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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 15:18:54 GMT -5
Introducing Reformed Faith & Practice
John R. Muether
Editor, Reformed Faith & Practice
With this issue Reformed Theological Seminary presents Reformed Faith & Practice: The Journal of Reformed Theological Seminary to the Reformed and evangelical community. We are pleased to inaugurate this online journal during the school’s fiftieth anniversary. The RTS faculty has grown to a size, now spread across several campuses, which we believe is capable of producing a quality journal, and we are eager, in this jubilee year, to exercise our continuing stewardship of the convictions that led to the founding of the Seminary in 1966.
The history of American Presbyterianism is a reminder that seminary journals can be very influential – for good or for ill. The “majestic testimony” of Princeton Theological Seminary would not have had nearly the effect it did without the publishing organs that disseminated its teaching, establishing it as a leading voice of international Calvinism. Beginning with the Biblical Repertory in 1825 and continuing through many name changes, Princeton used the printed word to uphold and propagate the Reformed understanding of the faith for over a century. Conversely, Sean Michael Lucas (in his recent history of the founding of the Presbyterian Church in America) notes that the erosion of Calvinistic orthodoxy in the Southern Presbyterian Church caught many conservatives unaware, because it took place largely through “a musty theological journal,” in this case, the Union Seminary Review. This history underscores the importance of stating our goals and objectives.
We write from convictions that comport with the mission of RTS, which is “to serve the church by preparing its leaders, through a program of graduate theological education, based upon the authority of the inerrant Word of God, and committed to the Reformed faith.” An ecclesial focus will, we hope, be especially prominent in these pages as we seek (in the language of the RTS vision statement) to serve Christ’s church “in all branches of evangelical Christianity, especially Presbyterian and Reformed churches.” Thus our pledge is that we will commend the Reformed faith with a particular view toward the well-being of Reformed churches. While we aim to maintain high levels of scholarship, we write as servants of the church. Even more specifically, we seek to serve alumni of Reformed Theological Seminary with hope that RF&P will be an ongoing source of wisdom and continuing education in the work of pastoral ministry. As our title suggests, we plan to give particular attention to the relationship between doctrine and life. Our faith should inform the practice of the Christian life, and that practice must, in turn, reinforce our doctrinal commitments.
In launching this journal we recognize that we join a crowded field in publishing, print and electronic, that vies for the interest of readers. We publish with respect for other journals, to many of which our faculty regularly contribute, and we strive for cordial conversation with these other voices. We hope that humility will characterize the tone of our offerings. But we also write with confidence, firmly persuaded that the Word of God and the Reformed confessions have answers to the biblical and theological questions and the cultural challenges of our age.
RF&P is edited by members of the faculty on behalf of the entire body, and most of the contributions will come from faculty of the several RTS campuses. Our voice will be united but not uniform. The faculty of the Seminary manifests the diversity of Reformed confessionalism in our day and we expect the pages of this journal to do the same.
RF&P will publish three times a year, and each issue will contain several sections: articles and book reviews, a few discoveries from our Reformed past, and occasional tastes of campus community life – excerpts from classroom lectures, chapel presentations, and lunchtime conversations.
We welcome feedback from our readers. Comments can be emailed to jmuether@rts.edu.
Pauline Parenesis
Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.
Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Emeritus
Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia
In March 2015, the Rev. Dr. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Emeritus at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, delivered the annual Kistemaker Lectures at the Orlando campus of Reformed Theological Seminary. The topic of his four lectures was “Life-Giving Spirit: The Exaltation of Christ and Salvation in the Theology of Paul.” Gaffin’s presentation was an opportunity for the campus to hear one of the finest biblical theologians of our day speak in summary fashion on what has been a life-long professional focus: the exaltation of Jesus Christ in the theology of Paul. One excerpt appeared in the previous issue of Reformed Faith & Practice and we are pleased to present a second selection here.
We come now to considering the parenesis or commands, the hortatory element in the theology of Paul. As a point of departure a particularly instructive place to begin is Colossians 3:1-4: “If therefore you have been raised with Christ, seek the things above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, our life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory.”
I want to highlight two basic dimensions in this passage. On the one hand, the resurrection of believers is referred to here as an already accomplished fact: “you have been raised with Christ.” The thought here is not merely that believers have been raised representatively when Christ was raised (although that is certainly true; in his resurrection he was their representative). In view as well, and primarily, is an experiential or existential reality. As Paul goes on to say, in their union with Christ believers have already died and their life, their very life, the life they presently possess, is “hidden with Christ in God.”
Secondly, interwoven with these statements, as well, are two parallel commands, “Seek the things above” and “Set your mind on things above.” Here “the things above” (if you have a Greek text in front of you, it’s the adverb ἄνω, translated “above” and made substantive and definite with the neuter plural article – “the things that are above”) surely refers to the things that pertain to the present life of Christ as resurrected and ascended, exalted. That is clear from the relative clause at the end of verse 1 where we are told the “above” is specifically “where is Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.” In other words, resurrection- or ascension-life is now a matter of aspiration, something that in some sense is still to be attained.
It should not be missed, then, that this “above” is not timeless in the sense of being beyond time or having its validity apart from history. The above and below that Paul has in view has nothing to do with pagan metaphysics. Rather, what we have here, we may say, is a redemptive-historical “above.” We can dub it that because in view here in verse 1 is heaven as the place it now is because for now, until his return, Christ, resurrected and ascended, is present there. That is where he is bodily; bodily he is not here but there.
So, I want to highlight, in these verses resurrection-life is brought into view as both a gift and a goal, as both a possession and a calling, a task. The controlling thought here might be paraphrased provisionally in the paradoxically-sounding directive, “seek after” or “set your mind on what you have.”
This teaching is capable of being stated in different ways, but it is instructive to note the way it shapes the syntax of verse 1. In its composition it consists of a conditional clause and a main clause containing a consequence. In the conditional clause (the protasis) – “if you have been raised with Christ” – the verb is in the indicative mood; in the main clause (the apodasis) – “seek the things above” – the verb is an imperative. In a manner of speaking, then, Paul is saying: if the indicative, then the imperative. Or, to put it more concretely, if you have resurrection-life, then seek resurrection-life. Assuming from the context (immediate and broader) that the condition is not purely hypothetical, but is realized, we could render it (as the NIV does): “since then you have been raised with Christ” or because you have resurrection life, seek resurrection life. Or, transposing that grammatical structure: seek after what you have, because you have it.
In the study of Paul in the modern period, this pattern of teaching has been the object of a fair amount of discussion and is often dubbed the problem of indicative and imperative in Paul. I prefer to refer to it as the indicative and imperative pattern, or phenomenon, in Paul. Here it will be useful to go on and note other passages where we find this pattern expressed in different ways.
Galatians 5:25: “If we live in the Spirit, let us walk in the Spirit” – virtually equivalent to saying: if we live in the Spirit, let us live in the Spirit.
Galatians 5:1: “Christ has set us free for freedom; stand firm and do not be burdened again with a yolk of slavery” – equivalent in its elemental thrust to: you are free, therefore be free.
Ephesians 5:8: “Now you are light in the Lord, walk as children of light.”
1 Corinthians 5:7: “Get rid of the old leaven that you may become a new batch of dough,” in other words, that you might become unleavened. So, that is: become unleavened even as you are unleavened. As will become clear, this, a corporate command to the church, also has individual implications for every believer.
We may also note the way in which indicative and imperative are linked by correlating different passages. In Galatians 3:27 there is the indicative: “you have put on Christ”; in Romans 13:14, the imperative, addressed to the church: “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 6:3, the indicative: “you have died to sin”; later in verse 12, the imperative: “do not let sin reign in your mortal body.”
Such statements taken together have prompted the observation that Paul’s exhortations to the church – his ethics, a basic aspect of his doctrine of the Christian life – can be summed up by the epigram: “become what you are.” Putting it that way is helpful in its pointedness. However, it also carries the decidedly unhelpful liability of suggesting a form of personal autonomy or self-assertion, and in fact equivalent expressions in this sense have been referenced within Hellenistic philosophy, like Stoicism. So, then, it is important always to take this epigram and read it, at least implicitly, with an all-encompassing Christological gloss: become in Christ what you are in Christ.
The Relationship between Indicative and Imperative
If we now ask about the relationship between indicative and imperative, we pose a question that takes us to the heart of how Paul views the Christian life as whole. Without being able to develop it here, it shows us as well how thoroughly a committed covenantal theologian Paul is. For Paul the covenant bond between God and his people has now been given, incipiently, its final, eschatological form in Spirit-worked union, in the union or fellowship bond that now exists between the exalted Christ and believers. Union with Christ is the climatic realization of the covenant reality that God has established with his people, captured with the words, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.”
Seen in terms of God’s activity, this relationship or bond, is unilateral, sovereignly monergistic from beginning to end—in its origin, its maintenance and its consummation. At the same time, as it engages believers, it is fully bilateral in its realization and its resolution. Negatively, to misconstrue the relationship between indicative and imperative strikes at the core of his teaching on the Christian life, on sanctification, on life in the Spirit.
In addressing that relational question here, I do so based on a couple of assumptions. First, by themselves the terms indicative and imperative are abstract and undefined, so it is worth reminding ourselves briefly here what they refer to concretely. The indicative is salvation accomplished once for all in Christ in his death, resurrection and ascension, and received in being united to him by faith—prominently justification and the definitive aspect of sanctification, or, seen negatively, being freed once for all from both the guilt and the controlling power of sin. The imperative, in turn, is the will or the law of God, with the Ten Commandments at its core.
That the latter is the case, though sometimes disputed, can be seen from 1 Corinthians 7:19, “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God.” (ESV) Here there is a clear contrast between the old covenant and new covenant orders, between, on the one hand, what did apply under the old covenant, focused in circumcision, but is no longer applicable, in distinction, on the other hand, from what does apply under the new covenant. Specifically, what applies now is keeping the commandments of God; these commandments continue in force for believers under the new covenant.
This conclusion is reinforced by two parallel statements elsewhere in Paul – statements where we also find the same contrast between the old and new covenant situations expressed by saying that the circumcision-uncircumcision distinction no longer counts for anything. In Galatians 5:6 what does count, in contrast, is “faith working by love” and in Galatians 6:15, “new creation.”
This interconnected triad, then, characterizes the new covenant in distinction from the old: “new creation,” “faith working through love,” and “keeping the commandments of God.” The new creation, inaugurated in Christ and for those united to him, is to be marked by faith working through love, as that consists in keeping the commandments of God. In the light of Romans 7:12 (“The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good”) and particularly Romans 13:8-10, where in addressing the church Paul makes explicit references to the 6th through 8th and 10th commandments, as well as to the 5th commandment in Ephesians 6:2, “the commandments of God” are best understood as the Decalogue centered in the love command.
Unpersuasive in my judgment are arguments that seek to show that the reference in 1 Corinthians 7:19 does not refer to any of the Ten Commandments directly, but only insofar as they are found among the imperatives present explicitly in either the teaching of Jesus or Paul or both.
So, we may note in passing, to consider the relationship between indicative and imperative in Paul is, in other terms, to consider a key aspect of how he sees the relationship in the life of the believer between law and gospel, or better—for, as we will see presently, the sequence is crucial—gospel and law. For believers, the antithesis between law and gospel no longer exists in its most fundamental sense or level. That has been done away with in their justification so that in the theology of Paul, for believers the principal relationship between law and gospel is a positive one; or to put it in a Puritan manner, the two sweetly comply.
The second assumption we make here is with an eye to distancing ourselves from views that they have emerged primarily within the historical-critical treatment of Paul but are unable to address here in detail: Indicative and imperative belong together and function in a positive, non-polar, non-dialectical relationship. By that we mean that the presence of both indicative and imperative in Paul does not involve a tension or amount to a contradiction, whether outright or apparent, as if Paul could not make up his mind or was uncertain about their relationship. In that regard the indicative does not really amount to a disguised imperative, or the imperative to a hidden indicative.
So, then, with these two assumptions kept in view, two important points, mutually related, are to be made about the indicative-imperative relationship. First, this relationship is irreversible. The indicative has priority in the sense that it is the foundation of the imperative; the indicative grounds the imperative, not the reverse. The imperative, in turn, is the fruit or the consequence of the indicative. If it needs saying, Paul’s gospel, as the good news of God’s free grace to sinners and the salvation that gospel ministers, stands or falls with this irreversibility. To put it negatively, it is not as if the indicative is constituted by (responding to) the imperative or expresses only a possibility that is first actualized by the imperative (the view, for instance, of Bultmann, still influential in various forms).
Rather, the indicative is such that it provides the impulse or dynamic, the incentive toward fulfilling the imperative. Paul never writes to the church in the imperative without first writing at least implicitly in the indicative. For he recognizes, perhaps better than many subsequent preachers of his imperatives, that it does no good simply to exhort the church. The church can never be exhorted effectively apart from being reminded who Christ is and who they are and what they have in him. Where that reminder is lacking, the imperative inevitably becomes an oppressive burden on the congregation.
At the same time, secondly, this irreversible relationship is also an inseparable relationship. Paul, we may also generalize, never writes in the indicative without having the imperative in view, at least implicitly
On balance, we may put it this way: the imperative without the indicative leads inevitably into some form of soteriological legalism, to using our compliance with the imperative to achieve our justification or self-secure our salvation, in whole or in part; it leaves us with Paul the moralist. This is the point that has to be made against variants of Liberal “Christianity,” which as Machen reminded us in his classic volume, is not really Biblical Christianity at all. It denies the gospel as does every form of moralism.
On the other hand, the indicative without the imperative tends to antinomianism; it leaves us with Paul the mystic. This is the danger that evangelical Christianity, Christianity that has its roots in the Reformation, is perhaps more exposed to and needs to continually distance itself from.
The point to be grasped here is this: The indicative does not describe a reality, a state of affairs for the believer, that exists by itself without the imperative. In other words, the indicative does not bring into view a situation where (a heart for) the imperative, where being disposed to obey and respond positively to the imperative, is not yet present but follows as a subsequent and presumably detachable addition. Rather, if we are true to Paul, we must appreciate that indicative and imperative are given together, and obedience in response to the imperative is the consequence and attestation apart from which the indicative does not exist. Such obedience is indispensable as “the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith” (the language of the Westminster Confession of Faith, 16.2, in describing the good works of believers).
This does not in any respect confuse indicative and imperative but is to insist, as the apostle does, that they are inseparable. We may say, then: there is no resting in the indicative that is not also restless for the imperative—at least, as we have said, incipiently, in its basic disposition. The hortatory element that permeates Paul’s writings is a clear indication that the life of new obedience does not result automatically in those united to Christ and justified in him. It happens surely, necessarily, but not as it were automatically, not apart from our engagement. In this regard, then, we might say that the imperative has a critical or discriminating function. Where by faith the indicative of salvation in Christ is in fact present, where resting in Christ and his work is a reality, there, too, a concern for the imperative must and will be a reality that comes to expression – however minimally, no doubt imperfectly, inadequately. But that concern must be there.
In discussing the indicative-imperative relationship in his book on Paul’s theology, Herman Ridderbos has a helpful way of making the distinction at issue here. He puts it this way, striking the requisite balance: For Paul the imperative, no less than the indicative, is the concern of faith. It is not as if faith is concerned only with the indicative and then involvement with the imperative somehow goes beyond faith. The imperative, no less than the indicative, is the concern of faith. Both indicative and the imperative are the object of faith, as faith in Christ, and they are that together and inseparably. On the one hand, faith in its receptivity answers to the indicative; on the other hand, faith in its activity corresponds to the imperative.[1]
Note that I just said that, related to the indicative, faith is receptive – not, as it is sometimes put, passive. Passivity is not a particularly useful category here. The Westminster Confession of Faith in its chapter on “Saving Faith” is helpful on this issue and the balance to be maintained: True to Paul, faith in its “principal acts” is “accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life” (14.2); this is the receptivity of faith, responding to the indicative. Correspondingly, what immediately precedes in this subsection is helpful in detailing something of the activity of faith, as it responds to the imperative, in distinction from its receptivity.[2]
Perhaps Paul’s deepest perspective on the indicative-imperative relationship is found in Philippians 2:12-13: “Therefore my dear friends, as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence but now much more in my absence, continue to work out you salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Here the imperative comes first, sweeping in its scope: You, that is, the church, are to continue working out your salvation with fear and trembling. (This “fear and trembling”, we should note in passing, is not a matter of anxious or desperate uncertainty, but rather points to fully engaged devotion, reverence, and total involvement.) Equally sweeping is the indicative that follows: “God is at work in you both to will and to work what pleases him.”
What is striking here is the way in which Paul brings imperative and indicative together. We can get at that by noting what Paul does not say. He does not say that God’s working parallels our working in tandem, in a non-intersecting fashion. Nor, related to that, does he say that God’s working supplements ours, or that ours somehow supplements God’s. Paul is worlds away from saying “God helps them who help themselves.”
Nor is God’s working in view compensatory. There is no suggestion here of a tension, as if God is at work in spite of us or to compensate for defects in our working. Now to be sure, that is certainly true on other grounds. God does that in view of all that is undeniably imperfect, all that is flawed about our working, but that is not Paul’s point here. Rather he draws a positive connection. He says we are working just because (γάρ) God is working.
In view here is what with care but fairly may be called a “synergy.” I choose that word advisedly because of the verbs that Paul himself uses. They are verbs that refer to “working”; they accent working, with the same verb used in verse 13 for both God’s working and ours. But with that noted, this is not the synergy of a divine-human “partnership” (a widespread misconception of what a covenant is). It is not a cooperative enterprise where God does his part, we do our part. It is not a 50-50 undertaking, nor is it even, alluding to a soap commercial of a bygone era (which very few readers will likely recall!), 99.44% purely God’s activity and the remaining barest minimal fraction, ours.
Rather what is involved here is, as it can be put, the “mysterious math” of God’s covenant, of that relationship between creator and image-bearing creature, of that fellowship bond, forfeited in Adam in the fall and restored in Christ, whereby 100% plus 100% equals 100%.. Ongoing sanctification, fully from beginning to end, is 100% the work of God and just by virtue of the nature of that working is to engage the full, 100% activity of the believer – again, as noted earlier, in an entirely non-dialectical and non-polar way.
