

In Him,

Beth

Pietism in the drivers seat, and Doctrine riding shotgun

Too often Reformed Christians disparage their siblings who are Pietists. Brad Boydston makes an astute comment on Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog:

"There are two reasons why Pietism gets misunderstood. The first is that it is a renewal or life movement rather than a doctrinal movement. It’s not saying that doctrine is bad — or unimportant but that it should not be in the driver’s seat. The car should be driven in a relational manner. That idea is troubling to those who have a rigid doctrinal system that they believe should drive everything.

Secondly, because it is not a tight system requiring uniformity in all matters, there are people within Pietism who have at times driven off in pretty weird directions — mysticism, extreme individualism or extreme focus on experience — to the degree that it pushes aside sound doctrinal input.

As I see it, though, you want to have a Pietist driving the car or it will never go anywhere significant. But you also need to have someone with a doctrinal orientation riding shotgun — and reading the map. They may annoy each other occasionally but the map reader is necessary or the driver can end up going in circles.

In 1 Timothy 4:16 the apostle tells Timothy to watch his life and doctrine. The church needs both the doctrinal and pietistic impulses. We’re the healthiest when we have been able to integrate both. Spener was calling the church to reintegrate both impulses. Those who caught the vision from him ended up doing some pretty amazing things — evangelizing the world, developing the notion of public education, caring for orphans and refugees…"

Comment by Brad Boydston — January 4, 2012 @ 10:39 am
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/01/04/pietism-what-is-it/

KEEPER: "God can do anything!"

Six years ago  I wrote a blog entry, prompted by the children's song: 
"My God is so great, so strong and so mighty, there's nothing my God cannot do." 
The truth is, there ARE some things that God cannot do:   

1) he can't lie ( Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29 and Titus 1:2); 
2) he can't not exist (Exodus 3:13-14)
3) he can't not be holy (Lev. 11:4-45; Ps.99:3,5; Is. 45:11, etc; 1 Peter 1:15-16 etc. ).

Why would we want a God who could contradict himself? (cf. James 1:17; Malachi 3:6) Such a God would not be sovereign, but nonsensical.

As C. S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain, 

“His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it’, you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words ‘God can’. It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”

Of course, Lewis was no nominalist. Neither am I, and because I am not a nominalist, I cannot be a voluntarist or a Calvinist. 
-------------------------------------------------------

From Jesus Creed: December 13, 2011

“God can do anything he wants!” (by David Opderbeck)
Filed under: Law — scotmcknight @ 12:06 am

David Opderbeck is Professor of Law and Director of the Gibbons Institute of Law, Science  Technology at Seton Hall University Law School. He is also a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophical Theology at the University of Nottingham. David’s post today is academic and complex, but he’s right in saying it is this distinction that was at work in the Rob Bell and hell debate with with Francis Chan. Chan’s appeal to submission to God at times sounded like nominalism. Read on, read slowly.

Nominalism, Voluntarism, and God’s Being and Will

“God can do ANYTHING he wants.” So say Preston Sprinkle and Francis Chan in their book Erasing Hell. It’s fair to say that this proposition is the cornerstone of Sprinkle and Chan’s theodicy of Hell. “Won’t God get what he wants?” So asks Rob Bell in his book Love Wins. It’s also fair to say that this question, along with the belief that God wants everyone to be saved, is the cornerstone of Bell’s theodicy of Hell.

Both Sprinkle / Chan and Bell focus on God’s will. But is there something missing from their theodicies? Theologically, the question concerns the relation of God’s will to His nature. Philosophically, the question relates to whether “universal” substances exist apart from their particular instantiations (“universals”), or whether substances are merely names for particular instances of things (“nominalism”).

Consider an apple. What is an apple? Is this particular apple on my kitchen table one instantiation of the substance “apple” – a substance with some sort of universal metaphysical (“beyond-“ or “above-“ physical) properties that are shared by all apples? Or is “apple” simply a name I apply to this object before me as a result of some observable similarities with other objects (other things we also call “apple”) that have no metaphysical connection to the “apple” on my table?

What do you think? Do nominalism and voluntarism improperly taint our conversations about ethics, justice and theodicy? Or, does “realism” about universals compromise God’s sovereignty? How can we avoid speaking about God in ways that seem either to compromise His sovereign freedom or to reduce His actions to the arbitrary exercise of power?

For many who claim a modern scientific worldview, there are only particular objects called “apple,” which are more or less related to other particular objects in morphology and chemical composition, all of which are categorized as “apples” for the sake of convenience. What is “real,” in this view, is merely chemistry and physical laws, not any substance “apple.” In contrast, for those who believe in universal properties, “apple” implies properties that are real and transcendent of any one apple. This apple on my table has properties such as “red” in common with other apples because those common properties transcend any one particular apple. (For a good overview of the problem of “universals,” see the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

The modern nominalist view of “nature” derives from and is related to nominalist and “voluntarist” views of God in late medieval philosophy. The medieval scholastic philosophers wrestled with this question: Is God’s will a product of God’s rational nature, such that God only calls things “good” that are substantively “good”? Or is God’s will utterly unconstrained, such that God is free to call “good” whatever He desires to call “good,” without any limiting principle (referred to as “voluntarism”)?

One of the key figures in the development of these ideas was the monk and philosopher William of Ockham (c. 1288-1348). Ockham took a strong – some would argue extreme – view of Divine sovereignty in relation to morality and ethics. Here is an example of Ockham’s voluntarist approach:

I say that although hate, theft, adultery and the like have a bad circumstance annexed de communi lege [“by the common law”] so far as they are done by someone who is obliged by divine precept to the contrary, nevertheless, in respect of everything absolute in those acts they could be done by God without any bad circumstance annexed. And they could be done by the wayfarer even meritoriously if they were to fall under a divine precept, just as now in fact their opposites fall under divine precept . . . But if they were thus done meritoriously by the wayfarer, then they would not be called or named theft, adultery, hate, etc., because those names signify such acts not absolutely but by connoting or giving to understand that one doing such acts is obliged to their opposites by divine precept. (Ockham, Various Questions, Vol. 5 (emphasis added)).

