Friday, August 31, 2007
Trinity & Covenant Part VI
This is the final installment and a continuation of Trinity & Covenant Part V
When I speak of the inter-trinitiarian relations as covenantal and argue that these relations are the ground of God’s external covenantal relations with humanity, I am not simply saying that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit entered into some sort of pre-temporal pact with one another to save us.
I am speaking of something richer than the contractual agreement that dominates older attempts to conceive of the eternal ground of God’s covenant. I am not arguing simply that the Persons of the Godhead came to some agreement about what each of them would do to save the elect, but that the form and manner in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit eternally relate to one another is covenantal. That what we know and experience as God’s covenant with us is the Trinity’s astonishing and gratuitous act of opening up these family relations to embrace persons other than themselves. That creation itself is an act of covenantal inclusion.
For example, the Father creates people after his Image, that is, he creates sons like his eternal Son. Adam is a son of God, the spitting image of God (Gen. 1:26; 5:1; Luke 3:38). But then, you see, according to the Bible the original Image of God the Father is God the Son (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:2). And so if there is another image, another son, then that other son is given the privilege of participating in the eternal Father-Son relationship in a limited, creaturely, but profound manner. The human son is created to relate to God the Father as he relates to the divine Son.
In other words, I am arguing that when God created man, the form of his relations with man was not something ad hoc, but an expression of the eternal personal relations between the Persons of the Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created non-divine persons in order that these human creatures might graciously enter into something of the blessed covenant, the communal life that they themselves enjoy.
The covenant is, therefore, not simply an external means, not merely a remedial arrangement by which God accomplishes salvation for fallen men, rather it is also the goal of creation. He created us for and now saves us to participate in his covenantal life. The Persons of the Trinity possess the fullness of life and blessedness as they love and serve one another sacrificially. This is the origin and eschatological goal of creation and redemption.
To say this in yet another way, the origin of the covenant is not simply in the will of God with reference to his creatures. That is, the covenant is not an arrangement conceived for man with no prior existence. God does not impose some arrangement de novo on his creatures. The covenant the gift of God. It is the gift of divine life. Our destiny is to enjoy God as redeemed creatures brought into an enjoyment of his rich covenantal life. Herman Hoeksema puts it nicely:
In closing, I return to my favorite Jonathan Edwards formulations:
When I speak of the inter-trinitiarian relations as covenantal and argue that these relations are the ground of God’s external covenantal relations with humanity, I am not simply saying that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit entered into some sort of pre-temporal pact with one another to save us.
I am speaking of something richer than the contractual agreement that dominates older attempts to conceive of the eternal ground of God’s covenant. I am not arguing simply that the Persons of the Godhead came to some agreement about what each of them would do to save the elect, but that the form and manner in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit eternally relate to one another is covenantal. That what we know and experience as God’s covenant with us is the Trinity’s astonishing and gratuitous act of opening up these family relations to embrace persons other than themselves. That creation itself is an act of covenantal inclusion.
For example, the Father creates people after his Image, that is, he creates sons like his eternal Son. Adam is a son of God, the spitting image of God (Gen. 1:26; 5:1; Luke 3:38). But then, you see, according to the Bible the original Image of God the Father is God the Son (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:2). And so if there is another image, another son, then that other son is given the privilege of participating in the eternal Father-Son relationship in a limited, creaturely, but profound manner. The human son is created to relate to God the Father as he relates to the divine Son.
In other words, I am arguing that when God created man, the form of his relations with man was not something ad hoc, but an expression of the eternal personal relations between the Persons of the Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created non-divine persons in order that these human creatures might graciously enter into something of the blessed covenant, the communal life that they themselves enjoy.
The covenant is, therefore, not simply an external means, not merely a remedial arrangement by which God accomplishes salvation for fallen men, rather it is also the goal of creation. He created us for and now saves us to participate in his covenantal life. The Persons of the Trinity possess the fullness of life and blessedness as they love and serve one another sacrificially. This is the origin and eschatological goal of creation and redemption.