We should not miss the connection to be drawn between what Paul says here in chapter 2 with the promise, the confident categorical assurance that he gives at the outset of this letter to the Philippians. In 1:6 he assures the church, God has “begun a good work in you,” and that good work, Paul says further, “he will bring to completion” at Christ’s return. Philippians 2:12–13 indicate the basic structure by which that good work begun is brought to completion.
Indicative-Imperative and Eschatology
It will be instructive at this point to broaden our perspective by taking note of how the indicative-imperative relationship integrates into the larger present-future, already/not yet eschatological structure basic to Paul’s thinking, in particular as that structure involves the overlap between this present pre-eschatological age and the coming eschatological age – an overlap, as it exists between the resurrection and the return of Christ, that shapes Paul’s outlook on the salvation accomplished and applied in Christ. As noted earlier in these lectures, in light of this overlap and by virtue of their union with Christ in his death and resurrection – their union with Christ as now resurrected – believers both have already been raised from the dead and are yet to be raised.
The basic anthropological distinction Paul that makes in 2 Corinthians 4:16 between “the outer man” and “the inner man” (or self) helps to clarify the resurrection situation of believers: In their outer, bodily existence, they are not yet raised; inwardly, at the core of their being (most often elsewhere in Paul, the “heart”), they have already been raised. Believers are already resurrected in bodies not yet resurrected. Or in terms of key expressions in the exhortation found in Romans 6:12–13, believers are “alive from the dead” … “in the mortal body.”
Using the distinction captured by these expressions as a grid for viewing the indicative and imperative pattern, this overall structure of the Christian life emerges: “Alive from the dead” pinpoints the present indicative of eschatological salvation, salvation as already possessed in Christ, and specifies the basic dynamic for obeying the imperative. This is the first thing the congregation needs to know and be continually reminded about itself: by faith they are a people already raised with Christ, filled by the Spirit with his resurrection life. On the other hand, “the mortal body” points to the still future indicative of salvation, salvation as not yet revealed and possessed in Christ, and the need for the imperative as well as its scope, the necessity for the congregation to be exhorted in the full range of its calling.
I close with these observations. A passage that I came across a number of years ago was so helpful to me at the time. It is found toward the close of G.C. Berkouwer’s book, Faith and Sanctification. In the biblical sense, he writes, “the path of good works runs not from man to God, says Paul, but from God to man.”[3] In other words, we misunderstand good works if we see them as the effort on our part to close the distance between God and ourselves, to gain his favor and earn his forgiveness. Our perspective on sanctification and good works needs to be less anthropological, more theological. Good works according to Paul, are ultimately not ours but God’s. In the end they are his work begun and continuing in us. Sanctification is a matter of God being at work in us both to will and to do what pleases him. That is why faith that rests in God the Savior is a faith that is restless to do his will. As Luther puts it in the Preface to his Lectures on Romans, “faith is a busy little thing.” Or as Paul says, a faith that rests and trusts in Christ is a faith that is “working through love” (Galatians 5:6), and we may add, faithful to Paul, every other fruit produced by the Spirit’s resurrection power.
In 1 Corinthians 4:7 Paul asks some searching rhetorical questions to Christians: “Who makes you different from others? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you did not?” These are questions that every one of us does well to put to ourselves every day of our lives. For these are questions that have the same answer for sanctification as they do for justification, for our good works as well as our faith. Both are God’s gift, his work in us. Neither good works anymore than faith provides any ground for boasting.
The deepest motive for our sanctification, for holy living, for obedience, for good works—for our response to the imperatives of Scripture—is not found in our psychology. That motive is not our gratitude or how we feel about Jesus; nor is it even our faith ultimately. All of these are surely involved and are not to be depreciated. But the ultimate consideration, about which Paul is so confident, is the good work, the resurrection good work that God has begun and is maintaining in his people, a work that he is sure to bring to completion at Christ’s return.
Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology. Trans. by J. R. DeWitt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), p. 256; see the discussion as a whole of the indicative imperative relationship (pp. 253-58). It has substantially influenced my own remarks here. ↑
“By this faith, a Christian … acteth differently upon that which each particular passage thereof [“the Word”] containeth; yielding obedience to the commands, trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for this life and that which is to come.” ↑
Trans. J. Vriend; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952, p. 191. This point is unmistakable in Ephesians 2:10, for instance. ↑
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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 15:22:30 GMT -5
Divine Fullness: A Dogmatic Sketch
Michael Allen
Associate Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology
Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando
Theologians have lots of words. Specifically when speaking of God, the scope and mystery of the Godhead demand that we have many words at hand to attest his transcendent goodness and might. The reader will remember the words at the end of the Gospel according to John: “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (Jn. 21:25). Attesting the breadth of the Savior’s light requires many words, indeed too many for any one book to bear. How much more true must this be when we speak of the glory of the whole Godhead? While we speak of God being simple, one, and unified, the corollary of that claim is that we can only know him by rather complex and rich catenas of words meant to brim over and point to his excess.
Hence confessions and catechisms regularly make use of many attributes or character traits to insist that we keep our eyes upon the full breadth of God’s goodness. For instance, the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks and answers: “What is God? God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth” (WSC 4). While longer lists appear in Larger Catechism 7 and in the Confession of Faith chapter 2, even this short answer resorts to almost a dozen terms to attest the bare minimum which must be said of the divine character. These and other terms have been confessed and debated throughout the centuries. Interestingly, however, one divine attribute has not achieved the prominence it deserves: divine fullness. It does not appear overtly, for example, in any of the Westminster Standards, and that silence is by no means unique to that strain of Reformed theology or even to Protestantism more broadly. When one looks for fullness in the brilliant riches of Christian doctrine, ironically one typically finds only void and want.
We might seek to account for this modern reticence regarding the riches of the divine glory. Since John and Paul speak of God’s fullness, why did it cease to capture our imagination? Why has the language of fullness fallen out of favor in recent Christian theology? Does this follow from a reaction to supposedly Hellenistic thought (and the purported Hellenization of the early church)? Does this silence somehow relate to modern rationalism which seeks to think by means of quantifiable elements rather than mysterious principles? Are particular exegetical trends related to the Greco-Roman backgrounds of Pauline and Johannine teaching to account for this trend? Such anatomies of the modern silence would be no doubt significant, but they are beyond the bounds of this study. In this brief essay, we will offer a sketch of divine fullness, seeking to note its biblical roots, taking in its relation to other elements of the doctrine of God, tracing its effects into the works of God in election, creation, incarnation, and beyond, and finally asking what practical uses the doctrine bears, that is, what ethical entailments follow from this particular divine reality. In so doing, we are attempting to reorient theological reflection with regard to a biblical theme that has been forgotten. Given the modern forgetfulness, perhaps a broad sketch can help reframe our imagination in a useful manner.
Introduction: A Dogmatic Sketch of Divine Fullness
Fullness is not a Christian word. We must go a step further than this even, admitting that divine fullness is not a Christian idea. In saying this, we do not deny the presence of such claims within the Christian tradition or even the Holy Scriptures. Rather, we note that the language is not exclusively or even originally Christian. It is common jargon and borrowed terminology. Fullness (the pleroma) regularly appears in pagan Greek literature prior to and contemporaneous with the New Testament writings. Taken from elsewhere, it becomes Christian.[1] Here we plunder the Egyptians (Exod. 12:36) by taking up language from the wider world and put it to the use of pointing to the incomparable one and his gospel.
Any time such common language, charged with metaphysical and moral entailments in a non-Christian manner, appears in holy writ, we do well to be vigilant in observing how it is used. Words do not carry meaning in and of themselves, but they mean things within contexts. While fullness would no doubt sound familiar to hearers or readers of the New Testament writings (which, of course, is part of its power), what is said there would be markedly unfamiliar in key respects. Thus we are reminded that we need to be alert to the Christian difference that situating language in the economy of the gospel has upon words like fullness (or other terms that are shared with pagan thought on God: infinity, omnipotence, eternity, goodness, and the like).
Dogmatic theology provides intellectual discipline by returning the mind again and again to the testimonies of the prophets and apostles. Dogmatics reminds us of the need to have our thought sanctified; with false presuppositions and assumptions confronted and mortified, and with new categories and concepts enlisted and vivified. Dogmatics prompts us to follow the Bible’s teaching all along its way, never narrowing our focus and in so doing losing its breadth and wholeness. Given our propensity as individuals and groups to focus in on hobby-horses, this canonical contextualization is no small matter. Dogmatics also compels us to have our priorities and emphases shaped by those marked by Holy Scripture itself: in so doing, its repetitions, its logical connections, and its literary emphases reconfigure our hierarchy of values. When we so frequently misidentify first and second things, such schooling proves essential. Finally, dogmatics hones our approach to any single theme by showing the lineaments that connect it to other biblical doctrines. Dogmatics always returns us, sooner or later, to the God “from whom, through whom, and to him are all things” (Rom. 11:36).
As we seek to think biblically about divine fullness, then, we do well to have our thoughts ordered by the whole Bible. We will consider the topic in four movements: the fullness in God (wherein life and bounty are his own in and of himself), the fullness from God (whereby he shares that life and bounty with his children), the fullness by God (whence comes all that is needed to share that life and bounty with his children), and the fullness before God (which traces the ways in which human faithfulness bears the marks of divine fullness). Good theology must lead eventually to ethics, prayer, and praise, but it may do so only in such a way that the graciousness of those human actions has been described by means of contemplating God and his works on our behalf, through Christ and the Spirit.
Fullness in God: Life and Bounty In and Of Himself
Divine fullness is first and foremost a reality within the divine life. God is rich and full with life, light, and all bounty. He possesses these realities in and of himself as the triune God, such that his fullness is that of the eternal triune relations and of the distinctly Trinitarian unity. His riches are owned by he who is without beginning or end and thus who is characterized by aseity. Yet his bounteous bliss goes beyond mere self-existence or self-sufficiency to also require that we attest his excess, wealth, and fullness. All that he has, he is, and he has all and more.
The doctrine of the Trinity not only identifies God by his singular name, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Mt. 28:19), but also depicts the relational character of God’s life. The persons share perfect bounty and life in and of themselves; for instance, the way in which the Son shares that self-sufficiency and fullness in and of himself with the Father is attested by Jesus: “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (Jn. 5:26). While Bonaventure speaks of the Father as “fullness as source,” the Son and Spirit possess fullness as generated and spirated, each in their own personal mode of subsistence.[2] God is full, not only of power or knowledge but also of love within the triune communion. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have shared perfect charity with one another for all eternity, such that their actions toward us do not begin their life of love but only express the public overflow of what has marked their own unity from everlasting unto everlasting. Only with such an understanding can we confess not simply that God acted lovingly or that God took upon himself a loving posture but that “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8; see also 1 Jn. 4:16). John presses home the eternal nature of God’s love in that the divine demonstration of love in sending his Son is immediately described as an occasion for “making manifest among us” that love, rather than initiating or beginning that love (1 Jn. 4:9).
The divine fullness has also been expressed in part by the doctrine of divine aseity. This confession of the self-existence of God speaks to the fact, negatively, that God does not receive being from another and, positively, that God possesses life in and of himself. Aseity is not equivalent to the well-intentioned but logically-mangled notion of being causa sui or cause of one’s own being. Aseity speaks, rather, to existing apart from any cause and, thus, it removes God’s existence from the same sort of category as that of every other being. While God has being, his being, then, is not of a type or sort to be likened unto or related nearly to human or creaturely being. Traditionally, language of the analogia entis has been intended to emphasize both the shared fellowship but also the marked and qualitative distinction between God’s way or mode of existing and that of all creatures.[3] We do not share existence univocally, though we do both exist (and hence equivocation regarding being cannot be appropriate). The realm of analogy means to acknowledge being with a difference. While the notion took on a very different sort of meaning in late modern theology and, thus, received brutal responses from some in the Protestant world (such as Karl Barth), we can appreciate its classical concern to express the very biblical principle of the Creator-creature distinction (signaled by texts such as Exod. 3:14 and others) alongside the equally scriptural reality of fellowship in being.
Aseity gestures toward fullness, though it does not comprehend the doctrine. Aseity specifically signals the fullness or self-sufficiency of God’s existence.[4] Fullness moves beyond that claim to make a still further one. God has “life in himself” (Jn. 5:26), but he is also blessed “from everlasting unto everlasting” (Neh. 9:5). God not only possesses mercy but is “rich in mercy” (Eph. 2:4) and has “riches of his glory” (Rom. 9:24). Whereas aseity is necessary to fullness, touting the self-possession of God’s existence, aseity is not itself sufficient to signal the overflow that is the divine fullness. God is not only without beginning or end as a se, that is, the “first and the last,” but also the “living one” who is replete and filled to overflowing with vitality (Rev. 1:17-18). Indeed, he is not only “Alpha and Omega,” but also the one “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8; see also Rev. 4:8).[5] This fullness marks God out to be the one known by the high priest as “the Blessed One” (Mk. 14:61),[6] the “blessed God” (1 Tim. 1:11), and “God, the blessed and only ruler, the king of kings and lord of lords” (1 Tim. 6:15). When we attest the blessedness and richness of God in and of himself, we indicate his reality as the one who possesses all fullness and whose own character is rich. He not only has what he has by himself—rather than from another—but he has it excessively.
Fullness from God: Sharing that Life and Bounty with Others through Election, Creation, and Incarnation
God’s fullness does not leave God locked up in himself. The logic of the gospel’s God runs in just the opposite direction. Precisely out of his fullness, God overflows in grace and free favor unto others, and he gives lavishly without thereby giving himself away. Indeed, one of the most significant features in tracing out the divine fullness is the new perception we may now possess of grace, for the bestowal of a blessing to another can only truly be called grace (undeserved favor of one sort or another) when the one bestowing the gift has all that they need and needs nothing from the object of that gift. We can see how his rich possession of all blessings in and of himself shapes and marks the manner of his election, creation, and incarnation.
First, divine fullness marks the election of God’s children not for anything foreseen in them but by God’s mysterious will alone. “He chose us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:3-4). And this divine predestination in Christ Jesus flows from the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” who is himself “blessed” (Eph. 1:3-4).[7] The unconditional nature of divine election flows not from arbitrariness as if election is randomness, but we speak of unconditional election as coming from or arising out of nothing in and of the human object of election. This reality was relayed powerfully by Moses (Deut. 7:6-8) and later by Paul (Rom. 9:6-29). Election does come from somewhere, though, and it does express wisdom. It comes not from a wisdom or logic based on reciprocity and of the blessing of those who merit, deserve, or will make best use of a gift. Rather it comes to the dead, and it expresses the wisdom and logic of divine generosity. We can refer to this as a logic and not mere arbitrariness, because it flows from God’s self-possession of the fullness of life and bounty. Should God need supplementation or fulfillment, it would make all the sense in the world for him to elect those with potential. In light of his fullness, however, his electing love flows seamlessly to seek out the small, insignificant, and even sin-drenched.
Second, divine fullness shapes the very character of creation itself, wherein nothing is needed or utilized other than the divine voice. The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo speaks not only of the distinction between uncreated being and created being but goes a step further to attest that the creative activity of the uncreated one does not find its origination, supplementation, or coordination in any input from the created order. It is not for nothing that the prologue of John states that “all things were made through him [the Logos, who is with God and is God], and without him was not anything made that was made,” and then it immediately shifts to say that “in him was life” (Jn. 1:3,4).[8] The vitality—and possession of not only his own life but that of all—leads to the creation. The text makes this plain then by saying further that “the life was the light of men” (Jn. 1:4). In other words, God’s own life—his full life within the triune being of God—illumines and spreads. The metaphor of light is apt because the sun’s rays spread without in any way diminishing the luminosity of the sun itself. God’s spreading and sharing—specifically here, his act of creating all things with the input or help of no other—does not in any way diminish God.
Third, divine fullness comes within the realm of the creaturely in the person of the Son. The chosen vessel of God’s care for his elect people is the Messiah, “who is God over all, blessed forever” (Rom. 9:5). “In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col. 1:19); indeed, Paul presses further to emphasize the human frame of his divine condescension, “for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9). Donald Carson has argued that this incarnational fullness of deity within human being through personal union marks out a greater grace than that known through the law in his interpretation of the Johannine teaching that “from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace” (Jn. 1:16). Carson suggests that “grace upon grace” be read in terms of an antithesis that highlights the still greater mercy shown in the incarnation.[9] While the law was a prior grace, it has been replaced by Christ as the means of experiencing the presence of God, which can now be known in a much greater display of grace precisely because Christ possesses the divine fullness. His fullness has been accented already in the famous claim that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:14). The incarnate Son’s glory marks out his character as overflowingly rich with the very characteristics of YHWH (for grace and truth are terms which render the divine attributes of Exod. 34:6-7). Cyril of Alexandria speaks of how, possessed of the fullness, the Son’s grace is one which then “gushes forth to each soul” such that the “creature receives” this gift “as from an ever-flowing spring.”[10] The gospel of the Son speaks not only of the righting of wrongs but the glorifying of the ordinary through the mediation of the incarnate Son, himself full to the brim with the Father’s glory and quick to make common those riches for his brothers and sisters.
Fullness by God: Doing All Needful for Sharing that Life and Bounty with Others through Applying Salvation and Extending His Mission
God’s fullness comes to action for the sake of creaturely renewal in salvation through Christ Jesus. In doing so God offers all to the creature without receiving any benefit or recompense from the creature. Paul attests to this divine weightiness in his remarks at the Areopagus: “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:24-25). God is full to the brim; no closeness or communion with us, whether in creation or temple or any other fellowship, serves to fill him up. “Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘in him we live and move and have our being’” (Acts 17:28, likely citing Epimenides of Crete). To the divine fullness in himself there is also divine fullness for others, and in that divine fullness for others there is a sufficient provision enacted by God.
First, God goes still further in applying that work of Christ, fulfilling the needful task of working out salvation by including or enfolding others into his life and death. The goal of knowing God in Christ is such that “you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19). Regularly, we read of the work done for us by Christ as “bestowing his riches on all who call on him” (Rom. 10:12) or as “the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us” (Eph. 1:7-8). We can see the fullness of God expressed in the human bearing found in the person and life of Jesus, for we are to “all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). The salvific work of Christ not only meets the bare minimum of our needs, but offers an excessive largesse. For this reason Hebrews can speak of “so great a salvation,” not only in its cause and cost (in terms of incarnation and sacrificial atonement) but also in terms of its conferral (Heb. 2:3). Ultimately, the sufficiency or fullness of God’s work flows from the character of his mercy in his very being, for “our God is full of compassion” (Ps. 116:5) and “rich in mercy” (Eph. 2:4).
