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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 15:43:46 GMT -5
Can We Trust the Bible Over Evolutionary Science?
James N. Anderson
Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy
Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte
It’s no secret that one of the main reasons unbelievers give for not believing the Bible is that modern science—specifically, evolutionary science—has shown that the Bible’s account of human origins is mistaken. Indeed, evolutionary science is not merely an obstacle to unbelievers; it can also be a stumbling block for professing Christians. There are many believers desperately trying to reconcile a high view of Scripture with mainstream scientific claims about our evolutionary origins, and those who cannot do so invariably end up downgrading their doctrine of Scripture. In some cases this is just the first step in a near-complete abandonment of Christian orthodoxy. For both believers and unbelievers, the claims of evolutionary science pose a serious challenge to the trustworthiness of the Bible.
Can we trust the Bible over evolutionary science? I doubt I need to issue a “spoiler alert” before revealing that my answer to the question will be an emphatic “Yes!” Even so, much needs to be discussed before delivering that affirmative conclusion. Why can we trust the Bible over evolutionary science? On what grounds can we answer the question with a confident “Yes”? That will be the primary focus of this article. Along the way, however, I also want to say some important things about how we ought to approach this question—and similar questions about the trustworthiness of the Bible—so that readers may be better equipped to deal with this and other challenges to Scripture.[1]
I. Analyzing the Question
Before attempting to answer our question, we need to take a closer look at the question itself to understand what’s really at stake. Any question of the form, “Can we trust X over Y?” suggests two things. First, it suggests that X and Y are two distinct sources of truth-claims. The question “Can we trust X over Y?” presupposes that X and Y make certain claims and present those claims as true. So the question we’re considering here assumes that the Bible is one source of truth-claims and that evolutionary science is another source of truth-claims. (Later on I’ll define more precisely what it means to speak of “evolutionary science” as a source of truth-claims.)
Secondly, a question of the form “Can we trust X over Y?” implies that X and Y are in conflict at some points—or at least appear to be in conflict. If someone were to ask my young daughter, “Can you trust your father over your mother?” that wouldn’t strike her as a very pertinent question, because in most cases her parents aren’t conflicting sources of truth-claims. (I say “in most cases”!) Likewise, if this essay bore the title, “Can we trust the Bible over the North Carolina White Pages?” I doubt it would attract much interest. I certainly believe the Bible is more trustworthy than the North Carolina White Pages, but that’s hardly a pressing question for anyone because there’s no apparent conflict between the two. In the case of the Bible and evolutionary science, however, it’s evident to most people that the two come into conflict at some very significant points.
Now, it’s only fair to acknowledge that many people believe there is no conflict between religion and science understood in very general terms. And there are many people—“theistic evolutionists,” or, as some now prefer, “evolutionary creationists”—who maintain there is no specific conflict between belief in God and the theory of evolution. Such people will argue for the possibility of God using evolution as his chosen means of bringing about life on this planet. Even though evolution operates entirely through uninterrupted natural processes—primarily natural selection acting on random genetic mutations, according to the standard neo-Darwinian account—God could have set up the natural laws and initial conditions of the universe so that it would play out in just the way he intended. Indeed, what appears to be random to us need not be random to God. What we observe in the biological world today could in principle be a divinely-rigged evolutionary outcome.
How does this bear on the question before us? I will grant that the theistic evolutionists are right about one thing: there’s no direct logical conflict between the existence of God and the standard theory of evolution. Neither logically excludes the other. Even so, that’s of little help to us in addressing the question at hand, for two reasons. In the first place, theistic evolution implies that God created the world in such a way as to largely conceal the fact that he created the world. The God of theistic evolution can be likened to a secret agent who carries out his mission by carefully covering his tracks and hiding all the evidence of his actions. But surely that’s not the God of the Bible! The apostle Paul tells us in Romans 1 that God’s existence and attributes have always been “clearly perceived in the things that have been made”—indeed, so clearly that no one is left without excuse for failing to honor and thank God for his good work of creation. But if God has covered his creative tracks, so to speak, people would have an excuse. And the reality is that many unbelievers point to evolutionary science—specifically, to the claim that the apparent design in the organic world can be explained entirely in naturalistic terms—as an excuse for their unbelief.
The second reason why theistic evolution doesn’t offer much help here is that the question before us isn’t whether we can believe in God, in some very general sense, but whether we can trust the Bible. And there are very clear conflicts between the teaching of the Bible and the teachings of mainstream evolutionary science: the sort of claims we would find in a textbook of evolutionary biology for example. It will suffice to mention here only two obvious points of conflict. (1) Genesis 1 records that God made plants and animals according to distinct kinds, whereas evolutionary science claims that all organisms are related through common ancestry; in terms of evolutionary history, there are no sharp discontinuities between different organisms or species. Every organism is, in the final analysis, a more-or-less distant cousin of every other organism. There are no original “walls of separation” in the biological world. (2) Genesis 2 records that God brought into existence the first human couple directly and immediately—Adam from the dust of the ground, Eve from the side of Adam—whereas evolutionary science claims that humans are descended by natural procreation from pre-human ape-like animals. In other words, there is no place for the special creation of humans in mainstream evolutionary science.
So our question—“Can we trust the Bible over evolutionary science?”—is an extremely important one, for there is a very apparent conflict between the Bible and mainstream evolutionary science. Each challenges the legitimacy and the trustworthiness of the other, and despite many attempts to reconcile the two, there is no way to do so without compromising one of them.
II. An Evidentialist Approach?
How then should we approach the question? How should we approach any question of the form, “Can we trust X over Y?” One method we might call the evidentialist approach. In simple terms, the evidentialist approach looks like this:
Stack up on one side all the reasons for trusting X.
Stack up on the other side all the reasons for trusting Y.
Weigh up the two sides to see which has the better reasons overall.
Or to put the same idea slightly differently:
Stack up on one side all the evidence we have for trusting X.
Stack up on the other side all the evidence we have for trusting Y.
Compare the two sides to see which has the greater weight of evidence.
On the face of it, this seems like a reasonable approach to questions regarding the relative trustworthiness of X and Y. It’s the sort of approach that might be taken in a criminal trial, with respect to conflicting witnesses. But there are two basic problems faced by the evidentialist approach to our specific question. The first is that the kind of evidence on each side may be very different. The kind of evidence we would have for trusting the Bible may be (and I would argue has to be) very different than the kind of evidence we would have for trusting evolutionary science. And that can make it difficult to compare and weigh evidences in an objective and quantifiable way. So the first problem is that of comparing different kinds of evidence.
The second problem (and a far more significant one in my view) is this: We come to the question as Christians—and therefore we don’t come to it with a blank slate or an empty ledger. We don’t come to it from “square one,” as though we have no prior beliefs or commitments. And it wouldn’t be right for us to try to go back to “square one” in order to answer it!
A couple of analogies will illustrate the point. Suppose I introduce you to two friends of mine: Dr. Calvin and Dr. Hobbes. The two doctors are both professional zoologists. But they have a disagreement: they make some conflicting claims. Dr. Calvin claims a certain species of spider is decreasing in number and will be extinct within 50 years, whereas Dr. Hobbes claims the same species of spider is actually increasing in number and there’s no danger it will go extinct in that timeframe. Having introduced you to these men and explained their disagreement, I put to you this question: “Should we trust Dr. Calvin over Dr. Hobbes?”
Assuming you can to resist the temptation to use the feature on your phone which makes a fake call to get you out of an unwanted conversation, how will you decide such a question? One approach would be to do some research on the qualifications of each man—his professional experience, his publication record, his reputation among his peers, and so forth—and then draw an informed conclusion about which of the two men is likely to be the more reliable source, at least with respect to the arachnological claims in question. That would reflect the evidentialist approach.
But now imagine a different scenario. You’re sitting at home one day, and the doorbell rings. At the door is a sharp-suited man with a grim expression who introduces himself as Agent Smith of the CIA. Agent Smith has some bad news for you. He tells you that your beloved spouse is actually a Russian secret agent who has been sent on a mission to seduce you with a view to gaining highly valuable commercial secrets from your employer. (We’ll assume for the purposes of the illustration that you don’t work for Taco Bell.) Agent Smith is clearly implying that your spouse has been feeding you a string of falsehoods.
Now that raises a question: Can you trust your spouse over Agent Smith? How should you approach that question? In principle, you could take the evidentialist approach. You could go back to “square one,” assuming nothing about either source, and evaluate the two sources. Perhaps your spouse has entered the room now and is contesting Agent Smith’s claims, but you have to say, “Sorry, honey, I can’t listen to you right now! I can’t simply take for granted that you’re trustworthy, because your trustworthiness is precisely what’s in question. I have to establish that from scratch!”
So you mentally stack up on one side all the evidence in favor of trusting your spouse, and then you stack up on the other side all the evidence in favor of trusting Agent Smith. (He shows you his CIA identification card, some official-looking documentation from the case against your spouse, suspicious-looking photographs of your spouse meeting a stranger in a café, and so forth.) You weigh up the two sides and finally decide which one to trust.
I assume it’s obvious what would be wrong with that approach. At the point when the conflicting claims arise, you already have a firm trust in your spouse. Your starting point is one of trust in one of the sources, and it would be wrong simply to suspend or relinquish that trust and to start from scratch. Instead, your question should be this: Does Agent Smith present you with any good reason to weaken or to abandon the trust you already have in your spouse?
The relevance of these two hypothetical scenarios should be apparent. It is the second of the two scenarios that most closely corresponds to our situation as Christians regarding the Bible. So when we consider the question, “Can we trust the Bible over evolutionary science?” we have to be clear about our starting point. We already trust the Bible! And it would be quite wrong for us as Christians to suspend or “bracket out” that trust as we consider that question. Instead, we should approach the question by asking this secondary question: Does evolutionary science present us with any good reason to weaken or to abandon the trust we already have in the Bible?
III. The Basis for Our Trust in the Bible
So the issue now comes to this. Does evolutionary science present a serious challenge to our trust in the Bible? The first step toward answering that question requires us to remind ourselves of the basis for our trust in the Bible. How do we actually know that the Bible is the Word of God and therefore supremely trustworthy?
On this issue I know of no better summary statement than the one found in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Article 4 of the opening chapter of the Confession reads thus:
The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.
The point here is that the Bible has intrinsic authority precisely because it is the Word of God. It doesn’t depend on some higher authority to certify or validate it, simply because there is no higher authority than God. But still the question arises: How do we come to know that the Bible is the Word of God? How do we come to know that it isn’t a merely human book, but rather divinely inspired? The Confession answers in the very next article:
We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture. And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.
The Confession is essentially saying this: The testimony of the Christian church—the testimony of Christian believers through the ages—certainly counts for something. It bears witness to the inspiration of the Bible. Furthermore, there are many objective evidences that the Bible is the Word of God (what the Confession calls “incomparable excellences”) such as its unified spiritual message and its power to transform lives. In other words, it bears all the hallmarks of a divine revelation. Nevertheless, the decisive factor in our coming to know that the Bible is the Word of God is an internal work of the Holy Spirit in our minds and in our hearts.
This is what Reformed theologians have called the “internal witness of the Holy Spirit,” whereby the Spirit gives us the capacity to recognize that God himself is speaking to us in the Bible, and he actually produces in our minds a belief, an acceptance, an assured trust, that the Bible is the Word of God. What typically happens in practice is that we read the Bible, or hear it preached, and we find ourselves under a deep conviction that this isn’t merely the words of men but the very Word of God. In short, the Spirit of God gives us ears to hear the voice of God speaking to us in the Scriptures.
The core idea here is very similar to what we find Jesus teaching in connection with his role as the Good Shepherd: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27) The sheep are precisely those who hear the voice of the Shepherd. Enabled by the Holy Spirit, Christian believers recognize the voice of their Master.
Another analogy may help at this point. I imagine most readers have had the experience of answering the phone only to be greeted with the words, “It’s me!” From a strictly logical perspective, that statement couldn’t fail to be true. (“Why, of course it’s you!”) Anyone in the world—even a complete stranger—could truthfully say, “It’s me!” Nevertheless, I’d wager that almost every time you hear those words you immediately know who ‘me’ is. The words themselves don’t identify the caller to you; rather, you directly recognize the voice of the person speaking to you. What’s more, that recognition doesn’t normally involve any conscious reasoning or inference from empirical evidence (“It’s the voice of a woman, probably in her 30s or 40s, with an East-coast Scottish accent, therefore…”). You simply know who it is by an immediate recognition. In an analogous fashion, when the Spirit bears witness in our hearts and minds to the divine authorship of Scripture, we immediately recognize the voice of God.
It’s important to emphasize that this explanation doesn’t reduce to unbridled subjectivism. The Confession isn’t saying that Christians experience something like a warm, fuzzy feeling that the Bible is the Word of God and conclude on that basis that it must be true. This isn’t the Calvinist version of the Mormon’s “burning bosom”! Rather, the Confession is asserting that the Spirit gives us a direct acquaintance with the Bible as the Word of God. Just as we can perceive directly that something is sweet from its taste, or that it is warm from touching it, the Holy Spirit gives us a spiritual capacity—a spiritual perception—by which we can perceive directly that the Bible is divinely authored.
Such is the basic Reformation position on the basis for our trust in the Bible, as represented by John Calvin, his fellow reformers, and subsequent Reformed theologians.[2] And it’s a position that received sophisticated defense by Christian philosophers in our day.[3]
IV. Defeaters
One might think that we have said all that needs to be said. After all, if the Bible is indeed the Word of God then it is supremely trustworthy. It is absolutely infallible, because God is absolutely infallible. Nothing could be more trustworthy than the Bible, including evolutionary science.
The logic is entirely sound as far as it goes. If the Bible is the Word of God then nothing could be more trustworthy than the Bible. The problem, however, is that evolutionary science challenges our conviction that the Bible really is the Word of God. It presents a challenge to our trust in the same way that Agent Smith did in my earlier illustration. To put the matter in terms that have become commonplace in contemporary epistemology: evolutionary science presents us with a potential defeater for our trust in the Bible.
A defeater, as the word itself indicates, is something that defeats a belief we hold. It gives us a reason to abandon that belief or at least to hold it less strongly. To take a simple example: suppose I look out of the window when I get up in the morning and I note that the driveway is wet. I think to myself, it must have rained earlier; I form the belief that it rained during the night. A moment later, however, I remember that I had set the lawn irrigation system to turn on at 5 o’clock. I now have a defeater for my belief that it rained earlier; I have a reason to abandon the (hastily formed!) belief that it rained during the night. And if my cognitive faculties are working properly, I will no longer believe that it rained during the night.
Here’s another example. Suppose I buy myself a Boston Kreme donut, which I store in the kitchen cupboard and plan to enjoy when I get home from work the following day. As I’m driving home I say to myself, “I’m really going to enjoy that donut!” But when I walk through the door, to my great surprise and consternation, the first thing my wife says to me is, “Thank you so much for the donut, darling. It was just what I needed this afternoon!” I now have a defeater for my belief that I’m about to enjoy a donut. (I also form a new belief that I need to find a better hiding place for my donuts.)
A defeater, then, is something that defeats one or more of our beliefs. And a potential defeater is something that could be a defeater: it has the potential to defeat one or more of our beliefs. (Whether the potential defeater becomes an actual defeater depends on a number of factors, including how the potential defeater is processed by the person who encounters it.) So the challenge we need to address is that evolutionary science presents us with a potential defeater for our trust in the Bible. But should that potential defeater be an actual defeater? Does evolutionary science present us with any good reason to abandon or diminish our trust in the Bible? Now that we have a clear view of the nature of the challenge, we can tackle it head-on.
V. Does Evolutionary Science Give Us Defeaters?
We’re now at the point where we need to be more specific about what is meant by “evolutionary science.” Evolutionary science isn’t a person or office that can be directly consulted. You can’t call up the National Academy of Sciences and ask to be put through to “Evolutionary Science.” Neither is evolutionary science a well-defined source of any other kind, like a recognized set of official documents. How then should we identify the claims of evolutionary science?
There is a remarkably naïve view in our culture today—it deserves to be called a modern myth—that “science” is some kind of official, identifiable, authoritative source that speaks to us with one distinct voice. I could cite numerous expressions of this view, but here I will mention only two, both connected with the contemporary debate over climate change. A few years ago I noted a stream of ‘tweets’ from the official Twitter account of the White House, promoting the President’s policy on dealing with climate change, all of which carried the hashtag #ScienceSaysSo. Not “scientists” say so—which would be questionable enough—but “science” says so! More recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a new report on the global climate. Invited to comment on it, Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, led with this statement: “Science has spoken.”[4]
“Science says so.” “Science has spoken.” Such language reflects a historically naïve and philosophically indefensible view of what science is and how it functions; indeed, it represents a shallow personification of science that borders on deification. Having noted such concerns, however, I believe it is possible to define “evolutionary science” in a sensible way that permits a meaningful consideration of the question posed:
Evolutionary science: A consensus of opinion among a particular subgroup of scientists who are generally regarded as experts in the theory of evolution.
Given this definition of “evolutionary science,” I see basically two ways in which evolutionary science might present a defeater for our trust in the Bible. First, there is the general testimony of evolutionary scientists; and secondly, there is the empirical evidence cited by evolutionary scientists in support of those specific claims that conflict with the Bible. Let us consider each way in turn.
The General Testimony of Evolutionary Scientists
Here’s the first way in which evolutionary science might present a defeater for our trust in the Bible. There are scientists who are experts in the theory of evolution—recognized authorities in their field—and among them we find a settled consensus that all organisms on earth, including humans, are related by common descent having evolved from simpler life forms through entirely natural processes. Since this is a consensus among experts, we should trust them on this. We should accept their testimony. In three words: “Scientists say so.”
I think there are several reasons why the testimony of evolutionary scientists, while not to be dismissed out of hand, shouldn’t defeat our trust in the Bible. For one thing, scientific consensus is notoriously fallible and open to revision. At one time there was a consensus that the earth was stationary and the sun orbited the earth; that theory has now been abandoned. At one time there a consensus that an element called “phlogiston” is released during combustion; that theory has also been abandoned. Examples could be multiplied of instances where an earlier scientific consensus is now considered quite mistaken.
Furthermore, I suggest we ought to be suspicious of any scientific consensus which has significant religious, moral, political, or economic implications. There is another prevalent modern myth to the effect that scientists are disinterested observers of the natural world, entirely objective pursuers of the truth. In reality, scientists are flawed human beings like the rest of us, with all the familiar prejudices, biases, and agendas.[5] Moreover, it’s as clear as day that evolutionary science isn’t religiously neutral. Richard Dawkins, arguably the world’s leading promoter of Darwinism, famously quipped that Darwin “made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist,” while Cornell biology professor William Provine once remarked that evolution is “the greatest engine of atheism ever invented.” Combine such comments with what Paul declares in Romans 1:18-32 and it’s evident that Christians need to approach the consensus of evolutionary scientists with a healthy dose of skepticism. For those who want to flee from God, the Darwinian theory of evolution is the getaway car of choice.