To say this in yet another way, the origin of the covenant is not simply in the will of God with reference to his creatures. That is, the covenant is not an arrangement conceived for man with no prior existence. God does not impose some arrangement de novo on his creatures. The covenant the gift of God. It is the gift of divine life. Our destiny is to enjoy God as redeemed creatures brought into an enjoyment of his rich covenantal life. Herman Hoeksema puts it nicely:
The presentation, however, of the counsel of peace must necessarily be changed when the idea of a covenant is not found in a contract or agreement, but is conceived as a living, spontaneous relation and communion, a communion of friendship. . . this covenant [then] is not perceived as a means to an end, as a way unto salvation, but as the very end itself, as the very highest that can ever be reached by the creature; not as a way to life, but as the highest form of life itself; not as a condition, but as the very essence of religion; not as a means unto salvation, but as the highest bliss itself.” (Reformed Dogmatics, p. 318).The eternal covenant is the eternal form of the fullness of God’s relational life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which is the origin and ground of God’s purposes for humanity. A definition of the covenant: God’s covenant is the bond of union, communion, self-giving love, and humble receptivity between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, into which God sovereignly and graciously brings Christians and their children through Jesus Christ, so that they can live with him and enjoy mutual love and faithfulness forever.
In closing, I return to my favorite Jonathan Edwards formulations:
“The end, the ultimate end of the creation of God was to provide a spouse for His Son, Jesus Christ, that might enjoy Him, and on whom He might pour forth His love. Heaven and earth were created in order that the Son of God might communicate His love to His spouse and bring that bride into the very family life of the Trinity.”
“There was, as it were, an eternal society or family in the Godhead, in the Trinity of Persons. It seems to be God’s design to admit the church into the divine family as his Son’s wife.”
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Trinity & Covenant Part V
Continued from Trinity & Covenant Part IV
Okay. Let's try to apply what I've been saying to the traditional Reformed formulations on the pactum salutis.
Understanding the relations between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as covenantal is not entirely new. Reformed theologians have typically affirmed that the inter-trinitarian relations are properly described as covenantal. Many Reformed theologians, since the 17th century, have spoken of an eternal “covenant of redemption” (pactum salutis), sometimes called the “counsel of peace” (consilium pacis from Zech. 6:13).
That there is a pre-temporal covenant between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has long been the majority position in the Reformed theological circles. It was held and taught by the primary authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, Caspar Olevian (1536-87) and Zacharias Ursinus (1534-83), as well the Westminster Divines (WCF 8.1-2; WLC 31), and also by J. H. Heidegger (1633-98), G. Voetius (1589-1676), John Owen (1616-83), Francis Turretin (1623-87), P. van Mastricht (1630-1706), Charles Hodge (1797-1878), A. A. Hodge (1823-1886), R. L. Dabney, and later Louis Berkhof (1873-1957). Consider Dabneys comments in his Lectures in Systematic Theology:
Nevertheless, this quotation reveals the central weakness, I believe, of the Reformed tradition on God’s eternal covenantal relations. God’s eternal covenant is too often conceived of solely as a “remedial plan in the Divine mind.” I want to argue that the eternal covenant is the very life and glory of God’s eternal inner-trinitarian relations.
The typical Reformed scholastic characterization of the eternal covenant is that it is some sort of agreement or compact between the Persons of the Godhead for the sake of accomplishing an external purpose—the redemption of the elect. For almost all of our theologians the covenant is a “remedial plan,” an arrangement to deal with a particular problem—man’s sin and God’s desire to save his elect. The covenant is the means by which the Persons of the Father and Son decreed to accomplish salvation for the elect.
The covenant, on this understanding, is something external to God’s being and life, something that came into being in view of the sin of the human creature. The Son entered into covenant with the Father in order to become our Federal Head. It is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The covenant is the means of bringing salvation to God’s elect.
But I believe that the eternal covenant is much more than this. When I speak of the inter-trinitiarian relations as covenantal and argue that these relations are the ground of God’s external covenantal relations with humanity, I am not simply saying that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit entered into some sort of pre-temporal pact with one another to save us. I am speaking of something richer than the contractual agreement that dominates older attempts to conceive of the eternal ground of God’s covenant. I am not arguing simply that the Persons of the Godhead came to some agreement about what each of them would do to save the elect, but that the form and manner in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit eternally relate to one another is covenantal. That what we know and experience as God’s covenant with us is the Trinity’s astonishing and gratuitous act of opening up these family relations to embrace persons other than themselves. That creation itself is an act of covenantal inclusion.
To be continued
Okay. Let's try to apply what I've been saying to the traditional Reformed formulations on the pactum salutis.
Understanding the relations between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as covenantal is not entirely new. Reformed theologians have typically affirmed that the inter-trinitarian relations are properly described as covenantal. Many Reformed theologians, since the 17th century, have spoken of an eternal “covenant of redemption” (pactum salutis), sometimes called the “counsel of peace” (consilium pacis from Zech. 6:13).