Second, God’s fullness presses beyond these two prior graces to still wider provision in enabling Christian mission and actualizing his kingdom here upon earth. Paul tells the Corinthians that “in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge – even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you – so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift” (1 Cor. 1:5-7). The provision of God’s enrichment enables attestation or testimony; Christian witness flows from God’s continuing provision. Divine gifts are not only the origin of mission and the content of its proclamation; the overflowing fullness of God is the very context for and energy unto Christian witness. Indeed, for this reason the church can be likened as “his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23). The head works through the body – the church – such that it expresses and extends his fullness to the world in mission.[11] The church does not become Christ, nor does the church fill him; just the opposite, he “fills all in all.” But the church does become identified with him and even with his “fullness.”
Think of the remarkable grace shown to men and women that God not only gives us reconciliation in Christ but even enlists us as ambassadors or instruments of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:17-20) and goes a step further to speak of us as those “working together with him” (2 Cor. 6:1). We might consider this a remarkable risk; when a project matters, we tend to make sure we do not place its results in the hands of the weak. Yet Paul has noted that these Corinthians who are fellow workers with God are not wise or fitting (1 Cor. 1:20-21). God can enlist weak disciples because God lacks nothing; his mission flows out of his very vitality. God’s fullness enables the frail and fallen to be employed in kingdom work, as his abundance proves to be more than enough to ensure the accomplishment of his intended goals. The blessing pronounced by Paul in Romans 15:13 invokes the filling of God: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” It leads to personal transformation that can only be characterized as abundance: “so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” But God’s abundant filling spills over immediately into service and ministry: “I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another” (15:14). God fills by his Spirit, abundantly enriching our hope, filling us with goodness, that we may be filled with knowledge so as to teach and instruct others. The recipient of God’s filling, then, is brought into his centrifugal movement which ever always reaches out to bring more into its blessed possession of all good riches.
Fullness before God: The Resulting Character of Creaturely Holiness as Faithful Prayer and Praise
The fullness of God shapes the faithfulness of human creatures in Christ. Because God’s character is displayed in the gospel, human knowledge and service to God are re-shaped accordingly. To the nature of God corresponds the life and behavior of his creaturely subjects. How does our following the way of Jesus bear the marks of divine fullness? What elements of our covenantal devotion demonstrate the effects of this divine attribute?
First, divine fullness reminds us that we always depend upon God and never out-run our need for his provision. We have received grace and count our lives to be his own (Rom. 14:8-9; Phil. 1:21). Yet when we ask: “what shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?” we answer “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord” (Ps. 116:12,13). Indeed the Psalmist identifies this action as paying his “vows” to the lord (Ps. 116:14,18). We see, however, that these vows are not made good on by doing something other than calling for more generosity from God and, thereby, going more deeply into one’s dependence upon him.[12] The image of lifting up the cup of salvation is one like Oliver Twist asking “More?” Because God is a Deity of fullness, not lacking but possessing all within himself, we never shift into the mode of returning discrete goods to God. Even our thanksgiving takes the form of calling upon him for still more deliverance (Ps. 116:17).[13] Divine blessedness and its expression through blessing others cultivate the Christian ethic of prayerful dependence and a life always marked by faithful trust in the triune God.
Second, divine fullness prompts us to reduce all things ultimately to God and, correspondingly, to return all things to him in praise. The art of reduction is an intellectual exercise of tracing things back to their deepest cause or principle. We reduce a bodily malady not by forgetting or overlooking it, but by appreciating its deeper roots in a virus or other illness. Similarly, we do not negate, minimize, or disrespect creaturely realities in reducing them to God, but we do accurately assess them in light of his fullness. In this drama of human blight and glory, there is genuine integrity and blissful good within the creaturely realm. These graces are spread far and wide. But we cannot envision these graces separated from the wider orbit of gospel truths, for we see them flowing forth from him; we appreciate them as suspended through him; we see them as purposed unto return to him. “For from him and through him and to him are all things”; Paul hereby locates all reality within the movement of God’s fullness. Thus, he voices an ethical implication: “To him be glory forever” (Rom. 11:36). The blessed abundance of God’s being leads to the wide extent of God’s provision which leads in turn to all glory, laud, and honor being his own. Divine fullness—and its overflow into the gracious economy of his works—shapes the ethic of Christian praise.
Conclusion: Confessing the Fullness of God Yesterday and Today
Let us return to where we began: Is fullness truly absent from recent theology? While the dominant strands of contemporary theology in the wider academy have tilted toward either some form of process theology or to what may be termed evangelical historicism, which is an over-identification to or reduction of God’s being to that action in the economy of the gospel, we can observe some retrievals of the fullness of God. John Webster has sought to refocus attention upon the perfection of God and to think all other realities of the divine or the divine economy always relative to that preponderant beauty.[14] My colleague Scott Swain has sought to reorient contemporary approaches to the trinity (specifically countering those of the Lutheran Robert Jenson and the Presbyterian Bruce McCormack, advocates of leading versions of evangelical historicism) in a similar manner by beginning with the riches that are God’s own:
The triune God is inherently rich, “the everlasting well of all good things which is never drawn dry.” To the gospel’s “blessed God” (1 Tim. 1:11) belong the immeasurable fullness of greatness, power, glory, victory, and majesty, an immeasurable fullness that God enjoys in and of himself (1 Chron. 29:11; Ps. 145:3; Jn. 5:26; Rom. 11:33-35). The divine works ad extra are consequently the free and generous overflow of God’s fontal plenitude (Ps. 36:8-9; Jn. 1:4; 5:21-25; Rom. 11:33-36; Jas. 1:17).[15]
Swain has turned a discussion about divine aseity and self-sufficiency, more restrictive jargon, to the deeper font of divine fullness, biblical and classical language which speaks not only of sufficiency but of excess and resplendence. And he has turned away from history and the dramas of redemption’s story and creational engagement to the deep sublime of God’s eternal repose. Still further, as with Webster’s arguments, he has then tried to show how this divine richness does not undermine the economy or the covenant, but helps show its singular nature: unlike other relations, here is one of grace, true and free.
If there are some voices reminding us of the riches of divine fullness today, we might ask if fullness is really missing from the Westminster Standards? While the specific terms “fullness” and “full” are not to be found on the surface of the text, it is perhaps appropriate to see the judgment present implicitly in the structure of the argument. Westminster Shorter Catechism 4 identifies God as “a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” Notice that three terms—“infinite, eternal, and unchangeable”—qualify the way in which we hear the final seven terms. God’s being, for example, is one that is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. Here we see the doctrine of divine simplicity put to grammatical usage, in that the structure of the sentence exemplifies that tenet’s affirmation that God’s attributes are unified in reality.[16]
How do we read Westminster’s litany of divine attributes in light of divine simplicity? Each of the attributes of God is his own infinitely, eternally, and unchangeably; this provides a matrix for interpreting each attribute as interpenetrating the others. They are simple in themselves; for us, knowing them requires dialectical thought to appreciate their oneness. The profusion of terms and their substantive inter-relations, however, point to the weighty fullness of the divine being. God has excessive or rich possession of all his characteristics, such that neither time, space, or anything else might limit or diminish them. The combination of terms found therein—“infinite, eternal, and unchangeable”—intermingle together and attest to the notion of fullness. Each of God’s qualities or attributes bears the fullness or richness which exceeds any single place (infinity) or time (eternity) or any episode or circumstance which might ebb or flow (immutability or unchangeableness). Taken together, then, these terms speak to the self-sufficient blessedness of God. God brims over in excess with each and every one of his many-splendored attributes.
It is worth making explicit that implicit logic, for divine fullness provides a remarkable lens for seeing the movement of Christian theology as a whole. Fullness speaks directly of God and then, secondarily, of other beings from God, in God, and unto God. Fullness bespeaks the reality of Christ by nature and of the body of Christ by grace. Fullness points back to the Alpha of God’s eternal self-sufficiency while also gesturing forward to the Omega of God’s limitless provision for his glorified saints. Fullness reminds us that the triune God of creation is rich and enriching, that the lordly king of our salvation is blessed from everlasting to everlasting and blesses his saints forevermore. Fullness reorients us to one who, in the gospel, gives without giving himself away. Not surprisingly, then, language of fullness appears (under the idiom of blessedness, riches, or fullness) regularly alongside calls to and demonstrations of prayer and praise. Such a God as this—this one summons forth our songs, our prayers, our very selves and all we have.
We could argue that it is ontologically Christian and that other versions are degenerations of that principial designation; this ordering is both true in reality and yet backwards in historical and epistemological experience. ↑
Bonaventure, Commentary on Sentences, 1.27.1. ↑
For helpful analysis of classical Reformed endorsement of the analogia entis, albeit in the vein of Thomas Aquinas rather than his later interpreter Cajetan, see Richard A. Muller, “Not Scotist: Understandings of Being, Univocity, and Analogy in Early-Modern Reformed Thought, Reformation & Renaissance Review 14 (2012), 127-150. Muller finds affirmation in Maccovius, Junius, Zanchi, Voetius, and others, at several points disagreeing with the argument presented by J. Martin Bac, Perfect Will Theology: Divine Agency in Reformed Scholasticism as Against Suarez, Episcopius, Descartes, and Spinoza (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Unlike some later renderings of the analogia entis (especially after modifications to the doctrine at the hands of Cajetan and Suarez), the key focus in classical Reformed renderings was on proportionality. For a nuanced reflection on late modern declensions and their Protestant rebuttal by Barth, see Keith L. Johnson, Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis (T & T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology; London: T & T Clark, 2010), esp. ch. 2. ↑
On a positive account of aseity, see John Webster, “Life In and Of Himself,” in God Without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology, volume one: God and the Works of God (London: T & T Clark, 2015), 13-28; and especially Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 11-27 (Fathers of the Church 79; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), tract. 22. ↑
Rev. 1:17 and 4:8 surely seek to render an amplification of Exod. 3:14, expanding on that text’s temporal under-determination and amplifying it in all three tenses. ↑
Some translations (e.g. ESV) simply render “the Blessed” here. ↑
On Eph. 1:3-4 and election, see Wesley Hill, “The Text of Ephesians and the Theology of Bucer,” in Reformation Readings of Paul: Explorations in History and Exegesis (ed. Michael Allen and Jonathan Linebaugh; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 143-164; on election in Romans 9, see also David Gibson, Reading the Decree: Exegesis, Election, and Christology in Calvin and Barth (T & T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology; London: T & T Clark, 2009); Ben Dunson, Individual and Community in Paul’s Letter to the Romans (WUNT 2:332; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012). ↑
Cyril makes a similar point in interpreting Jn. 3:36 relating this text to Jn. 1:4; see Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, volume 1 (ed. Joel Elowsky; trans. David Maxwell; Ancient Christian Texts; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 115. ↑
D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 132. ↑
Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, volume 1, 67 (on Jn. 1:16). ↑
Maintaining the distinction between head and members is no doubt pivotal and attested even in the immediate context here, wherein Paul has just said “And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church”(Eph. 1:22). “All things under his feet” surely includes the church itself. Indeed, we can speak of the lordship of Christ over the church as a preparatory microcosm of his wider reign over all creation, which will eventually bow the knee as his ecclesia has done so already. ↑
For further reflection on how sanctification is always by faith alone, though not of faith alone, see John Owen, Pneumatologia (Works of John Owen 3; Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), esp. 413-416; G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification (Studies in Dogmatics; trans. John Vriend; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), ch. 2; Michael Allen, Sanctification (New Studies in Dogmatics; Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, forthcoming), ch. 10. ↑
Calling upon God’s name involves a cry for his rescue, as can be seen earlier in Ps. 116:4. ↑
While present in numerous works now, see most recently the essays published in John Webster, God Without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology, volume one: God and the Works of God (London: T & T Clark, 2015). ↑
Scott R. Swain, The God of the Gospel: Robert Jenson’s Trinitarian Theology (Strategic Initiatives in Evangelical Theology; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 152-153. ↑
For defense and analysis of divine simplicity, see Steven J. Duby, Divine Simplicity: A Dogmatic Account (T &T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology; London: T & T Clark, 2015). A number of criticisms have been launched regarding this doctrine, the most significant of which include Wolfhart Pannenberg, The End of Metaphysics and the Idea of God (trans. Philip Clayton; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 11-12; and T. F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being, Three Persons (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996), 246-250. Analytic theologians and philosophers of religion have also protested, most notably Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980), 1-9; and Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Absolute Simplicity,” Faith and Philosophy 2 (1985), 353-382. ↑
Volume 1 Issue 1
May 2016 | 104 pages
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Introducing Reformed Faith & Practice
Divine Fullness: A Dogmatic Sketch
The Life-Giving Spirit
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Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and The Fourfold Gospel Witness
Paul and Union with Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study
The Righteousness of God: A Lexical Examination of the Covenant-Faithfulness Interpretation
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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 15:25:19 GMT -5
The Life-Giving Spirit
Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.
Professor Emeritus of Biblical and Systematic Theology
Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia
On March 10-11, 2015, the Rev. Dr. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Emeritus at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, delivered the annual Kistemaker Lectures at the Orlando campus of Reformed Theological Seminary. The topic of his four lectures was “Life-Giving Spirit: The Exaltation of Christ and Salvation in the Theology of Paul.” Gaffin’s presentation was an opportunity for the campus to hear one of the finest biblical theologians of our day speak in summary fashion on what has been a life-long professional focus: the exaltation of Jesus Christ in the theology of Paul. These lectures are now available in iTunes, and Dr. Gaffin has graciously allowed us to use an excerpt from these lectures, slightly edited, in Reformed Faith and Practice. (Two more excerpts are planned for future issues of the journal.)
We turn our attention now to the re-creative or renovative side of the benefits of salvation in Christ and to take note of their dependence on what took place for and in Christ and his resurrection. That comes to light in a most decisive way in what we can fairly say is a statement that is at the heart of both Paul’s Christology and his pneumatology, the statement that we find in the latter half of 1 Corinthians 15:45, where Paul says that in his resurrection, Christ, the last Adam, became life-giving Spirit.
“The last Adam became life-giving Spirit.” The meaning of this statement continues to be disputed. In particular the dispute is whether the reference of the Greek noun pneuma is to the Spirit with a capital “S,” or to a lower case “s” spirit in some sense. I could have well spent at least a full lecture with you addressing this issue and reflecting on it, but will forego that and content myself here with asserting that detailed exegesis leaves little doubt, if any, on two points. First, pneuma here refers to the person of the Holy Spirit, and secondly, Christ’s resurrection is the time of the “becoming” in view. Notice that Paul doesn’t say that the last Adam is the life-giving Spirit; he became the life-giving Spirit. Moreover, in the context of the chapter that “becoming” took place in his resurrection.
On the interpretation of this statement, there is a consensus on the conclusion that I just expressed across a broad spectrum of current commentaries, monographs, and other works on Paul’s theology. Among Reformed interpreters, this is the view of Geerhardus Vos, Herman Ridderbos, and John Murray (in his Romans commentary and commenting on 1 Cor 15:45). In contrast – and this continues to be a disappointment for me – most English translations have “spirit,” lowercase, apparently for the reason that to capitalize it (as a reference to the Holy Spirit) would seem to translators to lend credence to an anti-Trinitarian reading. (I would not commend the New Living Translation overall as a translation, but it alone among current English translations I’ve seen capitalizes Spirit in 1 Cor 15:45; so credit where credit is due).
It is not only unnecessary but entirely unwarranted to read “Spirit” as a denial of the personal distinction between Christ and the Spirit and as irreconcilable with later church formulation of Trinitarian doctrine. Paul is clear about that personal distinction elsewhere (as in the so-called apostolic benediction with its Triune structure at the end of 2 Corinthians). What needs to be kept in view here is the scope of Paul’s argument, its salvation-historical focus. The point is not who Christ is essentially, eternally, and unchangeably, but what he became in history, particularly what he became in history as the last Adam, or as Paul will say in 15:47, “the second man.” In view here is what has happened to Christ in history as incarnate, in terms of his true humanity.
We may note further the undeniable reference to the Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3:17, where Paul says “the Lord is the Spirit.” In this context I would argue “the Lord” is almost certainly the exalted Christ (although this is disputed by some). So it seems fair to say, as we compare these two statements, the “is” in 2 Cor 3:17 is based on and is the result of the “became” in 1 Cor 15:45.
So, 1 Cor 15:45 expresses the momentous and epochal significance of the resurrection for Christ personally. What Paul brings into view is Christ’s own climatic transformation by the Spirit in his resurrection, a transformation that results in a new and permanent relationship between Christ and the Spirit. The result is a functional unity, a unity in their conjoint activity of such intimacy and inseparability that it is captured most adequately, as the apostle sees it, by saying that in being raised from the dead Christ has become and so now is and remains in his activity the life-giving Spirit. What we are being brought to see, then, is that for Paul, Christ and the Spirit are united in the activity of giving resurrection life, correlatively, life in the Spirit or eschatological life. Resurrection life, life in the Spirit, eschatological life are alternative descriptions of the same reality.
This prompts some further observations on 1 Cor 15:45. First, within the immediate context (vv. 42–49), the last Adam, as resurrected, is also in view as ascended. As the last Adam he is the “second man … from heaven” (v. 47) and in that sense he is the “man of heaven” (v. 48). Note that, given the sustained emphasis on the resurrection in the immediate context, “from heaven” or “of heaven” is almost certainly an exaltation predicate. It refers to what is true of Christ because of where he is now. It is not, as some commentators have taken it, a reference to Christ’s origin, say, out of preexistence at the incarnation.
Second, while in chapter 15 Paul has in view Christ’s future life-giving action by the Spirit in the bodily resurrection of believers (cf. vv. 22, 49), his present activity, as the life-giving Spirit is surely intimated as well. Christ’s resurrection is not an isolated event in the past. Rather, as a genuine historical occurrence, a stupendous miracle that took place in the past, it is also the inaugurating “firstfruits” of the eschatological resurrection-harvest (vv. 20, 23). And Paul is clear: the believer’s place in that one harvest is present as well as future. Christ as resurrected and ascended is already active in the church as the life-giving Spirit, which is to say again, in the resurrection power of the Spirit. In their present union with Christ by faith, believers have already been raised with Christ; for them resurrection life is not only a future hope but a present reality (Gal 2:20; Col 3:3–4; 1:27). As they “belong to Christ” [= are “in Christ”] and “Christ is in them, “the body is dead because of sin, but the [Holy] Spirit is life because of [Christ’s] righteousness (Rom 8:9–10).