To these observations I would add that evolutionary science is largely self-defining and therefore self-serving. It’s hardly surprising to find a consensus among evolutionary scientists about the theory of evolution, given that one can be an evolutionary scientist only by accepting evolutionary science. There is an unavoidable element of circularity in the way scientific communities operate, including the community of evolutionary scientists. It’s practically a tautology that if an evolutionary scientist didn’t accept evolutionary science, he wouldn’t be a member of the group of evolutionary scientists. And who are evolutionary scientists trained by? Other evolutionary scientists, of course. And what are they taught when they’re trained? You see the point. It’s tempting to suggest that the consensus of evolutionary scientists on the origins of human beings carries little more weight than the consensus of professional football players on whether football is a great sport.
To be fair, it’s often claimed that there is a consensus across the entire scientific community about the theory of evolution. All scientists—or nearly all scientists—accept the theory, we’re told, and therefore the rest of us should too. But the truth is that most scientists have no special expertise in evolutionary science. They’re specialists only in their own fields. And to whom do they defer when asked about evolutionary science? You guessed it.[6]
One final point is worth noting before we move on. Recent trends suggest that a growing number of scientists are admitting to serious doubts about whether the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution actually explains the empirical evidence it is supposed to explain. When we add this fact to the considerations above, it seems to me that the general testimony of evolutionary scientists doesn’t give us a defeater for our trust in the Bible. It simply doesn’t carry sufficient weight. And the same goes for any general scientific consensus.
Empirical Evidence for the Specific Claims of Evolutionary Science
Let’s consider now the second way in which evolutionary science might present a defeater. Evolutionary scientists could give us empirical evidence for the specific claims that conflict with the teaching of the Bible. It’s not possible here to enter into a detailed discussion of all the supposed evidences for the theory of evolution; there’s simply too much ground to cover and the material would get rather technical and tedious. Instead, I propose to briefly address some representative examples that deal specifically with claims about human evolution, i.e., claims that humans are descended from pre-human ape-like animals, such that we share a distant common ancestor with chimpanzees and other apes. What are some of the actual evidences given for these claims about human origins?
(1) Often it is claimed that there is compelling evidence for evolution in general, i.e., for the common ancestry of all species, and therefore we should accept that humans are part of that larger picture. However, it’s well known—if not widely admitted—that there is considerable evidence against that general theory of evolution. For example, the fossil record is simply not what we would expect to find if the theory of evolution were true. We would not expect to see all the gaps and discontinuities between species that we do in fact see. The problem of the “missing fossils” has been a thorn in the side of Darwinism ever since Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution, and there have been many ingenious attempts to get around it, but all involve speculative theories that function to explain away the observational evidence rather than to independently predict that evidence. As such, these modified theories of evolution don’t serve to increase the evidential support for the Darwinian theory of evolution. Indeed, the fact that evolutionary scientists have to make ad hoc adjustments to their core theory actually weakens the evidential case for Darwinian evolution.[7]
(2) Another common argument is that there is specific fossil evidence for human evolution. We have discovered bones from pre-human hominids that demonstrate (so we are assured) a clear line of evolution leading up to present day humans. No doubt most of us have seen the stereotypical reconstructions depicted in natural history museums purporting to show the step-by-step progression from ape-like ancestors to modern man.
In reality, such reconstructions are highly speculative and susceptible to doubt. “Fossil evidence of human evolutionary history is fragmentary and open to various interpretations,” wrote the British paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, Henry Gee, in the prestigious scientific journal Nature.[8] After all, fossils aren’t discovered with convenient little labels telling us exactly which species they come from, and how that species is related to any other species in our current taxonomical scheme. The reconstructions of our supposed evolutionary history are precisely that: reconstructions. And the actual physical evidence on which those reconstructions are based is sparse and ambiguous.
No wonder, then, that paleontologists disagree quite markedly about how to interpret the fossil evidence and which species were our supposed evolutionary ancestors. It turns out that the fossil evidence falls into two basic categories: ape-like species and human-like species. There are no clearly intermediate transitional species, and there is no consensus about the supposed line of descent from the first group to the second group. Evolutionary scientists agree that human evolution happened: they just don’t agree on where it happened, when it happened, and how it happened. Consequently it’s very hard to see how the fossil record gives us solid evidence of human evolution.[9]
(3) A third common argument for human evolution is that it is supported by genetic evidence. Technology has advanced to the point where we can now ‘map’ the human genome, the DNA code that is taken to define us as a species, and we can compare it with the genomes of other species such as apes to determine how we are related to them. So the argument is that modern DNA analysis discloses our close genetic relationship with apes, which is precisely what the theory of evolution predicts.
Several things can be said about this line of argument. In the first place, we should note that the genetic arguments often assume common ancestry rather than proving it. They typically take for granted that we have a common ancestor, and on that basis draw conclusions from genetics about which species are most closely related to us. The genetics alone don’t establish common ancestry; rather, common ancestry functions as an ancillary assumption in the argument.
Secondly, the genetic arguments typically involve great leaps to conclusions that simply aren’t supported by the evidence in question. It’s often noted, for example, that our genome is 99% identical to that of chimpanzees, and then the conclusion is effortlessly drawn that we must be closely related to chimpanzees. But that’s a non sequitur. Since we have an anatomy very similar to chimpanzees, it stands to reason that the DNA which specifies that anatomy will also be very similar. Yet that genetic similarity can be equally well explained by common design as by common descent.
In any case, while the 99% statistic sounds like compelling evidence on the face of it, the numerical value itself means very little apart from an interpretive context. Among other things, it depends on exactly how one compares the genetic data (and precisely which genetic data one compares). It turns out that different methods of comparison give different numerical values. Moreover, one might just as well argue that since humans are radically different from chimpanzees in so many respects, we cannot be defined solely in terms of our DNA. In the end, the genetic evidence can be interpreted in very different ways depending on the assumptions one brings to it.
Much more could be said about the supposed scientific evidence for human evolution, but I want to take a step back at this point and make a more general observation about scientific theories and the evidence used to support those theories. One conclusion we can draw from the preceding discussion that evidence doesn’t speak for itself—despite what many people naively assume. Evidence always needs to be interpreted against a backdrop of guiding assumptions and prior knowledge. Moreover, evidence is always susceptible to different interpretations, each of which may be consistent with the evidence taken alone.
In the last half-century or so, philosophers of science have recognized that the complex relationship between theories and evidence presents scientists with a number of challenges, one of which is known as “the problem of theory underdetermination.”[10] Here’s the problem: whenever we gather a body of observational evidence, there is always more than one theory that fits the available evidence. Consider by way of illustration the data points depicted in Figure 1, which we can take to represent a set of empirical observations. What underlying theory would explain this raw data? Perhaps the most natural theory is one that posits a linear relationship between the points, as in Figure 2. But this is far from the only theory that fits the data. As Figure 3 illustrates, a theory positing a sinusoidal relationship between the points fits the data equally well. The raw data itself doesn’t select for the linear theory over the sinusoidal theory. The two theories are underdetermined by the data they seek to explain.
One might suppose that the straight-line theory should be favored over the sine-wave theory, since that’s the simpler or more natural of the two theories. But in mathematical terms a sine wave is very simple too, and sinusoids are ubiquitous in the natural world. The sine-function is related to the position of a point as it moves in a circle. And what could be simpler or more natural than a circle? (If you think “a line” is the obvious answer that question, that only reveals your geometrical bias!) The upshot is this: which of the two proposed theories you favor will depends on criteria other than the observational evidence, because the evidence itself doesn’t settle the issue.
One might imagine that the way out of the problem of theory underdetermination is simply to eliminate competing theories by obtaining more evidence. In the example depicted in Figure 1, additional data points might rule out one of the two proposed theories. The trouble is that for any finite set of data there will always be innumerable theories that could be constructed to explain that data. While additional evidence might help to exclude some theories, or groups of theories, there will always remain an unlimited number of possible theories consistent with the data.
Figure 1: Some Raw Data
Figure 2: One Theory Fitting the Data
Figure 3: Another Theory Fitting the Data
To be clear: my point is not that one scientific theory is ultimately as good as any other, or that there can be no rational basis for favoring one theory over its competitors. Rather, the point is that scientists cannot rely solely on observational evidence to establish their theories. They have to rely on other criteria to select between alternate theories—and that’s exactly what happens in practice, even if the scientists don’t realize it. What’s more, those other criteria are typically philosophical—even religious—in nature.
Now here’s the pay-off for our purposes. One of the criteria we use to select between competing scientific theories, and between different interpretations of the same observational evidence, is our prior knowledge: what we take ourselves to already know about the world. We can ask: Which of the available theories fits best with our prior knowledge? In practice, all scientists apply this criterion (again, whether they recognize it or not). But as Christians one of the things we take ourselves to know already is that the Bible is the Word of God. That’s part of our prior knowledge. It’s one of our background assumptions. So it’s quite legitimate for Christians, when presented with empirical evidence that can be explained by different scientific theories, to favor those scientific theories that are consistent with the Bible and to reject those scientific theories that are inconsistent with the Bible.
And this is especially true with regard to the theory of evolution. The observational evidence that many scientists take to be explained by evolutionary theory (or better: evolutionary theories) can also be explained by alternate theories, such as a theory of special creation that allows for widespread speciation within natural kinds. What’s more, there’s a raft of other evidence (such as the fundamental differences between humans and other animals) that is better explained by those alternate theories. What all this means is that the evidential arguments of evolutionary scientists need not be—and should not be—a defeater for our trust in the Bible.
Conclusion
Can we trust the Bible over evolutionary science? I answer with a resounding “Yes!” We know that the Bible is the Word of God because there are many objective evidences of its divine authorship, and through the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit we have eyes to see those evidences and ears to hear the voice of God speaking to us in Scripture. Furthermore, for the reasons I’ve laid out, I’m persuaded that evolutionary science has delivered nothing that comes close to defeating our trust in the Bible.
I would like to close with one final thought, more pastoral than philosophical in nature, which I suggest gives us another important perspective on this issue. When we ask the question “Can we trust the Bible over evolutionary science?” we’re implicitly asking this question: “Can we trust Jesus over evolutionary science?”
Why do I say that? Simply because Jesus consistently and unambiguously affirmed that the Old Testament scriptures were the very Word of God.[11] He specifically appealed to Genesis as a reliable historical account of human origins.[12] And he insisted that “the Scripture cannot be broken.”[13]
So whom will you trust? Has Jesus ever given you reason not to trust him unreservedly and wholeheartedly? To put the matter bluntly: if you can trust your spouse over Agent Smith, you can certainly trust your Savior over evolutionary science.
This article is adapted from a lecture delivered at the Raleigh Reformation Conference in October 2013. ↑
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (London: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 1.7.4-5; Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1992), Second Topic, Question VI. See also Question 5 of the Belgic Confession: “We receive all these books [of Scripture], and these only, as holy and canonical, for the regulation, foundation, and conformation of our faith; believing without any doubt, all things contained in them, not so much because the Church receives and approves them as such, but more especially because the Holy Ghost witnesses in our hearts, that they are from God, whereof they carry the evidence in themselves.” ↑
See, e.g., Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 241–323; James N. Anderson, Paradox in Christian Theology: An Analysis of Its Presence, Character, and Epistemic Status, Paternoster Theological Monographs (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2007), 177–99. ↑
“Of Warming and Warnings,” The Economist, November 3, 2014, www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21630639-most-comprehensive-climate-report-yet-issues-its-shots-across-bow-warming-and. ↑
The “Climategate” scandal which erupted in November 2009 offers a striking illustration. Andrew C. Revkin, “Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute,” The New York Times, November 21, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html. ↑
The point can be taken even further: evolutionary science itself is highly interdisciplinary, involving contributions from such diverse fields as paleontology, zoology, molecular biology, chemistry, biophysics, genetics, statistics, and so on. It is virtually impossible for any scientist to have special expertise in evolutionary science as such, rather than some particular field within it. ↑
For a thorough discussion of the problems the fossil record poses for Darwinism, see Stephen C. Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperOne, 2013). ↑
Henry Gee, “Return to the Planet of the Apes,” Nature 412, no. 6843 (July 12, 2001): 131–32. ↑
For an excellent critical analysis of the purported evidence for human evolution, see Ann Gauger, Douglas Axe, and Casey Luskin, Science and Human Origins (Discovery Institute Press, 2012). ↑
For a good overview, see Kyle Stanford, “Underdetermination of Scientific Theory,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2013, plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/scientific-underdetermination/. ↑
Benjamin B. Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1948); John W. Wenham, Christ and the Bible, 3rd ed. (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009); Craig L. Blomberg, “Reflections on Jesus’ View of the Old Testament,” in The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), 669–701. ↑
Matthew 19:4-6. ↑
John 10:35. ↑
Volume 1 Issue 3
December 2016 | 155 pages
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Living & Active: The Efficacy of Scripture in Contemporary Evangelical Theology
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Living & Active: The Efficacy of Scripture in Contemporary Evangelical Theology
Bruce P. Baugus
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Theology
Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson
Introduction
The theological appropriation of speech-act theory over the last two decades has revived interest in the efficacy of Scripture—the ability of God’s written word to accomplish divinely intended effects. Pioneered by J. L. Austin and John Searle in the 1960s, speech-act theory is constructed around the simple yet profound observation that we often use language to do many things other than just utter words that pick out objects or depict real or imagined states of affairs.[1] By way of uttering intelligible sounds (or inscribing meaningful notations, if the theory is extended to authorial acts), we might promise, command, question, warn, confess, or perform any number of other meaningful acts like these that are aimed at securing corresponding outcomes or effects. We can distinguish three distinct aspects of such speech acts: the locutionary act of uttering an intelligible pattern of sound, the illocutionary act which is the meaningful act one accomplishes by way of the uttering words and sentences, and the perlocutionary force of the speech act which is the intended effects or outcomes (perlocutionary acts) the speaker aimed to achieve by speaking.
Though Austin and Searle were not the first to notice we often put language to illocutionary and perlocutionary work, their sustained and systematic analysis has plowed up fertile ground for theorists in many fields and continues to turn the soil of evangelical theology, especially since Nicholas Wolterstorff’s and Kevin Vanhoozer’s groundbreaking work.[2] Vanhoozer’s sophisticated speech-act account of biblical efficacy may be the most influential proposal among American evangelicals since Karl Barth’s work in the middle of the last century. Intriguingly, Vanhoozer’s “trinitarian theology of holy Scripture” as a divine communicative act leads him to propose a formula that echoes Barth: namely, “that Scripture is the Word of God . . . and that Scripture may become the Word of God.”[3]
To understand what Vanhoozer means by this formula and assess its agreement with traditional Protestant accounts of biblical efficacy, we need to pay some attention to the theological context of the debate on biblical efficacy in early Protestant theology. I will argue that even though the orthodox Lutheran and Reformed branches of Protestantism carve out distinct positions on this point there are also deep structural similarities we do well to understand and maintain. Unfortunately, Vanhoozer’s account appears unable to accommodate several important features that the Reformed broadly hold in common with their Lutheran counterparts. To embrace Vanhoozer’s proposed formula on biblical efficacy, therefore, represents a perhaps subtle but consequential departure from Protestant orthodoxy on biblical efficacy.
The Efficacy of God’s Word & Scripture
The biblical testimony to the efficacy of God’s word is clear. He not only speaks creation into existence and “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3), but through the revealed word he promises and warns, blesses and curses, commands and calls, commissions and ordains, discloses and exposes, heals, delivers, takes possession, controls the elements, casts out demons, condemns, forgives, and raises the dead. The efficacy of God’s prophetic and apostolic word is not just displayed, but also explicitly asserted: the “word . . . that goes out from my mouth,” God declares, “shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isa. 55:11); “the gospel,” Paul asserts, “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16); and “the word of God is living and active,” the author of Hebrews writes, “sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12–13).
According to Protestant orthodox theologians the efficacy of God’s word applies just as fully to the inscripturated word as it does the spoken word. Whereas Roman Catholics argued that the spoken word and written word were two distinct kinds or species of divine word, Protestants countered that they are just two forms of the same word, the difference being merely accidental. While Lutherans distinguish between the efficacy of God’s immediate word of majestic power, such as he spoke at creation, and the efficacy of the mediated, revealed word spoken by the prophets and apostles, they agree with the Reformed that the inscripturated word (verbum engraphon) is the same word as the unwritten revealed word (verbum agraphon).
“So, too,” Richard Muller observes, “does the written form of Scripture convey the divine Word in such a way as to deliver it living and speaking to the church.”[4] As such, whatever efficacy is ascribed to the word of God spoken by the prophets and apostles is properly applied to the written word of Scripture. That the word initially spoken by God through his prophets may have been subsequently reduced to writing does not diminish its ability to accomplish whatever God intended it to effect in the world but is the very means by which these effects will be achieved. The gospel as preached by Peter at Pentecost or written by John for posterity is equally “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom 1:16). For this reason, “the sacred writings,” being “breathed out by God,” are just as “able to make you wise for salvation”—just as able to instruct, reprove, correct, and discipline the believing reader or hearer—and thus just as “profitable” and efficacious as the apostles’ preaching and teaching (2 Tim. 3:16).
In words echoed by the Westminster Assembly, John Cameron argues we must not construe “God speaking in the Scriptures or by way of the Scriptures” in such a way that “Scripture . . . hath neede to be propounded and applyed” in order to become God’s efficacious word.[5] “It is an infinite wrong,” he contends, “that the written word of the living God is called a dead and dumbe letter,” which is just what he believes such a construal amounts to.[6] “Since it is most true that the Scripture is given by inspiration of God, . . . the letter and the word change not the signification, neyther the force and efficacy of it.”[7] Whether the word is spoken or written makes no difference, it remains the lively and active word of God through which he is accomplishing whatever he intends to effect by it.
The Priority of the Word
Not only did Protestants insist the written word of God is equally efficacious as the unwritten, they also insisted God’s word is the primary means of grace (media gratiae par excellence) over against the sacerdotal claims of Rome that prioritize the visible church and her ceremonies. Both the Lutheran and Reformed orthodox insisted that the word of God is the primary means of grace and that the visible church is born of the word (ecclesia nata est ex Dei Verbo), not the other way around. Rome’s view, they argued, reduces the saving efficacy of God’s word to a mere preparation to receive the grace distributed through the church’s priestly hierarchy that is bound so tightly to the sacramental sign that these rites work by their very performance (ex opere operato), regardless of the faith or personal holiness of the recipient.[8]
The last point, that the grace signified is communicated independent of the recipient’s actual faith, was particularly scandalous to the heirs of the Reformation. While Roman Catholics argue that additional benefits or grace may flow to those who are properly disposed (ex opere operantis)—that is, by the work of the recipient who is open to the influence of divine grace—the grace signified by the sacrament properly administered is always conveyed through the priest to participants by virtue of their participation in the rite.[9]
The Reformers and their orthodox heirs, however, insisted that the received means of grace (word and sacrament) must be united in the recipient with the receiving means of faith. Apart from actual faith there cannot be any saving benefit or effect to the recipient. Though, as we shall see below, Lutheran and Reformed theologians differ on how the means of grace effectively operate, on the need for saving faith rather than mere assent they agree and offer a united front, as it were, to what the Reformers viewed as Rome’s superstitious or magical construal of sacramental efficacy.