For Ockham, then, there was no “absolute” notion of “the good.” “Good” is just a word we apply to whatever God commands. The parallels to both Sprinkle / Chan’s and Bell’s theodicies are obvious.

This sort of view sounds humble and pious. Who are we to question God? The problem, however, is that it begs the question of who “God” is.

Before the rise of nominalism, Christian theology generally held that God’s being and will are inseparable. God is “simple” and does not have separate “parts” such as “being” and “will.” This means that God wills and acts as He is. If God acts in ways that are “loving,” it is because in His Triune being “God is love” (1 John 4:8); and if God acts in ways that are “just” it is because in His Triune being God is just.

To be sure, Christian theology has always held that God’s essential nature is fundamentally unknowable by human beings, because God is radically other than His creation. However, many of the Church’s great thinkers believed we could know about God either through His “energies” in creation (e.g., many of the Eastern Fathers) or by “analogy” to the being of creation (e.g., Thomas Aquinas). At the very least, the apophatic theologians held that we can speak about what God is not like.

Nominalism and voluntarism, in contrast, divorced God’s will from His being, and thus drastically limited the role of theology for ethics. As theologian John Milbank notes,

In the thought of the nominalists . . . the Trinity loses its significance as a prime location for discussing will and understanding in God and the relationship of God to the world. No longer is the world participatorily enfolded within the divine expressive Logos, but instead a bare divine unity starkly confronts the other distinct unities which he has ordained. . . . This dominance of logic and of the potential absoluta is finally brought to a peak by Hobbes: ‘The right of Nature, whereby God reigneth over men, and punisheth those that break his Lawes, is to be derived, not from his creating them, as if he required obedience as of gratitude for his benefits; but from his Irresistible Power.’” (John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, at pp. 15-16 (quoting Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.))

Catholic philosopher Edward Feser recently summarized the fruits of Ockham’s reductionism as follows:

the Renaissance humanists’ revolution in culture, Luther’s revolution in theology, Descartes’ revolution in philosophy, and Hobbes’s revolution in politics also have their roots in Ockhamism. With the humanists this was manifested in their emphasis on man as an individual, willing being rather than as a rational animal. In Luther’s case, the prospect of judgment by the terrifying God of nominalism and voluntarism – an omnipotent and capricious will, ungoverned by any rational principle – was cause for despair. Since reason is incapable of fathoming this God and good works incapable of appeasing Him, faith alone could be Luther’s refuge. With Descartes, the God of nominalism and voluntarism opened the door to a radical doubt in which even the propositions of mathematics – the truth of which was in Descartes’ view subject to God’s will no less than the contingent truths of experience – were in principle uncertain. And we see the moral and political implications of nominalism in the amoral, self-interested individuals of Hobbes’s so-called “state of nature,” and in the fearsome absolutist monarch of his Leviathan, whose relationship to his subjects parallels that of the nominalist God to the universe.

I might not agree completely with Feser’s hasty appraisal of Luther. Note, however, Feser’s reference to judgment by “the terrifying God of nominalism and voluntarism – an omnipotent and capricious will, ungoverned by any rational principle….” If the governing principle of a theodicy is that “God can do ANYTHING he wants,” how does that theodicy avoid the capricious, irrational god of nominalism and voluntarism? How could even someone presently confident of his election to salvation have any reason to believe that his election will not be suddenly and arbitrarily revoked on the last day? Why should God keep His promises? At the same time, if the governing principle is that “God always gets what he wants,” how can human beings retain any moral freedom or responsibility?

Note also Feser’s linkage between nominalism, voluntarism, and ethics. If law and ethics derive from God’s commands, and God’s commands are the product of pure, ungoverned power and will, then what principle can check the tyranny of earthly rulers who claim absolute and unquestionable power on the basis of Divine right?

Finally, note Feser’s reference to epistemology. This relates to the broad question of universals versus nominalism, because a belief in metaphysical universals suggests that God first conceives of and then brings into existence by His commands a reality with stability and purpose. For Augustine and Aquinas, universals were Ideas in the mind of God, and so to investigate the order of things was to learn something of God. For Ockham, there was no reason for any similarity between things other than God’s choice. This lead Ockham to conceive of “science” as a strictly empirical and logical investigation into particular things, a move that led to the sort of empiricism in which God is no longer a necessary “hypothesis” (ala Pierre Simon-Laplace and Richard Dawkins).

1. This in many ways gets to the heart of Calvinist theology which is in the forefront of many theological discussions these days. Even my daughters, whom I homeschool, have picked up on the idea that God can do anything he wants. When I have expressed that God cannot act outside of his nature, they are incredulous.
   My problem with this thinking, as expressed by Ockham and even somewhat by Aquinas is that it ignores scripture and presents a God who resembles Allah more than Jesus. Lewis writes of God worthy of worship, not because of his power, but because of his goodness.
   We worship a God who lives in loving relation within the Trinity and with creation. While I can’t get to the point of all will be saved, as some don’t want to be, I also can’t accept that God is choosing who will go to Hell just because without him becoming a monster. If we are to trust God, then we must believe in his inherent goodness.
   Comment by Gina Wright Hawkins — December 13, 2011 @ 12:50 am

The New Perspective and Justification

File for future use:Scott McKnight has begun a new series on the New Perspective, the Old Perspective and Justification. Here is his analysis of the historical background:

October 19, 2011
New/Old Perspective on Justification 1
Filed under: New Perspective — scotmcknight @ 12:08 am
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Nothing has rocked the theological world of evangelicals and the Reformed more than the “new perspective on Paul.” In contrast to the “new” perspective is the “old” perspective, but it ought to be observed here that this is mostly an evangelical intramural debate and not a widespread scholarly debate. Ed Sanders got this going way back in the late 70s and he was a liberal Methodist, and Jimmy Dunn was next and he’s a Methodist, and then Tom Wright’s stuff came along, and he’s an Anglican. But it was the conservative evangelicals of the USA who mostly got upset about this new perspective stuff, and they asserted the “old” perspective, which mostly means Reformation/Augustinian theology either in a Reformed or Lutheran key. So let’s not think “New Testament” when we think “old” because both the “new” and the “old” think they are most faithful to the New Testament.