In terms of the categorical anthropological distinction that Paul draws in 2 Cor 4:16, while the outer self or body is undergoing decay, the inner self or elsewhere in Paul, “heart,” who we are at the core of our being, is being renewed daily. While outwardly, bodily they are not yet resurrected, believers are already resurrected inwardly. That carries with it this important implication that we need to think through: as Paul sees it, at the core of their being, in the deepest recesses of who they are, believers in Jesus Christ, will never be more resurrected than they already are.
Third, turning now to an important overall issue for New Testament theology, an issue that also continues to be debated across the face of worldwide Christianity, I want to propose that the latter part of 1 Cor 15:45 is, in effect, a one-sentence commentary by Paul on Pentecost and its significance. To see that we’re going to have to refer to an intertextual connection and look very briefly back in Acts 2 at Peter’s Pentecost sermon. Towards its conclusion with its focus on the earthly activity, the death and then especially the resurrection of Jesus, we come to this culminating statement in Acts 2:32-33, where Peter draws together the threads of what he has been saying. “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out that which you are both seeing and hearing.” Here in a summary sequence we have four elements: resurrection, ascension, reception of the Spirit in the ascension, and, finally, outpouring of the Spirit. The last of these, Pentecost, is linked with the other three. It belongs together with the resurrection, the ascension, and Jesus’ reception of the Spirit in his ascension.
We must appreciate from this statement of Peter that Pentecost is climactic and final on the order that the other events are also climactic and final, and as such is in no more need of being repeated than are these other events. Resurrection, ascension, Pentecost though temporally distinct, constitute a unified complex of events, a once-for-all unified series in redemptive history that is indivisible. The one is given with the others, and none of them exists without the others. In 1 Cor 15:45 this unified event complex is compressed and given its central focus by saying, “the last Adam became the life-giving Spirit.”
If the sequence in Acts speaks of Jesus having received the Spirit following his ascension and that is implied, as we’ve seen, in 1 Cor 15:45, how then is this reception to be understood? That question is raised considering that Luke previously reported that Jesus received the Spirit at the Jordan when he was baptized by John (Luke 3:22), and even before that he was conceived by the Spirit (1:35). Also, throughout his ministry prior to his resurrection he was filled with and empowered by the Spirit (e.g., 4:1, 14, 18; 10:21).
The answer to that question lies in appreciating the analogy between the Jordan event and Pentecost: in the former, Jesus being baptized by John and in the latter, Jesus baptizing the church with the Spirit. This analogy is particularly significant for both the accomplishment and application of salvation. On the one hand, at the Jordan the Messiah-Son receives the Spirit from the Father as endowment and equipping that is absolutely essential for the impending kingdom conflict facing him—the battle between the messianic kingdom and the kingdom of Satan that will take him through the path of obedience and suffering that ends on the cross where he dies for the sins of his people (cf. 2 Cor 5:20; Phil 2:6–8).
On the other hand, in his ascension the resurrected Christ receives the Spirit from the Father as the reward deserved for the kingdom task now completed. Further, we must note that he does not keep this climactic reward for himself. As Calvin says (Institutes 3.1.1), “not for his own private use”! Rather, this deserved reward becomes, in turn, the consummate gift that Christ shares with the church. Pentecost reveals Christ as the exalted receiver-giver of the Spirit, or in other terms, the life-giving Spirit.
So to draw things to a conclusion here, essential for Christ’s role in applying salvation in his state of exaltation is 1) his own climactic transformation by the Holy Spirit and 2) his new and consummate possession of the Holy Spirit resulting from the resurrection. What Christ now does rests in part on what was done to him and what he has become in his exaltation. By his resurrection he was “justified in the Spirit” and became “the life-giving Spirit.”
The single action of the Spirit in raising Christ from the dead constitutes him as the source, now exalted, of both the forensic and renovative aspects of salvation. His resurrection-justification grounds the removal of condemnation and entitlement to eschatological, resurrection life. Furthermore, that resurrection life, life in the Spirit, also eradicates the power and corruption of sin and death.
These two aspects are plainly inseparable. Yet the judicial aspect has an essential and decisive priority in the accomplishment of salvation that grounds its application. Because Christ’s obedience unto death is the requisite judicial ground for his resurrection and being highly exalted (Phil 2:9), his becoming the life-giving Spirit presupposes his being justified in the Spirit, not the reverse. Seen in terms of this climactic relationship between the exalted Christ and the Spirit, expressed in other categories, the outpouring-giving of the Spirit at Pentecost is an integral event in the historia salutis, not an aspect in the ordo salutis. Pentecost has its primary place in the once-for-all, completed accomplishment of redemption. It is not to serve as a model for individual Christian experience.
It does not overstate it to say this: without Christ himself being constituted the justified, life-giving Spirit, and his correlative outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost, there is no salvation. Without Pentecost, the definitive, unrepeatable work of Christ is incomplete. In no respect is Pentecost a model for an additional, “second” blessing that makes for a “full gospel.” It is a first order, primary blessing apart from which there is simply no gospel.
The task set before Christ as the last Adam was not only to secure the remission of sin, as important and absolutely necessary as that is, but also, and even more ultimately, as the grand outcome of his lifetime of obedience and atoning death, it was to obtain life eternal – eschatological life, resurrection life; that is, life in the Spirit.
Without that life, “salvation” is not only truncated, but also meaningless, as 1 Cor 15:17, for one, makes clear. And it is just that life, that salvation now completed in his exaltation, and Christ as now qualified to be its giver that is openly revealed in the giving of the Spirit by Christ, the life-giving Spirit on Pentecost.
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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 15:26:54 GMT -5
Owning Our Past: The Spirituality of the Church in History, Failure, and Hope
Sean Michael Lucas
Associate Professor of Church History
Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson
At the 43rd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), there was an attempt to have our denomination own its past. Ligon Duncan and I brought a personal resolution that called on the church to “recognize and confess our church’s covenantal and generational involvement in and complicity with racial injustice inside and outside of our churches during the Civil Rights period.” While the PCA had previously in 2002 confessed its covenantal and generational involvement in the sins of 1861—its generational involvement with race-based chattel slavery—it had never owned the sins of 1961; in fact, it has shown a general unwillingness to admit directly that many of our conservative churches and leaders from that period stood against racial integration in church and society. Even the 2004 PCA Pastoral Letter on the Gospel and Race vaguely referenced “the Southern Presbyterian tradition and its publicly promulgated views on race,” but missed the opportunity to detail the ways our leaders failed to promote biblical positions on race and racial justice. And so, the personal resolution—originating out of Mississippi which has served as the ecclesial seedbed of the PCA and as the central stage of the battle over Civil Rights—was meant as a vehicle for our church finally to own its past, to grieve for and hate the sins found there, and to turn to God and each other, purposing and endeavoring after new ways of obedience (LC76).[1]
As it happened, the PCA General Assembly decided not to act on the resolution this year, but rather referred it to the 44th General Assembly that will meet in Mobile, Alabama, in June 2016. While there were multiple reasons why various elders argued for and supported this action, one undoubtedly was a lack of willingness to understand and own the past.[2]
One of the significant barriers to doing that, and so to confessing and repenting in the present as well as engaging our culture in love and justice both now and in the future, is the long-standing, “distinctive” conservative Presbyterian commitment to the so-called “spirituality of the church” doctrine.[3] Stated in its most classic form by the nineteenth-century southern Presbyterian theologian James Henley Thornwell, the spirituality of the church doctrine means that the church “has no commission to construct society afresh…to change the forms of its political constitutions….The problems, which the anomalies of our fallen state are continually forcing on philanthropy, the Church has no right to solve. She must leave them to the Providence of God, and to human wisdom sanctified and guided by the spiritual influences which it is her glory to foster and to cherish. The Church…has a fixed and unalterable Constitution; and that Constitution is the Word of God…She can announce what it teaches, enjoin what it commands, prohibit what it condemns…Beyond the Bible she can never go, and apart from the Bible she can never speak.”[4]
For Thornwell and other proponents of this doctrine, the root of the spirituality of the church doctrine was the separation of church and state. The church has no commission to change the form of political constitutions; she was not to solve the problems of our fallen state; and she was not to involve herself in dealing with specific policies contemplated by the state. Rather, her authority and role “is only ministerial and declarative since the Holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith and practice.” Such a position demanded silence on matters of political and social policy except when they touched on issues of morality. Only then might the church comment on the moral imperatives found in Scripture. Beyond that, she could not and ought not to go.[5]
And yet, that was always the rub with the spirituality of the church doctrine: the Bible certainly addresses issues that involve social, economic, and political realities and directly impact matters of public policy. As nineteenth-century southern Presbyterian theologian Francis Beattie recognized, this was one of the things that made the spirituality of the church doctrine so difficult to apply: “These difficulties appear in connection with certain questions which are partly civil and partly religious in their nature. Such questions as education, marriage, the Sabbath, and temperance are illustrations of what is here meant.”[6] Of course, other questions such as slavery and racial relationships also involved civil and religious issues—the Bible speaks to every area of “faith and practice” at some level. And so, a major difficulty with the spirituality of the church idea as it has developed was the selective way it was deployed: historically, it was invoked to prevent conversations on race while it was ignored with education, temperance, or sexual morality.
It is for these reasons that many historians have viewed the spirituality of the church doctrine simply as a “protective gesture,” mainly used to shield or prevent southerners from acting with justice toward African Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Jack Maddex suggested that race-based slavery forced southern Presbyterians to move from asserting theocratic ideals—with Jesus Christ as King and the Bible as the rule of the state—to promoting the “spirituality doctrine” as a means to preserve the status quo. Writing about twentieth-century Presbyterianism in Mississippi, Peter Slade observed that “the spirituality of the church is in fact the time tested political strategy of powerful men to perpetuate an unjust status quo free from moral censure…[It] is a sophisticated theological resistance to systemic change: it is not an innocent doctrine misused.” Likewise, Carolyn Dupont observed that PCA founders identified the spirituality of the church doctrine as one of its primary commitments; yet this was problematic because the spirituality of the church was the main support for “conservative Presbyterians who condemned the Christian supporters of black equality.” It was a theological commitment that “formed an essential foundation for their racial ideology.”[7]
What do we make of this? How do we go about owning our past—especially the white majority’s failure to recognize its cultural captivity and maintenance of a system of injustice that has prevented genuine truth and reconciliation between blacks and whites? How should we understand this “spirituality of the church” doctrine—is it a white protective gesture or even a racial ideology? Is there any reason that we might want to preserve some vestige of the idea that the church’s mission is “spiritual”? Is it possible that white southern Presbyterians misunderstood what their confessional documents taught and allowed that to excuse their failures on issues of racial justice in our church and society?
I want to attempt the seemingly impossible: to rehabilitate the idea of the “spirituality of the church” in such a way as to make it a vehicle for the church to speak to social and political issues as part of a full-orbed Gospel mission. In order to do this, I’m going to make the claim that southern Presbyterians have misunderstood what the Westminster Confession of Faith—and the Bible itself—demands when it comes to preserving the spiritual mission of the church. Far from encouraging a quietist posture to social, political, or cultural issues, rightly understood we discover that the confessional teaching actually provides both the basis for speaking prophetically to our generation and allows us to instruct our congregations about their responsibilities as Christ’s disciples in his world. At the same time, read with other sections of Presbyterian confessional documents, we recognize that the church’s primary means for social change has always remained the same: Word, sacraments, and prayer, which God uses to transform people as they are instructed in their duties toward their neighbors and move to seek peace and justice for their communities. With this corrected understanding of what the “spirituality of the church” means—and does not mean—we can see better the ways that our Presbyterian forefathers (and we ourselves) have failed to pursue justice and love mercy and so own the past for the “healing of remembering” and the beginning of hope.[8]
Not to Intermeddle with Civil Affairs
The Presbyterian commitment to the spirituality of the church doctrine is rooted in Westminster Confession of Faith 31:4: “Synods and councils are to handle, or conclude nothing, but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth, unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary; or, by way of advice, for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate.” This chapter dealing with synods and councils—and by implication, all church courts—appears to limit those church courts to speak only on ecclesiastical matters. In fact, the language here is fairly strong: they “are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth.” It seems from a surface reading that this is meant to separate church from state: synod and councils have authority for the ecclesiastical realm; civil magistrates (who are addressed in WCF 23) have authority for the civil realm. The biblical proof texts for this section are drawn from Luke 12 and John 18, both of which emphasize that Jesus rules over a “kingdom not of this world.” Hence, Jesus does not interfere with the state’s operation, but rather establishes a separate realm to rule called the church with his own laws and for his own purposes.[9]
Of course, this raises all sorts of questions for us. Perhaps we can start with what the Confession means by “not intermeddling with civil affairs.” Are we to understand this in the broadest sense possible? Or is a more narrow restrictive understanding a better approach?
Historically, southern Presbyterians read “not to intermeddle with civil affairs” in the broadest possible sense. For example, in the early 1930s, when PCUS progressives successfully formed a denominational-level committee to guide the church on matters of social, economic, and political welfare, conservatives pushed back using this aspect of the spirituality of the church idea. Judge Samuel Wilson, a ruling elder from Lexington, Kentucky, argued, “Nothing should be done by the Presbyterian branch of [the Christian] church to obscure or subordinate the spiritual nature of Christ’s Kingdom, the preeminently spiritual nature of his life and work and teachings. The Christian church received no commission from its divine Founder to occupy itself with social, moral, economic, or political questions as such.” Likewise, S. K. Dodson, minister of the Citronelle, Alabama, church, held that “the Church should not through her courts endorse any specific social program, and that if any declaration is made by these higher courts as to the Church’s social duty, it should be done very carefully in the broadest terms possible.” To intermeddle with civil affairs was to undo the unique testimony of the southern Presbyterian church, Columbia Seminary professor William Childs Robinson argued. “Is it quite right to turn a Church away from the very principle that gave it life and independent being? The non-secular character of the Southern Presbyterian Church is her ‘raison d’etre.’” Any involvement by the church as church in the social, economic, or political questions of the day was “to intermeddle with civil affairs.”[10]
However, such a boundary is difficult to maintain because it necessarily cuts off the “spiritual” from the rest of life. And southern Presbyterians had a difficult time knowing where the line was between spiritual and secular realms. One example of this was the church’s long-standing support and advocacy of abstinence from alcohol. From 1862 on, the southern Presbyterian General Assembly repeatedly advocated teetotalism, reprobated the sale of beverage alcohol, and urged people to “use all legitimate means for its banishment from the land.” Finally, in 1914, as the political process began that would produce the Volstead Act, the General Assembly declared, “We are in hearty favor of National Constitutional Prohibition, and will do all properly within our power to secure the adoption of an amendment to the Constitution forever prohibiting the sale, manufacture for sale, transportation for sale, importation for sale, and exportation for sale of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes in the United States.” Notably, there was no hue and cry in the Presbyterian papers by conservatives about this action as a violation of the spiritual mission of the church.[11]
Another example of blurring the lines between the so-called spiritual and secular realms occurred in the 1920s over the teaching of evolution in the public schools. In North Carolina, the key leaders who opposed evolution both in the public schools and at the University of North Carolina were Presbyterian ministers, Albert Sidney Johnson and William P. McCorkle. In 1925, the Synod of North Carolina adopted resolutions that called for “a closer supervision to prevent teaching anything [in the public schools]…[that contradicted] Christian truths as revealed in the Word of God.” They also “demanded the removal of teachers found guilty of teaching evolution ‘as a fact.’” Again, beyond the rightness or wrongness of the action, the main point here is that the spirituality of the church doctrine did not prevent these Presbyterians from intermeddling in civil affairs outside the “spiritual” realm of the church.[12]
The difficulty discerning the line between the spiritual and secular realms in the matters of alcohol and evolution should have clued southern Presbyterians to the fact they might have misunderstood what the authors of the confession intended. As historian Chad Van Dixhoorn’s work on the Westminster Assembly minutes has demonstrated, the focus of the Westminster divines as they worked on chapter 31, which deals with “synods and councils,” was on whether Presbyterian church government was biblically correct (or jure divino “divine right”). The paragraph that we now know as WCF 31:4 was added “by some brethren [who] entered their dissents.” These brethren were William Greenhill, Sidrach Simpson, and Francis Woodcocke, all Independents (Congregationalists) who were determined to preserve some measure of separation between church and state over against the Erastians and Presbyterians, who firmly believed both in Establishment and in ecclesial influence upon the civic realm. That this suggested paragraph—along with the admission that “all synods and councils since the Apostles time, whether general or particular, may err and many have erred,” also suggested by the Congregationalists—was included seems to suggest a compromise by the Presbyterians, the majority at the Westminster Assembly.[13]
What was the compromise? Because the Congregationalists were outgunned on the matter of Presbyterian government, the Presbyterians agreed to ensure that all understood the necessity of church-state separation and the fallibility of higher church courts. And yet, the divines had to walk carefully. After all, the English Parliament brought Westminster Assembly into existence in 1643 for the purpose of setting national religious policy. Their work, while biblical and theological (and so, “spiritual”), was profoundly civil and political, and they clearly understood it to be such. With all of this in view, then, I want to suggest that the original intention of the divines with that phrase, “not to intermeddle with civil affairs,” was far more limited, tracing out the different responsibilities of church and state when the church is established and funded by the state. The church is not to usurp the legislative role of the state, to interfere with the state’s processes, or to involve itself needlessly or incessantly in political conniving (as those Protestants saw Roman Catholics doing). The church as church has a different mission: to make disciples through its means of grace and to instruct them in the duties of the moral law. However, this would not prevent the church from speaking truth to political power or from involving itself in matters of clear social importance.[14]
Petitioning and Advising the Authorities
This understanding of “not intermeddling with civil affairs” fits much better with the rest of the confessional paragraph. After all, the second part of the paragraph provided ground for the church through its church courts to offer a prophetic witness to the state on a range of issues: “Unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary; or, by way of advice, for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate.”