That there is a pre-temporal covenant between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has long been the majority position in the Reformed theological circles. It was held and taught by the primary authors of the Heidelberg Catechism, Caspar Olevian (1536-87) and Zacharias Ursinus (1534-83), as well the Westminster Divines (WCF 8.1-2; WLC 31), and also by J. H. Heidegger (1633-98), G. Voetius (1589-1676), John Owen (1616-83), Francis Turretin (1623-87), P. van Mastricht (1630-1706), Charles Hodge (1797-1878), A. A. Hodge (1823-1886), R. L. Dabney, and later Louis Berkhof (1873-1957). Consider Dabneys comments in his Lectures in Systematic Theology:
If there is any gospel remedy for sin, then there must have been, from eternity, such a remedial plan in the Divine mind. But the question is, was this part of the eternal decree, in any proper sense a covenant? Has it properly the form of an eternal compact between persons of the Trinity? This is purely a question of revelation, to be decided not so much by finding the words, covenant, compact, agreement, applied to it in Scripture, as the substance of the thing asserted. Calvinists hold that in the one, eternal decree of the Trinity, which is one in essence and attributes, and harmonious in will and thought, this remedial purpose (or part of the plan) has from eternity held the form of a concert or agreement between the Father and Son, for the redemption of believers (p. 431).Dabney correctly reminds us that the absence of the word “covenant” itself is not sufficient evidence to conclude the absence of a covenant. One must look for defining characteristics of the covenantal relations.
Nevertheless, this quotation reveals the central weakness, I believe, of the Reformed tradition on God’s eternal covenantal relations. God’s eternal covenant is too often conceived of solely as a “remedial plan in the Divine mind.” I want to argue that the eternal covenant is the very life and glory of God’s eternal inner-trinitarian relations.
The typical Reformed scholastic characterization of the eternal covenant is that it is some sort of agreement or compact between the Persons of the Godhead for the sake of accomplishing an external purpose—the redemption of the elect. For almost all of our theologians the covenant is a “remedial plan,” an arrangement to deal with a particular problem—man’s sin and God’s desire to save his elect. The covenant is the means by which the Persons of the Father and Son decreed to accomplish salvation for the elect.
The covenant, on this understanding, is something external to God’s being and life, something that came into being in view of the sin of the human creature. The Son entered into covenant with the Father in order to become our Federal Head. It is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The covenant is the means of bringing salvation to God’s elect.
But I believe that the eternal covenant is much more than this. When I speak of the inter-trinitiarian relations as covenantal and argue that these relations are the ground of God’s external covenantal relations with humanity, I am not simply saying that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit entered into some sort of pre-temporal pact with one another to save us. I am speaking of something richer than the contractual agreement that dominates older attempts to conceive of the eternal ground of God’s covenant. I am not arguing simply that the Persons of the Godhead came to some agreement about what each of them would do to save the elect, but that the form and manner in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit eternally relate to one another is covenantal. That what we know and experience as God’s covenant with us is the Trinity’s astonishing and gratuitous act of opening up these family relations to embrace persons other than themselves. That creation itself is an act of covenantal inclusion.
To be continued
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Terrorist Training Recruitment Video
If you are light on your feet, the Taliban needs you.
I have to take a break for a few days, so talk amongst yourselves.
I have to take a break for a few days, so talk amongst yourselves.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Friday, August 24, 2007
Oh my, No. Please!
How can I not respond to this? I must address such blasphemous effrontery. But now I'm beginning to sound a bit like Ignatius Riley. Oh, just wait. I have something to say about him in my next post.But for now, let me point out what an incredibly awesome game Rainbow Six Vegas truly is. Halo and Halo 2 prostrate themselves low. This is the best shooter I've ever played, hands down. I'm talking about the single-player, story line part of the game. I'm not sure about multiplayer or the Xbox life game play. Bracketing those, the game play is perfect. The sets are visually stunning. The controls are just right. Everything about this game is just right.
The only small critique I have is the same one I have with every shooter - you are always constrained to go one way. I wish one day that we will have the memory and processing power to have more freedom in the environments we inhabit in these games. But besides that, this game is pure fun. I'm about finished, so I hope they come up with a sequel soon.
But I've got Ghost Recon 2 in the queue. That's supposed to be just as good or better. We'll see.