Thanks to the fine efforts of James Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy, we now have a new volume that gets major thinkers to interact over the new perspective vs. old perspective on justification. The book is called Justification: Five Views (Spectrum Multiview Books). I’m really glad the first piece is by Michael Horton because I haven’t received his book “For Calvinism” yet and so the blog has tipped toward Roger Olson’s book “Against Calvinism.” But at least we can begin this series on a Reformed note, even if not today. Today we look at the big picture in the history of the church: How has justification been understood? (Next post will examine just the “new” perspective.)

The various authors who define justification and then interact with other views are Michael Horton (traditional Reformed), Michael Bird (progressive Reformed), James Dunn (new perspective), Veli-Matt Kärkkäinen (deification view), and Gerald O’Collins/Oliver Rafferty (Roman Catholic). Well, this is a dream team.

If justification is so central to the gospel, and it surely is for the Reformation, why does it not come up in 1 Cor 15 and only once in the sermons in Acts, and hardly at all in the Gospels? Or, does it come up in those texts? How important is justification by faith to the gospel?

And the editors provide a wonderful sketch of the history of justification theology in the church. Origen, who against Marcion did not separate faith and works as many have done. The earlier Augustine didn’t either, but later in his life Augustine (392, 396 and later) did develop a much more grace-shaped justification. But, Augustine saw justification as transformative and not just forensic. Medieval justification theory is Augustinian. So Aquinas: infusion of grace, movement of free will toward God through faith, movement of free will aginst sin, and remission of sin. Thus, justification is both forensic and transformative process.

The Reformation, which is what most mean by “old” perspective, shows a powerful “newness” when it comes to justification. For Luther, justification is the heart and soul and the article by which the church stands or falls. Here ar three major ideas about justification for the Reformation, and this is what “old” perspective basically believes: it is a forensic declaration about status, it is not the same as either regeneration or sanctification (so transformation is not a part of justification), and it is an alien righteousness (imputed righteousness). (McGrath famously argued that Luther was himself more Augustinian in seeing transformation while it was later Lutherans that developed the forensic stuff so thoroughly.)

Wesley: forensic but not emphatic on imputed righteousness; sanctification differs from justification. John Henry Newman: both declarative and transformative. Trent: declarative and transformative. Same in modern Catholic Catechism: “… not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.”

Pietism worried about separating the forensic from the transformative, though most were traditional Protestants in this issue. Schleiermacher, a Pietist and a Lutheran, resisted an purely forensic view. Ritschl found a way to move form a Reformation view into a Kantian view, in that justification is a means to an end: communal striving for the kingdom of God. Tillich moved between sin and doubt as conditions of justification. Bultmann sees justification as a forensic judgment by God in the present time, but he emphasizes the confrontation through preaching of the human in order to make a decision (and here Bultmann has a curious likeness to much of contemporary evangelicalism). Karl Barth makes justification profoundly christocentric. Both declarative and “a making righteous.”

Anabaptists have struggled with the prospects of a too-forensic imputed righteousness for it can undo the moral vision they had/have. But JC Wenger’s view is essentially that of the Reformation. Justification has not been central to either liberation or feminist theology. Among the Pentecostals the same wariness about too much forensic is clear enough. It becomes more Trinitarian and Spirit-shaped for Pentecostals and thus leads to transformation. And Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen explores justification through Spirit and the Eastern idea of deification/theosis.

And there has been serious dialogue between Catholics and Protestants about justification.

Brad Boydston Explaining the Trinity

Brad Boydston does a great job here...I especially like the way he underscores God's essential  relationality

Rob Bell: crypto-Covenanter?

Okay, so I finally broke down and read Bell on hell. I don't usually read the latest evangelical best sellers until at least a couple of years go by. That way anything that isn't worthwhile will be remaindered and forgotten, and I won't need to waste my reading time. If something is still around, then it merits my attention.

However, Bell's Love Wins has created quite a fuss among some New Hope students and faculty. Wayne Cordiero, NHCC president, is a close friend of Francis Chan, who has recently written his own book in response to Bell. I certainly didn't want to be drawn into discussions and pull a Piper so I figured I should have a look.  (I am grateful that a good friend loaned me the book, so I could save my money for something more deserving, like James Dubay's The Evidential Power of Beauty or Peter Leithart's Defending Constantine. )

Anyway, it's my first Bell book. It's easy to read, full of questions, very, very popular and deliberately non-scholarly. In fact, it's downright sloppy about exegesis. That's really frustrating!  find myself agreeing  with Kyle Small, writing in the June 2011 Covenant Companion, that the book isn't really about heaven and hell: it is about election, and that Bell is reacting against his Reformed Calvinist tradition. This might explain Bell's stridency at various points. For those of us who do not share that tradition, reading "Love Wins" is not all that upsetting or enlightening.

I had to laugh at Kyle's observation:

This book is anything but radical for the Evangelical Covenant Church. The Covenant has held strongly to a view of the atonement where “God’s love for the world is magnified” and less so to the more classic substitutionary model of atonement where “the wrath of God is satisfied.” Covenant theology rejoices that God came to love the world and generously gave himself fully to us. I would venture to say that Bell becomes a Covenanter in his middle chapters. He even sounds like P.P. Waldenström in a few places (who was also wrongly criticized for being a universalist). As I re-read sections of the book, I wondered if the Covenant Church (via the Communications Department) had been invited to edit the work, especially the tone and phrasing, would this book have be more palpable? Perhaps!