To Raise Up or Strike Down
Despite their agreement on the equal efficacy of the written and unwritten word and priority of the word as a means of grace, Lutheran and Reformed Protestants did not develop identical responses to Rome (and other disputants). Lutheran orthodox theologians sharply distinguished and defended their view from their Reformed counterparts who frequently accused them of having “partly retraced their steps” to Rome on the efficacy of the means of grace.[10]
Although the differences between the Lutheran and Reformed orthodox positions are substantial, and not just semantic, they are not as far apart as the rhetoric sometimes suggests. The Reformed emphasize the instrumentality of God’s word as the primary means of grace whereas Lutherans prefer to speak of an inherent saving power in the word. Similarly, the Reformed tend to stress the free and personal agency of the Spirit in their explanations of the word’s saving power while Lutherans emphasize a perpetual union of Spirit and word. Yet, Lutherans also speak of the word in instrumental terms and insist its saving power is only through the agency of the Spirit just as the Reformed affirm a union or conjunction between word and Spirit such that the external word is always powerful an active, able to do all that God wills.
Still, substantial differences do exist between Lutheran and Reformed accounts. As Robert Preus explains the Lutheran view,
f a man is converted and saved, the glory is due to God alone, who works through the Word. If a man is lost, it is wholly because of his own stubborn resistance to the Gospel, and it is therefore his fault. Hence, it is never because the Word has no power or because the Spirit chooses not to work through the Word that a sinner is lost. The efficacy of the Word extends to all men everywhere.[11]
He continues, quoting the eminent Lutheran scholastic Johannes Andreas Quenstedt:
“It is the intrinsic power and natural disposition of the divine Word to persuade people of its truth; and it is never non-persuasive, except when its work is removed and impeded by a person’s willful, self-determined stubbornness and natural resistance.”[12]
Three points stand out: (1) the word is always powerful to save in itself; (2) the Spirit is always at work through the word; and (3) the intrinsic power of the Spirit at work through the word can be resisted.
The Reformed agree that the Spirit is always attending the word and that the word of God is always powerful. Herman Bavinck, taking full account of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century debate, is emphatic: “the Lutherans are completely correct: always and everywhere the word of God is a power of God, a sword of the Spirit. ‘The Holy Spirit is always present with that word’.” This, he argues, is true of God’s word in whatever form the word happens to take or by whatever means it happens to be conveyed—proclaimed by a minister, conveyed in a personal admonition, taught to a child, inscribed on a monument, written in a book, presented in a tract, meditated upon in the mind, and so on. So long as it is “taken from Scripture,” even if “not identical to it,” it remains the word of God and “is spoken in the power of the Holy Spirit and therefore always effective . . . [in just the same way] as Scripture . . . is continually sustained, preserved, and made powerful by that Spirit.”[13]
The Reformed do not accept that this power is always being exerted to save all readers and hearers indiscriminately, however. They agree that the power of God’s word is universal or “extends to all men everywhere,” as Preus puts it. They also agree that the word “is always efficacious; it is never powerless.”[14] But, in doing so, they have in view a wider and more diverse efficacy than just the efficacy to save, as Bavinck again makes clear:
The word of God, both as law and gospel, . . . concerns all human beings and all creatures and so has universal significance. The sacrament can only be administered by a lawfully called minister in the assembly of believers, but the word of God also has a place and life outside of it and also exerts many and varied influences.[15]
And yet, despite this wider scope of influence, he also insists “this power of the word of God and specifically of the gospel must, with the Lutherans, be maintained in all its fullness and richness.”[16]
The crux of the Reformed objection to the Lutheran view of biblical efficacy is therefore not that the word is always efficacious everywhere but that it is always efficacious to save. “Lutherans lock this divine and supernatural efficacy [to save] up in the word, but do not secure any advantage by it and, to explain the variable outcome of the word in people, have to resort to free will.” The problem is that the Lutheran construal is one-dimensional even though “both Scripture and experience teach that the word does not always have the same effect,” but rather has many diverse effects of two broad sorts: “If it does not raise people up, it strikes them down.”[17]
This variegated concept of efficacy is able to accommodate God’s complex perlocutionary intentionality, the particularity of saving grace, and the freedom of the Spirit’s activity to account for the diversity of outcomes the word effects. By reducing efficacy to one sort of effect the word is viewed as nothing but a means of saving grace and by insisting it is always efficacious to this end the Spirit’s activity begins to look like an “impersonal magical power” located within the word. Unable to accommodate variegated efficacy, Lutherans are also forced to explain the apparent failure of the word to save in at least some cases by arguing that “God, working through means, can be resisted” by the willful individual in a way that “God, working in uncovered majesty, cannot.”[18]
Vanhoozer’s Speech-Act Construal of Efficacy
Vanhoozer also maintains Scripture’s “power to produce effects” is only realized through the agency of the Spirit. In line with the Protestant tradition, he affirms “the Spirit is neither a supplement nor a second source to the Word in Scripture” and neither changes nor adds to the meaning of the text.[19] From this, he proceeds to argue that the Spirit “renders the word effective” in two distinct ways: he “illumines it” and “energize and empower the sense” of it.[20]
Appropriating speech-act categories, he relates the illuminating work of the Spirit to the “illocutionary efficacy” of the text, which is fully realized when the reader understands its meaning. He isolates this particular effect from all other textual effects while maintaining that understanding the text’s meaning includes understanding the text’s perlocutionary significance. Accordingly, “the Spirit renders the Word efficacious by impressing on us the full force of a communicative action.”[21] He also suggests the Spirit’s illuminating work that “enables understanding” is necessary to overcome readers’ “prejudices or ideologies” not just when reading Scripture but when reading “novels, newspapers, and traffic signs.” Scripture may be an intensified instance of this need for divine illumination, given how much the God’s word demands of readers, but it is not unique in this respect.[22]
In terms of perlocutionary efficacy, “the Spirit’s role . . . [is] to energize and empower the sense—the speech act—that is already there.” In doing so, The Spirit goes beyond “bringing the illocutionary point home to the reader” by “achieving the corresponding perlocutionary effect—belief, obedience, praise, and so on.” Following Bernard Ramm, Vanhoozer insists “the Word does not work ex opere operato.” On the contrary, “the Spirit is ‘mute’ without the Word” and “the Word is ‘inactive’ apart from the Spirit.”[23] What is more, “God the Spirit is free to use or not to use these words to witness to himself or to make the words efficacious in a perlocutionary manner.”[24]
So, the Spirit uses the instrument of the inspired biblical text, perhaps sporadically, to speak to readers and hearers in the moment, illuminating and activating the text and thereby rendering it efficacious. According to Vanhoozer, we may “affirm both that Scripture is the Word of God (in the sense of divine locution and illocution) and that Scripture may become the Word of God (in the sense of achieving its intended perlocutionary effects).”[25]
Echoes of Barth?
On the surface, this seems to locate Vanhoozer’s view somewhere along the Reformed branch of the Protestant tree; he certainly presents it as such and not without some reason. Charles Hodge, for example, uses similar language when he writes that “it is necessary, in order to render the Word of God an effectual means of salvation, that it should be attended by the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit” and that, “when attended by the demonstration of the Spirit, [it] becomes the wisdom and power of God unto salvation” to those who believe.[26] But in writing this, Hodge is speaking only of how Scripture “is made effectual to salvation,” he is not suggesting that the word is ever perlocutionarily impotent.[27] On the contrary, he follows the standard Reformed line: “that the Bible has the power attributed to it;” that it produces various effects such as binding all to obedience, exposing and restraining sin, and offending the unrepentant and not just saving effects; and that “this work of the Spirit” the renders the word effectual to salvation “is with the soul” of fallen readers or hearers who “are not in a condition to receive the transforming and saving power of the truths of the Bible.”[28]
Being intentionally bound, exposed, restrained, and offended by someone’s word are just the sort of perlocutionary effects speech-act theory has in view and discussions of the saving efficacy of Scripture often do not. While examples of effects like these are noted in nearly all Reformed systems in their discussions of the law, common grace, external call, and other places, they are seldom explicitly discussed in terms of biblical efficacy in these systems since that discussion is ordinarily located under the means of grace and thus understandably focused on how the word is effectual to salvation among those who believe. Despite this, Bavinck recognizes the point and speaks of a wide scope and diverse array of biblical effects in his summary of the Reformed position and even Hodge, whose discussion is tightly restricted to just the saving efficacy of Scripture, observes the general enlightening, liberating, and sin-restraining effects of the word in the world wherever Scripture is widely taught and notes the power of the gospel to offend unbelievers: “to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness.”[29]
From the perspective of Reformed orthodoxy, Vanhoozer’s proposal that Scripture in some sense becomes God’s word as the Spirit freely chooses to use it or not “to witness to himself” is jarring and drives him to pose this question: “Is such a view similar to Barth’s insistence that . . . the Bible ‘becomes’ the Word of God only when the Spirit illumines the reader?” He answers that it “depends on how one views communicative acts and on how one defines Word.”[30] Contemporary evangelicals, he notes, disagree.
While there is no evident disagreement among the Reformers or their orthodox heirs on whether the Bible in any way becomes God’s word at any point subsequent to inscripturation, Barth famously advances just such a view. Distinguishing between the Bible and God’s word, he holds the former becomes the latter on the occasion the Spirit uses the text to speak, as it were, to or through its readers. Although, as the normative source for the church’s proclamation, readers ought to approach the text with the expectation that God will speak, the Spirit is free to be silent and, if he is, Scripture will be ineffective as divine discourse.
Despite significant differences in their respective doctrines of Scripture, Vanhoozer agrees with Barth that God must perform some sort of act subsequent to the original authorial act in order for Scripture to become God’s active and efficacious word and that the Spirit is free to perform such an act or not on any given occasion. As such, each proposes that Scripture must become something like a divinely spoken word by the Spirit, in the moment, to become God’s efficacious word. For Barth, God’s word is always efficacious but Scripture is not always God’s word; for Vanhoozer, Scripture is always God’s word but is perlocutionarily impotent as divine discourse until activated by the Spirit.
After explaining “the Spirit’s agency consists” only “in bringing the illocutionary point home to the reader and in achieving the corresponding perlocutionary effect,” Vanhoozer proceeds to argue that “Word and Spirit together make up God’s active speech (speech act).”[31] The inscripturated word, it appears, does not count as a divine speech act apart from the Spirit’s act of “bringing the illocutionary point home to the reader” such that “the corresponding perlocutionary effect” is achieved. Similarly, Barth argues that,
The presence of the Word of God itself, the real and present speaking and hearing of it, is not identical with the existence of the book as such. But in this presence something takes place in and with the book for which the book as such does indeed give the possibility[, and this something is a] free divine decision. . . . It then comes about that the Bible, . . . is taken and used as an instrument in the hand of God, i.e., it speaks to and is heard by us as the authentic witness to divine revelation and is therefore present as the Word of God.[32]
Both Vanhoozer and Barth, then, point to an occasional performed divine act subsequent to and independent of inspiration that renders Scripture God’s living and active word capable of producing divinely intended effects, saving or otherwise.
Presenting, Activating, and Speaking
Wolterstorff’s speech-act analysis of Barth’s argument leads him to conclude, first, that Barth operates with a “presentational, rather than authorial” model of divine discourse and, second, that “a different sort of action than speaking” is in view when he speaks of Scripture becoming God’s word.[33] Presentational discourse says “something by presenting a text to someone, be it a text that one has oneself authored, or one that someone else has authored.”[34] A key aspect of presentational discourse is that it treats texts instrumentally. Rather than using an act of writing or speaking, presentational discourse uses an already authored text to say something. Both Barth and Vanhoozer appear to operate with an essentially presentational model of biblical efficacy.
Unlike Vanhoozer, Barth offers little more than a presentational model of the Bible as divine discourse. In his view, the Bible becomes God’s word only as the Spirit freely uses it to say something as it is presented to someone. Vanhoozer, in defending his embrace of the identity thesis—that the Bible is God’s word—criticizes Barth on this point.[35] Yet, when he turns to biblical efficacy he also depicts the Bible as inactive and ineffective (being word alone) apart from the Spirit’s presentational use of it. Scripture becomes “God’s mighty speech act” able to accomplish what God intends not by way of the original authorial act but by way of a subsequent presentational act performed by the Spirit.[36]
According to Wolterstorff, however, the divine act that renders the biblical text a divine speech act is not itself an act of God speaking—at least not for Barth. It is instead an act in the neighborhood of activation, ratification, and fulfillment, which is just how Barth describes it:
To bring it about that the Deus dixit is present with the Church in its various times and situations is not in the power of the Bible or proclamation. The Deus dixit is true . . . where and when God by His activating, ratifying and fulfilling of the word of the Bible and preaching lets it become true.[37]
Wolterstorff reads Barth as claiming that “God activates, ratifies, and fulfills in us what God says in Jesus Christ.”[38] Barth may instead be saying God activates and ratifies “the word of the Bible and preaching” such that the text or sermon “become true” in the sense of fulfilling the expectation that God will speak.
Either way, some sort of activating and ratifying activity of God is involved, leading Wolterstorff to conclude there is “no reason to call this action ‘speech’” since “it doesn’t itself consist in God saying something.”[39] Even if Barth means that God does something that renders the written or preached discourse God’s efficacious word (rather than merely acting on the reader or hearer to acknowledge it), the point holds: what Barth depicts God doing is something other than speaking.
Vanhoozer’s account of the activating act of the Spirit is also puzzling in that he denies the Spirit is performing an illocutionary act, which is what a meaningful speech act amounts to, while representing this act as the way the Spirit “speaks in and through Scripture.”[40] The denial seems clear:
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of understanding—the Spirit of the letter correctly understood—not a rival author. Indeed, the one who inspired Scripture cannot contradict himself when he illumines it. . . . The Spirit is neither a supplement nor a second source to the Word in Scripture. . . . [He] does not alter the literal meaning but . . . enables understanding. . . . The Spirit’s work . . . is not to change the sense but to restore us to our senses.[41]
The Spirit’s activity consists merely in illuminating and applying the meaning of the text as a previously completed illocutionary act, not in performing a fresh illocutionary act. By denying the Spirit performs a new illocutionary act, however, he appears to deny the Spirit is saying anything at all—even presentational discourse involves performing a distinct illocutionary act, it just uses an already authored text to do so. Yet, Vanhoozer explicitly states the “Spirit speaks in and through Scripture precisely by rendering its illocutions . . . perlocutionarily efficacious.”[42]
How the Spirit can speak without performing a distinct illocutionary act, which would necessarily introduce another meaning, is not clear.[43] Each time he performs this oft-repeated act, however, he renders an inactive illocution (the biblical text) one of “God’s mighty speech acts.”[44] Only then does the Bible become what the Protestant orthodox insisted it always was: God’s efficacious word, living and active, able to accomplish all he intends. Prior to this act “Scripture is the word of God” only “in the sense of” being a “divine locution and illocution” (which is much more than Barth claimed for the text); by this act it “become the Word of God, . . . achieving its intended perlocutionary effects.”[45]
Mapping a Fault Line
Although substantial differences exist between Lutheran and Reformed orthodox accounts of biblical efficacy, deeper structural continuities hold the Protestant theological plate together. Vanhoozer’s particular application of speech act theory to this issue, however, breaks with several of these tectonic continuities. The resulting fault between Vanhoozer’s account of scriptural efficacy and Protestant orthodox accounts, however subtle in some places, can be traced.
Like Barth’s proposal, Vanhoozer’s construal of scriptural efficacy requires the written text be transformed into something like direct personal speech in order for it to become efficacious. Because the inscripturated word is not living and active as inspired, the Spirit must activate this word as it is read in order to “energize and empower the sense—the speech act—that is already there.”[46] Only then does the inactive written word become a mighty speech act of God capable of achieving his purposes.
The Reformers and their orthodox heirs are fully aware of the necessity of the Spirit’s agency and the instrumental nature of Scripture, but do not frame biblical efficacy this way. They often explicitly deny the assumption that the inspired word of God must become anything more or other than what it already is in order to accomplish what God intends. For their part, Lutherans hold that “the Word has an inherent, divine, and constant power.”[47] In Quenstedt’s words, God’s external word has an “intrinsic power and natural disposition.”[48]
Vanhoozer rejects such formulas as committing “the mistake . . . that transfers the life and power of the Spirit to the text itself.”[49] Despite their emphasis on the power of God’s word in itself (in se) and independent of its use (extra usum), Lutherans do not seem to commit this error. As Preus explains,
The written . . . Word of God derives its power from the Holy Spirit, who is united with the Word and operative through it. Orthodox Lutheranism . . . emphasiz[es] the perpetual union of the Spirit with the Word of God. This is the reason for the Word always being efficacious.[50]
Rather than neglecting the role of the Spirit, it is precisely due to the “perpetual union” of word and Spirit that Scripture, in their view, is always efficacious.
More than this, the union of word and Spirit, which the Reformed also affirm in their own way, is the very reason why a second divine act to render the word efficacious is unthinkable to them:
The power of the Word is never independent of the Spirit of God. . . . The work of the Word and the work of the Spirit are not two works, nor are they the union of two distinct operations, but they are one work, a unity of effect and a unity of operation. . . . Lutheran theology never thought of the Spirit of God abdicating His work of saving sinners to the Word, which then takes over God’s soteriological purposes in some sort of automatic fashion. . . . The power and work of the Word is never distinct from the Spirit’s power and work but is His power and work. . . . All Lutheran theologians from the time of the Reformation through the period of orthodoxy taught that the Spirit was the efficient cause of conversion and of all spiritual activity in man and that the Word (and sacraments) was His instrument.[51]
The union of the Spirit with God’s word allows Lutheran (and Reformed) theologians to attribute the life and power of the Spirit to the external word, even in its written form, without transferring that life and power from God to the text, as though God abdicated his saving work to the Bible sans the Spirit.
Vanhoozer also envisions a tight relationship between the Spirit and God’s word: “the Spirit is most properly conceived as the effective presence of the Word, or as the Word’s empowering presence,” he writes.[52] By this he means to affirm the conjunction of word and Spirit that one finds throughout Reformed theology and that he takes to be the critical distinction between an abbreviated “fundamentalist” Protestant principle and an unabbreviated one. But his conclusion, that Scripture both is the word of God on the basis of a past illocutionary act and becomes the word of God on the occasion of the Spirit’s presentational use of it does not square with the sort of union or conjunction either Lutheran or Reformed orthodox doctors taught. Indeed, Lutherans explicitly teach that, in virtue of the standing relation between word and Spirit, the Bible “is not a passive, inanimate instrument that . . . has no power in itself” but is rather “an instrumentum activum . . . like the eye or hand of a living man.”[53]
The fault line between the traditional Reformed account and Vanhoozer’s proposal is also evident. It is true that the Reformed teach that “the Spirit’s sovereignty” over the word is such that he “gives or withholds” his saving influence as he pleases and so, as the primary means of grace, its effects are “sometimes more and sometimes less” and sometimes not at all.[54] On the surface, this teaching might seem very close to Vanhoozer’s (and Barth’s) and able to accommodate the construction that the ineffectual word of God may become God’s efficacious speech act whenever the Spirit is pleased to use it.
