Christmas Heresy

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.  And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete (1 John 1:1-4)

All of us have wondered if what the Church has labeled as heresies might just be nit-picky obsession about little details.  For example, the dividing line between heresy and orthodoxy in one controversy is the addition of a single Greek letter.  You are okay if you confess that Jesus was homoousios with God the Father, but you are literally damned if you believe that he was only homoiousios.  One Greek letter – iota.

But of course, that one letter changes the meaning of the word entirely.  Either you believe that the Son and the Father are of the same divine essence or you think they have only “similar natures.”  So what appears to be just an iota of a difference is in truth the difference between two entirely different confessions of God and therefore two radically different conceptions of the world, life, and the future.

But it’s not just little details in doctrinal disputes.  Christians claim that ostensibly “little events” make all the difference in the world.  It’s kind of like the little parts without which a machine could not operate.  Or like putting together a Christmas gift for your children.  Let's say you don’t read, or you ignore the instructions, dismissing early on a small part here or the orientation of something little there.  You get to the end and the bicycle doesn’t work or the final pieces don’t line up. And all because you got something seemingly small wrong near the beginning of the process.  It is not difficult to envision the same kinds of problems when engineers and carpenters build buildings.  What might appear to be a small mistake near the foundation could end up ruining the entire project.

Even though toys and buildings are often forgiving with many mistakes, there are some omissions and errors that are systemic and spoil everything.  So it is with life, and God’s world, and the Kingdom God—Christian civilization.  There are certain practices and beliefs that we all forgive in one another and make adjustments—different views on church government, or about the mode of baptism, etc.  But there are others—what might appear to outsiders to be minuscule puzzle pieces—that are the corners and straight edge sides without which there would be no completed image.  And they are game changers, culture crushers, eternally significant.

Damnable heresies.

The Heresy with the Really Cool Name

The Good News is not that God made some external determination to forgive man, superficially exercised his divine will, waved a disinterested wand and sprinkled some salvation dust across the human race.  What he did was penetrate the very depths of humanity’s being and life, to restore the distorted and corrupt condition of man’s actual human existence.  In his innermost being as the Son he genuinely united himself to human, finite, creaturely existence.  We call that the incarnation.

God himself bore our infirmities and sins and the whole inheritance of judgment that lay against us—God himself, not merely in some extrinsic, detached way.  He personally bore all of this.

Incidentally, it is important to not evade this point by denying that Jesus assumed our fallen, mortal human nature.  The Greek culture where the Gospel was preached held to the apathy or passionlessness of the divine nature.  In order to avoid the revolutionary doctrine of God presented in the Scriptures, the heresy of aphthartodocetism was invented.  The error here is to say that Jesus took to himself a flawless human nature, one that was not affected by the curse.  God himself didn't really suffer, he only appeared to do so.  Jesus' mind and body were not subject to sickness, weakness, and the liabilities of our mortal existence.  That, of course, frees God from any contact with the yuckiness of mortal human existence as we experience it.

But this is not what we read in the Scriptures.  Jesus, as true God, was also a man like us subject to our frailties though without sin.  This is not only essential to his being our Savior; it is precisely the way the Son has revealed the true character of God to us. If the weakness, suffering, and death of Jesus was simply that of a good man from Nazareth, then God is inevitably bound to become a cold, silent, unknown heavenly power.  And even if God had united himself with a pre-fall Adamic human nature, somehow remaining aloof and detached from the weakness as suffering associated with humanity's present condition, then that would be the end of the Christian faith.  What Jesus’ birth—and then, of course, his life as a mortal man—manifests to us is the willing suffering of the passionate God.

Some Older Comments on the Trinity & Femininity

Here are some comments from a lesson I taught way back 1994.  I think I still agree with myself.

In Gen 1:27, "So God created man in His [own] image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

Both men and women image God.  Just as a man as Husband in some special sense images the Second Person of the Trinity and a man as Father in some special sense images God the Father, so also the woman as mother, finds a model within the Trinitarian life of God also.  But where?  God has not revealed himself as “Mother.”   That is not his Name.

Nevertheless, the source of motherhood is to be found in the attributes and behavior of God.  And of the three members of the Godhead, the one that most presents himself as the model of motherhood is the Holy Spirit.  The woman as mother models in so many ways the work of the Holy Spirit.  You should be studing him, because I believe he was the model in which the woman as image of God was largely (but not exclusively) sculpted.

In Genesis 1:2 the Spirit hovers over the unformed, dark, and unfilled earth like a mother bird. The Spirit is "the Lord and giver of live."   Remember that God as the source of all created reality includes the paradigms of created gender within Himself.  Within the Godhead there resides the original mixture of attributes that will become the source of created masculinity and feminity.  The created qualities of masculinity and femininity reflect uncreated qualities within the Godhead.   So the qualities of the feminine in the image of God, the woman, arise out something that corresponds to femininity in the Godhead.