Kyle is spot on as he concludes his review:

This book that many of us cannot understand. I continually felt like I had entered another family’s argument. Bell is overly polemical throughout these pages. Several friends have commented that wherever Bell says something clear and helpful he uses the next page to make a point that resembles a sword and not a ploughshare. He seems to write as if embattled from the outset.

I think Bell is responding to his theological past—a past that many North American young people continue to revolt against—in profound ways. Bell is a Reformed guy with a love for C.S. Lewis. If you grew up Baptist, Bible church, Reformed Church, or even conservative Presbyterian, this book might deeply resonate with you. And most Americans have a Reformed view of God in their back pocket, even when they are not aware of it (see Sydney Ahlstrom’s A Religious History of the American People). Lutherans would be one of the few groups to be somewhat disengaged from the topic altogether.

Reformed theology is centrally concerned with the theological topic of election. Bell’s tradition most often stresses certainty of salvation and election, including predestination. Reformed folks, like John Piper, read the Bible through the lens of election, asking, “Who has God chosen and not chosen? God chose Israel, God chose Jesus; did God choose me?” This question strikes fear in the heart. This fear responds by seeking salvation because the other options scare the hell out of us.....

American Calvinism has this interesting acronym for their theology called TULIP. I don’t necessarily understand it, but it has to do with the question, “Who is in/out?” If you resonate with John Piper, your perspective is primarily on “Who is in?” and “How do we assure ourselves of this?” If you resonate with Bell, the perspective is “Who is out?” and “How do we welcome them in?” If you resonate with neither and wonder why this book has produced such a firestorm, perhaps it is because you believe in a God who blesses the world, inside and out, or possibly because regardless of debates about heaven and hell, open or closed, you believe that Jesus Christ is the world-concerned story of how love wins.

Precisely. Reformed theology has nominalist DNA.   One of the by-products of nominalism is individualism, and a preoccupation with the problem of how it is possible to "group" individuals. This leads to a focus on a sovereign God who becomes the ultimate agent for grouping. "Either/or" thinking prevails. However, those of us whose theology is informed by a realist metaphysic delight in the way all things are related and ultimately relate to God, who Himself is a perfect community of Three Persons. Sin ruptures relationship, and separates us from God, and this leads us to focus on Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate agent of reconciliation.  As Waldenström writes,

When we started to speak of reconciliation, we raised the question if it was God, or man, or both parties, who was, or were, to be reconciled. Now we have searched the Bible and have found that it does not speak of God as being reconciled. The love of God had not been diminished through man's sin, so that it needed to be improved, increased or restored; nor could God's hatred of sin be done away with, for if He did not hate sin, He would not be righteous; neither could God's displeasure to those who live in sin be done away with, because even yet, this very day, God is displeased with all who live in sin. No change has taken place in Him. He remains the same; with Him there is "no variableness, neither shadow of turning." He is the eternally faithful, unchangeable God, whose name is Jehovah (that is, "I am that I am").

On the contrary, man needed to be reconciled to God....The Scriptures testify that man, as estranged from God, is carnal. It is not the Spirit of God that fills and rules him, but the flesh. But "the carnal mind" ("the mind of the flesh," according to the Revised Version) "is enmity against God," says Paul (Rom. 8:7). That is the chief trouble; not this or that transgression or misdeed; nay, but the very mind, is enmity against God: "for it (that is, this mind) is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be." Of the same thing the apostle speaks in Col. 1:21, where he says to the Christians: "Ye were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works." "The wicked works" of the ungodly are never isolated; they are expressions of the wicked, or evil mind. And the evil mind is enmity against God. This the natural man will never admit. Even though he may admit that now and then in his life and in his works he may be at fault or be mistaken, still he will hold that in the depths of his heart he is good. But no, says the apostle, the natural mind itself in man is enmity against God. It is a terrible judgment which the apostle by these words pronounces upon all that bears the name of man; but it is a true judgment.
In short, the heart of the world is estranged from and dead to God, averse to him; and this makes it unblest. Here, as we have said, a reconciliation must take place, a reconciliation which brings man into an entirely different relation to God, if he is to become happy. But how, then can such a reconciliation be brought about? By the removal of sin, and by the justification of man. That which separates must be removed. Otherwise there can be no reconciliation. But that which separates is sin. From this fact we understand why "the reconciliation of the sinner to God" always depends on "the atonement of the sins," that is, on removal of the sins. We repeat it again: By being cleansed from sin, the sinner comes into a right relation to God. In no other way can such a relation be brought about.

 Hell, then, is that condition of being estranged from, averse to and dead to God, just as heaven is that condition of being in a living, loving relation to Him.  Rob Bell gets it right when he writes,

There are individual hells
and communal, society-wide hells,
and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously. (p. 79)

Eternal life doesn't start when we die;
it starts now.
It's not about a life that begins at death;
it's about experiencing the kind of life now that can
endure and survive even death. (p. 59)

Jesus invites us
in this life,
in this broken, beautiful world,
to experience the life of heaven now.
He insisted over and over that God's peace, joy, and love
are currently available to us, exactly as we are...

There's a heaven now, somewhere else.
There's a heaven here, sometime else.
And then there's Jesus's invitation to heaven
here
and
now,
in this moment,
in this place. (p. 62)
       

Bottom line:  IMO Bell asks good questions, but doesn't have the personality, mind and theological tradition to provide good answers.  I'm going to look for Jerry Wall's Hell: The Logic of Damnation. It's been out for 9 years now, and it has infuriated some Calvinists, so it ought to be good. ; )

QUOTE: My name is Kevin and I'm a Kataphatic

There are spiritual personalities, just like there are psychological personalities. Barbara Mujica of Georgetown University writes, "Apophatic or 'negative' spirituality stresses interiority, 'imageless-ness,' and 'wordlessness.' Kataphatic, or 'postive' spirituality is image-driven and uses analogies to speak of God."  Postmodernists tend to be apophatic; stressing difference, how God is "not like" things. This has caused great alarm from Reformed quarters. I think there is a place for both: it's not an either/or.  However,  my natural temperment is kataphatic. Kevin, I think you've got a point there!