The case is not so simple, however. To begin, when the Reformed speak this way they are referring only to the function of Scripture as a means of saving grace and not to the efficacy of Scripture in general. Since biblical efficacy is often discussed under the larger topic of the means of grace it may sometimes seem as though the Reformed teach that the Bible only becomes efficacious on particular occasions and only through a subsequent act of the Spirit. But, as noted above, the Reformed recognize a richly variegated efficacy—“to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jer. 1:10)—and this efficacy is universal in scope, constant in operation, and diverse in outcome.
“For the Reformed,” Bavinck is convinced, “the word of God had a much richer meaning than one would gather from its use as a means of grace in the strict sense of the term.” In the first place, “the word of God, both as law and gospel, . . . concerns all human beings and all creatures and so has universal significance.” For this reason, unlike the sacraments, “the word of God also has a place and life outside of [the visible church] and also exerts many and varied influences.”[55] This wider scope of the word is matched not only to a wider administration than the sacraments but also a wider efficacy. The word is to be preached to all people in all places and the preacher can know for certain that even if none are converted or strengthened the Spirit is always at work through the word accomplishing everything God has appointed it to do.
According to Bavinck, the very expression “word of God” denotes “that it is never just a sound but a power, not mere information but an accomplishment of his will (Isa. 55:11).” This is not just true of God’s creative word but of his re-creative word too, by which he “works in the area of morality and spirituality.”[56] To translate this into speech-act terms, Bavinck argues that the word of God, by definition, is not only a completed illocutionary act but also perlocutionarily efficacious, actually accomplishing everything God intends.
If Bavinck is right then Vanhoozer’s proposed distinction between Scripture being the word of God “in the sense of divine locution and illocution” and becoming the word of God “in the sense of achieving its intended perlocutionary effects” is discontinuous with the Reformed orthodox view. There is, by definition, no such thing as an inactive or ineffective form of God’s word available to become efficacious in the latter sense. The word of God is not divided this way and is never perlocutionarily impotent; it is instead always living and active, always efficacious.
When Reformed authors assert “that the Word alone is insufficient to bring people to faith and repentance” they never imagine that the word ever is “alone” or that it requires energizing and empowering. As Hodge writes, it is “a fact that the Bible has the power attributed to it” and that “it is a clear doctrine of the Bible and fact of experience that the truth [of God’s word] . . . has this transformative power.”[57] As Bavinck explains, “Word and Spirit . . . work in conjunction to apply the salvation of Christ to human beings” and even when saving grace is not communicated the word has not failed to accomplish God’s intended purpose:
The word that proceeds from the mouth of God is indeed always a power accomplishing that for which God sent it forth. . . . And this is even true not just of the gospel but also of the law. Paul, admittedly, says of the Old Testament dispensation of law that “the letter kills” (2 Cor. 3:6), but in making that point he is saying as powerfully as he can possibly say it that it is not a dead letter. Instead, it is so powerful that it produces sin, wrath, a curse, and death.[58]
These effects of the law on the lost are clearly taught in Scripture (Rom. 4:15, 1 Cor. 15:56, 2 Cor. 3:7–9) and belong also to Scripture.
Unlike the law, which “demands that humans work out their own righteousness, . . . the gospel invites them to renounce all self-righteousness and to accept the righteousness of Christ and even offers the gift of faith to that end.”[59] As such, the gospel is,
The ‘power of God for salvation’ (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 1:18; 2:4–5; 15:2; Eph. 1:13). Since it is not a human word but God’s (Acts 4:29; 1 Thess. 2:13), it is living and lasting (1 Pet. 1:25), living and active (Heb. 4:12), spirit and life (John 6:63), a lamp shining in a dark place (2 Pet. 1:19); it is a seed sown in the human heart (Matt. 13:3), growing and multiplying (Acts 12:24), a sharp two-edged sword piercing the innermost being of a person and judging all the thoughts and intentions of the human heart (Heb. 4:12). For that reason it is not void and futile but works . . . in those who believe (1 Thess. 2:13); and the works it brings about are regeneration (John 1:18; 1 Cor. 4:15; 1 Pet. 1:23), faith (Rom. 10:17), illumination (2 Cor. 4:4–6; Eph. 3:9; 5:14; 1 Tim. 1:20), teaching, correction, consolation, and so forth (1 Cor. 14:3; 2 Tim. 3:15).[60]
Not even the efficacy of the gospel is one dimensional, however. Just as the law continues to drive believers to Christ and guide them in their sanctification, so also the gospel offends the unrepentant:
The gospel exerts its effect even in those who are lost; to them it is a reason for their falling, an offense and foolishness, a stone over which they stumble, a fragrance from death to death (Luke 2:34; Rom. 9:32; 1 Cor. 1:23; 2 Cor. 2:16; 1 Pet. 2:8).[61]
All of these divinely intended perlocutionary effects of the word of God as law and gospel, among believers and unbelievers, are equally effects of Scripture, which “always accomplishes what it is meant to accomplish and never returns empty.”[62]
God’s inscripturated word, in other words, does not need to become efficacious because “it is always his word; he is always present in it; he consistently sustains it by his almighty and omnipresent power.” As such, “Scripture was not just inspired at one time by the Holy Spirit, but is continually sustained, preserved, and made powerful by that Spirit.” For this reason “it is always efficacious; it is never powerless. If it does not raise people up, it strikes them down.”[63]
Conclusion
As Vanhoozer’s work demonstrates, the insights of speech-act theory break rich ground for evangelical theologians to work. His appropriation of these insights is always stimulating and often constructive, and his attention to biblical efficacy is justified and appreciated. Nevertheless, his proposed “solution” to this issue—that “Scripture is the Word of God (in the sense of divine locution and illocution) and that Scripture may become the Word of God (in the sense of achieving its intended perlocutionary effects)”—represents a problematic departure from Protestant orthodoxy.
The fault line between Vanhoozer’s account of scriptural efficacy and Protestant orthodox accounts is now evident. His account establishes two senses in which the biblical text could be called the word of God and presupposes the inspired text, as mere divine illocution, is inactive and ineffectual. As such, it must be activated by the Spirit on the occasion of it being read in order for it to have the power to accomplish God’s perlocutionary intentions. Although nothing seems to preclude the Spirit activating the written word every time it is taken up, he maintains “the Spirit is free to use or not use these words to witness to himself or to make the words efficacious in a perlocutionary manner.”[64]
On each of these points Vanhoozer breaks with basic features of traditional Protestant accounts of the efficacy of God’s inscripturated word, and on each one the Reformed are actually closer to their Lutheran counterparts than to Vanhoozer, whose views on efficacy are nearer to Barth’s. This is somewhat surprising given the prima facie resemblance of Vanhoozer’s proposal to the traditional Reformed position, but illustrative of the tectonic rift his proposal opens on this particular issue. For both the Lutheran and Reformed orthodox, to deny the perlocutionary efficacy of a discourse is to deny that discourse is the word of God. There is no inactive or ineffective form of God’s word and therefore no instance of his word, written or unwritten, ever needing to be activated in order to become his efficacious speech act. On the contrary, the word of God in whatever form is living and active, “always a power accomplishing that for which God sends it forth.” Tolle, lege.
See J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962) and John Searle, Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). ↑
See especially Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Kevin Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text? The Bible, the Reader and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998). ↑
Kevin Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 156 (emphasis original). ↑
Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, vol. 2, Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 200. ↑
John Cameron, A Tract of the Soveraigne Iudge of Controversies in Matters of Religion, trans. John Verneuil (Oxford: William Turner, 1648), 14–15 (italics original). Cf. Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.10. ↑
Cameron, Soveraigne Iudge, 22 (italics original). ↑
Cameron, Soveraigne Iudge, 23 (italics original). ↑
Council of Trent, Sess. VII, cans. vi–viii; cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1128. ↑
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1128. ↑
See Robert D. Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism: A Study of Theological Prolegomena (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1970), 362-78 and Preus, The Inspiration of Scripture: A Study of the Theology of the Seventeenth Century Lutheran Dogmaticians (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1957), 170-92; Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4, Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 445. ↑
Preus, Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 376-77. ↑
Preus, Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 377. ↑
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.459. ↑
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.459. ↑
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.448–49. ↑
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.458. ↑
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.459. ↑
Francis Pieper, Church Dogmatics, vol. 2 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1951), 465. See also Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; reprint, 1982), 479–85. ↑
Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, 427. ↑
Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, 427, 428 (emphasis original). ↑
Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, 427. ↑
Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, 428. ↑
Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, 428. ↑
Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, 437n.288. ↑
Vanhoozer, First Theology, 156 (emphasis original). ↑
Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3.472 and 622, respectively (emphasis mine); cf. 3.500, 622. ↑
Westminster Larger Catechism, 155. ↑
Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3.470, 477, and 472, respectively. ↑
Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3.473, citing 1 Cor. 1:23. Hodge also discusses the profound moral force of biblical truth. Though this force is “all in vain” with respect to salvation apart from the Spirit’s effectual calling, he nevertheless allows that it produces various non-saving effects in the world (see 3.470–73). ↑
Vanhoozer, First Theology, 155 (italics original). ↑
Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, 428. ↑
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. I/I: The Doctrine of the Word of God, 2d ed., eds. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1975), 530. ↑
Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, 71, 72. ↑
Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, 55 (emphasis original). ↑
Vanhoozer, First Theology, 130, 148, and, 150-51. See also Vanhoozer, “A Person of the Book? Barth on Biblical Authority and Interpretation,” in Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology: Convergences and Divergences , ed. Sung Wook Chung (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008). ↑
Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, 428 and First Theology, 130-31. ↑
Barth, Church Dogmatics I/I, 120. ↑
Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, 73. ↑
Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, 72-73. ↑
Vanhoozer, First Theology, 200. ↑
Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, 427-28. ↑
Vanhoozer, First Theology, 200 (emphasis added). ↑
Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, 429. Even if the Spirit is doing nothing more than performing the same kind of illocutionary act on two different occasions, this still seems to require two (or more) illocutionary acts: an original authorial speech act and a subsequent presentational speech act, the latter necessarily repeated each time the Spirit renders the text efficacious. If so then it is difficult to see how there are not also two meanings—one authorial and the other presentational—which he denies. ↑
Vanhoozer, First Theology, 127. ↑
Vanhoozer, First Theology, 156. ↑
Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, 428. ↑
Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3.481. ↑
Preus, Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 377. ↑
Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, 428. Following Bernard Ramm, Vanhoozer identifies this as the error of ex opere operato. That error, however, is not so much about whether the Spirit’s agency is being acknowledged as the requirement of saving faith to benefit from the means of grace. ↑
Preus, Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 374. ↑
Preus, Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 374-76. ↑
Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, 429 (emphasis original). ↑
Preus, Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 365. ↑
Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3.476, 482. ↑
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.448–49. ↑
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.459. ↑
Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3.470 and 3.477, respectively. ↑
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.457 and 4.458, respectively. ↑
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.454. ↑
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.458. ↑
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.458. ↑
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.458. ↑
Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.459. ↑
Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?, 437n.288. ↑
Volume 1 Issue 3
December 2016 | 155 pages
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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 15:46:40 GMT -5
Old New Calvinism: The New School Presbyterian Spirit
S. Donald Fortson, III
Professor of Church History and Practical Theology
Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte
In 2008, Christianity Today’s Colin Hansen, wrote a fascinating book, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists, which captured a lot of attention.[1] In a commendation of the book, evangelical historian Doug Sweeney, of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, acknowledged the increasing popularity of Calvinism among young Americans, and noted how this “New Calvinism” is “the latest trend in our (endlessly trendy) evangelical movement.”[2] That is perhaps a reluctant acknowledgement by a Lutheran, but of course Presbyterians and other Reformed types have been delighted by this resurgence of interest in Reformed theology. Those involved in higher education, have been watching this trend unfold for a number of years. Young people on college campuses and in seminaries across the country are finding Calvinism to be an intellectually satisfying articulation of the faith, especially attractive in an increasingly anti-Christian American environment.
Hansen’s book, Young, Restless and Reformed, through a series of stories and interviews, chronicles the turn to Calvinism among the young, noting the significant Baptist connection. John Piper is at the headwaters of the movement, along with Southern Baptist leader Al Mohler of Southern Theological Seminary. Hansen describes how Calvinism has become a major point of contention in the nation’s largest Protestant body, the Southern Baptist Convention. The intramural debate among Baptists tends to focus on whether Calvinism encourages or discourages evangelism – each side throwing statistics at the other about who is more committed to reaching the world for Christ. Those familiar with the seventeenth-century history of the English Baptist movement find the Baptist connection quite natural. The New Calvinism has not been without its naysayers in Presbyterianism also. A few Presbyterians appear to view these Baptists as intruders, wondering how these New Calvinists can be “Reformed” if they don’t embrace infant baptism.
Regardless of its critics, the New Calvinism is growing, cutting across denominational lines. Hansen observes that this ecumenical Calvinism has a healthy respect for Christian tradition,[3] but also notes its “openness to the Holy Spirit’s leading.” In one chapter he discusses the emergence of charismatic Calvinism, described as “one sure sign of Reformed resurgence. Such a combination would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago.”[4] Hansen opines, “Considering domestic and international trends, it’s likely that Reformed evangelicals will become more charismatic if Calvinism continues to spread.” An historical role model for these Calvinist charismatics is Jonathan Edwards who famously offered his balanced appraisal of the Spirit’s work during the eighteenth-century awakening in America.[5] The Jonathan Edwards connection is a fascinating one, given the priority New Calvinists give to church membership, discipline, holiness and missions, all significant themes in Edwards’ theology and practice.
Those familiar with nineteenth-century American evangelicalism watch the current commotion over this broader expression of Calvinism with some amusement, noting that much of the “New Calvinism” sounds remarkably similar to the old New School Presbyterianism. One obvious point of contact would be the deep respect for Jonathan Edwards. New School Calvinism was often identified with the work of “President Edwards,” who some considered a father of New School Presbyterianism.[6] While historical context would certainly make the two movements distinct in significant ways, there are some intriguing parallels.[7]
American Presbyterianism for generations has included a significant contingent of clergy who have found their primary Christian identity within the evangelical movement, while also considering themselves a part of the Reformed tradition. A ground breaking work linking the New School with the broader evangelical movement was George Marsden’s book, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience (1970).[8] As Marsden indicates, in the nineteenth century, a progressive party within the Presbyterian household, dubbed the “New School” party, was known for its broader evangelical perspectives on a host of issues. The New School won many hearts and minds, eventually composing half of the Presbyterian family in nineteenth-century America. For a few decades they had their own denomination which reinforced commitment to the issues that separated them from the “Old School.”
New School Calvinism
An outside observer of Presbyterianism in the nineteenth century described Presbyterians this way, “Presbyterians are like hickory, good timber, splits easily.” This was an apt description of American Presbyterians, especially in the years up through the end of the Civil War. The Presbyterian General Assemblies in the 1830s were so raucous that one journalist, commenting on an upcoming General Assembly meeting, declared that there was a “jubilee in hell, every time that body meets.” Notwithstanding the Presbyterian propensity to fuss, in the early 1830s there was one major Presbyterian body in America. By 1861, that one denomination had been split into four separate ecclesiastical bodies.
Two decades before the sectional divide hit its peak in the national debate over slavery, Presbyterians had divided in 1837 into the Old School and New School churches. It was not an amicable parting of the ways, as the Old School had unilaterally booted out the New School, claiming that they alone were the “true” Presbyterian Church in the United States. The New School vigorously disagreed with that conclusion, making its own claim to the Presbyterian heritage, which they believed the Old School had abandoned. Out of the great schism of the 1830s, where Presbyterianism was essentially divided in half, a new denomination was born – what became known as the Presbyterian Church (New School). The new church would have a separate and distinct identity for thirty years in the north; a southern New School body (The United Synod of the South) would have its own separate existence for a mere seven years (1857-1864), separating from the northern New Schoolers in 1857 explicitly over the issue of slavery.
The Old School always asserted that the original divide of the 1830s was theological, a strict Old School contingent arguing that the New Schoolers tolerated Pelagian and Arminian errors. The New School vehemently objected to these accusations, which they considered slanderous and ill conceived. And so ensued a prolonged battle in writing between Old School and New School advocates, each claiming, “my version of Presbyterianism is better than yours;” and a concomitant assertion was, “my Calvinism is more consistent with historic American Calvinism.” Much of the ongoing debate centered upon the question of clergy subscription to the Westminster Confession and catechisms. The meaning of the old 1729 Adopting Act was fiercely debated between the Old School and New School leading up to the division of 1837, and throughout the period of their separation.[9]
The first General Assembly of the New School in 1838 issued a “Pastoral Letter” to her churches in which an account of the Presbyterian controversies leading up to the rupture was discussed and a justification for the actions taken was explained. Included in the letter was a statement wherein devotion to the Westminster Standards was made explicit: “We love and honor the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church as containing more well-defined, fundamental truth, with less defect, than appertains to any other human formula of doctrine, and as calculated to hold in intelligent concord a greater number of sanctified minds than any which could now be framed; and we disclaim all design past, present or future to change it.”[10]
The history of the New School Presbyterian Church in the decade of the 1840’s was a time of developing organizational structure and administration. Separation from the other body came to be viewed as an accepted fact with no expectation of a quick reunion. Tensions with the other Presbyterian body were unabated as conservative voices in the Old School relentlessly attacked the New School. In 1852 the New School Presbyterian Church established its own journal, The Presbyterian Quarterly Review.[11] Examining the pages of its ten years of existence, it is abundantly clear that a chief goal of the periodical was to both justify the New School Church’s existence and to defend her distinctives. For the New School men, who viewed themselves as the “true” constitutional Presbyterian Church, it was simply a matter of demonstrating how their branch continued to exhibit the characteristics of “American Presbyterianism” that had emerged in the eighteenth century. They believed the historical records were on their side and went to great lengths in the Review to substantiate these claims.