This second part gives two ways for interaction between church and state. The first way is for the church to act: “by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary.” The second way is for the state to act: “if they be required by the civil magistrate, by way of advice.” Both of these serve to nuance confessional “reluctance” to interfere in legislative processes. If the state is considering something that is unbiblical and would plunge society into great spiritual and moral danger, then the church may act to involve itself in the civil processes. As we have already noticed, in the early decades of the twentieth century, southern Presbyterians clearly felt that beverage alcohol and evolution were “cases extraordinary” that compelled them to speak prophetically to the powers that be. In the PCA’s own history, the homosexual movement and the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized on-demand abortion also were viewed this way—in both instances, the church rightly raised her voice.[15]
Moreover, if the national, state, or local government asks the church for its advice on some matter, the church may certainly comply with that request. Again, within the PCA’s own history, at the 38th General Assembly, we voted to approve a letter to the President of the United States through the head of our chaplains’ commission on the matter of homosexuals in the military, urging the powers that be to maintain the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. It was in response to a request from the federal government for just such advice and was given as a matter of conscience.[16]
Thus, the confession provides avenues to speak prophetically on social, moral, economic or political issues in “cases extraordinary” or when asked by the state. Of course, the question then becomes, “What are cases extraordinary?” As Francis Beattie noted, “It is not easy to decide what are extraordinary cases justifying petition; and then where is the arbiter who is to decide upon such cases.” That may be true. For the purposes of my argument here, we can say this: if state-supported abortion and homosexuality rise to the level of extraordinary cases, then surely the state-supported oppression and injustice of the Civil Rights era did as well. Surely, the basic human rights violations and indignities represented by Jim Crow—“separate, but equal” schools and facilities; poll tests and taxes that disenfranchised; preventing mixed-race worship and other social interactions; the violence perpetrated against those who sought such basic human rights—should have brought protest and petition from every Presbyterian who had the parable of the Good Samaritan in their Bibles.[17]
Moral Imperatives for Faith and Practice
But there is one last piece to all of this. Every southern Presbyterian theologian of the nineteenth and twentieth century recognized that there were places where the Bible obviously spoke to conflicted issues in American culture. Since these men believed the Bible but also believed that the church as church was prohibited from intermeddling in civil affairs, they held that “the best thing is for the same members and officers of the church to act as citizens, and to seek thereby to bring their moral influence to bear” upon political and social questions. In order to ensure that Christian citizens knew best how to do this, ministers needed to instruct their people on the moral imperatives involved in various social issues.[18]
Such instruction was why both James Henley Thornwell and Robert Lewis Dabney attempted to make extensive biblical arguments on slavery. Not only did they want to demonstrate the legitimacy of “southern slavery as it was” to salve the consciences of southern masters, but they also wanted to inculcate the “duties growing out of this relation—duties of the masters and duties of the slave.” Of course, such defenses created problems because the Bible itself never legitimized race-based slavery as practiced in the American South; the Bible also provided alternative readings that held out freedom as the preferable state for humankind. But these proslavery defenses also created issues because even as “private citizens,” Thornwell and Dabney had public authority to teach and advocate on these issues—not just from Presbyterian pulpits, but in Presbyterian newspapers and books published by Presbyterian publishers—in their roles as Presbyterian ministers. As such, they represented the church in what that they said and did, even as “private citizens.”[19]
In the twentieth century, the waters became even murkier. As southern Presbyterian ministers and elders involved themselves in “biblical” defenses of segregation in church and society, they found themselves bumping up against their flawed understanding of the spirituality of the church. On the one hand, the insistence that “the Bible, and the Bible alone, is her rule of faith and practice” meant that southern Presbyterians felt the need to attempt craft a biblical defense for segregation. And they would do so repeatedly and at great length in the pages of the Southern Presbyterian Journal through the 1940s and 1950s. On the other hand, even though they spoke to the issue as “private citizens,” they did so as Presbyterian leaders in Presbyterian magazines meant to influence the Presbyterian church. While it was true that church courts were “not intermeddling with civil affairs,” Presbyterian leaders surely were.[20]
And southern Presbyterians were quick to recognize how such connections between leaders and churches existed when the shoe was on the other foot. For example, when northern Presbyterian ministers came to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1964 to support African Americans who desired the right to vote, the local newspaper wondered, “We know of no Biblical warrant for ministers marching in picket lines…Many God-fearing people are being given cause to wonder just what is happening to the Presbyterian church in the North. What is the source of this sinister pattern of law defiance in the name of morality?” On the surface, these northern ministers were simply exercising their rights as private citizens to support blacks in a civic cause, which was certainly allowable under the southern spirituality of the church logic. However, they were viewed both as illegitimately active and as representatives of the northern Presbyterian church. But surely under southern Presbyterian spirituality of the church teaching, they were well within their rights to be in Hattiesburg as private citizens? The objections signaled a problem in the teaching itself—ministers and elders especially, but all Presbyterians generally, represent the church whether the church as church is doing or saying something or not.[21]
Even further, the Bible itself presents a much different picture on the issues in play during the 1950s and 1960s, one that should have led conservative, Bible-believing Presbyterians to work for racial justice, not against it. Justice for the poor and oppressed is a major biblical theme that continues to have relevance for Christians in this New Testament era. In Isaiah, God’s people are repeatedly arraigned for their failure to seek justice for the poor and oppressed among them (Isa 1:23; 10:1-2; 59:8-9, 15); in Jeremiah, God’s people did not judge with justice or care for the rights of the needy (Jer 5:28); in Ezekiel, God’s people oppressed the poor and needy and did not give them justice (Ezek 22:29); and the other prophets the same. While not all African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s were poor, they were needy and oppressed; the power structures, maintained and guarded by whites, prevented them from receiving justice and basic human rights. And these biblical texts spoke both to the problem (injustice) and the solution (seek justice).
Further, racial reconciliation within the church as God’s people is a biblical issue. Our 2004 PCA Pastoral Letter on the Gospel and Race dealt with this at length. Ephesians 2; Galatians 2-3; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Romans 9-11 all deal with the dividing walls between Jew and Gentile within the context of the church. These “ethnic” divisions—the Jews v. everyone else—serve as a way of talking about our racial divisions today. And of course, Revelation 7 pictures a multi-racial, multi-ethnic church that is true already globally and must be increasingly true locally. These texts demand that we live out that reality now in a church that includes whites and blacks, Asians and Hispanics, and others. Beyond that, essential human rights find their common grace basis in the reality that all human beings are created in God’s image. Everyone is our neighbor; there really is not “them,” but only “us.”[22]
All of this suggests that that southern Presbyterians—the forefathers of the PCA—misunderstood and misapplied what the WCF taught. What originally was meant as a way of keeping the spheres of church and state separate—not the spiritual and “secular,” not faith and politics, not love and justice—evolved to create all sorts of complications. For conservative southern Presbyterians, it became an excuse not to involve themselves in the righting of social wrongs for African Americans both within and outside the church as well as a powerful tool to shut down opposition to the racial status quo. However, righty understood, I believe that the spirituality of the church would not have prohibited, and actually provided the ground for, speaking prophetically on the issues of racial justice during the Civil Rights era and in our present hour as well as to a range of other social, economic, and political issues.
Full Circle: Owning the Past
This all brings us full circle. I suggested at the beginning that one of the reasons that the PCA 43rd General Assembly failed to own the past was its commitment to a flawed understanding of the spirituality of the church doctrine. But it is more than that: as conservative Presbyterians, we have used this flawed understanding of the spirituality of the church as an excuse not to do what is right toward African Americans and we have used it as a tool of power to maintain a system of white privilege. We have demonstrated in times past and present that, when we want to do so, we will forget our commitment to the spirituality of the church and speak truth prophetically to our culture. We have been hypocrites.
In addition, we did not and have not raised our voices when we could have and should have. Conservative southern Presbyterians—the ones who formed the PCA—could have joined the rest of the PCUS in petitioning the authorities on behalf of basic civil rights for southern blacks. They could have joined in support of Brown v. Board of Education, worked within structures to advance toward racial justice, or demonstrated the unity of Christ’s people by integrating their services. A few actually did these kinds of things—Bill Hill and the Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship sought to host integrated evangelistic meetings as they followed Billy Graham’s example; John Neville, when he pastored in Prattville, Alabama, co-chaired a committee that sought racial justice in a town dominated by the Klan; Newton Wilson, when he pastored the Presbyterian church in Ellisville, Mississippi, worked beside John Perkins to seek justice; Larry Mills, the first coordinator of the PCA’s Mission to the United States, partnered with Dan Iverson and others to plant mixed-race churches in the South. I am sure there were others, but they were too few. When the PCA formed, though we said we wanted to be an inclusive church, we did not work hard enough to make that a reality; we tolerated and honored too many who defended segregation and the old Southern way of life; and we have not sought with consistency and determination to listen well and work for our African American brothers and sisters. We were wrong; we must own that past, confess it and repent from it, and purpose to do new practices of obedience.
But we also have to say that the way forward for all of us will be our common commitment to what the church as church should be and should be doing. Central to that life together will be the ministry of the Word, the administration of the sacraments, and prayer. And as we use these effectual means of our salvation, what we will find is that the grace that comes to us through them will transform us. It will drive us out into our world to share the Good News of Jesus, but also to live that transforming Gospel in tangible ways, as we love justice and mercy, as we extend ourselves in risky ways into the lives of our neighbors. This Gospel will not leave us alone and cannot leave us the same. After all, King Jesus is making his world new now through you and me—his grace transforms everything.
Sean Michael Lucas (PhD, Westminster Theolgoical Seminary) is senior minister at the First Presbyterian Church, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and associate professor of church history at Reformed Theological Seminary/Jackson. He gave this as a keynote address at the Leadership Development Resource weekend, hosted at Covenant Theological Seminary on 6 September 2015. He expresses gratitude to historians Peter Slade and Otis Pickett for comments on earlier drafts of this essay. byfaithonline.com/personal-resolution-on-civil-rights-remembrance/ (accessed 15 June 2015). ↑
There were other reasons as well, which I touch on in “Grace, Race, and the PCA,” ByFaith Magazine (Fall 2015): 19-21. ↑
The spirituality of the church doctrine is often said to be a “distinctive” doctrine of the southern Presbyterian tradition (e.g., E. T. Thompson, The Spirituality of the Church: A Distinctive Doctrine of the Presbyterian Church in the United States [Richmond: John Knox, 1961]). However, the same kind of arguments—that the church should restrict itself to “spiritual” matters and avoid engaging in “social or political” matters—can be found in every southern mainstream Protestant denomination in the twentieth century. For examples, see Charles Marsh, God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 82-115, and Mark Newman, Getting Right with God: Southern Baptists and Desegregation, 1945-1995 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001), 168-190. ↑
James Henley Thornwell, “Relation of the Church to Slavery,” in Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell, ed. B. M. Palmer and J. B. Adger, 4 vols. (reprint, Carlisle: Banner of Truth, 1974), 4:382-4, as quoted in Thompson, Spirituality of the Church, 25. ↑
“Preliminary Principles,” The Book of Church Order of the Presbyterian Church in America (2014); Sean Michael Lucas, “Hold Fast That Which is Good: The Public Theology of Robert Lewis Dabney,” (PhD diss: Westminster Theological Seminary, 2002), 66-8, 99-142 (for a comparison between Dabney and Thornwell on spirituality of the church), 174. ↑
Francis R. Beattie, The Presbyterian Standards: An Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms ([1898] Greenville, SC: Southern Presbyterian Press, 1997), 362. ↑
E. Brooks Holifield, The Gentlemen Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture, 1795-1860 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1978), 154; Jack P. Maddex, “From Theocracy to Spirituality: The Southern Presbyterian Reversal on Church and State,” Journal of Presbyterian History 54 (1976): 438-457; Peter Slade, Open Friendship in a Closed Society: Mission Mississippi and a Theology of Friendship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 119, 120; Carolyn Renee Dupont, Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1975 (New York: New York University, 2013), 219.It is notable that antebellum black Presbyterians do not appear to have developed a similar commitment to the “spirituality of the church” idea. Samuel Cornish, for example, published the first black newspaper in America and was prophetic in his denunciation of white racism; James W. C. Pennington was a leader in promoting temperance among blacks; Henry Highland Garnet issued scathing indictments of slavery. The historical question is: why did whites develop such an understanding of WCF 31:4 when blacks did not, even as they shared the same commitment to the confession? See David E. Swift, Black Prophets of Justice: Activist Clergy Before the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989). ↑
Slade, Open Friendship in a Closed Society, 133. ↑
Chad Van Dixhoorn, Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith (Carlisle: Banner of Truth, 2014), 419-22. Van Dixhoorn represents the vast majority of opinion on this section of the WCF. ↑
Samuel M. Wilson, “The Proposed Assembly’s Committee on Social and Moral Questions Is Inexpedient, Unwise and Unconstitutional,” Union Seminary Review 45 (1934): 191-2; S. K. Dodson, “The Church and Social Service,” Christian Observer (22 August 1934): 10; William Childs Robinson, “Questions Which Divide Us as Citizens,” Christian Observer (26 December 1934): 15. ↑
MGAPCUS (1886): 60; MGAPCUS (1914): 71, both quoted in A Digest of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, 1861-1965 (Atlanta: Office of the General Assembly, 1966), 143-44. ↑
Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Preachers, Pedagogues, and Politicians: The Evolution Controversy in North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), 165-66. ↑
Chad Van Dixhoorn, ed., The Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly: 1643-1652, 5 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 4:246-47; John R. DeWitt, Jus Divinum: The Westminster Assembly and the Divine Right of Church Government (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1969), 27; Robert S. Paul, The Assembly of the Lord: Politics and Religion in the Westminster Assembly and ‘the Great Debate’ (London: T&T Clark, 1997), 522-45. ↑
For the political self-understanding of the Westminster divines, see Paul, Assembly of the Lord. Likewise, the idea that ministers and churches were not to intermeddle in civil affairs would have been news to John Knox: see Jane Dawson, John Knox (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). For the suggestion that this section had Roman Catholics in view, see Van Dixhoorn, Confessing the Faith, 421. ↑
See the PCA position paper on abortion (1978): www.pcahistory.org/pca/2-015.pdf; and its declaration of conscience on homosexuality (1992): www.pcahistory.org/pca/2-399.pdf (accessed 17 June 2015). ↑
MPCAGA (2010): 229-31, 648, 667-70. ↑
Beattie, Presbyterian Standards, 363. It is notable that the 1970 PCUS General Assembly did debate the issue of “cases extraordinary” in relationship to petitioning governments. They concluded that the standards of the church made provision for the church to petition civil governments “where the church’s mission to tell and demonstrate the love of God in Jesus Christ requires more than individual efforts alone.” See “Day by Day in Memphis” Presbyterian Outlook (29 June 1970): 12. ↑
Beattie, Presbyterian Standards, 362. ↑
Thornwell, “Relation of the Church to Slavery,” 386; Sean Michael Lucas, Robert Lewis Dabney: A Southern Presbyterian Life (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2005), 117-28, 143-50. ↑
On southern Presbyterian “biblical” defenses of segregation, see Sean Michael Lucas, For a Continuing Church: The Roots of the Presbyterian Church in America (Phillipsburg, P&R, 2015), 112-26; David Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). Strikingly, Nelson Bell felt the need to defend himself against claims that he violated the spirituality of the church when he attacked Communism in the pages of the Southern Presbyterian Journal: see Lucas, Continuing Church, 104-5. ↑
Hattiesburg American, 25 January 1964 and 4 February 1964, quoted in Dupont, Mississippi Praying, 190-91. Notably, the editor of the Hattiesburg American was an elder in the PCUS. ↑
Timothy Keller, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just (New York: Dutton, 2010). ↑
Volume 1 Issue 1
May 2016 | 104 pages
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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 15:28:28 GMT -5
“It Was Made to Appear Like that to Them:” Islam’s Denial of Jesus’ Crucifixion
Gregory R. Lanier
Assistant Professor of New Testament
Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando
Introduction[1]
“The report of my death was an exaggeration.” —Mark Twain[2]
Of the major theological divides that separate Islam and Christianity, one of the most difficult to pin down is the denial of the crucifixion of Jesus in Muslim tradition. Though the assertion that Jesus did not die on the cross appears in only part of one difficult verse in the Qur’an (Q4:157, see below), scholars agree that the majority view within Islam is that this verse “affirms categorically that Christ did not die on the cross and that God raised him to Godself.”[3] In fact, the rejection of the crucifixion has “become a sort of shibboleth of orthodoxy,”[4] thus presenting a significant challenge for Muslim-Christian engagement.
This dogma is not, however, without its difficulties: it requires rejection of the broad scholarly consensus that the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth outside Jerusalem under the oversight of Pontius Pilate is an indisputable historical fact; it strains exegesis of other parts of the Qur’an and appears to rely on strained exegesis of one verse; and it has spawned a wide range of often speculative and contradictory explanations.[5] But does the Qur’an itself actually deny the resurrection? Such is the question this article attempts to answer. By analyzing the textual data and interpretive history, it will be argued that the belief that Jesus was not crucified actually stems from an anti-Jewish polemical passage that was misinterpreted along both Shi’a and Sunni lines and cemented by medieval orthodoxy. In other words, it is not the Qur’an itself that indisputably denies the crucifixion, but the scholars defending Islamic orthodoxy.
We will proceed in three steps: examining the Qur’an’s view of Jesus’ death in itself; outlining three options within Islamic tradition that attempt to explain why the denial of the crucifixion became dogma; and proposing an alternate explanation for the long-standing durability of this denial within Islamic thought. This third step will identify the root cause of the debate—scriptural exegesis versus dogmatic tradition—which in turn will prompt reflections on Christian-Muslim engagement as well as similar “in-house” tensions within our own Christian traditions.
The Qur’an’s Teaching on Jesus’ Death
Given the primacy of place given to the Qur’an in all Islamic schools, the logical starting point is to examine the textual data within the Qur’an that has led to this denial of the crucifixion.[6] Two aspects of the question should be distinguished but not separated: what does the Qur’an say about Jesus’ death in general, and what does it say about the crucifixion in particular?
Can Jesus, as a Messenger of Allah, Actually Die in Principle?
The antecedent question to that of the crucifixion is whether the Jesus presented in the Qur’an could actually die a normal human death to begin with. Within Islamic interpretation, there are two competing lines of thought: (i) given Jesus’ elevated status as Prophet, Messenger, and Messiah (which, incidentally, the Qur’an does not quite define clearly), he could not actually die but instead “was raised body and soul to heaven,”[7] where he met Muhammad during his Night Ascent;[8] or (ii) Jesus, just like Muhammad and other prophets, will—or already did—die from natural causes.[9] Most scholars agree that four verses deal with the possibility of Jesus’ death[10]:
Q3:55—God said, ‘Jesus, I will take you back and raise you up to Me: I will purify you of the disbelievers. To the Day of Resurrection I will make those who follow you superior to those who disbelieved. Then you will all return to Me and I will judge between you regarding your differences.