Jesus' Biblicism
Modern conservative Reformed denominations have a huge problem. It used to be that "Reformed" was short for "Reformed According to the Word." Reformed Christians were the loudest to profess to be "Bible-believing Christians."
Now, however, in many circles, "Reformed" appears to be the proudly worn badge of hyper-traditionalists. For them the supreme judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined. . . and in whose sentence we are to rest is no longer the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture. No. Now all theological controversies are resolved by an appeal to the authority of the decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, and doctrines of men.
If you didn't get the irony of my last two sentences, please read the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapt. 1, par. 10.
Are we followers of Jesus or not? Did Jesus ever once seek to correct the Pharisees or Sadducees by appealing to their traditions or great teachers? No. Just the opposite. He berated them for their loyalty to tradition. He warned them that their traditions "made void the word of God" (Matt. 15:6). He cited the Hebrew Scriptures. Over and over again.
If the reformation of Jesus was anything, it was fresh return to the Hebrew Scriptures as the authority for his church and kingdom.
In Matthew 19:1-12 the Pharisees lay a trap for Jesus. They ask him a question about divorce designed to make him take sides about what tradition school of thought in their little sect was right. Did Jesus know about their internal squabbles about the grounds for a man divorcing a wife? Sure he did. They expected Jesus to say that one side or the other was correct, but he doesn't. When Jesus answered them he did not ask them if they had read this or that Jewish authority on the subject. He asked them, "Have you not read. . ." And then he directed them to the Scriptures, God's Word. He goes all the way back to Genesis, to what God said and God did in the beginning.
Jesus would be derisively labeled as a "biblicist" by many Reformed partisans.
More often than not theological controversies that Christians fight over, that have divided Christian brothers, are best resolved with a fresh look at God's Word. One comes to God's word not looking for a proof text to back one's tradition or confession, but one examines the Bible for fresh insight, new categories, and an authoritative Word that cuts to the heart of the issue. After all, that used to be what it meant to be "Reformed."
Two great essays by John Frame on this subject:
A Defense of Something Close to Biblicism
Traditionalism
Now, however, in many circles, "Reformed" appears to be the proudly worn badge of hyper-traditionalists. For them the supreme judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined. . . and in whose sentence we are to rest is no longer the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture. No. Now all theological controversies are resolved by an appeal to the authority of the decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, and doctrines of men.
If you didn't get the irony of my last two sentences, please read the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapt. 1, par. 10.
Are we followers of Jesus or not? Did Jesus ever once seek to correct the Pharisees or Sadducees by appealing to their traditions or great teachers? No. Just the opposite. He berated them for their loyalty to tradition. He warned them that their traditions "made void the word of God" (Matt. 15:6). He cited the Hebrew Scriptures. Over and over again.
If the reformation of Jesus was anything, it was fresh return to the Hebrew Scriptures as the authority for his church and kingdom.
In Matthew 19:1-12 the Pharisees lay a trap for Jesus. They ask him a question about divorce designed to make him take sides about what tradition school of thought in their little sect was right. Did Jesus know about their internal squabbles about the grounds for a man divorcing a wife? Sure he did. They expected Jesus to say that one side or the other was correct, but he doesn't. When Jesus answered them he did not ask them if they had read this or that Jewish authority on the subject. He asked them, "Have you not read. . ." And then he directed them to the Scriptures, God's Word. He goes all the way back to Genesis, to what God said and God did in the beginning.
Jesus would be derisively labeled as a "biblicist" by many Reformed partisans.
More often than not theological controversies that Christians fight over, that have divided Christian brothers, are best resolved with a fresh look at God's Word. One comes to God's word not looking for a proof text to back one's tradition or confession, but one examines the Bible for fresh insight, new categories, and an authoritative Word that cuts to the heart of the issue. After all, that used to be what it meant to be "Reformed."
Two great essays by John Frame on this subject:
A Defense of Something Close to Biblicism
Traditionalism
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Trinity & Covenant Part IV
Continued from Trinity & Covenant Part IIILet's move from Christology to Trinitarian theology. Now we're getting to the good stuff. I argued in the last post that God the Son converses with, loves, obeys, serves, glorifies, and offers himself to God the Father. God and God. God relating to God.
Indeed, given the way that the Son of God himself speaks of the Personal agency and relations of God the Holy Spirit (John 14-16), the church has rightly concluded that there is a complex three-way set of personal relations—God and God and God. God begotten of God. God and God sending God. God being sent by God and God. God glorifying God and God. But not three gods, one God. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit speaking to, obeying, loving, serving, glorifying, offering themselves to one another.