In the very first issue of the new journal, the editors utilized two articles to review the background of their denomination and rehearse the unjust impugning of her character by the other branch of the church. The Review editors reminded readers that those who had rent the Presbyterian Church believed, “the exscinded portion was radically unsound in theology, and without any fixed attachment to church order.” But now after fifteen years of existence as a denomination, “…in the body with which we are connected, no man has moved to alter a tittle of the Confession of faith, or an essential principle of Presbyterian church government.” The charge of unsoundness was unsubstantiated; in fact, the brief history of the New School as a separate body has demonstrated her commitment to biblical Calvinism. The editors state, “So far as we are informed, there is not a minister of our body who does not love and cherish the Westminster Confession of Faith as the best human delineation of biblical theology; while all are prepared to bow implicitly and finally and fearlessly, before the only infallible standard, the word of God. ‘Our church standards as symbols for union, but the Bible for authority,’ is the motto of our denomination.”[12]
The editors of the Review asserted that Calvinism had been distorted and deemed it their responsibility to defend “old fashioned, Catholic, American Presbyterianism.” The editors went on the offensive and stated specific distortions against which they would take a stand:
This Review is ‘set for the defense of the gospel’ against all assailants, especially those who professing to abjure philosophy, yet philosophize the Almighty into a tyrant, and man into a victim; who represent a holy God as creating sin in a human soul, anterior to all moral acts, and then punishing that soul for being as he made it; who teach that man has no ability to do his duty whatever, but is worthy of eternal punishment for not enacting natural impossibilities; who limit the atonement offered for a race to the elect alone, and then consign to a deeper damnation, souls for rejecting an atonement, which in no sense was ever provided for them. These excrescences on sound Calvinism, these parasites which antinomian metaphysics have engrafted on the glorious doctrines of grace, we shall deem it our duty to lop off….As we love the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Catechisms, we shall stand ready to vindicate them from Arminian, Socinian, and infidel assaults on the one side, as well as Antinomian glosses on the other.[13]
Between the years 1852 and 1855, the New School’s Presbyterian Quarterly Review carried a series of five articles entitled, “The Spirit of American Presbyterianism.” These articles expounded in detail the great themes of the New School mind. An essential framework throughout the articles was the idea that there had always been two great elements in the Presbyterian Church of America from its beginning. One group exhibited a “rigid” spirit which primarily was made up of the Scottish whose plan was to transplant the Presbyterian Church of Scotland in America. The other party, “liberal” in spirit, was comprised of more diverse Reformed elements from England, Ireland, Wales, France, Germany and Holland. This party had its affinity with the Puritans of New England and was more distinctly “American” in “a new and unparalleled age and country.” The great question was: which of these branches contains the “genuine Spirit of American Presbyterianism.”[14]
New Calvinism and New School
Looking at the character of nineteenth-century New School Calvinism, there appears to be much in common with the spirit of the New Calvinism. John Piper has highlighted twelve features of the New Calvinism; for the purposes of comparison, four of Piper’s distinguishing marks will function as a framework for evaluating continuities in the two “New” versions of Calvinism. Piper notes these four features (among others) of the New Calvinism:
1. The New Calvinism is inter-denominational with a strong (some would say oxymoronic) Baptistic element.
2. The New Calvinism is aggressively mission-driven, including missional impact on social evils, evangelistic impact on personal networks, and missionary impact on unreached peoples of the world.
3. The New Calvinism, in its allegiance to the inerrancy of the Bible, embraces the biblical truths behind the five points (TULIP), while having an aversion to using the acronym or any other systematic packaging, along with a sometimes qualified embrace of limited atonement. The focus is on Calvinistic soteriology but not to the exclusion or the appreciation of the broader scope of Calvin’s vision.
4. The New Calvinism puts a priority on pietism or piety in the Puritan vein, with an emphasis on the essential role of affections in Christian living, while esteeming the life of the mind and being very productive in it, and embracing the value of serious scholarship. Jonathan Edwards would be invoked as a model of this combination of the affections and the life of the mind more often than John Calvin, whether that’s fair to Calvin or not.[15]
These four features (inter-denominational, aggressively mission driven, qualified embrace of limited atonement and priority on piety) especially seem to mirror very similar perspectives that are found in nineteenth-century New Schoolism. While the historical context has certainly changed dramatically, the substantive theological principles and ministry practices are remarkably alike.[16]
1. Inter-Denominational
Inter-denominational cooperation, especially for the sake of gospel witness, was an extremely important value for New School Presbyterians. Presbyterians and Congregationalists in New England had a long history of cordial relations that went back into the colonial era when the first Presbyterian churches had been organized. By 1801 the two groups decided it was time to formalize an agreement to benefit both churches in their evangelistic efforts on the American frontier. The 1801 Plan of Union set up an ecclesiastical arrangement for Presbyterians and the General Association of Connecticut (Congregationalists) to share ministers and accommodate one another’s polity. A Congregational Church could call a Presbyterian minister, likewise a Presbyterian Church could have a Congregational pastor and in each situation local church polity would remain in force, whether Presbyterian or Congregational. A genuine ecumenical spirit prevailed at the time and the 1801 Presbyterian General Assembly unanimously adopted the Plan of Union.
Presbyterians also united with other denominations in joint mission agencies to both reach the ever-expanding American frontier, and sending missionaries to foreign fields. These nineteenth-century multi-denominational mission agencies were called “voluntary societies.” In 1826 the American Home Mission Society (AHMS) was organized in New York by Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed and Congregational churches; the United Foreign Mission Society (UFMS) established in 1816 was a cooperative effort between Dutch Reformed, Associate Reformed and Presbyterian Churches. Presbyterians had also supported the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), organized by Congregationalists in 1810.
These cooperative arrangements served the churches well for a season, but they would become dividing lines between the New School and Old School eventually. The Old School was concerned about the absence of full commitment to Westminster Calvinism among the Congregationalists, and they preferred distinctively Presbyterian-sponsored missions through their own Board of Missions. The New School, on the other hand, tended to prefer the inter-denominational approach in principle which subjected them to suspicions and censures by the Old School. The attitude of cooperation, the New School believed, decreased the attitude of rivalry, enhanced missions, exhibited to the world a “catholic spirit” and rather than “spreading the Shibboleths of sect” was intent on “saving the souls of men.”[17]
The editors of the New School journal argued that this cooperative spirit was consistent with the Presbyterian heritage in America. In an 1852 article, “The Mission of the Presbyterian Church,” describing New School distinctives, the editors wrote,
The spirit of co-operative Christianity characterized the early period of Presbyterianism in America, and eminently conduced by God’s blessing, to make it what it was in its palmist days, when ‘giants’ were in the Church. It seems to grow naturally in the atmosphere of revivals of religion, and be one of ‘the fruits of the Spirit’ in its more general effusion. It expressed itself, as all impartial historians must acknowledge, in the original composition of the Presbyterian Church in America, and manifested itself in the plan of union of 1801, … It gave birth also, to the noble cluster of modern charities, called Voluntary Associations, the ideal once of some who have ‘left their first love.’ These are Associations, not of unbelievers, worldlings or pagan, but of Christians, united in the vitals of truth, and supremely devoted to the propagation of a common Christianity, and the common salvation, over our land and world. The flower of the Presbyterian church was found among the originators and advocates of these institutions. American Presbyterianism must deny her parentage and past history, if she became sectarian, denominational, and exclusive, instead of liberal, catholic and co-operative.[18]
2. Aggressively Mission-Driven
For nineteenth-century New Schoolers being “missional” would have translated into being supportive of revivals, viewed by many of their generation as the chief means of winning lost souls to Christ. One could certainly describe them as aggressively mission-driven in their support for revivals, and this support received harsh criticism by some of the Old School men. A primary culprit of the Calvinist commotion over revivalism was the preeminent evangelist of the Second Great Awakening, Charles G. Finney, who was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1824. Finney experimented with “new measures” in his revival meetings which included an “anxious seat” (a front pew for seekers), “particular prayer” (public praying for the lost by name), the “prayer of faith” (unified prayer guaranteeing results) and women praying and exhorting in public meetings. At a later stage Finney preached “perfectionism” or “entire sanctification” during his years as President of Oberlin College after he had abandoned the Presbyterian ministry.
Presbyterians responded to Finney in a variety of ways. New School minister Lyman Beecher was skeptical of revivalistic techniques at first but later became a moderate supporter of Finney. Beecher wrote in 1829,
There is such an amount of truth and power in the preaching of Mr. Finney, and so great an amount of good hopefully done, that if he can be so far restrained as that he shall do more good than evil, then it would be dangerous to oppose him, lest at length we might be found to fight against God; for though some revivals may be so badly managed as to be worse than none, there may, to a certain extent, be great imperfections in them and yet they be, on the whole, blessings to the Church.[19]
The association of Finney-like revivals with extreme Arminian theology was a given in many Old School minds. The New School, however, tended to take the moderate approach of Beecher, objecting to obvious errors but looking for the good in revivals which were producing a harvest of souls. New School men viewed their support of revivals, and Old School resistance, as a continuation of the same debates from the eighteenth-century revival and earlier schism of Presbyterians (1741-1758). The New School claimed to embrace the “revival spirit of our fathers” and viewed the eighteenth-century Presbyterian revivalists as their ecclesiastical forefathers. In the mid 1850’s New School men lamented that there had been a “suspension of the influences of the Spirit” in their time, and longed for the former days:
Our earnest desire is to witness such scenes as those which clustered around Edwards and Whitefield, Blair and the Tennents, Davies and Dickinson. Our souls break for the longing which we have after the Holy Spirit, and we would plead as starving men for bread, that His mightiest influences might be poured out upon us. This is our characteristic faith and hope as a denomination.[20]
Acknowledging that there were excesses during the eighteenth-century revivals, nevertheless a vital work of God had occurred. The mission of the Presbyterian Church (New School) may be described as “Calvinism in a revival” (italics theirs).[21] The New School journal editors declared, “Our fathers loved and sought revivals of religion, and so do we. The evils are dust in the balance, the good is illimitable and everlasting!”[22]
Debate over revivalism continued for decades. When the Old School and New School churches in the South began negotiations for reunion in 1863, one issue still on the table was revivals. Under the leadership of New School minister and evangelist Dr. Joseph C. Stiles of Georgia and Old School Professor Robert L. Dabney of Union Seminary (Virginia), the joint committee produced a six point doctrinal statement which attempted to bridge New School and Old School concerns. On the question of promoting revivals, there was a carefully crafted statement which granted that there had been revivalist excesses, and then added,
But, on the other hand, we value, cherish, and pray for true revivals of religion, and wherever they bring forth the permanent fruits of holiness in men’s hearts, rejoice in them as God’s work, notwithstanding the mixture of human imperfection. And we consider it the solemn duty of ministers to exercise a scriptural warmth, affection, and directness in appealing to the understanding, hearts, and consciences of men.[23]
3. Qualified embrace of limited atonement
New Schoolers used the phrase “Moderate Calvinism” to portray themselves as holding the middle ground between conservatives and radicals in the Presbyterian household. Robert W. Patterson, Moderator of the New School General Assembly, described this as a “distinctive feature of our body” in his sermon to the Assembly in 1860. Due to the request from a large number of commissioners, the sermon was published. Patterson characterized “Moderate Calvinism” as a “toleration of a generous and liberal construction of the Westminster Confession of Faith.”[24] Indeed a broader Calvinism had been a distinguishing mark of the New School party from its earliest days. In the years leading up the 1830’s schism, even the Old School Princeton professors acknowledged that much of the New School version of Calvinism had been acceptable in the Presbyterian Church for quite some time.[25]
The New School perceived themselves to be more truly representative of the foundations of the American Presbyterian Church. They believed that the 1729 Adopting Act, the “Corner Stone and Magna Carta” of American Presbyterianism, was most faithfully upheld according to its original intent by their branch of the church. The New School maintained that the Adopting Act emphasized the principle of subscribing to the Westminster Confession in all its essential and necessary articles, allowing for the declaration of acceptable scruples, provided that these extra-essential points of doctrine did not compromise the integrity of the system of doctrine contained in the Confession. Their view asserted that the Adopting Act “. . . formally adopts the Westminster Confession and Form of government, as a system, for the substance of them; or in other words, establishes as the basis of the Church, the necessary and essential articles only, of Calvinism and Presbyterianism.”[26] And one of the emphases associated with New School Calvinism was a qualified embrace of limited atonement.
In the years leading up to the Old School/New School schism of 1837, Old School conservatives relentlessly attacked New School “errors” in a series of protest documents annually sent up to the General Assembly. One these protest documents, known as the “Western Memorial,” came before the 1834 Assembly. The conservatives listed numerous New School doctrinal innovations including views on the atonement. Several New School ministers were implicated by name as primary sources of these errors. The memorial called upon the Presbyterian Church to censor these doctrinal aberrations and faithfully deal with the cases that were referred to the General Assembly. The 1834 Assembly did not concur with the judgment of the Western Memorial, and reprimanded its advocates for publicly defaming ministers without trial. Professor Charles Hodge of Princeton Seminary rebuffed these Old School critics because their list of errors were about peripheral issues and not fundamental theological error. As an example of acceptable doctrinal difference, Hodge rhetorically asked, “Is it to be expected that, at this time of the day, the Assembly would condemn all who do not hold to the doctrine of a limited atonement?”[27]
It was well known that New Schoolers rejected certain expositions of limited atonement held by a few Old School brethren. When the United Synod of the South (New School) entered into reunion negotiations with their Old School southern counterparts, the discussions included the doctrine of limited atonement. Again, Old School professor Dabney, helped craft a compromise declaration on the atonement. The 1863 doctrinal statement declared,
The atonement we believe, though by temporary sufferings, was, by reason of the infinite glory of Christ’s person, full and sufficient for the guilt of the whole world, and is to be freely and sincerely offered to every creature, inasmuch as it leaveth no other obstacle to the pardon of all men under the gospel, save the enmity and unbelief of those who voluntarily reject it. Wherefore, on the one hand, we reject the opinion of those who teach that the atonement was so limited and equal to the guilt of the elect only, that if God had designed to redeem more, Christ must have suffered more or differently. And, on the other hand, we hold that God the Father doth efficaciously apply this redemption, through Christ’s purchase, to all those to whom it was his eternal purpose to apply it, and to no others.[28]
The Old School men on the reunion committee took heat from a handful of vocal critics, one writer even suggested the statement was Pelagian. Dabney responded by justifying the distinctions made in the statement, and admitted that “The United Synod had just cause of complaint against a few Old School men” whose “ultra” views had distorted Calvinist teaching. Dabney noted, “And all intelligent Calvinists are accustomed to teach that the limitation which attaches to the atonement, is not in its nature, but only in its design; while their enemies, Arminian and Pelagian, industriously change upon them what they as industriously repudiate, that they teach it is limited by its nature.” Dabney asserted that it was proper to use “general terms” when referring to the nature of the atonement, “so does the Bible.”[29]
4. Priority on Piety
One of the primary principles embraced by New School Presbyterians was the priority of piety. This was considered one of the “characteristic peculiarities” of their denomination. When the New School editors of the Presbyterian Quarterly Review summarized what they perceived to be the “special mission” of their church in 1853, one of the principles was commitment to what they called “living Calvinism.” In explaining the meaning of this principle the editors explored the relationship of theology and piety. This “living Calvinism,” was expressed in the Adopting Act and the 1758 Basis of Reunion between the Old Side and the pro-revival New Side. The New Side and the Log College are the “true line of succession” of the living Calvinism as described in The Log College by Dr. Archibald Alexander of Princeton. The New Side Calvinists believed,
That while they held the great vitals of the system intact and sacred, they were to be allowed to give it power and influence and life, in practical personal application, especially amidst the outpourings of God’s Spirit, without incurring suspicion of heresy, or being condemned by the cold-hearted and formal, for disloyalty to truth, or disorderly measures for doing good and saving souls.[30]
Presbyterian minister Gilbert Tennent, who would become a close associate of George Whitefield, emphasized the issue of genuine piety as a fundamental qualification for ministers of the Gospel. In a 1734 overture to the Synod of Philadelphia, Tennent asked the synod to “particularly enquire into the Conversations, Conduct & Behaviour of such as offer themselves to the Ministry, and that they diligently examine all Candidates for the Ministry in their experiences of a work of sanctifying Grace in their Hearts, and yt they admit none to the sacred Trust yt are not in the Eye of Charity serious Christians.”[31] The New School men shared Tennent’s sentiments about piety being equally important with orthodoxy, looking to the eighteenth-century revivalists as role models.
The New School editors asserted that without the element of piety, Calvinism is a “sepulchre of departed glory.” Calvinism likewise is necessary for piety as that great system of truth that provides the “moral vertebrae” of piety. The editors explained,
But this strongly vertebrated system, probably more than any other, needs for its perfection to be clothed all over, made living, true, beautiful and influential, by the infusion of inward life, the harmonious and free working of genial piety…. Since the settlement of the Augustinian controversy, and the re-establishment of the same fundamental truths, by the Herculean labours of Calvin, this has been the desideratum – to have a living Calvinism. Without piety, it tends to formalism and a freezing orthodoxy or Antinomianism, as Arminianism degenerates into more nervous sentimentalism, or ungovernable enthusiasm, for lack of substance.[32]
According to the New School editors, there must be a protest when “mere accuracy of system, and swearing in the ipsissima verba of formularies, is the sole recommendation of excellence.” The struggle is not for “latitudinarian forms of expression, capricious opposition to hallowed phraseology, or license for fanatical measures, though there is always liability to these extremes, but for the life and soul of a chosen system of faith and order.” It is the old controversy of dogma and life and in such a case the higher law of doing good and saving souls must govern “if the choice is forced on us by circumstances or the exercise of power.” Orthodoxy and piety are necessary and should be blended into harmony. Orthodoxy protects the church from licentiousness and disorder, piety preserves the church from formalism and inaction.[33]
In the final analysis, despite their multiple differences with the Old School, the New School men ultimately desired reunion with the other party. Each party brought something necessary to the Presbyterian household. The New School editors believed that the 1758 reunion (Old Side/New Side) was a model of Presbyterianism at its best. They wrote, “… whenever one or the other has been too prominent, there has been a one-sided tendency…. wherever both elements have been in full activity and cordial compromise, we have had the greatest and noblest Church on earth, just because both elements are needed, …”[34] And, “… we have always considered the union of both the elements of our Church the true ideal of American Presbyterianism, both being defective when alone.”[35] This charitable spirit would prevail – the New School bodies reunited with the Old School churches in 1864 (South) and 1869 (North).
Concluding Observations
In this brief overview of nineteenth-century New School Calvinism, it appears that there is an affinity between New School Presbyterianism and the current phenomena called “New Calvinism.” New Calvinism may not be as “new” as some suggest, but rather the latest installment of an older version of Calvinism which has had its unique expression among every generation of American Calvinists since the era of the colonial revivalists. As indicated in this study, common features of this type of Calvinism include its inter-denominational spirit, focus on being missional, commitment to personal piety and its moderate expression of Calvinist doctrine. The essential tenets of Calvinist soteriology are intact, and alongside this theological commitment is an openness to expressing the old faith in new ways.