"Yes, yes, a thousand times yes; we do see through a glass dimly; we do not fully understand; we don't know God as God knows Himself; our words can't capture the essence of God. God is greater than we can conceive- but what about the 1,189 chapters in the Bible? Don't they tell us lots of things about God that we are supposed to do more with than doubt and not understand? Aren't the Scriptures written so that we might believe and be sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see and even proclaim this faith to others?"


 -- Kevin DeYoung,  Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be  (p. 123-124)

 

Jerry Walls, Evangelist of the Mind

This afternoon on Talk of the Nation, Neal Conan had Jerry Walls as his guest for a brief segment on the upcoming end of the world and our fascination with "end times." Jerry fielded a Swedenborgian and other callers, and gave a clear orthodox affirmation of his faith: "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again." Great stuff!

We knew Jerry when we were at Notre Dame. In 2005 we heard him as keynote speaker for the Wheaton Philosophy Conference: "Philosophers Think about Heaven and Hell." Jerry is an engaging speaker, and a vocal Arminian, as the clip below shows:
Jerry Walls



Jerry's Bio, from The Christian Studies Center

B.A., Houghton College
M.Div., Princeton Seminary
S.T.M., Yale Divinity School
Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame

Jerry Walls is one of the most respected Christian philosophers in America. His engaging, energetic lectures make Jerry a student favorite, and his lively debates outside the classroom help students learn to think and communicate Christianly on a variety of topics. For many years, Jerry taught at Asbury Theological Seminary and is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame. He has authored and edited nearly a dozen books and has been a contributor to almost 20 others. Jerry has published a pair of books that make a philosophical defense of Christian views on the afterlife, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy and Hell: The Logic of Damnation. He is also an editor of a volume in the prestigious Oxford Handbook series, The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology. Two of his other books explore the thought of C.S. Lewis, C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer (with Scott Burson) and The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy (with Gregory Bassham). Not merely a cut and dry philosopher, Jerry also won a national poetry contest in his college years, and in 2009, he published his first book of poetry Who Watch For The Morning. When he is not writing books, Jerry serves as a pastor, guest lecturer or avid sports fan.










Areas of Specialty: C.S. Lewis, Heaven and Hell, Calvinism and Arminianism

A Conference I wish I could go to

The Analogy of Being:
Invention of the Anti-Christ or the Wisdom of God?

A Theological Symposium

Date: April 4—6, 2008

Place: Pope John Paul II
Cultural Center
3900 Harewood Road, NE
Washington, DC 20017

Synopsis of the Conference

Is there any ‘natural’ knowledge of God available to the human person, apart from Christian revelation, or is all knowledge of God given to human beings uniquely in Christ? Is Christianity irrevocably wed to the classical metaphysical tradition, or can God’s nature and character be rethought in distinctly modern ways, based upon a renewed reading of Scripture? What relationship or likeness, if any, exists between created nature and the grace of God? Does Christian theology presuppose a natural philosophical ‘capacity’ for knowledge of God in the human person?

All of these fundamental theological questions are situated at the heart of the famous 20th century debate between Erich Przywara S.J. and Karl Barth, and were treated in Przywara’s famous work Analogia Entis. These topics were also revisited by Hans Urs von Balthasar in his ecumenical landmark, The Theology of Karl Barth. On the occasion of a forthcoming English translation of Analogia Entis by John Betz and David Bentley Hart, this symposium will invite contemporary theologians indebted to Aquinas, Przywara, Barth and Balthasar to discuss these issues. Is the theological concept of the ‘analogy of being’ in fact an ‘invention of the anti-Christ’ as Karl Barth suggested, or is it a truth about creation revelatory of the wisdom of God?

NOTES to SELF: On Maritain and Gilson

"A Thomistic Tapestry: Essays in Memory of Étienne Gilson, edited by Peter A. Redpath

"Gilson and Maritain: Battle Over the Beautiful," by Francesca Murphy
p. 103-104

"Maritain, as a convert, who began by seeing the need for reason and worked his way from there to faith, and Gilson, as a cradle-catholic, who experienced faith as a given, were at tempermental antipodes from one another.

The differences between them were more than psychological. Gilson created a philosophy for theology. Maritain developed a philosophy grown into fruition in the shelter of his spiritual life, but not intended to be the direct and inseparable expression of his Christian belief. Gilson positions his starting point in faith, or theology, Maritain in philosophy. Gilson's philosophy is intended to illuminate his theology. Maritain's philosophy is intended to explain experiences universally accessible to all rational human beings, regardless of their religion.

...I have no doubt that we have an equal need of Maritain's philosophical and Gilson's theological apologetic. In the years to come, Gilson will serve as a reminder that, as Augustine knew, cultural conservativism is not enough: it is not even a beginning.

My Ways Are Not Your Ways:

The Moral Character of the God of Abraham

Not long now until Steve and I will be attending a Center for the Philosophy of Religion conference, "My Ways Are Not Your Ways" at the University of Notre Dame. The last time we were away together for such fun was in 2005, when we went to the Wheaton Philosophy Conference, "Heaven and Hell," with Jerry Walls as keynote speaker. It's about time for another get away.

Here is a description of the conference:

The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible

Adherents of the Abrahamic religious traditions contend that human beings are made in the image of God and that modeling the character of God in one’s life represents the pinnacle of human flourishing and moral perfection. Defenders of this tradition commonly point to passages in the canonical texts of the Jewish and Christian faiths that portray God as loving, merciful, patient, etc. in support of such a position.