As difficult as it was for the fledgling, post-apostolic church to make this confession in the face of Greek philosophical paganism with its inert, static, lifeless conception of God—the impersonal one, the undifferentiated monad—she courageously did so. Even so, the fuller implications of what she confessed when she called on God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would not be worked out for many centuries.
She was tempted on the right and left by heretics that would shield the eternal Godhead from these personal actions. God was above all that, they said. Nevertheless, the church, bound by the Holy Scripture, against human reason and the philosophical “common sense” of the day, stuck to her guns. The God we worship, the God who has delivered us from sin and death is the God who speaks to God, the God who serves God, the God who loves and obeys God, the God who sacrifices himself to God, and all for us.
But even with this shocking trinitarian confession we are not yet ready to announce that the riddle has been thoroughly solved. We have not yet plumbed the depths of the revelation of God in Christ. There is more to learn. We are back to some of our original questions. What does this startling slice of the life of God unveiled to us during the three-year ministry of the Son in the flesh reveal about God’s being and life as God? How can obedience, service, sacrifice be predicated of the relations between the Persons of the Trinity? What does the interaction between God and God and God tell us about the way he relates to us and the way we relate to him? And ultimately what does it reveal about our eschatological hope—the end, the goal of our redemption?
It was the Reformed church and her theologians who recognized that that the way in which God the Son and God the Father and God the Holy Spirit relate to one another is strikingly parallel to the way God relates to us and the way we are expected to relate to God. That obeying, glorifying, serving, and sacrificing describe covenantal relations. Even the climax of the covenant—“God with us” and “God in us” is first of all a divine reality and relationship. How so?
The language of John 14-17, especially the language Jesus uses to indicate that the Father is with him (16:32) and that he and the Father and Spirit with be with the disciples (17:24)—this is covenantal language. In the OT, God’s covenant with the Patriarchs and Israel promised that God would dwell with them and he did so in some sense in the Tabernacle and Temple, just as he was with Adam in the Garden.
When God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’s promise to be “with” and “in” the community of believers after Jesus’ departure this is just the covenantal language of the older age come to fulfillment in Christ. The word “covenant” may not be used, but the substance and language of the covenant is clearly present.
But what is striking about this language is that with the incarnation of God the Son, we get more information on the origin and ground of God’s covenantal promise to be with us. The language of God’s being “in” and “with” us is grounded in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’s being “in” and “with” one another. Consider John 17:21:
. . . even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you,What this means is that the covenantal promise of “God with us” is first of all that which is experienced in the eternal inter-personal life of God the Father and Son. Just as the Father is “in” the Son and the Son is “in” the Father, so too will believers be covenantally united “with” and “in” the divine community. Just as the Word is with God the Father (John. 1:1), so the promise of the covenant is that we also with be “with” God.
may they also may be in us.
Moreover, just as the Father and Son are “in” and “with” one another—covenantally united in love and service—so too will believers in the new age be “in” and “with” one another, covenantally united one with another in a way that is analogous to the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What else could John 17:22 and 26 mean?
. . . that all of them may be one, Father,There you have it. As we noted at the beginning of these reflections on the covenant, in John 17 the relations between Father and Son are all mixed up, so to speak, with their relations to us. What might at first seem like the Son’s actions toward us also turn out to be the Son’s actions toward his Father. And vice versa—the Father’s active way of relating to the Son is the way he relates to us.
just as you are in me and I am in you.
May they also be in us
. . . that the love with which thou hast loved me
may be in them, and I in them”
What does this mean for our understanding of the covenant? The eternal covenantal love between Father and Son is the origin and ground of the covenant that binds together God and believers as well as believers with believers. God’s covenantal life is graciously opened outward to embrace created men and women.
In other words, our covenant unity with God and with one another is grounded in God’s covenantal unity with God—that is, the mutual covenantal relations between God and God and God. From eternity the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share a fullness of covenantal life, love, glory in their personal relations with one another; and it is this covenantal personal fellowship of the Trinity that is the life of the covenant into which we are graciously admitted.
Let it sink in.
So is my reasoning really just pure "speculation"? Should what I have argued for in these posts—God's covenantal life is the origin and ground of his covenant with us—be dismissed as speculative simply because the Bible never explicitly applies the word "covenant" to the inter-Personal relations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
Next time: Reforming the traditional pactum salutis.
Monday, August 20, 2007
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