One issue within New Calvinism, that Piper doesn’t include in his list, is the growing acceptance of a variety of baptismal practices. This topic of course has been debated among Calvinists for centuries, but there does seem to be more détente on this question among some New Calvinists than in generations past. Piper himself has had some transition in his own thinking on this issue, and is likely having influence. Increasing numbers of young Calvinists are not bothered by the fact that fellow believers hold diverse views on who should be baptized and how much water one should use. On the Baptist side, some New Calvinist pastors and their congregations no longer require persons baptized as infants, to be immersed as believers before they may become church members and partake of the Lord’s Supper. On the Presbyterian side, pressure is not placed upon parents to have their children baptized; if parents choose to wait and let their offspring receive Christian baptism later as believers, this is acceptable and not frowned upon. In both instances, there is a catholic, charitable spirit at work, comfortable leaving this decision up to a believer’s Scripture-informed conscience. This reciprocal accommodation points to New Calvinist respect for tradition and catholicity. If the catholicity of the church is an essential doctrine, as the ancient creeds indicate, then mutual recognition of baptism seems to be a logical conclusion.
A final observation on the Presbyterian side is that much of what the New Calvinism affirms shares a kindred spirit with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC). The EPC, founded in 1981, is clearly evangelical and New School Presbyterian in its orientation, and its younger generation of clergy would be in the New Calvinist camp. A distinguishing characteristic of the EPC is its openness on both charismatic gifts and women’s ordination, both issues placed in the “non-essential” category. On the issues of limited atonement and baptism there is a breadth of view and practice.[36] A number of the New Calvinists have been attracted to the broader evangelical Calvinism of the EPC.
It is a great joy to teach many of these young Calvinists at Reformed Theological Seminary, and I am delighted that an increasing number of them are to be found among the Baptist brethren. The New Calvinism’s contagious enthusiasm for theology, holiness and mission should be an encouragement to the whole body of Christ.
This essay is based upon a paper given at the Evangelical Theological Society meeting, November 20, 2014. ↑
Collin Hansen, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008). ↑
This “respect for tradition” may be a partial explanation for Baptist Calvinist publishing on Early Christianity, for example, Michael Haykin’s Rediscovering the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011). ↑
Hansen, 99. ↑
See “A Faithful Narrative,” “The Distinguishing Marks,” and “Some Thoughts Concerning Revival” in Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 4: “The Great Awakening,” ed. C.C. Goen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972) and “Religious Affections” in Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2. ↑
Old School Samuel Baird claimed that Jonathan Edwards’ theological innovations were the genesis of New School “heresies.” The trajectory of Edwardsean doctrines were known as “New England theology;” see Samuel J. Baird, A History of the New School (Philadelphia; Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, 1868), 167-183. Jonathan Edwards had close relationships with the pro-revival Presbyterians (Synod of New York) and would attend their synod meetings when he was visiting New York. They chose Edwards to be the president of the College of New Jersey in 1758. The nineteenth-century New School men, like their colonial predecessors, had great respect for Edwards, adopting many of his theological emphases as their own. When the New School defended its distinctive doctrines versus an Old School list of “errors” in the summer of 1837, it concluded, “the Convention declare that the authors whose exposition and defense of the articles of our faith are most approved and used in these synods – are President Edwards, Witherspoon, and Dwight….” See “The Auburn Declaration” in The Presbyterian Enterprise, ed. Maurice Armstrong, Lefferts Loetscher and Charles Anderson (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956), 166-171. Baird’s history of the New School was an intensely critical Old School perspective; for a more sympathetic telling of the New School story from within that tradition see Edward D. Morris, The Presbyterian Church New School, 1837-1869: An Historical Review (Columbus, OH: The Chaplain Press, 1905). ↑
Historically, there have always been a variety of views and practices within Calvinism, often minimized by partisans both inside and outside the Reformed Tradition. An excellent study highlighting this diversity is Kenneth J. Stewart’s Ten Myths About Calvinism: Recovering the Breadth of the Reformed Tradition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011). ↑
George M. Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). While Marsden highlighted the New School Presbyterian experience within evangelicalism, and its similarities to twentieth-century fundamentalism, he also noted its “undeniable affinities to the tolerant doctrinal position of theological liberalism.” p. 246. ↑
For a survey of the Presbyterian subscription debates and their role in the reunions of the Old School and New School see S. Donald Fortson, III, The Presbyterian Creed: A Confessional Tradition in America, 1729-1870 (Paternoster, 2008, reprint Wipf & Stock). ↑
Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (New School) (New York: Published by Stated Clerks, 1838-1858. reprint. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work, 1894), 34. ↑
The editor of the The Presbyterian Quarterly Review was Ben J. Wallace; the associate editors were Albert Barnes, Thomas Brainerd, John Jenkins and Joel Parker. Also, assisting with editing the new journal were the professors at Union (New York), Auburn and Lane Theological Seminaries. ↑
“Our Church and Our Review,” Presbyterian Quarterly Review, June 1852: 3-5. ↑
Ibid., 9,10. This statement is a caricature of Old School views; very few Old School advocates would have articulated their views in such extreme ways. Old School conservatives often did the same thing when describing New School “errors.” These exaggerations spread false impressions of the other party, but made it an easy target to assault. This was a steady problem between the two churches. When they finally sat down and discussed their theological differences during reunion negotiations in the 1860s, both sides discovered that the theological gulf was not nearly as deep as anticipated. ↑
“The Spirit of American Presbyterianism,” The Presbyterian Quarterly Review, December 1852: 475-477. ↑
Desiring God, “The New Calvinism and the New Community” accessed October 24, 2014, www.desiringgod.org/conference-messages/the-new-calvinism-and-the-new-community. This presentation was the “Gaffin Lecture on Theology, Culture and Mission” given at Westminster Theological Seminary March 12, 2014. ↑
This study will argue for positive common features in the two movements. There is no intent to imply there are no weaknesses in the “new” forms of Calvinism. Every historical Christian movement typically possesses both strengths and weaknesses. ↑
“Pastoral letter” in Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (New School) New York: Published by Stated Clerks, 1838-1858. Reprint. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School, 1894), 70-76. ↑
“The Mission of the Presbyterian Church,” Presbyterian Quarterly Review, June 1852: 25. ↑
Letter of Lyman to Beecher to Asahel Nettleton, quoted in George Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience, 77,78. ↑
“Spirit of American Presbyterianism,” Presbyterian Quarterly Review, June 1854: 125. ↑
“The Presbyterian Church Intelligently Preferred,” Presbyterian Quarterly Review, March 1856: 656. ↑
“Spirit of American Presbyterianism,” Presbyterian Quarterly Review, June 1854: 130. ↑
Presbyterian Almanac and Annual Remembrancer of the Church for 1865, vol. 7 (Philadelphia: Joseph M. Wilson, 1865), 317. For an overview of reunion negotiations between the New School and Old School in the South see S. Donald Fortson, III, “Old School/New School Reunion in the South: The Theological Compromise of 1864,” Westminster Theological Journal, 66, 2004, 203-226. ↑
See “The Position and Mission of Our Church,” Presbyterian Quarterly Review, July 1860: 119,120. ↑
Princeton professors Archibald Alexander, Samuel Miller and Charles Hodge, in the early 1830s, were outspokenly opposed to a division of the Presbyterian Church. ↑
“The Spirit of American Presbyterianism,” Presbyterian Quarterly Review, September 1853: 245. ↑
Charles Hodge, “Act and Testimony,” Biblical Repertory and Theological Review (October, 1834): 517. Commenting on the protest document, “Act and Testimony,” Hodge makes reference to the Western Memorial, stating he was not surprised that the General Assembly rejected its list of New School errors. ↑
Presbyterian Almanac for 1865, 317. ↑
“Dr. Dabney on the Plan of Union,” Southern Presbyterian, December 3, 1863. Dabney’s essay was published serially in four issues of the Southern Presbyterian. At the conclusion of Dabney’s articles were remarks by the editor, A.A. Porter, attempting to refute Dabney. There appears to have been a growing Presbyterian consensus on this point. American Presbyterians added a new chapter to the Westminster Confession, “Of the Love of God and Missions” (1903, PCUSA) and “Of the Gospel” (1942, PCUS), both chapters emphasizing the love of God for all humanity. The 1942 chapter stated: “God in infinite and perfect love, having provided in the covenant of grace, through the mediation and sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, a way of life and salvation, sufficient for and adapted to the whole lost race of man, freely offers this salvation to all men in the gospel.” ↑
“The Mission of the Presbyterian Church,” Presbyterian Quarterly Review, June 1852: 21, 22. ↑
Minutes of the Synod, 24 September 1734 in Guy S. Klett, ed. Minutes of the Presbyterian Church in America 1706-1788 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Historical Society, 1976), 122, 123. Spelling, capitalization and abbreviations from the original manuscripts are preserved. Gilbert Tennent was author of the infamous sermon, “The Dangers of an Unconverted Ministry” wherein he charged that some anti-revival ministers may be unsaved. He later rectified his harsh judgment of his brethren, and served as the first moderator of the reunited Synod of Philadelphia and New York in 1758. ↑
“The Mission of the Presbyterian Church,” Presbyterian Quarterly Review, June 1852:19-21. ↑
Ibid., 22, 23. ↑
“The Spirit of American Presbyterianism,” Presbyterian Quarterly Review, December, 1854: 477, 478. ↑
“The Spirit of American Presbyterianism,” Presbyterian Quarterly Review, September, 1853: 231. ↑
The EPC’s modern language version of the Westminster Confession includes the chapter “The Gospel of the Love of God and Missions” (1942 text); see note 29 above. Historically, the EPC has had a few ministers who practice both infant baptism and baby dedication in an attempt to accommodate parents with Baptist views. ↑
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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 15:47:45 GMT -5
The Signs of Jesus in Calvin’s Christology
Howard Griffith
Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Academic Dean
Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington D.C.
From the paucity of scholarly studies, one might suppose John Calvin had little interest in miracles. There is perhaps an exception. To his chagrin, Calvin learned in 1551 that his hometown, Noyon, France, had held a celebration at the rumor of his death. The next year Habsburg troops sacked the town. The one house left standing belonged to Calvin’s father. Calvin said that was a “miracle”![1]
Calvin did however, have considerable interest in biblical miracles. This essay locates John Calvin’s view of Jesus Christ’s miracles[2] as signs of his saving power, within a covenantal and catholic Christology. We will seek to allow Calvin to speak for himself. We will deal not with abnormal phenomena in general, but only with Jesus’ miracles. A few preliminary points should be made.
I.
First, Calvin does not give a technical (philosophical or metaphysical) description of biblical miracles.[3] Although for Calvin, the natural order of the creation shows God’s glory, he describes miracles as, “testimonies to [Christ’s] divine power,” as “not human acts, but events in which the … power of God reigns and stands out clearly,” “shining demonstrations of Divine power,” extraordinary, “wonders.” Commenting on John 11:14, regarding Jesus’ delay in coming to raise Lazarus from the tomb, Calvin writes, “The more nearly God’s works approximate to the ordinary course of nature, the more are they despised and the less obvious is their glory.”[4] In other words, Jesus delayed in order “to heighten the miracle.” Miracles then, broadly speaking, are God’s works that provoke wonder.
Second, for Calvin, miracles are events interwoven with, not working against, God’s providential government of all things. In other words, Calvin did not conceive of the miraculous as the “interruption of the natural by the supernatural.” Calvin certainly does not see the universe as a closed causal system. He writes, “All events are governed by God’s secret plan.” Creatures have “natures,” their own properties, but they exercise those properties only by God’s “ever present hand.” Calvin is less interested in how natures function, the stress of Thomas Aquinas,[5] than in God’s use of the creatures. For example, the sun warms, and draws forth seeds from the earth, but God caused the sun to stand still at Joshua’s request to make it clear that the creatures are not first (or necessary) causes, only instruments of God’s will. God caused the sun to stand still, writes Calvin, to reveal that he governs the daily sunrise and all things, by his fatherly providence.[6] Calvin, like Augustine before him,[7] makes no rigid distinction between natural and supernatural, as though one might be opposed to the other. Miracle for him is not suspension of natural law, as it would later be defined, because the Creator is also the God of providence. Nothing but God’s hand controls all events. Miracle and providence are closely related in Calvin’s thought.[8]
Against the radical Lutheran Joachim Westphal, Calvin avers that he opposes the doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ’s flesh in the Sacrament, not because it goes against the measure of human reason, but because it was God’s will, as Scripture reveals, to make Christ’s human nature like all human nature, that is, with the property of dimension. “Such is the condition of flesh that it must subsist in one place.” What does happen in the Lord’s Supper, Calvin describes as “miracles,” “… that things severed and removed from one another by the whole space between heaven and earth should not only be connected across such a great distance but also be united, so that souls should receive nourishment from Christ’s flesh.”[9]
Third, Calvin is not interested in the apologetic force of miracles as in any respect separate from God’s Word and Spirit. Christ’s miracles prepared for faith, and strengthened faith, but only as testimonies to the doctrine of the Word of God, and then only for those in whom the Holy Spirit first purified the heart by faith. This is illustrated by the unbelief of many witnesses of Christ’s miracles. Referring to the people who sought Jesus after the feeding of the five thousand, Calvin writes, “… they were unaware of the true…reason for his action, since they were seeking in Christ something other than Christ himself…. It is very important … what we look at in Christ’s miracles.”[10]
Fourth, all biblical miracles for Calvin are covenantal—that is, God gives them, like the sacraments, as confirming signs and seals of his promises, what Calvin calls God’s “doctrine.” Randall Zachman notes that Calvin showed his interest in miracles as signs confirming the truth of the Word of God as early as the first edition of the Institutio in 1536.
The term sacrament as we have previously discussed its nature so far, embraces generally all those signs which God has ever signaled to men to render them more certain and confident of the truth of his promises. He sometimes willed to present these in natural things, at other times, set them forth in miracles.[11]
Zachman writes, “The purpose of the extraordinary sign is the same as the ordinary sign, namely, to confirm faith in the promise of God. The difference isthat the work of the Holy Spirit is not seen in ordinary sacraments, whereas it is in miracles.” Calvin writes, “… whenever God sees that his promises do not satisfy us, he adds helps to them suitable to our weakness; so that we may not only hear him speak, but likewise behold his hand displayed, and thus are confirmed by an evident proof of the fact.”[12]
As signs and seals, miracles are revelatory, essentially one with God’s words. This relationship with the words is important for Calvin, because false prophets seem to have the ability to work signs of their own. “In order … that we may duly profit by signs, an inseparable connection must be established between them and doctrine.”[13] Thus, miracles cannot stand alone, apart from the promises of God.
…those who simply know the bare history have not the Gospel, unless there is added a knowledge of his teaching, which reveals the fruit of the acts of Christ. For this is a holy knot, which may not be dissolved.[14]
Further showing their covenant orientation, miracles function within redemptive history, especially because the exodus from Egypt is the great archetype of the grace of God. As the most vivid miracle, it confirmed the covenant of adoption established with Abraham and his descendants.[15] Likewise, prospectively, the exodus typified the redemption Christ would accomplish. Though he does not, so far as I have seen, attribute the exodus miracle directly to Christ, for Calvin it is axiomatic that all God’s acts of salvation come through Christ the Mediator.[16]
Fifth, Christ’s miracles had the temporary function of establishing the gospel, by which God’s grace is permanently administered. In Calvin’s view, unlike the final view of Augustine,[17] miracles themselves were passing signs of grace, though that grace continues in Christ. Zachman writes, “Calvin thought that God exhibited unusually vivid signs of God’s grace at the time of the emergence of the Gospel that were meant to reveal to the church the perpetual gifts God would bestow upon it, without the signs themselves being perpetual.”[18] From the 1536 Institutio to its final edition, Calvin argues in this way. He responds to the Roman Catholic criticism that the Reformed church had no miracles—Calvin says the gospel of Reformed Christianity is the gospel of Christ, and for Christ’s gospel, Christ’s miracles suffice. The implication is if one asserts that new miracles are necessary, it is because one believes he has a new gospel to authenticate.[19]
II.
We come now to Jesus’ miracles specifically. For Calvin they function as signs of his saving work.
First, as incarnate, Christ is the final mediator of the covenant. Calvin understands the works of Christ according to a catholic Christology. Following the Definition of Chalcedon, Calvin argues that Christ, in order to accomplish redemption, must be both God and human. He writes in Institutes 2/12.2,
It was his task to swallow up death. Who but the Life could this? It was his task to conquer sin. Who but very Righteousness could do this? It was his task to rout the power of the world and the air. Who but a power higher than the world and air could do this? Now where does life or righteousness or lordship of the world and heaven lie but with God alone? Therefore our most merciful God, when he willed that we be redeemed made himself our Redeemer in the person of his only-begotten Son [cf. Rom. 5.8].
Christ’s works of salvation are performed in the unity of his divine Person in both divine and human natures. This comes out clearly in Calvin’s first reply to Francesco Stancaro (1560). Stancaro, focusing narrowly upon the work of atonement, taught that Christ mediated between man and God only in his human nature. He acknowledged that a divine and a human nature were united in Christ’s person, but said the divine nature, because shared fully by the three persons of the Trinity, cannot mediate between God and humanity. To say that the Son mediates between the Father and humanity in his divinity would imply that he is subordinate to the Father in his divinity, and thus fall into the Arian heresy.[20]
Calvin replied that all the incarnate Christ does, he does as the one Christ in both natures:
It is…true to say that all the actions which Christ performed to reconcile God and man refer to the whole person, and are not to be separately restricted to only one nature. Lest this opinion be subject to quibbles, a distinction will be helpful: certain actions, considered in themselves, refer to one nature, but because of a consequent effect they are common to both. For example, dying is proper to human nature, but if we take into account the apostle’s meaning when he says that by the blood of Christ our consciences are purified because he offered himself though the Spirit (Heb. 9:14), we will not separate the natures in the act of dying, since atonement could not have been effected by man alone, unless the divine power were conjoined. If the apostle suitably and correctly concludes that Christ is the mediator of the New Testament because he offered himself through the Spirit, it follows that his death, on that account, was expiatory, since he was the only begotten Son of God and the Redeemer given to mankind. In this manner, nothing hinders the properties from remaining integral to each nature, nor does their communication argue against their distinction.[21]
In the Institutes, Calvin says miracles rendered the fullest testimony of Christ’s divinity. Though prophets and apostles performed miracles like his, there is this great difference—“they distributed the gifts of God by their ministry, but he showed forth his own power.”[22]
Second, nevertheless, as incarnate mediator, Christ’s miracles were performed in a state of humiliation, and for the purposes of redemption. Zachman notes that in the biblical commentaries, Calvin stressed that although the miracles were works of divine power, Christ’s divinity was concealed by his lowly and suffering humanity, or his role as suffering servant. Commenting, in 1548 on Phil. 2:7, “he emptied himself,” Calvin writes,
…how can He be said to have emptied himself, who, nevertheless, proved Himself throughout by miracles and powers to be the Son of God, and in whom, as John testifies, there was always to be seen a glory worthy of the Son of God? (John 1.14). I answer, that the abasement of the flesh was, nevertheless, like a veil, by which His divine majesty was covered.[23]
Indeed the concealment of his divinity increased in intensity as his humiliation increased, to the point of his death on the cross. Because that cross is the greatest scandal, his miracles were worked by one who appeared to have no power. Nevertheless, “… the divine majesty of Christ was not so concealed under the contemptible and lowly appearance the flesh that it did not send forth beams of his manifold brightness.”[24] The signs indicated both who he is as divine savior, and because his divinity was concealed by his humanity, that God was at work in his ministry. That is, to those with eyes to see. “By accommodating himself to men’s capacity, he will at one time assert his divinity and claim for himself what is of God, and at another time, will be satisfied with bearing a human character, and give the whole glory of divinity to the Father.”[25] The miracles were to lead past his humiliation and suffering to faith in Christ as divine Son.