Q3:144—Muhammad is only a messenger before whom many messengers have been and gone.
Q5:117—[Jesus said,] I was a witness over them during my time among them. Ever since You took my soul, You alone have been the watcher over them: You are witness to all things.
Q19:33—[Jesus said,] Peace was on me the day I was born, and will be on me the day I die and the day I am raised to life again.’
A few observations may be made about this selection of verses. First, Q3:144 indicates that not only is it possible for Messengers of Allah to “pass away”[11] but, in fact, some have done so.[12] Second, Jesus appears well aware of the possibility that his time on earth will cease. In Q5:117, he speaks of a distinction between the time he was among humans and the time when Allah took his soul; likewise, Q3:55 speaks of Allah’s removal of Jesus to heaven. Scholars are divided over the interpretation of these verses, however, due to the difficulty of the verb tawaffa in each. It can be taken four ways: “cause to die,” given its typical use in the Qur’an;[13] Allah’s act of raising Jesus, body and soul, to heaven while bypassing death; some sort of soul-sleep that was not death; or the termination of Jesus’ time on earth without reference to physical death at all.[14] Third, verse 19:33 perhaps resolves the conundrum by indicating that Jesus expected a literal, physical death.[15] Taking stock of the exegetical options, the most natural answer to the question posed is “Yes”: on the whole the Qur’an does not explicitly deny the possibility of Jesus’ death in principle (regardless of his special status) but, rather, strongly implies “that he can die a ‘normal biological death’” just like any other Messenger.[16]
Was Jesus Crucified on the Cross?
If Jesus could in principle die, the focal question becomes whether crucifixion—as attested in the Gospels and affirmed by historical scholars—was the cause. The locus classicus of the debate is Q4:157, for which various translations are provided below:
Haleem—[Jews] said, ‘We have killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the Messenger of God.’ (They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, though it was made to appear like that to them; those that disagreed about him are full of doubt, with no knowledge to follow, only supposition: they certainly did not kill him.)
Sahih International—And for their saying, ‘Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.’ And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but another was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain.
Yusuf Ali—That they said (in boast), ‘We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah’; – but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not.
This notoriously difficult verse is the only reference to the crucifixion in the Qur’an, and the apparent denial of the crucifixion is, as is clear in Haleem’s and Ali’s renderings, a parenthetical statement modifying the primary clause speaking of the Jew’s claim of killing Jesus. The underlined portion represents the fundamental exegetical challenge of the verse. The passive verbal phrase shubbiha lahum (“caused to appear”) is a hapax legomenon (appearing only once in the Qur’an) that has generated numerous interpretations which can be grouped along two basic understandings of the verb.[17]
The most common interpretation, often called the “substitution theory,” takes the implied object of the verb to be Jesus himself: namely, it was not Jesus who was crucified, but someone who “appeared” like him to the Jews and was killed in his place (e.g., the Sahih International rendering). This theory maintains that the Jews intended to crucify Jesus, and a historical crucifixion indeed happened, but Allah controverted the Jews by placing Jesus’ visage on another person who, subsequently, took his place on the cross. Islamic exegetes have generated a plethora of possible identities of the person who bore Jesus’ image and replaced him on the cross: a passing Jew, a Roman soldier, Judas Iscariot, Simon of Cyrene, or one of the apostles such as Tatanus, Sergius, or Peter.[18] In short, the substitutionist reading, which is the most popular among Muslims today, is “that someone was, in fact, crucified, but it was not Jesus.”[19]
A less common but exegetically valid theory holds that the verbal phrase “is applied not to Jesus, but to the event of the Crucifixion.”[20] That is to say, the implied object of the verb is the act of crucifixion itself, suggesting that no one actually died on the cross, but rather it only “appeared” to take place, thus fooling the Jews into thinking they had successfully killed Jesus (e.g., the Haleem and Yusuf Ali translations). Proponents of this reading shift the emphasis in the direction of vindicating Allah’s protection of Jesus from suffering an unnatural, violent death at the hands of his enemies, the Jews.[21] The event of the crucifixion was a mirage.
Notably, both of these exegetical options allow room for difference of opinion regarding whether Jesus could (in theory) or actually did die a physical death; where they agree, of course, is denying the possibility that, even if Jesus as Messenger and Messiah could die, he certainly did not die through crucifixion at the hands of the Jews.
Three Explanatory Frameworks for the Denial of the Crucifixion
The preceding cursory summary captures the orthodox position within both Sunni and Shi’a traditions, which interpret the Qur’an as rejecting Jesus’ crucifixion at Calvary outright (at least in some form).[22] We will see below that some voices within Islam in recent years have begun to question this dogma. But before doing so, let us explore why this mainstream Islamic creed has been so persistent. How has the doctrine been so “sticky” over time? Three frameworks may provide part of the explanation for the doctrine’s entrenched status.
Docetism and the Person of Jesus
A common explanation offered by outside observers (not necessarily Islamic “insiders”) focuses in the impact of Christian heresies on Muhammad and his contemporaries. It is often observed that Q4:157 has a noticeable Docetic feel to it, whereby “Jesus’ suffering only ‘seemed’ (dokein) to be physical but had, in fact, more of an apparitional quality.”[23] Some scholars detect similar notions elsewhere in the Qur’an, and many argue that various Christian sects holding unorthodox christological views were active in the Arabian peninsula during Muhammad’s day and likely influenced him, including Monophysites, Julianists, Gnostic Basilideans, Nestorians, and other groups.[24] If true, the influence of such group (or groups) upon early Islam might explain the Docetic/Gnostic tenor of Q4:157, whereby Muhammad and his followers may have believed that such an apparitional crucifixion was, in fact, “perfectly in line with the early and apparently widespread Christian perspective” they had encountered.[25] In other words, Muhammad thought his teaching on the crucifixion was the Christian teaching as well—unaware that it was a version of “Christianity” deemed heretical. There is a prima facie appeal to this explanation. However, the main problem with the Docetism theory, as many scholars have observed, is that Docetism and other Gnostic strands emphasize Jesus’ absolute divinity and deny his real humanity (Jesus only “seemed” human), while the bulk of the teaching of the Qur’an and Hadiths—even if Muhammad was in some way influenced by such groups—emphasizes precisely the opposite, namely, denying Jesus’ divinity and affirming his humanness.[26]
The Relationship of Allah to Jesus as Prophet
A second explanation focuses on the Qur’an’s teaching about Jesus’ position with respect to Allah. There is a “notable selectivity with which the Qur’an describes and approves of Jesus Christ.”[27] Jesus is mentioned in 15 Suras and 93 verses; while this is not trivial, Abraham is mentioned over 240 times and Moses over 500 times. The Qur’an affirms some basic facts about Jesus life, such as his virgin birth, moral righteousness, reception of the Injil (gospel), and various miracles. However, even in the presentation of supernatural events surrounding Jesus, the Qur’an takes a fairly subdued position that assigns little if any theological significance to them.[28] Islam places the emphasis not on the special nature of Jesus but on the working of Allah; various literary devices in the Qur’an are used repeatedly to “minimize the role of Jesus in initiating and carrying out the miracles” and onto the power and permission of Allah.[29]
Against this backdrop, it is argued that Muslim interpreters have maintained the denial of the crucifixion out of a combination of a disinterest in reconstructing the historical Jesus (negative aspect) and a strong desire to make a theological statement about Allah (positive aspect).[30] The statement is simply this: Allah will not let his enemies vanquish his chosen Messenger. The denial of the crucifixion is a denial of the power of mankind to overturn Allah’s will; the Jews cannot kill Jesus because Allah is the ultimate responsible actor who will determine when and whether his anointed Messenger will die.[31] In short, if anyone will put Jesus to death, it is Allah—not the Jews—for he has promised to vindicate his prophets; if Jesus were crucified, Allah would be contradicted.[32] While this construction rightly draws upon key themes pertaining to the qur’anic conception of Jesus, it tends to downplay the high status placed on Jesus[33] and the bare fact that many Messengers, including Muhammad, have indeed died—and often brutally.
Islamic Conception of Salvation
A third approach locates Islam’s trenchant denial of the crucifixion in its attempt at “undermining the construct of redemption.”[34] On this view, by calling into question whether Jesus actually died on the cross at all, Islamic scholars have severed the link between the crucifixion and the redemptive importance assigned to it by Christianity. Given the Qur’an’s denial of Jesus’ divinity as well as its generally negative stance towards the biblical idea of human depravity or original sin,[35] Islam does not teach a concept of atonement, which is obviously tied up in the event of the cross for Christians. Thus, not only is the crucifixion of a Messenger of Allah (even a special one like Jesus) soteriologically unnecessary in Islam, it would actually contradict the general teaching of Islam regarding the nature of salvation; “since Islam has no such doctrine [of redemption], such a death never would take place.”[36] In other words, the denial of the crucifixion is a kind of doctrinal Occam’s Razor: it serves no purpose, so it is rejected.[37] Though it is generally the most compelling option, the problem facing this explanatory framework is that it assumes the Qur’an has soteriology in view in 4:157, which may not, in fact, be the case.
Constructing a Possible Explanation
If the preceding explanatory frameworks are inadequate to account for why traditional Islamic teaching so strongly clings to the denial of the crucifixion, what may account for it? As some Islamic scholars have begun to acknowledge, the starting point may lie in “exegetical atomism,” that is, “studying quranic verses in isolation.”[38] This method has dominated Islamic scholarship from its earliest days, and generations of interpreters have accordingly built a doctrine denying the crucifixion based solely on the exegesis of a single part of a debated verse, without paying attention to its context.[39] In other words, the crucifixion has become heresy in Islam due to inadequate hermeneutics. A more nuanced approach to Q4:157 shows that the single text that appears to reject the crucifixion actually may not actually do so at all, but through non-contextual interpretation it has been appropriated by Shi’a and Sunni traditions to serve competing doctrinal agendas.
Exegetical Context of Surah 4: Jewish Polemic
The broader context of the key passage indicates that the most sound reading of Q4:157 is that it functions as a polemic against the Jews, not as a denial of a historical fact about Jesus or doctrine of Christianity. If the exegetical window of 4:157 is expanded, one finds that the surrounding verses strongly accuse the Jews—who, as is well known, are treated by the Qur’an quite harshly in some cases, and with some mutual respect as “People of the Book” in others—of various forms infidelity:
4:153 Worshipping the golden calf—“Even after clear revelations had come down to them, they took the calf as an object of worship”
4:155a Breaking the covenant—“for breaking their pledge”
4:155b Rejecting revelation—“for rejecting God’s revelations … for saying ‘Our minds are closed’”
4:155c Murdering prophets—“for unjustly killing their prophets”
4:156 Slandering Mary—“they disbelieved and uttered a terrible slander against Mary”
4:160 Various wrongdoings—“for the wrongdoings done by the Jews, We forbade them certain good things”
4:161 Financial abuse—“for taking usury when they had been forbidden to do so … for wrongfully devouring other people’s property”
The entire passage is a sharply-pointed rhetorical onslaught against the faithlessness of the Jews, concluding thus: “those of them that reject the truth [Allah] has prepared an agonizing torment” (4:161b). The verse about the crucifixion, then, forms a key part of broader attack on the multitude of sinful acts committed by Jews, culminating in their rejection of Jesus himself, which was forbidden: “there is none of the People of the Book but must believe in him before his death” (4:159).[40] In other words, 4:157 indicts of the Jews for their attempt to crucify Jesus, to gain victory over him, and to repudiate him as their specific Messenger from Allah.[41]
If this is true, how should the key verb shubbiha lahum (“caused to appear”) be taken? Verse 4:142, which introduces this series of condemnations of hypocrites who disobey God (including the Jews), provides the exegetical key: “The hypocrites try to deceive God, but it is He who causes them to be deceived.” In light of the surrounding verses, a straightforward reading of 4:157 becomes evident: the Jews have claimed to controvert Allah by crucifying Jesus, but Allah has deceived them into thinking they have won, when in fact they stand condemned.[42] In other words, given the focus of the entire passage, “the Crucifixion [is] one example of Israelite infidelity. … The Quran intends to defend Jesus from the claims of the Jews. … Whether or not Jesus died is simply not the matter at hand.”[43] Put differently: the issue in Q4:157 is not the historicity or non-historicity of the crucifixion at all. That is simply not the point of the passage. Rather, the crucifixion episode is yet another way in which Jews (according to the Qur’an) have rebelled against God; they thought they won, but they were deceived. Whether or not the crucifixion actually happened in Jerusalem is not the focus of the passage at all.
Such a re-reading does justice to the context of the Surah and resolves a nagging historical question: if Muhammad did in fact make the astounding historical claim that Jesus was not, in fact, crucified on the cross (which, recall, is widely accepted among secular historians and which was the source of long-standing conflict between Christians and Jews for six centuries before Muhammad), “such a revolutionary account—if any—would be well remembered and well preserved.”[44] But in fact the opposite is the case; Muhammad left behind only part of one ambiguous verse to that effect.
In fact, as scholars have begun increasingly to recognize the pitfalls of traditional Islamic “atomistic” hermeneutics, some have argued that the Qur’an is ultimately silent or, at least, ambivalent regarding the actual historicity of the crucifixion. Consider three scholarly samples:
Over the last thirty years, scholars have found that the Qur’an does not clearly reject the idea that Jesus was placed on the cross and died there.[45]
The meaning of verse 157 is best understood not as a statement of historical fact about Jesus but, rather, as a rebuke of the Jews. The operating hermeneutic here is to situate the denial of crucifixion within the Qur’an’s negative attitude toward the Jews; this allows an interpretation that shifts our attention away from what happened to Jesus in the direction of what the Qur’an says about the Jews.[46]
The underlying theme of the set of ayas in which the reference to the crucifixion verse is situated relates specifically to the condemnation of disbelief (kufr) and has little bearing on the discussion of the historicity of the crucifixion.[47]
These observations fit quite logically with the Qur’an’s general lack of interest in presenting the “historical Jesus” and its pervasive treatment of Jesus as primarily an argumentative prop for elevating Muhammad (among other things).[48] Thus, the Islamic dogma that emphasizes the denial of the crucifixion may have arisen from the overly narrow hermeneutical approach used by the majority of traditional Islamic commentators—an approach which becomes particularly problematic when dealing with a verse that hinges on an ambiguous hapax legomenon.[49] A more contextually sensitive reading of the key verse makes clear that what is in play is not a denial of a historical crucifixion but a polemical attack on those who sought it. What, then, has given such an interpretation its staying power?
Sectarian Conflict: Shi’a vs. Sunni Eschatology
I suggest that the primary reason the denial of the crucifixion attained creedal status relates to eschatological conflicts “connected to the sectarian milieu in which Islamic doctrine developed.”[50] While the Sunni Hadith never actually mentions the issue of the crucifixion at all, the Shi’ite Hadith “explicitly denies that Jesus was crucified.”[51] The reason on the Shi’a side is fairly apparent. As Shi’a doctrine developed (particularly the Twelver strand), Jesus quickly became associated with the Twelfth Imam (Madhi), and both men will play prominent roles in their return at the end of the world. The denial of the crucifixion, and the related view that Jesus did not die at all but was raised directly to heaven, became a perfect fit with the Shi’a concept of occultation: both Jesus and the Twelfth Imam have remained alive in a state of hiding, awaiting the second coming.[52] Sunni eschatology, however, insists that there would be no other Madhi, that the Twelfth Imam is a myth, and that Jesus himself is this single eschatological figure: “Jesus became the Sunni answer to the Shii … and his preservation from death was accordingly emphasized.”[53] In short, both main divisions of Islam have made use of the denial of the crucifixion to support their competing eschatological doctrines which, somewhat ironically, ultimately rely on the same essential tenet: Jesus, as an eschatological redeemer figure, could not undergo the humiliation of death by crucifixion.
Fortress Mentality of Orthodoxy
Once the atomistic reading of Q4:157 was firmly integrated into the eschatological framework of either division of Islam—regardless of the flawed underlying exegesis—it became nearly impossible in practice to question. Though only a single quranic verse mentions the crucifixion, and though any further references in the accepted Hadith and Sunna are quite rare (and absent altogether on the Sunni side), the interpretive tradition of commentators (tafsir) from the Middle Ages onward has been an imposing force in shaping how Muslims read the Qur’an. One could describe it as interpretive inertia: “over successive centuries the discussion of the crucifixion within the Islamic tradition … evolved to accommodate the doctrine of denial in a way which obscured the neutrality of the original Qur’anic position.”[54] Even as alternative approaches have been voiced, they have had little impact on either mainstream (conservative) scholarship or the average Muslim, for the “majority of traditional scholars in all sects of Islam are not willing to question medievalist constructs.”[55] Given the inherent priority Islam places on upholding the accepted traditions, accepted tenets are rather difficult to change; medieval exegesis, however flawed, has a conditioning effect on all subsequent scholarship. There are dangers in assaulting the fortress of orthodoxy. Consequently, “the point is that tafsir, not the Qur’an, denies the Crucifixion.”[56]
Conclusion and Reflections
Factoring in all the data, the denial of the crucifixion within Islam ultimately seems to have developed as follows: competing opinions existed about the possibility of Jesus’ earthly, physical death; a single qur’anic text ambiguously describes how Allah would confound the Jews into thinking they had succeeded in crucifying Jesus, as part of a larger polemical attack against Jewish unbelief; Shi’a and Sunni scholars in the Middle Ages appropriated this verse to support their own views of Jesus’ role in the eschaton; and this medieval rejection of the crucifixion has proven difficult to dislodge.[57]
This evaluation of a stronghold doctrine within Islam raises a few important questions pertaining to how Christians should engage with the Qur’an and Muslims. Whose version of Islam should be considered normative? How should a Christian interact with a subject if the Qur’an leans in one direction, while orthodox dogma is calcified in another? Does one side with the Qur’an or with the scholars? How should Christians sensitively navigate the tension between what seems to be the teaching of a given qur’anic verse and a cherished position that a Muslim friend might have been taught for years? How might Christians best seek inroads into the Muslim worldview by examining the Qur’an with fresh eyes and respectfully asking questions that might lead a Muslim friend to do the same?