Since the seventeenth century, however, numerous critics of these Abrahamic traditions have argued that God, especially in the Hebrew Bible, is often portrayed as anything but a moral role model. On the one hand, historical narratives in these texts describe God apparently committing, ordering, or commending genocide, slavery, and rape among other moral atrocities. On the other hand, a number of commands purportedly issued by God seem to commend bigotry, misogyny, and homophobia. In recent days, similar criticisms of the Abrahamic traditions have been raised by philosophers (Daniel Dennett), scientists (Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris), social commentators (Christopher Hitchens), and others.

Are these apparent commendations and commands of the Hebrew Bible consistent with the claim that the Abrahamic God is perfectly good and loving? Those defending this tradition have two avenues of response open to them. The first response would be to argue that the aforementioned troubling narratives or commands should simply be rejected. Those taking this approach would have to explain how they think such passages could be rejected without placing in peril the Abrahamic religions, which have traditionally claimed that the Hebrew Bible is, represents, or contains the inspired word of God. The second response would offer explanations aiming to show that the apparently untoward consequences can be avoided without rejecting the narratives or commands. Those taking this approach must explain either why the untoward consequences do not follow, or why they are not, in the end untoward.

However, while defenders of this tradition have both routes available to them, few of these defenders seem to have taken the challenge to heart. Despite these recent, forthright criticisms, only a handful of theologians or philosophers in these traditions have sought to respond to the criticisms.
The present conference aims to remedy this deficiency, taking as its focus the charge that the Abrahamic tradition should be rejected because of its foundation in the Hebrew Bible, which portrays God as immoral and vicious. The presenters and commentators include philosophers—both theistic and nontheistic—as well as Biblical scholars.

The papers, comments, and replies from the conference will be collected in a volume provisionally titled Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham. We have a contract with Oxford University Press for this volume and expect it to be published in 2010.

Participants include

Alvin Plantinga – University of Notre Dame
Eleonore Stump – Saint Louis University
Richard Swinburne – University of Oxford
Peter van Inwagen – University of Notre Dame
Michael Murray – Franklin and Marshall College
Michael Rea – University of Notre Dame
Stephen T. Davis – Claremont McKenna College
John Hare – Yale Divinity School
Daniel Howard-Snyder – Western Washington University
Christopher Seitz – Wycliffe College, University of Toronto
Mark C. Murphy – Georgetown University

But most exciting is the discovery that one of our VCC students who attends Calvin College will be attending. We look forward to seeing Kaylee and her friends, and sharing some great conversations.

Stackhouse: "A Bigger--and Smaller--View of Mission"

The following is a must-read from John Stackhouse. His bigger vision takes an inclusivist position on salvation, and his smaller vision calls for greater humility.



Of course, my metaphysical antennae were applauding when I read about binary oppositions...<g>


A Bigger--and Smaller--View of Mission

"...Let's begin, then, with two ways in which our view of mission should expand. First, Christians typically have believed that those who have not heard the name of Jesus are simply lost and destined for hell. Much of the energy of the great 19th-century missionary movement among Westerners, and much of the impetus of missions work around the world to this day, has come from the horror of a Niagara of souls pouring into a lost eternity for want of an evangelist.

We also need to acknowledge, however, a corresponding horror in the hearts of many—including many missions-minded Christians—about a God who allows whole nations and generations to plunge into a lost eternity simply because no one happened to reach them with the gospel. Does faithfulness to the Bible mean we must retain this picture?..... "

-------------------

"....Furthermore, we must beware of a second problem that lies nearby. And that is the idea that missions is all about getting people saved, and particularly about rescuing their souls from hell so that they can go to heaven. Multiple theological errors, in fact, attend this view of salvation.

God is not interested in saving merely human souls. He wants human beings, body and soul. Furthermore, he does not settle for saving human beings, but the whole earth. He made it in the first place, pronounced it "very good," and he wants it all back. So he is saving us, the lords he put over creation, as part of his global agenda to rescue, indeed, the globe.

What God rescues us to, furthermore, is the original agenda he set out for us in Genesis 1, namely, to "fill the earth and subdue it." He planted a garden for us to tend (Gen. 2) and commanded our first parents to raise up generations of gardeners to fan out across the earth to till the rest of it. This is what it means to bear the image of God. We, too, are to improve the situation, to cultivate what we encounter, to make shalom in every sector of life. And such work is our ultimate destiny as well, as we are to "reign with him" over the new earth he promises (2 Tim. 2:12). Thus we are not going back to Eden, nor up to a (spiritual) heaven, but forward to the New Jerusalem, which comes down from heaven to earth as our proper home (Rev. 21). ..."

-------------------

"....In these ways, then, our view of mission must be properly large. At the same time, however, it may need reducing in some key respects. In particular, the virtue of humility would properly deflate several exaggerations of our missionary outlook. "

Divorce and health

Is this evidence for the biblical doctrine of "One Flesh?"

Divorce takes health toll that remarriage can't heal, study says
Story Highlights:

• Divorced or widowed people found to have 20 percent more chronic health conditions
• Marriage is believed to have protective physical and mental health benefits
• Traumas of divorce could be detrimental and difficult for people to rebound from
  

If the article is accurate, in many cases it will be difficult to argue that divorce is good for you emotionally, without acknowledging that it is bad for you physicially.

Thomistic Pilgrimage site

Just one of the delights of our trip to Toronto was touring the University of Toronto campus. The Pontifical Institute was where my hero, Etienne Gilson worked for the latter part of his life. The Unity of Philosophical Experience is probably his most widely known work Here is an excerpt:

The only way to ascertain what the free will can do is to define what it is. Knowing its nature, you will find in that knowledge a safe rule to define the power of the will as well as its limitations. If, on the contrary, you start on the assumption that it is safer to keep a little below the line, where are you going to stop? Why, indeed, should you stop at all? Since it is pious to lessen the efficacy of free will, it is more pious to lessen it a little more, and to make it utterly powerless should be the highest mark of piety. In fact, there will be mediaeval theologians who come very close to that conclusion, and even reach it a long time before the age of Luther and Calvin. Nothing, of course, would have been more repellent to St. Bonaventura than such a doctrine; the only question here is: was St. Bonaventura protected against it? If we allow pious feelings to decree what nature should be, we are bound to wrong nature, for how could we find in piety a principle of self-restriction? In theology, as in any other science, the main question is not to be pious, but to be right. For there is nothing pious in being wrong about God!