Further, Calvin attributes the power of Christ’s miracles to his anointing with the Holy Spirit. Hence, in the state of humiliation, the miracles are works of the three persons of the Trinity, for the accomplishment of redemption. After Christ’s resurrection and ascension, his miracles functioned as they once did for the prophets, now for the apostles, to attest the gospel.[26]
Third, Christ’s miracles indicate his Messianic or mediatorial, identity. We may look at Calvin’s treatment of three categories of Jesus’ miracles: nature miracles, healing miracles, and exorcism.
Commenting on the leftover baskets of food after Jesus’ multiplying loaves and fishes, Calvin writes, “… this not a little heightened the wonder of the miracle. For by his power they understood that Christ not only created out of nothing the food for their present use, but… he could also provide their needs in the future…. Christ wished to declare that, just as all things had been given into his hands, so the food which we eat comes to us from His grace.”[27] “…though he does not now satiate five thousand men with five loaves, he nevertheless does not cease to feed the whole world wonderfully.”[28] Jesus is the Creator; as eternal Son, he entered history to redeem; as exalted King, he is Lord of creation now. He still mercifully feeds the world by his providence.
Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law of fever. He took her by the hand and “rebuked the fever.” Why are human bodies afflicted with illness? Commenting on Matthew 8, Calvin says, it was on account of God’s judgment on human sin. “… fever and other diseases, famine, pestilence and every kind of hardship are the forward troops of God, through which He works His judgments. By His decree and will we understand that He sends these messengers ahead, and then He restrains and calls them in, when He thinks right.” Jesus’ removal of illness indicated reconciliation with God, because it indicated removal of the curse. By laying hands on those he healed, Christ signified absolution from God’s curse.[29] Calvin ponders why Matthew writes in v. 17, “This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.’” Some think this shows the evangelist used the Old Testament arbitrarily. Calvin thinks not. Rather he links the healing of the body with the renewal of sinful humans. He writes,
He gave light to the blind in order to show Himself to them as the light of the world. He gave life back to the dead that he might prove himself to be the resurrection and the life; similarly with the lame and the paralyzed. This is the analogy we must follow: whatever benefits Christ bestows on men in their flesh, we must relate to the aim which Matthew sets before us, that He was sent by the Father to relieve us from all our ills and woes.[30]
Isaiah 53:4, the text Matthew quotes, prophesied of Christ’s cross. Only this suffering is true medicine for sin.
… we must come to our Lord Jesus Christ, who was willing to be disfigured from the top of his head even to the sole of his feet, and was a mass of wounds, flogged with many stripes and crowned with thorns, nailed and fastened to the cross and pierced through the side. This is how we are healed… knowing that otherwise we can never have inward peace… unless Jesus Christ comforts us and appeases God wrath against us.[31]
The healing miracles were symbolic actions, to denote Christ’s renewal of body and soul from vice and wretchedness. Contrast, however, Calvin’s restrained interpretation of them with Augustine’s. The latter reads these miracles as allegories of the possible states of people’s souls.[32]
However, Calvin also notes that Jesus’ healing miracles did not effect final healing. We might describe them as “sub-eschatological.” “… it would be preposterous to tie ourselves to a fading benefit, as though the Son of God were a physician of the body.”[33] Though Christ showed his mercy in healings, we find here another clue to Calvin’s notion that miracles are passing signs of perpetual grace, limited to the time of Christ and the apostles. In union with Christ, the church lives by faith; because believers are united to Christ, they share Christ’s sufferings until his return. God never intended that the church partake of visible glory. Calvin says the whole earth is already subject to Christ’s kingship, that the new creation has begun, but that his kingship is still invisible.[34] So there is triumph in the midst of suffering, but that triumph can only be grasped by faith. In 1550 Calvin wrote,
…let us remember that the outward aspect of the church is so contemptible that its beauty may shine within; that it is so tossed about on earth that it may have a permanent dwelling-place in heaven; that it lies so wounded and broken in the eyes of the world that it may stand, vigorous and whole, in the presence of God and his angels; that it is so wretched in the flesh that its happiness may nevertheless be restored for it in the Spirit. In the same way, when Christ lay despised in a stable, multitudes of angels were singing his excellence; the star in the heavens was giving proof of his glory; the magi from a far-off land realized his significance. When he was hungry in the wilderness and when he was contending with the taunts of Satan to the point of shedding blood, the angels were once again ministering to him. When he was just about to be fettered, he drove back his enemies with his words alone. When the sun failed, it was proclaiming him – hanging on the cross – the king of the world; and the open tombs were acknowledging him Lord of death and life. Now if we see Christ in his own body tormented by the insults of the wicked in their arrogance, crushed by cruel tyranny, exposed to derisive behavior, violently dragged this way and that, do not let us be frightened by any of these things, as if they were unusual. On the contrary, let us be convinced that the church has been ordained for this purpose, that as long as it is a sojourner in the world, it is to wage war under the perpetual cross.[35]
On the cross, Christ took the curse of sin on his own shoulders, and there is “a similarity between head and members in bearing the cross.”[36]
Christ’s exorcisms too, show the work of the Messianic king. Victims of Satan’s tyranny are emancipated in him. Jesus is King over the powers of evil. When Jesus cast demons from the Gadarene, Calvin says ‘… they are brought to a halt in mid-career by Christ’s secret force, that by their expulsion, he may reveal himself as men’s deliverer.”[37]
Finally, Christ is now the resurrected and ascended Mediator. He continues to exercise his wondrous lordship over the creation and the church, though this rule is only known by faith. At his coming “…he will appear to all with the ineffable majesty of his kingdom, with the glow of immortality, with the boundless power of divinity, with a guard of angels.”[38] The veil over his majesty will be lifted.
Conclusion
Calvin’s presentation of Jesus’ miracles highlights the transcendence of the God who is not far from us. He relates the wondrous events of salvation, as Scripture does, to the divine Person who entered human history to redeem. Because God is both Creator and Redeemer in Christ, Calvin relates Jesus’ miracles to God’s providence not as intrusions, but as signs of restoration. In his doctrine of Jesus’ miracles, we find a convergence of Calvin’s Christology, soteriology, and ecclesiology. Jesus’ miracles are signs of the benefits of salvation, received in union with Christ. That union includes sharing Christ’s sufferings until he returns in glory. At the same time, they show us that today, Jesus is Lord in the whole creation. Further research may show an element of Jesus’ own redemptive suffering in his miracles. In a time when God is sometimes seen as very far, or so near as almost to be lost, Calvin’s views holds out a Christ to be trusted and adored.
Bibliography
Augustine, The City of God, (trans. Marcus Dods; New York: Modern Library, 1993).
Berkouwer, G. C., The Providence of God (trans. Lewis B. Smedes; Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1952).
Calvin, John, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries (ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance, 12 Vols.; Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1959-1972).
Calvin, John, Concerning Scandals (trans. John W. Fraser; Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B. Eerdmans, 1978).
Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. J.T. McNeill, trans. F.L. Battles, 2 vols.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960).
Calvin, John, Sermons on Isaiah’s Prophecy of the Death and Passion of Christ (tr. and ed. Thomas F. Torrance; London: James Clarke, 1956).
Edmondson, Stephen, Calvin’s Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Frame, John M., The Doctrine of God (Philipsburg, NJ.: P&R Publishing, 2002).
Griffith, Howard, “’The First Title of the Spirit,’ Adoption in Calvin’s Soteriology,” Evangelical Quarterly 73/2 (2001): 135-153.
Pannenberg, Wolfhart, “The Concept of Miracle,” Zygon 37/3 (2002): 759-762.
Selderhuis, Herman J., John Calvin, A Pilgrim’s Life (Downers Grove, IL.: InterVarsity Academic, 2009).
Tylenda, Joseph, “Christ the Mediator: Calvin Versus Stancaro,” Calvin Theological Journal 7 (1972).
Zachman, Randall, Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).
Herman J. Selderhuis, John Calvin, A Pilgrim’s Life (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Academic, 2009), p. 9. ↑
miraculis. ↑
Cf. John M. Frame’s discussion of the definition of miracles in The Doctrine of God , A Theology of Lordship (Philipsburg, N.J.: P&R Publishing, 2002), pp. 245-57. ↑
Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance, 12 Vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1959-1972) 4: pp. 50, 62, 113; 5: p. 7. Ibid., 5: p.5. ↑
G.C. Berkouwer, The Providence of God, Studies in Dogmatics, trans. Lewis B. Smedes (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1952), pp. 156-58, and pp. 198-9. ↑
Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J.T. McNeill, trans. F.L. Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960) 1: p. 199, 1/16.2; cf. “the shadow of the sundial went back ten degrees to promise safety to Hezekiah;” cf. “God’s name ought to be hallowed always and everywhere, whether by miracles or by the natural order of things” “Prefatory Address to King Francis,” 1: p. 16. ↑
Wolfhart Pannenberg, “The Concept of Miracle,” Zygon 37/3 (2002): 759-762. ↑
As far as I have observed, n the discussion of miracle Calvin does not introduce the medieval distinction between God’s absolute power and his ordained power. ↑
Institutes, 4/17.24. ↑
Ibid., 5: pp. 17-18; 4: pp. 152-3. ↑
As cited in his Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), pp. 154-5. ↑
Ibid. ↑
Zachman writes, “The Law confirmed by miracles becomes the criterion by which to reject all alleged miracles done by false prophets.” Image and Word, p. 156. ↑
Calvin, commenting on Acts 1.1, Image and Word, p. 293. ↑
Image and Word, 157-8. Cf. Howard Griffith, “’The First Title of the Spirit,’ Adoption in Calvin’s Soteriology,” Evangelical Quarterly 73/2 (2001): 135-153. ↑
Cf. Institutes 2/6.2. Moreover, Christ is Mediator both of creation and redemption. ↑
The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: Modern Library, 1993), XXII, 8. ↑
Image and Word, p. 301. ↑
“Prefatory Address to King Francis,” section 3 (in both 1536 and 1559 editions). ↑
Stephen Edmondson, Calvin’s Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 15-35. ↑
Trans. by Joseph Tylenda in “Christ the Mediator: Calvin Versus Stancaro,” Calvin Theological Journal 7 (1972): 15. The incarnation seems to be absolutely necessary (not hypothetically necessary) when Calvin writes, “The situation would surely have been hopeless had the very majesty of God not descended to us, since it was not in our power to ascend to him. Hence, it was necessary for the Son of God to become for us “Immanuel, that is God with us,” and in such a way that his divinity and our human nature might by mutual connection grow together. Otherwise the nearness would not have been near enough, nor the affinity sufficiently firm for us to hope that God might dwell with us.” Institutes, 2/12.1. ↑
Institutes, 1/13.13. ↑
New Testament Commentaries, 11: p. 248. ↑
New Testament Commentaries, 4: p. 163. ↑
Zachman writes, “… Christ does this so that we might gradually be led from his humanity to his divinity, as we are incapable of ascending to God without the mediation of his humanity.” Image and Word, p. 267. ↑
Image and Word, p. 263. ↑
New Testament Commentaries, 2: p.149. ↑
New Testament Commentaries, 4: p. 147. Cf. John Calvin, “Sermon on Isaiah 53, 4,” in Sermons on Isaiah’s Prophecy of the Death and Passion of Christ, tr. and ed. Thomas F. Torrance (London: James Clarke, 1956), pp. 68-70. ↑
New Testament Commentaries, 1: p. 163. ↑
Ibid. ↑
“Sermon on Isaiah 53, 4,” in Sermons on Isaiah’s Prophecy, p. 75. ↑
Cf. “Sermon XLVIII” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First series, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1956) vi: pp. 414-15. ↑
New Testament Commentaries, 1: p. 163. ↑
On Hebrews 2:5 “It was not to angels he subjected the world to come,” New Testament Commentaries, 12: p. 22. ↑
Concerning Scandals, trans. John W. Fraser (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1978), pp. 29-30. ↑
Ibid. ↑
New Testament Commentaries, 1: p. 285. ↑
Institutes, 2/16.17. ↑
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Post by Admin on Apr 8, 2024 15:49:15 GMT -5
A Pastoral Theology of Suffering
Derek W.H. Thomas
Robert Strong Professor of Systematic and Pastoral Theology
Reformed Theological Seminary, Atlanta
I begin with a story. For over a year, a young lady of twenty-seven was dying of incurable cancer. Her mother kept a daily on-line blog detailing the ups and downs of the struggle with faith and courage, hope and despair. The blogs were read far and wide, and the godliness and honesty of the entries were deeply moving and God-honoring. At the funeral service, I preached on Romans 8:28: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” The family was Presbyterian, deeply entrenched in the Westminster Confession and a robust form of experiential Calvinism.
I sometimes say we ought to have a moratorium on the use of Romans 8:28. Too often, it is trotted out with insufficient care for the ravaged emotions of the one we are attempting to comfort. But, in this instance, it seemed entirely appropriate. What this family needed to hear was a word about divine sovereignty – events happen because God wills them to happen; wills them to happen before they happen; wills them to happen in the way that they happen.
It was, I suppose, a no-holds-barred Presbyterian predestinarian sermon reflecting on the issue of suffering and providence. And the family seemed deeply appreciative, writing the sweetest note to me a few days later (which I still have). And then I discovered that an editor of the local newspaper (who had been present at the funeral) had written an article entitled, “Is Suffering Part of God’s Doing or Not?” in which for a couple of pages or so he specifically mentioned the funeral sermon. The editor noted that I had spoken of God’s providence as certain, without randomness. He correctly cited my words: “God weaves, not only the fabric that produces joy and righteousness, but also that which produces agony and evil. Both strands in the tapestry eventually will lead us to glorify God even if we don’t quite understand how or why He sometimes chooses a path that involves so much pain.” Then, the editor added a significant comment:
Maybe a person has to believe in predestination to fully grasp the concept, but I cannot quite get my mind around the idea that God’s hand is in everything I do or that is done to me. If I choose to order catfish instead of chicken for lunch one Sunday at the Crystal Grill, is that God’s will at work? I would think He is too busy to worry or intervene with such inconsequential matters.[1]
According to the editor, God takes care of the big things but not the trivial. God’s will is one thing; his ability to perform it is something else. His providence while general is not specific and detailed.
The Problem of Evil
The philosophical and ethical dilemma posed in the circumstance described above is famously expressed by David Hume: “If God is willing to prevent evil, is He willing to prevent evil but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”[2] According to this view, God is either weak or evil, and the editor in question had chosen the former.
Suffering in one way or another abounds in fallen creation. Take mental and/or emotional health, for example. Without getting into the issues that divide nouthetic counselors and integrationists, all concerned will agree that the Scriptures have something to say about emotional and psychological health.
Consider, for example, the following statements in Scripture:
“You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness” (Psa. 88:18; or “darkness is my only friend” in the ESV footnote as a possible translation).
The extended lament of Job in chapter 3 where, among other things, he says, “Why did I not die at birth, come out from the womb and expire?” (3:11); “why was I not as a hidden stillborn child, as infants who never see the light? There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest” (3:16-17).
In similar fashion, Jeremiah (citing Job 3), following a night in the stocks, complains: “Why did I come out from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?” (Jer. 20:18).
In these examples, the troubling issue before them is taken to the Lord, either in complaint or regret, but in such a manner as suggests that the reason for and solution to their predicament lies (or did at some time lie) within God’s ability to change.
Poor health (physical and emotional) has been a part of humanity’s experience from the beginning, though our expectation of a sickness-free existence exponentially increases as medical science continues to expand its borders. Limiting ourselves to physical sickness, we note that the Bible records a surprising amount: atrophy (Lk. 6:6), dermatological diseases (see, Lev. 13), dysentery (2 Chron. 21:18; Acts 28:8), epilepsy (Matt. 4:24; 17:5), hemorrhage (Lk. 8:42-48), indigestion (1 Tim. 5:23), infirmity (Jn. 5:5), leprosy (Matt. 8:2; Mk. 1:40; 14:3), tapeworm (Acts 12:23).
In addition to human physical suffering, there is animal suffering, animal suffering brought about by human cruelty – a point eloquently (and perhaps, surprisingly) made in C. S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain.[3] The appearance of reckless animal cruelty poses questions for humanity to be sure; but it also, questions the goodness of God. How can God permit such a thing? It is not mere sentimentalism that poses such a question. In the new heavens and earth, with creation restored (including animals, surely) shalom banishes all such cruelty (Isa. 65:16; 66:22; 2 Pet. 3:13; cf. Rom. 8:21-22). Why, then, does it exist now?
Solutions to the Problem of Evil
Evil is a problem, no matter what view of it we take. Typically, philosophers and theologians recognize two types of evil – natural and moral.[4] By natural evil we mean evil that is not of particular human volition or action. So we can think of hurricanes or floods or tornadoes or cancer (although sometimes cancer is a consequence of human action). Moral evil is evil in which there is a particular human volition or human action involved – as in sexual violence, war, all forms of cruelty (to animals and human beings) and discrimination, slavery and injustice.
What possible responses do we have to the problem of natural and moral evil in the world? One response would simply be to reject the very notion of evil – as did Christian Science and to some extent, Spinoza (1632-1677). Mary Baker Eddy seems to suggest that evil and suffering are merely states of mind: “All reality is in God and His creation. That which He creates is good, and He makes all that is made. Therefore the only reality of sin, sickness, or death is the awful fact that unrealities seem real to human, erring belief, until God strips off their disguise.”[5] Such denial is, of course, just that: a will-o’-the-wisp flight of fancy that offers no help to those whose experience of pain and evil is all too tangible.
Another response to the problem of evil is to adopt the view known as Philosophical Compatibilism.[6] Compatibilism is the view that human freedom is compatible with one’s choices being predetermined. Soft determinists argue that the way God orders good events and evil events is asymmetrical. He is “responsible” for the former, but not the latter.[7] Paul K. Helseth seems to take it further when he argues that God orders events, including evil, without himself being the “author of it,” yet in such a way that “evil must be regarded as something that is not contrary to, but an essential component of, God’s will.”[8]
If compatibilism is philosophically sound, the problem of evil is most certainly answered to some degree. But there are some further possibilities that we should consider.
(1) We could abandon the concept of justice.
C. S. Lewis describes how he rejected Christianity because of the horrendous cruelty he observed in the world around him. He discovered, however, that evil posed an even bigger problem for his atheism.