Moreover, the juxtaposition of scriptural teaching with dogmatic tradition outlined here should prompt all Christians to pause and reflect on areas within our own theological system (Reformed or otherwise) where such tensions may be at play. In essence, the Qur’an says one thing, but through a series of interpretive maneuvers made by folks who were attempting to defend a certain position and maintain that position at all costs, an erroneous interpretation became the overwhelmingly accepted orthodoxy. This can happen in Christian circles, too. We can learn at least three things from this discussion.
First, with respect to the doctrinal “fortress mentality”: we should be ever-willing to examine our own thinking (or that of our church, seminary, favorite theologians, etc.) to determine if there are any areas where we have developed a view that may not be exegetically bulletproof (and may, on close inspection, be simply unfaithful to Scripture), but which we implicitly treat as the “litmus test of orthodoxy” against which everyone else is measured. Are there any doctrines, particularly secondary ones, for which more charity is needed towards those who sincerely interpret things differently?
Second, with respect to “atomistic” exegesis: we should strive as best we can to interpret any given biblical text in a way that is faithful to its local context (the surrounding verses of the passage) and its broader context (the message of Scripture as a whole). If our exegesis of a single verse militates against the plain sense of other passages—as with Q4:157 versus other passages on Jesus’ death in the Qur’an—we should perhaps rethink our exegesis.
Third, with respect to “scripture” versus “dogma”: we need to work very hard faithfully and soberly to ensure our exegesis and doctrinal formulations mutually inform one another in a healthy, balanced way. Within the Reformed tradition we reject the view that scriptural exegesis and systematic theology are somehow polarized. We strive, rather, to ground our systematic theology in sound exegetical work, while simultaneously admitting that a central feature of “sound exegetical work” is the shaping influence that theology (church fathers, confessions, Reformed covenantal theology, etc.) has on the very endeavor of interpreting scriptural texts.
This essay is a revised version of a course assignment for the inaugural Christian Encounter with Islam course at RTS. I extend my thanks to Dr. James Anderson (RTS-Charlotte) for his constructive feedback and to the other faculty members of RTS who are engaged in teaching this important curriculum throughout the seminary. I hope this piece reflects the important role this initiative will play in ensuring RTS graduates are equipped with both a heart for the Muslim community and a mind that understands Islam at a level that is more than cursory—both of which are increasingly needed in the current cultural, political, and religious climate. ↑
From a note to a friend in 1897; often misquoted, “Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.” ↑
Michael F. Fonner, “Jesus’ Death by Crucifixion in the Qur’an: An Issue of Interpretation and Muslim-Christian Relations,” JES 29 (1992), 442. This view is held not only within popular Islam but among mainstream Islamic scholars; e.g., “Most people familiar with the topic understand that the Qur’an denies Jesus’ crucifixion” (W. Richard Oakes, “Review of The Crucifixion and the Qur’an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought,” The Muslim World 101 [2011], 119). While we want to avoid painting all Islam(s) with a broad brush—there is, of course, much diversity among the major branches as well as among individual clerics and believers—the standard view is widespread enough that it has its own Wikipedia page! ↑
Gabriel Said Reynolds, “The Muslim Jesus: Dead or Alive?” Bulletin of SOAS 72/2 (2009), 237; he further notes, “most critical scholars accept that this is indeed the Quran’s teaching. … The prevalent Islamic teaching [is] that Jesus escaped death on the cross, that instead God raised him body and soul to heaven, and that God will send him back to earth in the end times. … This teaching is standard in classical Muslim literature.” ↑
Reynolds comments, “[The theories of classical commentators] are inconsistent and often contradictory. They have all of the tell-tale signs of speculative exegesis” (“Muslim Jesus,” 258). ↑
Two objections might be raised at this point. First, why privilege the Qur’an’s interpretation of history over biblical and extrabiblical sources (e.g, Josephus, Tacitus) that, in the hands of modern scholarship, have rendered the Jesus’ “death by crucifixion … so high on the ‘almost impossible to doubt or deny’ scale of historical ‘facts’” (James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003], 339)? Second, why privilege the Qur’an over, say, the Hadiths, Sunna, or other popular and authoritative Islamic literature? The simple answer to both is that, if we are to allow Islam to speak for itself, we must recognize “the particular importance of the Muslim belief that the Qur’an conveys God’s definitive word on all subjects, including Christianity” and any historical events that the Qur’an addresses (Fonner, “Jesus’ Death,” 433; emphasis added). Much like how many Christians (particularly those within the Reformed tradition) take the OT and NT to be normative (in some sense, which is, of course, debated) on our interpretation of historical data, so also Muslims. ↑
Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus,” 245. ↑
Khaleel Muhammad, “The Case of the Overlooked Fatwa,” JES 46/3 (2011), 381-382. The basic premise of this view is that Jesus, by virtue of the special status given to him by the Qur’an (which, of course, still falls short of divinity) cannot be allowed to die by Allah. ↑
Muhammad, “Overlooked Fatwa,” 384. ↑
Unless otherwise noted, the Qur’an translations are taken from The Qur’an (Trans. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Another key data point for the possibility of Jesus’ death is 4:159, which will be covered below in our treatment of 4:157. ↑
Other translations render the verse more clearly as referring to death or passing away than that of Haleem: e.g., “many were the messenger that passed away before him” (Yusuf Ali). ↑
“There is little doubt that the Qur’an affirms that prophets die. … Moreover, the Qur’an also asserts that prophets have been slain” (Fonner, “Jesus’ Death,” 441). ↑
E.g., the Shakir translation of 5:117 reads, “but when Thou didst cause me to die…” Muhammad concludes, “Since this verse [5:117], in its affirmation of the end of Jesus among his people, comes without any conditioner, there is no justification for saying that Jesus is alive and did not die” (“Overlooked Fatwa,” 381). ↑
See summary of views in Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus,” 245. ↑
“Here Jesus – speaking miraculously as an infant – implies that his death will be like that of any other human” (Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus,” 239). Even with this verse, a minority of scholars hold that the death envisaged by Jesus has not happened in the past but refers to a future event. ↑
Mustafa Shah, “Review of The Crucifixion and the Qur’an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 12 (2010), 193. ↑
Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus,” 238; Shah, “Review of The Crucifixion,” 193. ↑
Anthony McRoy, “The Christ of Shia Islam,” ERT 30/4 (2006), 341; Oakes, “Review of The Crucifixion,” 121; Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus,” 241-242. Reynolds elaborates, “Their [classical scholars] principal disagreement is only whether God cast the image of Jesus on a number of people, from whom the Jews chose one to crucify, or whether God cast the image of Jesus only on one specific person.” The identities of Tatanus and Sergius are unknown. ↑
Fonner, “Jesus’ Death,” 443. “The common belief among Muslims that the crucifixion was an illusion, or that someone else was substituted for Jesus” (“Jesus, Son of Mary,” The New Encyclopedia of Islam [ed. Cyril Glassé; New York: AltaMira Press, 2002], 239); “the dominant opinion among Muslims is that another person was substituted in Jesus’ place” (Muhammad, “Overlooked Fatwa,” 378). ↑
Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus,” 238. ↑
“This is what the verses encapsulate … as well as that Jesus would complete his term without being killed or crucified, but instead expire through natural death” (Muhammad, “Overlooked Fatwa, 383). ↑
The Sunni view is encapsulated in the following Saudi fatwa: “The Second Advent of Jesus is so important to majoritarian Islamic creed that the Permanent Committee for Research and Fatwa, of Saudi Arabia … proclaimed: It has been established by proofs from the Scripture and the authentic traditions that Jesus, son of Mary, was not killed and did not die. … Whoever says that Jesus son of Mary died … is to be ruled as a disbeliever” (Muhammad, “Overlooked Fatwa,” 379). In other words, like the Trinity (which violates tawhid and results in shirk), so also does belief in the crucifixion of Jesus result in shirk. With regard to Shi’ism, “the Shi’ite Hadith [e.g., Abu ‘Abd Allah], unlike its Sunni equivalent, explicitly denies that Jesus was crucified” (McRoy, “Christ of Shia,” 349). ↑
Fonner, “Jesus’ Death,” 444. Space does not permit engaging in a summary of the Docetism heresy of early Christianity. ↑
Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus,” 252; McRoy, “Christ of Shia,” 349. ↑
Shah, “Review of The Crucifixion,” 192. ↑
“The Qur’an presents a Christology of the human Christ … The qur’anic Jesus is not only fully and only human but … also exemplarily human” (Fonner, “Jesus’ Death,” 438, 444. ↑
Fonner, “Jesus’ Death,” 432. ↑
McRoy, “Christ of Shia,” 340. “These miracles are reported in the Qur’an in a perfunctory way and are presented as simple demonstrations of God’s power” (Kate Zebri, “Contemporary Muslim Understanding of the Miracles of Jesus,” The Muslim World 90 [2000], 71). ↑
Zebri, “Miracles of Jesus,” 75. ↑
“The emphasis [in 4:157] is in looking at the passage not as relating historical fact but, rather, as asserting theological truth” (Fonner, “Jesus’ Death,” 444). ↑
Oakes, “Review of The Crucifixion,” 120; Fonner, “Jesus’ Death,” 445. ↑
“The Quran’s denial of Jesus’ death reflects instead Muhammad’s particular idea that Prophets are always vindicated” (Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus,” 253). ↑
Fathi Osman, Zalman Schachter, Gerard S. Sloyan, and Dermot A. Lane, “Jesus in Jewish-Christian-Muslim Dialogue,” JES 14/3 (1977), 451: “The Qur’an refers clearly to a special place of Jesus in his relation to God, which is different from the place of any other prophet, even if the Qur’an rejects the notion that Jesus may be called ‘Son of God’.” ↑
Shah, “Review of The Crucifixion,” 197. ↑
McRoy, “Christ of Shia,” 340. ↑
Fonner, “Jesus’ Death,” 443. Chedid provides an example of this view: “Since Islam rejects the whole concept of a fallen human nature and the principle of vicarious atonement for sin, it follows naturally that the denial of the meaning of the cross becomes a condition for their theology” (Bassam M. Chedid, Islam: What Every Christian Should Know [New York: EP Books, 2004], 199). ↑
“The crucifixion of Jesus does not play a role in the Islamic perspective any more than does his superhuman origin, for salvation in Islam results from the recognition of the Absoluteness of God and not from a sacrificial mystery. Since Islam believes that Jesus will return at the end of time, his death was no more than apparent and did not, as in Christian belief, involve a resurrection after the event” (New Encyclopedia of Islam, 239). ↑
Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus,” 252. ↑
Westerners often run into this problem when engaging with Islamic scholarship, which approaches the Qur’an in a “literalist fashion; that is, each sentence or passage is interpreted for what the words say, quite apart from their historical and literary context” (Fonner, “Jesus’ Crucifixion,” 435). ↑
Yusuf Ali translation; emphasis added. ↑
“[The Qur’an] presents a Jesus who has an ethically/geographically restricted ministry, since Islam holds that only Muhammad was chosen to be the Messenger to the whole world. [Imams teach that] ‘Allah sent Jesus especially to the children of Israel’” (McRoy, “Christ of Shia,” 345). ↑
“Since [the reference to the Crucifixion] exists only in the context of responding to the Jewish claim, the discourse structure suggests it was denying the capability of the Jews to have done this depending on their own power” (Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus,” 253). This “deception” need not be taken in an overly negative sense, given that Islam also affirms the truthfulness and uprightness of Allah. It is, perhaps, akin to the use of deception in military tactics. ↑
Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus,” 252. ↑
Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus,” 258. ↑
Mohammed, “Overlooked Fatwa,” 378. ↑
Fonner, “Jesus’ Death,” 440. ↑
Shah, “Review of The Crucifixion,” 193. ↑
“We note that the Qur’an is not interested in reconstructing the historical Jesus. … Rather than attempting to reconstruct historical persons and events, the Qur’an recollects them in order to inspire piety. … For the Qur’a¨n, Jesus belongs within the framework of God’s sending of prophets and books (Fonner, “Jesus’ Death,” 436; emphasis added). ↑
“The problem with most of the suggestions about how to read and understand puzzling phrases in the Qur’an … is that the interpretive focus has often been too narrow, confining attention to the immediate context of the troubling words and phrases and imagining a solution, either grammatical, lexical or historical, without taking a wider Qur’anic context into account” (Mohammed, “Overlooked Fatwa,” 384). ↑
Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus,” 250. ↑
McRoy, “Christ of Shia,” 349. See note 21 above. ↑
Shah writes, “In Twelver Shi’a commentaries the denial of the crucifixion is upheld. … The substitute legend in Islamic exegesis probably had its origins in a Shi’a milieu as it fits in exactly with the doctrine of a Hidden Imam who resides in the unseen realm, although it is recognised that the idea of substitution was [also] adopted quite early by Sunni exegetes” (“Review of The Crucifixion,” 195). ↑
Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus,” 251. ↑
Shah, “Review of The Crucifixion,” 191. ↑
Muhammad, “Overlooked Fatwa,” 387. Oakes also comments on the pervasive “influence that medieval tafsir still have on today’s average Muslim” (“Review of The Crucifixion,” 121). ↑
Reynolds, “Muslim Jesus, 252. ↑
Shah summarizes it well: “The hermeneutic culture out of which the doctrine of denial emerged was shaped by a complex array of dogmatic exigencies and … the distinction between scripture and its interpretation tends to be inappropriately overlooked by those who speak of the Qur’an denying the crucifixion” (“Review of The Crucifixion,” 191). ↑
Volume 1 Issue 1
May 2016 | 104 pages
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Introducing Reformed Faith & Practice
Divine Fullness: A Dogmatic Sketch
The Life-Giving Spirit
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Other Reviews in This Issue
Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and The Fourfold Gospel Witness
Paul and Union with Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study
The Righteousness of God: A Lexical Examination of the Covenant-Faithfulness Interpretation
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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 15:29:34 GMT -5
The Redeemer City Ministry Program as a Model of Ministry Preparation for the City
Timothy J. Keller
Visiting Lecturer in Preaching
Reformed Theological Seminary
An inaugural convocation address [1]
And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons.
When I went to seminary a very long time ago, A. B. Bruce’s book on the Training of the Twelve was the book to read.[2] Our Mark 3 text was central to that book, especially verse 14: “He appointed twelve that they might be with him, and that he might send them out to preach.” James Edwards’s commentary on Mark says this about the text: “The simple prepositional phrase, ‘to be with him,’ has atomic significance in the Gospel of Mark. Discipleship is a relationship before it is a task. It is a ‘who’ before a ‘what.’”[3]
The essence is this: you become like those with whom you hang out the most, those to whom you relate most intensely. You are a product of a family, and you will only be changed with relationships at least that intense with others. That means that no one can be “sent out” unless they have been brought in to “be with” in a radical, intense way.
Be with whom? With Jesus, first of all. Which means that if you are trained to go out to minister, your training does have to teach you how to pray. It does have to deepen your spiritual life enormously. These things cannot be “sidebars”—optional one day seminars—in your ministry training. You are supposed to be with Jesus during those three years. But it also means to be with (in intensely relational ways) your mentors, your trainers, and with other students—your colleagues. It is only through some radical communal experience of spiritual formation that you become someone who can be sent out.
Everybody talks about this around seminaries these days, and we talked about it when I was a seminary student. At Westminster Seminary, I was both a professor for a number of years and later a member of the Board. We constantly discussed “spiritual formation” and “character formation” under many names. Everybody says, “That’s it! That’s what seminary ought to be—intensely communal, lots of time together, teaching us how to pray, looking at each other’s souls.” So you talk about somehow “incorporating it into the curriculum.” But at the faculty level, it’s hard to find room for it (what will you drop or cut out?), and at the Board level, you realize that you can’t afford it.
Over the summer, I read a book by Paul House of Beeson Divinity School, Bonhoeffer’s Seminary Vision.[4] House looked at Bonhoeffer’s role in the German Confessing Church’s illegal, underground seminaries in 1930’s Nazi Germany. Bonhoeffer took students who were being prepared for ministry, and they lived together for six months or so. There were lectures and discussion, but no papers and no grades. The groups were small—generally 8 to 20 students at a time with a teacher/mentor. House does a good job recounting the fascinating history, and then he draws some applications for today. He concludes that today’s seminaries need small classes, that professors should have mentoring relationships with their students, and that there should be no distance education at all.
It is a great read, and it certainly would be good if seminary classes were smaller and if professors were more involved with their students. Yet I sensed there was something obvious that House seemed to miss completely. Let’s give an overview of how ministerial training worked in that time.
In Europe, then and even today, there was no Master of Divinity. Theological training was conducted in the university, and practical ministry training was done as an apprenticeship. Theological training was an accredited university degree. The subjects were biblical languages, exegesis, biblical studies, church history, theology, and philosophy. The intellectual standards were high. The pedagogical vehicles for the training were reading, lecture, and classroom work. The products to be evaluated were exams and papers. The goal was academic excellence and the mastery of a body of knowledge.
Ministry training, however, was not part of the degree program. It was a non-credit sequence, with small cohorts and much more personal interaction between students and instructors and between students and students. The education was a deliberate mixture of non- formal, informal, and formal elements. This was because the goal was to take the more academic knowledge attained and to learn how to use it—use it in one’s own spiritual life, use it in one’s own growth and self-knowledge and character change, use it in the lives of others through preaching, pastoring, leading, and evangelizing. There were more formal subjects but they all had a practical cast: reading the entire Bible together in the original languages with an eye to preaching it, expositing the biblical texts that had the most to do with ministry, the doctrine of the church, worship and sacraments, doing pastoral care, how to disciple other people. It was also in your practical training time that you mastered the confessional standards of your church with an eye to catechesis.
The main pedagogical instrument for all this was intensive and extensive discussion – both in class time and just as much at meals and within a host of other planned and encouraged times of life together. The pedagogy also made heavy use of worship and prayer together, with periods of solitude and meditation. The products to be evaluated also differed from the university courses. Students were involved in actual ministry in local churches and settings, so their preaching, evangelism, pastoring, and other ministry work was constantly evaluated—by instructors, other students, and by themselves.
The students lived in community in the same location with one another and with their instructor. The day would begin with the Psalms and worship, followed by a time of silence, prayer, and meditation where they learned to practice what they had been taught. They had classes all day, meals together, and evening worship. On the weekends they ministered in local churches. For about six months it was totally communal and all about “with”—with Jesus, with your trainers, with your fellow students.