If piety is not theology, still less is it philosophy. Yet it cannot be denied that, as a philosopher, St. Bonaventura sometimes allowed himself to be carried away by his religious feelings....

Which gospel do you choose?

Scot McKnight poses a question: "Which Gospel do you Choose?"

Here's a first option, which I've slightly edited, and one that is becoming more and more a way articulating the gospel for some:

"The gospel is not a call to follow Christ's example or his teachings. It is not a proclamation of his kingly reign. It is not an invitation to enter the Church. It does not include a promise of his return. These are all aspects of Christian teaching. But the Gospel, very specifically, is the starting point that prepares for the teaching. The gospel is the good news that Jesus came to save us from our sins by dying on the cross and rising from the dead."

The second one comes from NT Wright, from his book called What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? :

My proposal has been that 'the gospel' is not, for Paul, a message about 'how one gets saved', in an individual and ahistorical sense. It is a fourfold announcement about Jesus:

1. In Jesus of Nazareth, specifically in his cross, the decisive victory has been won over all the powers of evil, including sin and death themselves.
2. In Jesus' resurrection the New Age has dawned, inaugurating the long-awaited time when the prophecies would be fulfilled, when Israel's exile would be over, and the whole world would be addressed by the one creator God.
3. The crucified and risen Jesus was, all along, Israel's Messiah, her representative king.
4. Jesus was therefore also the Lord, the true king of the world, the one at whose name every knee would bow.

Two options on the table here. What do you think? Which best captures the gospel for you? What would add to each or either to make it better?

It's an intriguing question. Actually, I wouldn't add anything: I'd edit them both down, the same way that those who have gone before us did. The liturgy puts the gospel at at its center in the memorial acclamation. It is short, sweet, memorable, and transcends every culture:

"Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again."

This puts CHRIST at the center, and requires us to position ourselves in relation to Him each moment of our lives, either to move toward Him, or away from Him.

Whether this proclamation of the gospel better coincides with #1 or #2 matters less than whether we are able to enter into it in faith, with hope, in order to love. I look forward to being able to make this confession every time we have communion at VCC.

My Theological Catena

impart

(Josef Pieper) ...in the beginning was the Gift.

... 1 Thessalonians 2:8 Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us.

participate in

...John 17:21 that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.

incarnate

...1 John 1:1 What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life--

...Acts 11:26, The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

"Knowing"

We saw Knowing last night...an apologetic for Calvinism, or an opportunity to think about providence and prophecy? Depends who's watching it.

While I enjoyed the film, I had a hard time with its black-and-white orientation: "Either determinism or randomness." Either everything is caused, and stands in a long chain of cause and effect, or else nothing is caused. There is no option for metaphysical libertarianism, which defines freedom as the ability to act against a cause (contra-causal power). From this perspective, persons are regarded as agents, as initiators themselves of causal chains, but the film does not countenance that possibility.

To me, the most telling scene occurred in the MIT classroom, as Koestler lectures. He equates purpose with determinism. In a world starved for final causality, it is refreshing to hear the word "purpose" even mentioned in a film. (No, I am not a Purpose- Driven Groupie. If anything, my sympathies lie much further down the line, with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas). But what if there is a God who allows us the freedom to determine our own ends? Then there would be purpose without either a "hard" or "soft" determinism. Then we could understand and appreciate Ezekiel 18.

If you roll with its presuppostions, the film is certainly a thriller. It has the definitive image for Malachi's "Day of the Lord," though I found its (super?) natural beings at the end not at all convincing.

Bottom line: Worth the ticket, but Signs was better.

Here's Roger Ebert's review

and there's more (including spoilers) at Roger Ebert's Journal.

There's a great resource for Christians interested in the question of God's omniscience, foreknowledge and human freedom here.

And finally, there's this little video explanation of determinism by David Sosa, chair of the philosophy department at the University of Texas, Austin.

Analogy of Being or Analogy of Faith? Both, Please!

I've discovered a fascinating blog, Millinerd, and highly recommend perusing Mathhew J. Milliner's musings. Milliner is a graduate of Wheaton and the Princeton Theological Seminary, and is now pursuing his doctorate in art history at Princeton.

Last Thursday night at Free Range, I gave my spiel about premodernism, modernism, and postmodernism. There wasn't time to go into detail, but I tried to suggest that one way of understanding premodernism is that it affirms the analogy of being, whereas the other periods do not. Tonight I stumbled on Milliner's blog entry that provides further support for this idea. I reproduce it in its entirety below, and encourage you to check this fellow out for yourself. He's a both-and kind of guy, without being wishy-washy.

Who's Afraid of the Analogia Entis?
Saturday, December 16, 2006

For those wondering what the analogia entis is (the "analogy of being"), allow me to explain in a way that probably won't satisfy full-time theologians (whom I respectfully don't intend to satisfy), but hopefully will satisfy newcomers to the term: It is the notion that the very being (entis) of the created world offers an analogy by which we can (in a very limited way) comprehend God. For example, if you've looked at a sunset and wondered that perhaps God is similarly beautiful, you've intuitively employed what theologians call the analogia entis.

This way of thinking is well expressed in contemporary idiom in addresses like this, but because of its heyday in the Medieval world, the analogia entis is best articulated by Medieval theologians such as Bonaventure: (continue...)

"All created things of the sensible world lead the mind of the contemplator and wise man to eternal God... They are the shades, the resonances, the pictures of that efficient, exemplifying, and ordering art; they are the tracks, simulacra, and spectacles; they are divinely given signs set before us for the purpose of seeing God. They are exemplifications set before our still unrefined and sense-oriented minds, so that by the sensible things which they see they might be transferred to the intelligible which they cannot see, as if by signs to the signified" (Itinerarium mentis ad Deum, 2.11, as quoted p. 165).