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of “cruel” and “unjust”? … What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? … Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did this, my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended upon saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies… Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple.[9]
Evil is a problem simply because we have a sense of moral rightness; morality isn’t merely the choice of an individual (“what’s right for you isn’t right for me”). Paul makes the point when arguing for Gentile sin. Though they do not have the moral law in the form of the Ten Commandments, they still possess a moral compass: “They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them” (Rom. 2:15).
(2) We could abandon the concept of omnipotence
Another way to solve the problem of evil is to relinquish the idea of control, either totally or partially. God’s power is relative to other powers in the universe – evil powers in particular. In the thought of the newspaper editor earlier, God isn’t in control of the details, the trivial matters. The cosmos is thus viewed as dualistic: evil and good are equally ultimate and must fight it out for ultimate supremacy. Both Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism entertain some such viewpoint.
(3) We could abandon omniscience (specifically, knowledge of the future)
To an important degree, advocates of free-will theism adopt this point of view. If man possesses free-will in an absolute sense – he or she is capable of choosing X or Y in any given circumstance – God cannot know the outcome in advance. Molinism – perhaps the dominant view currently among philosophical theologians – suggests that God knows what each person freely chooses to do in any set of circumstances (so-called, middle knowledge). According to this view, God can “put” people in times and places where God’s ultimate goal is achieved without violating creaturely freedom and creaturely responsibility.[10] If an individual chooses this outcome in this circumstance, the creation of the circumstance guarantees the outcome. Calvinists respond by insisting that God cannot know in advance (even in controlled circumstances) whether a person chooses X or Y if they act from an absolute sense of freedom. Humanity is always capable of choosing irrationally, or on a whim.[11] The premise of Molinism is faulty. Middle knowledge is a “now you see it, now you don’t” point of view. On the one hand, it advocates that God’s omnipotence is capable of re-producing the circumstances in which Joe or Jill will always choose “X” rather than “Y” – a freely-made choice. The premise is wrong, in my view, but even if it were true, it does not remove the issue of sovereignty (the intrusion of Calvinism, if you will) as to why God chooses that particular circumstance in which Joe or Jill makes that free-choice. In so doing, the event remains controlled by God’s choice of the circumstance.
(4) We could abandon the goodness of God
Another way to solve the problem of evil is to downplay the problem: why should evil be considered ethically unacceptable? To some extent, Islam with its fundamental emphasis upon Divine transcendence, downplays the goodness of God, thereby making evil less problematic.[12] More importantly for our purposes here, an absolutist (hard) idea of determinism does the same thing. The Westminster Confession, for example, goes out of its way to avoid this form of hard determinism, advocating a “soft” determinism, which on the one hand insists that God “upholds, directs, disposes and govern all creatures and their actions,” and on the other hand, in such a way that “in relation to foreknowledge and the decree” God is the “first Cause” but in relation to the way in which these “fall out” they do so in accord with “second causes” (WCF 5:1-2)[13] Whatever this means, and it is not at all clear what it does mean, the aim of these statements is to prevent the attribution of blame for sin and evil being made against God. To make things absolutely clear, the Confession insists, God is not “the author sin” (3:1).
Whatever else is being asserted here, the Divines wish to distance themselves from any notion that compromises the goodness of God in the face of the reality of evil. The cause of evil is not immediately attributable to God, even though nothing happens without his express will and superintendence. One might be tempted to suggest that this is a notion in which God “permits” evil, but as Calvin insists again and again, the language of “bare permission” is no better an explanation, veering too much in the “softer” direction than Scripture warrants.[14]
(5) We could regarding suffering as (invariably) divine punishment
If suffering is always just punishment for wrongdoing, the problem of pain is removed. We need to be clear here. Sometimes, this is indeed the explanation for pain. Consider the incident of the boy born blind in John 9. Given the boy’s blindness, the disciples ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2), suggesting that God’s involvement in the malady was direct and judgmental.
The Bible does indicate a doctrine of divine punishment for sin and covenant unfaithfulness. Perhaps, nowhere is this clearer than in Paul’s statement to the Corinthians that their lack of reverence at the Lord’s Supper brought instant retribution: “That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died” (1 Cor. 11:30). Whatever the precise nature of their conduct,[15] Paul could not be clearer as to the cause of their troubles. Suffering is the result of divine punishment.
Some, like Eliphaz in Job’s suffering, suggest that punishment is invariably the cause of suffering. Thus he pontificates in his initial foray into divine theodicy: “As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same” (Job 4:8). In the same speech he adds the following insight: “Can mortal man be in the right before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker?” (Job 4:17). His point is brutally honest: the reason for Job’s tragic circumstances (including the loss of his ten children) is his fault. A man reaps what he sows. It is as simple as that. Suffering is invariably retribution. There are no exceptions. In fact, all three of the counselors (and possibly Elihu along with them[16]) sing this song interminably.
This viewpoint – the instant retribution formula – allows for no exceptions. Suffering is due to sin. It was the instinct of the disciples in John 9 to ask of the incident of the boy born blind as to the cause, but the question showed all too clearly that only one answer was possible: someone had sinned. But in this instance, as in the Book of Job, we are expressly told that the reason for suffering and evil lay in another direction. Of course, sin is always involved in some capacity. Without a fallen world, there would be no suffering and evil to endure. But the solution is trite and simplistic, even if it does expose a robust doctrine of sovereignty.
It is all too possible to descend into a form of skepticism as to God’s involvement in healing. The memory of one incident still lingers, though it is over two decades ago. A young mother of three, dying of cancer, is less than a day before her death. I made a final visit only to find her in tears. I had bumped into someone leaving as I entered – someone with a message from God that “if she only believed, she would be healed.” The message contained a grain of truth but in this context, it was savage and without mercy. Lack of faith is a sin and delivered this way, it is only a partially disguised form of the “suffering is punishment” viewpoint.
Detached from this particular context, it is important for us to catch the biblical emphasis on the role of faith in healing. There are Jesus words: “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him” (Mk. 11:22-23). And in similar vein, the words of James 5: “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven” (Jam. 5:14-15).
Several passages of Scripture seriously distort the view that healing is available to anyone who has sufficient faith. Timothy is advised, for example, to take some wine for his stomach and his “frequent ailments” (1 Tim. 5:23), suggesting that recourse to healing through increased faith on Timothy or Paul’s part was not the solution. Similarly, Paul leaves a sick Trophimus behind at Miletus (2 Tim. 4:20), though no suggestion is made here of any lack of faith. And the apostle’s own thorn in the flesh, despite three solemn seasons of prayer, was not taken from him. Paul lived with pain.[17]
(6) We could equate suffering with Satanic oppression
Mark 7 records the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman who is said to have “an unclean spirit” (Mk 7:25) that subsequently is cast out and referred to as a “demon” (v. 26). Similarly, in Mark 9, a man brings his son to Jesus (the disciples having failed to cure him) suffering from a condition that resembles epilepsy (Mk. 9:17-29). As the narrative progresses, the “unclean spirit” (v.25) is “rebuked” and throws the boy to the ground in a condition that suggested at first that he was dead (v.26).
Similarly, Paul’s experience of a “thorn” is described as “a messenger of Satan” (2 Cor. 12:7), suggesting that perhaps the solution to the problem of evil lies in some form of dualism – Satan did it in this case. (This is wholly inadequate as a solution, of course, in the face of soft-determinism).
From one point of view, bad things happen because Satan does them (instigates, coordinates, manipulates). Jesus is specific about this: behind Peter’s suggestion that Jesus had no need to endure the cross lay Satan’s voice – “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matt. 16:23). And later, anticipating Peter’s denial, Jesus attributed it directly to Satan “demand” – “Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat” (Lk. 22:31). More especially, the opening two chapters of the book of Job are explicit in recording Satan’s involvement in Job’s suffering – though the manner of account highlights God’s sovereignty – Satan must give account of himself to God (Job 1:6-12; 2:1-7).[18]
However, as a complete explanation for suffering, “Satan did it” is inadequate, for in the last analysis, even the forces of darkness and chaos are thrown into a confinement whose boundaries are kept secure by a sovereign God: “Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:14). No usurper, even one of Satan’s power, can ultimately threaten to undo the ultimate purposes of God.
Suffering is incomprehensible
The nature of God’s involvement in all that occurs in the world of men and angels, though we may employ terms such as “concurrent,” or “confluent,” or “compatibilist” (and each have nuanced distinctions), remains incomprehensible – that is to say, it is beyond our grasp. However, this should not be read as a justification of irrationality. Several features need reaffirmation:
God is totally sovereign in all his will and acts (his ensures that his “will of events” comes to pass)
Things happen which contradict God’s “will of command” – men lie, cheat, rebel, all of which violates his moral will for us – but at the same time, the end as much as the beginning is exactly as God purposes, for we are “predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11).
Men may do dastardly things and with purposeful intention, and yet God “overrules” to bring about exactly what he had planned all along – thus Joseph spoke to his bothers: “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20).
Evil on the part of human beings causes suffering for which it’s perpetrators are held morally responsible and liable to judgment; nevertheless, as James makes all too clear, the cause of evil cannot be laid at God’s feet: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one” (Jam. 1:13-17).[19]
Responses to Suffering
As this article is entitled, “A Pastoral Theology of Suffering,” I wish to suggest how Christians – specifically, Christians who hold to an inerrant view of Scripture and a compatibilist understanding of providence – respond to evil and suffering. Here, I merely outline some appropriate responses.
(1) Suffering is announced by Jesus as central to the understanding of Christian discipleship.
Few things are clearer in the New Testament than the fact that Christians are called to a life that involves suffering. Specifically, cross-bearing and self-denial: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). Getting what we do not want and not getting what we do want, is at the heart of a consecrated life in tune with the Lord Jesus Christ. Mistaken rhapsodic views of Christian discipleship as a life free of pain are just that – fanciful and fairytale. The reality is that Paul’s first lesson in missionary endeavor was this: “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Those who fail to see this are doomed to misunderstand the role of hardship and setback in the Christian pilgrimage. A triptych of simple truth addresses the issue:
The Christian life is lived in the amphitheater of opposition and warfare. Satan prowls about seeking whom he may devour (1 Pet. 5:8).
The reality of our fallen world, with its attendant messiness and disorder, inevitably means pain here and now. It groans in its current disorder, tripping us as it does so (Rom. 8:21-22).
And we find ourselves in a “now – not-yet” tension: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Rom. 7:19, taking the classic, Augustinian sense of these words).
(2) There is no safe alternative to trust.
We must trust in God, his ways, his purpose, his means, through thick and thin, no matter what occurs or threatens to occur. Christianity is an invitation to trust God’s love and covenant at all times and in all situations. The guarantee that the Lord’s purposes are always designed for good lies in the cross. Having not spared his Son, he is determined to grant “all things” (Rom. 8:32). The cross is an instrument of sheer brutality and physical torture; it does not in itself convey the love of God. Some viewed the crucifixion folly and others found it a stumbling block (1 Cor. 1:23). The cross only signals a loving and gracious God because (to employ Anselm’s terms) it was an act of satisfaction and substitution. Jesus endured the cross and thereby “fully satisfied the justice of His Father … for those whom the Father has given unto Him” (WCF 8:5). He died for me, enduring the wrath that my sins deserved (Gal. 2:20; 2 Cor. 5:21).
Cross-borne love beckons our trust in every other aspect of our lives, no matter how difficult it is. Pastorally, we should speak, not of the problem of evil, but the problem of faith. In the end, it is what Job faced. Unable to reconcile epistemologically the problem of suffering in his life, he asks for a “fight” – an epistemological engagement with the Almighty over the issue of justice. “Dress for action like a man,” God says to him (Job 38:3) – employing military language of preparation for battle. “Yahweh’s call to gird up his loins is a call to combat, to the combat between warriors, to the combat of heroes.”[20] And to what end? That Job might give a reason for the existence of giant land and sea creatures, Behemoth and Leviathan (Job 40:15; 41:1)? Hardly! What have these to do with existential suffering? Nothing. Except that his inability to answer is similar to the problem he has raised about his own suffering. No explanation is given him and he must learn to live with the ignorance and trust the kindness of his Heavenly Father (Job 42:6). If all Job can do is to say with the man in Mark 9, “I believe, help my unbelief!” (Mk. 9:24), it will be a stepping stone to pastoral healing and peace of mind in the midst of darkness.
Suffering in itself does not necessarily produce blessing; it only does so to the one who has faith. It has been pointed out many times, with evident accuracy, that of the two crosses on either side of Jesus, only one was sanctifying. The other was just as surely hardening. Chastening, as Hebrews 12 informs us, can be met with disdain and contempt.
(3) The pathway to trust and rest may not always be a smooth one.
It is an important pastoral lesson that even Paul did not immediately respond to pain with sublime acquiescence. In the “thorn in the flesh” incident recorded in 2 Corinthians 12, the apostle is very clear that his initial response was to ask the Lord to take it away! We may, falsely, assume that a sign of spiritual maturity is never to question anything. But that would be a false conclusion. Paul prayed three times that the thorn in the flesh be removed (2 Cor. 12:8). But even more pertinently, Jesus responded in similar fashion in the Garden of Gethsemane. As the horror of what lay before him seemed to overwhelm him, he prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39). We might have expected that Jesus, having known of his impending cataclysm from the beginning, to have complied with the unfolding of providence in a manner that would relay his submission and trust without recoil. But on the contrary, his hesitation is indicative, on the one hand, of the reality of his incarnation, and on the other that hesitation and maturity are not mutually exclusive. To cite Donald MacLeod:
At a very basic level, Jesus does not want this ‘cup’. His whole nature shrinks from it, and as he speaks to his Father he becomes acutely aware that there are two wills (and two ways): there is “my will” and there is “thy will.” Nor did Jesus find it easy to be reconciled to the Father’s will. It literally terrified him, because here was the concentrated essence of the mysterium tremendum. It was eerie. It was overwhelming. It was uncanny. Jesus’ victory consisted not in merging his will with that of the Father or even in wanting specifically what the Father wanted. It came from choosing his Father’s will rather than, and even over against, his own. He willed what he did not want, embarking on an astonishing course of altruism.[21]
(4) We must learn to glory in tribulation.
It is not enough simply to acquiesce, to grin-and-bear the trials; we must learn to see suffering for what it accomplishes to the one who has faith. It is the perspective to which Paul turns in Romans 5: “we rejoice in our sufferings” (verse 3). And why rejoice? Because “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (vv. 4-5).
There is no hint of masochism in this statement, simply a resolve to view suffering as the vehicle through which God brings us to the purest form of our existence – conformity to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29). And it is in looking to Jesus in our suffering that resolution comes. Jesus, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb. 12:2). There is no circumstance or set of contingencies through which our Savior has not passed, as our forerunner blazing a way for us to follow (Heb. 6:20; 12:2).
The article no longer appears online. ↑
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. with an Introduction by Norman Kemp Smith (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1980), Part X, p. 198. ↑
C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (London & Glasgow: Fontana Books, 1972). See chapter 11, pp. 117-31. ↑
See, for example, Ronald H. Nash, Faith and Reason: Searching for a Rational Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1988), p. 178. ↑
Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health (Boston, 1889), p. 489. ↑
Theistic compatibilists include, Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will (New York: Cosimo, 2007); Paul Helm, The Providence of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1994); P. Helm, “Classical Calvinist Doctrine of God,” in Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: 4 Views, ed. Bruce Ware (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, pp. 5-75; D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990). ↑
For the language of asymmetry, see Paul Helm, “God, Compatibilism, and the Authorship of Sin,” Religious Studies: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 46, no. 1 (March 2010): 119; D.A Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2002), p. 212. ↑
Paul Kjoss Helseth, “God Causes All Things,” in Divine Providence: Four Views, ed. Gundry, Stanely, N. and Dennis W. Jowers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), pp. 18, 51. ↑
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: MacMillan, 1960), 31. ↑
Representative samples of this point of view would include, John Sanders, The God who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998); Gregory Boyd, God of the Possible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000); Christopher Hall & John Sanders, Does God Have a Future: A Debate on Divine Providence (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003); William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987); Clark Pinnock, et. al. The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994). ↑
John Frame, No Other God, A Response to Open Theism, (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2001); Bruce A. Ware, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism, (Wheaton: Crossway Books), 2001; Paul Helm, The Providence of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic, 1994). ↑
See, Pierre Berthoud, “The Compassion of God,” in Engaging the Doctrine of God: Contemporary Protestant Perspectives, ed. Bruce L. McCormack (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), pp. 144-46. ↑
The distinction between first and second causes was not new to the seventeenth century Puritans. It was made, for example, by Thomas Aquinas (See Summa Theologiae, First part, a, Question 2, Article 3). ↑
On Calvin and “bare permission,” see the following quote: “These instances may refer, also to divine permission…But since the Spirit clearly expresses the fact that blindness and insanity are inflicted by God’s just judgment [Romans 1.20-24], such a solution is too absurd. It is said that he hardened Pharaoh’s heart [Ex.9.12], also that he made it heavy [ch.10.1] and stiffened it [chs. 10.20,27; 11.10; 14.8]…for if “to harden” denotes bare permission, the very prompting to obstinacy will not properly exist in Pharaoh. Indeed how weak and foolish it would be to interpret this as if Pharaoh only suffered himself to be hardened!…from this it appears that they had been impelled by God’s sure determination.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1960), [1.18.2], 1:231-32. ↑
Evidently, it was a lack of discernment (δοκιμάζω, v.28) that lay at the root of the problem, for it brought “judgment” (κρίμα, v.29) upon them. An inability to distinguish the Supper from other fellowship meals seems to be the issue rather than “self-examination,” the latter too easily suggesting that worthiness to partake of the Supper should be sought after (an impossibility!). See, Leon Morris, 1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary (London: Tyndale Press, 1969), p. 164. ↑
Some commentators have viewed Elihu’s contribution more positively, including to some extent Calvin. See, Susan Schreiner, “Calvin as an Interpreter of Job,” in Calvin and the Bible, ed. Donald K. McKim (Cambridge: CUP, 2006), pp. 53-84. Others have viewed him less favorably. See, for example, Francis I. Andersen, Job: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (London: The Tyndale Press, 1976). See also my Calvin’s Teaching on Job: Proclaiming the Incomprehensibility of God (Geanies: Mentor, 2004). ↑
A helpful summary of the place of sickness and a Christian’s response to it can be found in J. I. Packer’s, God’s Plans for You (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), pp. 149-55. ↑
Some commentators wonder why Satan does not reappear in the conclusion of the book of Job. Consequently, some have conjectured that the references to Leviathan and Behemoth are, in fact, demonic in nature. ↑
For a brief summary of this analysis, see the chapter on “Providence” in J. I. Packer, Concise Theology (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1993), pp. 54-56. ↑
David J. A. Clines, Job 38-42 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 1097. ↑
Donald MacLeod, The Person of Christ (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1998), p. 79-80. ↑
Volume 1 Issue 3
December 2016 | 155 pages
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