On Interviews & Testimonies, Part II

Continued from Part I.

Another problem I've observed in interviews conducted with the intention of discovering the authenticity of someone's faith has to do with a popular set of "diagnostic" questions.  Of course, we have to ask diagnostic questions of the one being interviewed.  It's not so much the questions that are the problem; rather, the answers that are given need to be wisely analyzed.  Whatever answers our questions provoke must be carefully evaluated.  Too often we react to the sound of certain words and phrases and are too eager to jump to cookie-cutter conclusions about the person's spiritual status.  So what am I talking about?

Probably the most popular set of diagnostic questions for evangelically oriented elders and boards are the two Evangelism Explosion (EE) questions:  

1.  Have you come to the place in your spiritual life where you can say you know for certain that if you were to die today you would go to heaven?

2.  Suppose that you were to die today and stand before God and he were to say to you, "Why should I let you into my heaven?" what would you say?

I've used these questions many times in my conversations with people and on evangelistic forays into the neighborhood around the churches I've served.  They are not bad questions.  They can be productive conversation starters.  But evaluating the answers given to these questions is a lot harder than is commonly thought.  For one thing, we need to be very careful about jumping to quick conclusions about somebody's spiritual life and relationship to God based on their short, off-the-cuff answers to these two questions.  I've seen young Christians and wiser elders draw unwarranted conclusions about a person's "unsaved" status simply because the person being interviewed didn't answer these questions with familiar terminology or used words and phrases that evoked "works righteousness" fears.  And conversely, just because a person knows all the right lingo in response to questions like this doesn't mean they are genuine believers. Are these issues for which school and elder boards are thoughtfully prepared?   I want to unpack this a little bit more.

Thou Shalt Not Play God

When I was a teenager, a few buddies and I would periodically break into a local business.  We used credit cards to jimmy the locks on the back door.  There was no alarm.  We would never steal anything of real value, but we always left with something little—maybe some food (ice cream or candy) or a pen—just enough to top off the experience.  What experience?  The exhilaration that attends such audacious mischief.  For us to roam through the facility and not get caught was an adrenaline rush.  We could do it.  We did it. We were young, but we had the power.  And we didn’t get caught.  We were untouchable.  We were like gods.

Download and listen to the entire sermon on the 8th commandment.

Job's lament

Job's curse-lament begins, "After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.  And Job said, 'Let the day perish on which I was born. . .'" (Job 3:1-3).  Not every commentator thinks that this is Job's finest moment.  Some even think that these sentiments are sinful and self-absorbed.  Divorced from the context of the story of Job this dark little poem might indeed be condemned as narcissistic. But I'm convinced it calls for a careful appraisal.  After all, remember that Job is wisdom literature.  And the words of the wise are not usually superficial.  They are "dark sayings" and "riddles" to be thoughtfully deciphered (Prov. 1:6).

Job was a ruler, a chief elder or probably even a king (Job 29:7; 31:21).  His "friends" are not simply chums, they are his "advisors," his "cabinet," if you will (2 Sam. 16:16).  The calamity that befalls him in the first chapters of the book have repercussions for the entire community, which is why his "friends" spend so much time trying to advise him how to respond well.  Job loses his sons and daughters, his health, the respect of his people, his standing in the community, his wife, his friends, and more.  But what is worse, Job loses the experience of the love and favor of God, his heavenly Father. The long arguments and further laments of Job as book progresses make it pretty clear that this last deprivation that is the most confusing and horrific to Job.

Before I talk about the content of the lament, the first thing we ought to note is how remarkable it is that in the context of Job’s abject misery he bothers to carefully compose, to artistically fashion this curse-lament. It is a complex, artistic poem with a very sophisticated heptamerous literary structure based on Genesis chapter one.  There's a lesson here about the value of art and beauty, even—or especially—in the midst of human suffering.  I am reminded of C. S. Lewis's sermon on the value of Learning in War-Time.

Continued in Part II

Salus extra ecclesiam non est

When Augustine was contemplating becoming a Christian Simplicianus, Ambrose's tudor and assistant, told him a story about Victorinus.  Victorinus was a Roman rhetorician and translator of neo-Platonic philosophical works. He had begun to read the Scriptures and study the Christian faith, encouraged by Simplicianus.  Simplicianus told Augustine that Victorinus once came to him in private saying, "I should like you to know that I am now a Christian."  Simplicianus replied, "That I will not believe, and I shall not count you as a Christian until I see you in the church of Christ."  That was wise advice from Simplicianus to Augustine, the young man for whom contemplation was everything.

The Latin in the title to this post means "There is no salvation outside of the church."  Typically, we add "ordinarily" to that slogan just to be sure that everyone understands that there are extraordinary situations where people do trust Jesus but are not able to join with a local congregation. The point is, however, that becoming a Christian is not simply something that happens in one's head.