For those pleased by the preceding passage, it may surprise you that the analogia entis comes under severe Protestant attack. Why? Because of the dangers of abuse.

The 20th century Protestant theologian Karl Barth, in an overstatement that recalls Luther's remarks on the Mass below, called the analogia entis the "invention of the antichrist"(x). I imagine he did so because of its potential to obscure the mediating role that belongs to Christ alone. Instead Barth proposed the analogia fidei, (the "analogy of faith"), meaning the only link between ourselves and God is one of faith in Christ, recalling of course the Reformation's sola fide. In so doing, Barth burned all bridges but one, remembering that there is "one mediator" and "one foundation."

And in this Barth was right.

But consider the words of Pope Benedict in his recent Regensburg address, which, were they paying attention might have upset world Barthians as much as Muslims:

"The faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason, there exists a real analogy, in which - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf" (9/12/06).

Benedict, speaking for the largest Christian tradition on the globe, makes three essential moves that when properly understood reasonably alleviates the fear of abusing the analogy of being:

1. First, he recalls the words of the Fourth Lateran Council ("maior dissimulitudo in tanta similitudine"), explaining that the church has for quite some time been on record saying that the world's dissimilarity to God is somewhat greater than the similarity to God. Woops - did I say somewhat? I misquoted. Let me start again: He said "unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness." This is, after all, a fallen world. Anyone therefore fearing that the analogia entis obscures God's transcendence, or leaves no room for apophatic (negative) theology, needs to run by Benedict's statement again.

2. Secondly, in words that could be addressed directly to postmodern reductionists, Benedict shows that the analogia entis is important because it's easy to overdose on negative theology (a danger especially near to wounded ex-evangelicals on a positivist hangover who just discovered that negative theology exists). Benedict says that "God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism," by which I take him to mean that the analogia entis safeguards us from the dangers of mysticism and subjectivism, thereby indirectly securing the essential benefits of both.

3. Finally, and most importantly, Benedict explains that the analogia entis is related to the logos - the ordering principle by which God created all that is. And this logos is none other than the Logos, Jesus Christ. The reason the analogy of being makes sense, even after God has definitively revealed himself in Jesus Christ, is because Christ is the one "through whom all things were made" and in whom "all things hold together."Therefore to contemplate an analogy between the being of the created world and the being of God is, properly understood, not something done independently of the Logos, Jesus Christ.

So, who'll it be? Bonaventure, Barth or Benedict? I'll take 'em all, the Barthian insight being wonderfully framed by the wider perspectives of Bonaventure and Benedict. All shed important light on an enormous truth. What cannot be accepted is Barth's (or Luther's) hyperbolic desertions of large swaths of the tradition. Just as Protestant condemnations of the Mass cannot reasonably be sustained in light of the Catholic Church's emphatic clarification (see pt. 1367) that the Mass is not a repeated sacrifice (which was the basis of the original protest), so Protestant condemnations of the analogia entis cannot in my judgment be sustained in light of Benedict's qualifications without running on the fumes of anti-Catholic prejudice (of which there is plenty).

For a more heavyweight discussion of this issue, consider how Hans Urs von Balthasar (p. 163) suggested that he could subsume Barth's analogia fidei into the Catholic analogia entis, or how David Bentley Hart (see p. 242) playfully turns the tables on Barth (a move which was debated at a recent session covered here and here), but as stated above, that may be more interesting to full-time theologians.

The matter is not whether there is more than one mediator or more than one foundation, but just how big that mediator and foundation is. The question is not which of the two analogies is true. They both are (with priority, I would submit, going to the analogia fidei). The question is in which can we afford to neglect. The answer is neither.

Caviar and Concepts: A Teaching Moment for the Church?

detail, Old Woman Examining a coin by a Lantern, by Gerrit van Honthorst,(1592-1556)

"Caviar Days are over" for the World Economic Forum at Davos, according to this article. The Masters of the Universe are making do with ham and cheese and white wine, instead of lobster, caviar and Dom Perignon. And Jean-Pierre Lehmann, professor at the IMD business school, is resorting to religious language to describe the situation:

"Citigroup used to throw big parties. So did Goldman Sachs and the others. But the mood this year is very different." Davos, he noted, was founded on the "dogma of business leadership" which in recent months has been choking on fallout from the credit crisis fallout. "There was always a certain element of evangelism capitalism during previous years' Davos. You don't get fundamental debate on the system," he said.

Lehman is on the lookout for "acts of contrition" this year, as bankers and other captains of industries are under the spotlight for their role in the financial crisis.

Is the City of God ready to enter the collapsing City of Man? Certainly the latter is beginning to appropriate its language; and that offers us a huge opportunity. Are we able to recognize it, and use it as a "teaching moment?" Are there "bilingual" Christians prepared to enter the halls of finance, listen to the conversations happening there, and explain the original, authentic meanings of these terms? Missionaries can come in all kinds of dress, and not only to people who live in poverty!

The greatest tragedy would be if such words lost their tethering in the Christian narrative, were absorbed into the commerce of the Market, and were thus stripped of their theological power. May God raise up men and women who will take advantage of the present financial crisis to witness to the Living Word.

ADDENDUM, 1/29/09 On yesterday's Marketplace, I heard the following segment, where Scott Jagow asked about the mood at Davos. Diane Brady replied:

Diane Brady: I think the general mood is a real sense of confusion. There's a sense that there's going to be unprecedented government intervention in the next year, and so there's more CEOs and chairpersons than ever in the history of Davos. There's also more world leaders here, so I think you're dealing with people whose industries have collapsed in a way that they've never seen, and they're trying to figure out what will get the world out of this, nevermind their own companies.

Confusion...loss of control...collapse...just the sort of tinder the Holy Spirit is able to use.