In our country, and only in our country, these two aspects—the theological training and ministry training—have been fused into the single, three-year MDiv program. The positive benefits (which outweigh the negative aspects) have been these. The American seminary institutions, particularly the evangelical and confessional ones, have rescued academically excellent theological education from the liberalism of the modern research university in the West. It saved theological education from heterodoxy, and that is an enormous accomplishment.
So our seminaries, unlike Bonhoeffer’s seminaries, took over the academic part of theological education from the universities and “saved” it. But the problem is that now when you load all the ministry part of seminary education into the MDiv, an academic degree, you also lose a lot. Here are just three parts to the problem.
First, the pedagogy used for the academic subjects (languages, exegesis, theology, history) tends to be used on the practical subjects (preaching, shepherding, leading, evangelism) when the two ways of learning should be fairly different. No offense to any biblical language instructors who might be listening, but students don’t need to talk over a meal with their instructors about optative and subjunctive moods. They don’t have to process the content they need that way. They can get that online or in a lecture. They can master that in truly academic settings and ways.
But you can’t learn to pray that way. I probably could come up with a set of edifying and informative lectures on prayer. But that will not teach students how to pray. It will take much more than that. In fact—as I look at this room—I could not teach this many people at once how to pray. Teaching people how to pray—how to bring their joys and sorrows before God, how to watch their own heart in his presence—can’t be done just through lectures and tests. That has to be done in community, in relationship. So the MDiv tends to merge very different pedagogies.
Secondly, the admission standards for the two programs—academic and practical—are quite different. To be admitted to the academic classes you mainly need to be academically qualified. You may not know yet whether you want to do ministry or what you want to do with your life. That’s fine. You can still take theses courses and master the material and learn. But for ministry training, you need to know where you are going in life. You need to have some sense of call to the ministry. You need to be willing to suffer for your faith and for the people you are trying to reach. Those who get into academic training and ministry training are sometimes two different groups of people. If you are going to do ministry, you need the academic training, but lots of people who would profit from the academic training should not be in the ministry sequence. You need to screen and admit candidates not once but twice—once for the theological, and once more for the ministry.
Thirdly, you really cannot cover enough of the needed practical topics within the MDiv. If I remember, Reformed Theological Seminary made an effort in the 1980s to put more practical material inside the MDiv—more classes on preaching and so on. But the effect was to strain the academic. Students were not coming out theologically and Biblically knowledgeable enough, and RTS adjusted back to a more classical curriculum.
This is another reason why, in the Redeemer City Ministry program, we believe that practical ministry training needs to be given its own, dedicated curriculum. Most experienced ministers learn quickly that there are too many subjects that are not even alluded to in seminary. The first time you face a financial crisis in your church, you say, “just what seminary prepared me for.” Right? And I should add that for our New York City program, the list of practical topics gets even longer. There are at least five things you need to learn here, in the city: You need to learn cross-cultural communication, non-western Christianity, urban anthropology, urban sociology and social systems, and how to exegete a neighborhood. Those are all subjects that are every bit as important as the other subjects in a traditional practical theology curriculum. If you try to load all of that into an MDiv program, you shortchange the amount of stuff you can actually do for ministry training.
As you know, here in New York City we will not be offering the MDiv at this time. But now you can see that I don’t think that this two-phase program—the M.A. (Biblical Studies) degree followed by a “City Ministry Year” of non-credit, mentored practical ministry—is “second-best.” It is not “the only thing we can do under the circumstances.” It is a way to make ministry education in our country even better. Actually, there are four ways in which what we are planning to do here in the city may be unique:
It will be the only Reformed, evangelical education with a classical theological curriculum offered in New York City.
It will be a unique blend of online education with a residential learning community. We think we can merge these to get the best of both worlds.
We are training people in the city for ministry to the city. This is extraordinarily rare, not to say unique, among evangelical seminaries today.
We are recognizing the distinction between theological training and ministry training, but we are not pitting them against each other. We are doing them in tandem, with each side having an eye for the other.
I really do think that we will not only produce ministers for the cities of the world, but also advance theological education in the country. We’ll see.
To the students gathered here this afternoon, remember that you are here to be with each other, to be with your instructors, to be with Jesus. We are here to say at this convocation, “this is not what we are, but this is what we want to be.” Thank you for being willing to be the first through our doors.
An address delivered by Dr. Keller at the inaugural convocation of Reformed Theological Seminary—New York City and the Redeemer City Ministry program, September 10, 2015. ↑
Bruce, A. B. The Training of the Twelve; Or, Passages Out of the Gospels, Exhibiting the Twelve Disciples of Jesus under Discipline for the Apostleship (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1877). ↑
Edwards, James R. The Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 113. ↑
House, Paul R. Bonhoeffer’s Seminary Vision: A Case for Costly Discipleship and Life Together (Wheaton: Crossway, 2015). ↑
Volume 1 Issue 1
May 2016 | 104 pages
BACK TO ISSUE
Other Articles in This Issue
Introducing Reformed Faith & Practice
Divine Fullness: A Dogmatic Sketch
The Life-Giving Spirit
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Other Reviews in This Issue
Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and The Fourfold Gospel Witness
Paul and Union with Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study
The Righteousness of God: A Lexical Examination of the Covenant-Faithfulness Interpretation
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Copyright © 2017 Reformed Theological Seminary
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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 15:30:51 GMT -5
From the Archives: The Five Points of Calvinism
Roger R. Nicole
Editor’s note: The 2015-16 academic year began a series of observances at Reformed Theological Seminary in commemoration of its jubilee. We would be remiss if we failed also to note that 2015 is the centennial of the birth of Roger Nicole, who joined the faculty at RTS Orlando in 1989 and served faithfully for two decades. This essay originates as an address delivered at the 1974 Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology and was subsequently published in Tenth: A Journal of Tenth Presbyterian Church.
The five points of Calvinism come to us today in a form that is quite traditional: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. But we are not to think that this is the only form the doctrines of grace can take or that the phrases themselves are unalterable. The advantage of this particular formulation is that when you take the first letter of each of those points and read it from top to bottom you find the word “tulip,” and so have an acrostic. The tulip is a beautiful flower marvelously cultivated in the Netherlands, and since there are many Calvinists in the Netherlands and many flower-loving people, it seems to be a delightful arrangement to organize these doctrines in terms of the letters of this word. However, I would like to consider the nature of the points and suggest certain rewordings which, in my judgment, may prevent misunderstandings.
Pervasive Evil
The first point is “total depravity.” The purpose of this point is to emphasize that no expectation can be entertained from man with respect to ability to please God or even to come to him in salvation unless God moves him to it. Thus, the purpose is to turn away the eyes from man in his action and ability and instead direct the eyes to God and his sovereign action. The advantage of expressing this truth in this way is that we emphasize the fundamental and pervasive character of the evil in man.
However, the terms that are used are somewhat misleading. I find that invariably, after having said “total depravity,” the staunchest Calvinists find it important to qualify precisely what they mean. They add, “But we don’t mean to say by this that man is quite as bad as he could be.” Practically everybody who says “total depravity” or “total inability” has to qualify this at once. Obviously, people who seek to know what Calvinism is ought to make it their business, not only to go by certain titles, but also to examine what is being said under those titles. But since those words are used repeatedly we cannot blame them too much for having taken them at face value. Nor can we blame them when, thinking that somehow Calvinists believe that every man is as evil as he can be, and finding situations where men seem praiseworthy, these people point to certain virtues and say, “How can you hold to your Calvinism in the presence of this?” Perhaps it would be wiser to use another form of language that would be calculated to emphasize the indispensable character of this divine grace and that would not need so quickly to have a qualification.
May I suggest that what the Calvinist wishes to say when he speaks of total depravity is that evil is at the very heart and root of man. It is at the very foundation, at the deepest level of human life. This evil does not corrupt merely one or two particular avenues of the life of man but is pervasive in that it spreads into all aspects of the life of man. It darkens his mind, corrupts his feelings, warps his will, moves his affections in wrong directions, blinds his conscience, burdens his subconscious, and afflicts his body. There is hardly any way in which man is called upon to express himself in which, in some way, the damaging character of evil does not manifest itself. Evil is like a root cancer that extends in all directions within the organism to cause its dastardly effects.
How shall we express this? Well, I am not too happy about my substitutions, but I would like to suggest that the term be “radical depravity” or “pervasive depravity” or, if you want to have a somewhat longer approach, to say “radical and pervasive depravity.” This is a little less sweeping than “total” and, in that sense, a little closer to what we really want to assert.
Divine Initiative
The second point is “unconditional election.” The emphasis here is upon the fact that it is God who takes the initiative. There is no previous merit or condition in the creature, either present or foreseen, which determines the divine choice. This is the key to what is in view. The disadvantage to this formulation is twofold. In the first place, it is not sufficiently comprehensive, for it suggests that the only thing that God does is to elect people to be saved and that, therefore, there is no relationship of God to those who are lost. But election involves not only the taking of some to be saved; it also involves the bypassing of the remainder of mankind and the just reprobation of them in view of their sins. So just to talk of election is not enough. We should also recognize preterition, the bypassing of those who are not to be saved. Moreover, the term “unconditional” might be misconstrued to suggest that God has no interest in the condition of those whom he chooses to make his redeemed people. It suggests that God is not concerned about what we are, what we become, and how we relate ourselves to his will. If the point is that God does not ground his choice in the fact that those who are elected are better or worse than others, it is correct. But if it suggests that God does not care about the condition of those whom he has chosen to save, it is wholly incorrect. For the Scripture makes it very specific that we are elected “unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).
What we need to recognize here is that the sovereign initiative in salvation is with God. It is not with man. It is not by virtue of something that God has foreseen in a man – some preexisting condition which is the source or root of the elective purpose of God – that God saves him. God in his own sovereign wisdom chooses, for reasons that are sufficient unto himself, those who shall be saved. We may, therefore, much better speak of “sovereign election” or the “preterition of God.”
Particular Redemption
Then comes the third point, which is sometimes called “limited atonement.” This, I think, is a complete misnomer. The other points I can live with, but “limited atonement” I cannot live with, for this is a total misrepresentation of what we mean to say.
The purpose of using this expression is to say that the atonement is not universal (in the sense of Christ having died for every member of the race in the same sense in which he died for those who will be redeemed). Therefore, the purpose of the atonement is restricted to the elect and is not spread to the universality of mankind.
Some limit it in breadth; that is, they say the Lord Jesus Christ died for the redeemed and that he sees to it that the redeemed are therefore saved. For them there is a certain group of mankind, a particular group, which is the special object of the redemptive love and substitutionary work of Jesus Christ and toward which Christ sees to it that his work is effective. While the remainder of mankind may gain some benefits from the work of Christ, they are, however, not encompassed in the same way in his design as were those whom the Father gave him. This is one way of limiting it. Other people say that Christ died for everybody in the same way, but they must acknowledge that some of the people for whom Christ died are at the end lost. So for these the death of Christ does not, in fact, ensure the salvation of those for whom he died. The effect is to limit the atonement in depth. The atonement is ineffective. It does not secure the salvation of the people for whom it is intended. For these, the will of God and the redemptive love of Jesus Christ are frustrated by the resistance and wicked will of men who resist him and do not accept his grace. In addition, salvation really consists of the work of Christ, plus the acceptance or non-resistance of some ingredient of one kind or another that some people add, and it is this ingredient which really constitutes the difference between being saved and being lost. No one who says that at the end there will be some people saved and other people lost can really in honesty speak of an unlimited atonement.
For these reasons I, for one, am not happy to go under the banner of a limited atonement, as though Calvinists and myself were ones who wickedly emasculate and mutilate the great scope and beauty of the love and redemption of Jesus Christ. For it is not really a question of limits. It is a question of purpose. How should we phrase it therefore? We ought rather to talk about “definite atonement.” We ought to say that there was a definite purpose of Christ in offering himself. The substitution was not a blanket substitution. It was a substitution that was oriented specifically to the purpose for which he came into this world, namely, to save and redeem those whom the Father has given him. Another term that is appropriate, although perhaps it is less precise than “definite atonement,” is “particular redemption.” For, the redemption of Christ is a particular one which accomplished what it purposed. The only alternative is that Christ redeemed no one in particular.
If we change the language in this way I think we put ourselves away from being the ones who seem to be in the business of restricting the scope of the love of Christ. If I say that my position is that of limited atonement, my opponent will say, “You believe in limited atonement, but I believe in unlimited atonement.” He seems to be the one who exalts the grace of God. But see what happens when we use my words. I say, “I believe in a definite atonement.” What can my opponent say? “1 believe in an indefinite atonement”? If I use the old language, I have no opportunity to do anything except protest. If I use the new language, I do not put myself at a psychological disadvantage from the start. Incidentally, the term “definite atonement” you will find in writers such as John Owen and William Cunningham of Scotland. So let us abandon the expression “limited atonement,” which disfigures the Calvinistic doctrine of grace in the work of Christ.
Effectual Grace
The fourth point is “irresistible grace.” The emphasis here is upon the fact that God accomplishes his designs, so that the saving grace of God cannot be resisted unto perdition. But a misunderstanding may also arise from this phrase; for it may suggest that a man may resist to the very end and that God will nevertheless press him willy-nilly, kicking and screaming, into the Kingdom. This is not the case. The grace of God does not function against our wills but is rather a grace which overcomes the resistance of our wills. God the Holy Spirit is able to accomplish this.
You say, “How can God the Holy Spirit accomplish this without violating free will and making us into puppets?” I don’t know how he can do it but that is what he does. I am not concerned about God’s modes of operation, and I am quite ready to see that he may well have a good number that I do not know about and that I am not able to explore. What I do know is that when there is resistance God comes in with his mighty grace and subdues that resistance. He makes no one come against his will, but he makes them willing to come. He does not do violence to the will of the creature, but he gently subdues and overcomes human resistance so men will gladly respond to him and come in repentance and faith. We ought not to give the impression that somehow God forces himself upon his creatures so that the gospel is crammed down their throats, as it were. In the case of adults (those who have reached the age of accountability) it is always in keeping with the willingness of the individual that the response to grace comes forth. This is surely apparent in the case of the Apostle Paul, for whom God had perhaps made what might be called the maximum effort to bring him in. He resisted, but God overcame his resistance. The result is that Paul was brought willingly and happily into the fold of the grace of God.
What we mean here is not “irresistible”—it gives the impression that man continues to resist—but “effectual.” That is, the grace of God actually accomplishes what he intends it to accomplish.
Perseverance with His Saints
The last point is called “the perseverance of the saints,” and the emphasis is upon the truth that those who have been won by the grace of God will not lose out but will be preserved by God’s grace to ultimate salvation. It means that it is not possible for one who is truly regenerate so to fall out of the reach of divine grace as to lose salvation altogether and finally be lost.
The advantage of this formulation is that there is, indeed, a human activity in this process. The saints are active. They are not just passive. In a true sense they are called upon to persevere. But there is a devastating weakness in this formulation in that it suggests that the key to this perseverance is the activity of the saints. It suggests that they persevere because they are strong, that they are finally saved because they show that kind of stability and consistency which prevents them from turning back into their original wickedness. This is never the case. The key to perseverance is the preservation by God of his saints, that is, the stability of his purpose and the fixity of his design. What is to be in view here is not so much the perseverance of those who are saved but the perseverance of God with the sinners whom he has gloriously transformed and whom he assists to the end. We ought to talk about “God’s perseverance with his saints.” That is the thing that we need to emphasize.
A New Acrostic?
We now need to review our terms—“radical depravity,” “sovereign election and preterition,” “definite atonement,” “effectual grace,” and “the perseverance of God with his saints.” Those are the terms I suggested. Unfortunately, the terms do not provide acrostics in English, French, German, Latin, or any other language I know of. So we have lost our “tulip,” that beautiful mnemonic device to remember these five points in a simple manner. Well, I think it may be worthwhile to lose it, if those other terms mislead people as to what it is we actually hold. We certainly don’t want to sell our birthright, which is the truth, for a mess of pottage, which is an acrostic. If that is what has to be done, let it be done.
On the other hand, I do not want to finish altogether on this note. So I would like to suggest to you that there is a way in which we ought to unite the five points; for in a very special sense we ought to recognize that the five points of Calvinism are, in reality, not five separate doctrines that we assert almost as disjointed elements, but rather the articulation of one point which is the grace of God. Total depravity we may call “indispensable grace.” It is the truth that without God’s grace we can do nothing because we are so evil. Election, called in Scripture the election of grace, may well be called “differentiating grace” or “sovereign grace.” Definite atonement is “providing grace,” for it refers to that grace by which God has established a basis for salvation. The fourth point is “effectual” or “efficacious grace.” Perseverance of the saints may be called “indefectible grace,” grace that will never fail us. In this way we can see how the points simply formulate what Scripture presents to us concerning God’s grace.
If you want to, you can make an acrostic that will read “gospel.” The g would be “grace”; the o, total depravity, would be “obligatory grace”; the s would be “sovereign grace”; the p, corresponding to definite atonement, would be “provision-making grace”; the e is “effectual grace”; finally, the l would be “lasting grace.” I do not like this as well as I like my other terms, so I present it with some diffidence. But if you are hung up on an acrostic, use it. At any rate, get something that has more meaning than “tulip.”
Even better, let us go to the heart of the gospel and say, “Calvinism is the gospel,” and then spell it out. This is what the Reformed position was all about, after all. Sola gratia! By grace alone! That is what we are talking about. The five points of Calvinism merely conjoin to this. Moreover, we do not even have to go to the Reformation, we can go directly to the Scripture.
Here is a text: Jonah 2:9. It reads, “Salvation is of the Lord.” And, in the New Scofield Bible, which I will even venture to quote for once, there is a beautiful little note at that place which says, “The theme of the Scripture.” That is exactly it. Salvation is of the Lord! That is the theme of the Scripture, and the five points of Calvinism.
Volume 1 Issue 1
May 2016 | 104 pages
BACK TO ISSUE
Other Articles in This Issue
Introducing Reformed Faith & Practice
Divine Fullness: A Dogmatic Sketch
The Life-Giving Spirit
VIEW ALL
Other Reviews in This Issue
Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and The Fourfold Gospel Witness
Paul and Union with Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study
The Righteousness of God: A Lexical Examination of the Covenant-Faithfulness Interpretation
VIEW ALL
Copyright © 2017 Reformed Theological Seminary
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