The Gardener & his Beloved - An Easter Meditation

The Da Vinci Code Be Damned: A Typological Reading of Mary Magdalene

or The Gardener & His Beloved

Song of Solomon 3:1-5, 5:1-6:3 & John 20:1-18

A famous painting depicting this dramatic scene with Mary and Jesus outside of the garden tomb can be seen on a fresco in a chapel in Padua, Italy. It was painted by Giotto di Bondone in the early 14th century. Jesus is striding from the tomb with a victor’s flag in his left hand. But with his right hand is held out, keeping Mary from coming close. This part of the fresco has been called Noli me tangere (“Do not hold me”).

But there are problems with Giotto di Bondone’s interpretation of this biblical story. He depicts the resurrected Christ as aloof, cold, as one who is onward and upward, leaving for higher concerns, one who cannot be held back by this woman. “Do not hold me” seems to mean “I’ve got more important things to do.” And Mary drops to her knees in tears longing for her beloved.

Read the entire meditation here.

New Year Theology

I think it's time for me to start posting biblical theological comments again on this blog. I'm not going to stop posting images. I enjoy photography too much. But I think I'm ready for more.

I stopped posting mostly because I was sick of the pettiness of so many theologically-oriented blogs. Way too much posturing and pontificating from men who, apart from the internet, would otherwise have no public, national voice. It is obnoxious to me that contentious, divisive men (Titus 3:9-10; Philem. ) have such free reign in the blogisphere. It also frosts me that these blogs attack men and churches with which they have never had any personal contact. This fans the flames of controversy and eventually dishonest, underhanded ecclesiastical campaigns are then initiated against otherwise good men who have been maliciously tagged as heretics and enemies of the Gospel.

I don't know if I can avoid the controversies or not. We'll see. But I would like to continue to post interesting biblical and theological insights that I discover while preaching and teaching and writing.

Wall of Separation?

Back in April I was asked to "debate" a professor at William Woods University in Fulton, Missouri. The question: should there be a "wall of separation" between religion and government/politics so that government and the political process are strictly secular? It was more like a forum and less like a debate. Nobody "won." I'd like to take a few posts and offer some random thoughts about this topic. Nothing polished and definitive. Just some ruminations from a simple pastor.

Thinking about this question and topic I realized that the conversation can go in any number of directions. More often than not the debate focuses narrowly on what role if any religion should have in the public lives and official actions of politicians and legislators. Religion, it is argued, should not be a factor in the “political process,” narrowly conceived. I’ll come back to that in a moment. But before I do, I think it would be beneficial to step back or zoom out and look at the relationship between religion and politics with a wide-angle lens, if you will.

What I have in mind are broader definitions of religion and politics than what are often used in this popular debate. I’m afraid a modernist conception of “government” has captured the day. “Government” and “politics” refer to the highest levels of civil government—national or state government and politics. To what we might call “professional” politics.

Our media has reinforced this modernist meaning: “The government releases crime figures today.” “The government sets education policy.” “The government delivers unemployment statistics.” And so on. When Fox News reports on “politics,” as it does for an hour in Brit Hume’s Special Report every weekday at 5 PM, it is almost exclusively focused on national politics, and sometimes on State government.

But there was a time (pre-modernist) when the noun "government" and the adjective "political" denoted much more. There seems to be a move in these post-modern times to recognize that there’s much more to “government” and to “politics” than centralized state and federal power structures.

For example, pre-modernist dictionary definitions of “government” recognize that communities are governed at many different levels. The 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language defined government in this way:

Government. N. Direction; regulation. “These precepts will serve for the government of our conduct.” 2. Control; restraint. “Men are apt to neglect the government of their temper and passions.” 3. The exercise of authority; direction and restraint excercised over the actions of men in communities, societies or states. . . . 4. The exercise of authority by a parent or householder. “Children are often ruined by a neglect of government in parents.”

Compare that with Webster’s New World Dictionary (1972) that I still have from my high school days: “Government. N. The exercise of authority over a sate, district, organization, institution, etc.”

The same reductionist tendency can be discerned with our use of the word “politics.” We have become comfortable with a constricted modernist definition. But the word comes from the Greek polis, which means "city." Politics had to do with the organization, life, administration, and rule of a polis (a city).

Expanding the domain of the activity in a pre- or post-modern definition would lead to something like this: “Politics as the art and science of organizing, administering, and ruling the affairs of a community.” The adjective “political” then ought to be recovered so that it encompasses the communal life of a people and especially the order of a community (family, neighborhood, county, city, state, nation state). Politics has to do with social leadership, responsibility, and service within the community.

With these expanded (recovered?) conceptions of government and politics, the question about the role of religion becomes acute.

When I talk about to my congregation about the Christian’s political duty, I am referring to the perspective Christians ought to have on and the role we should play in the life, order, and government of the communities to which we belong. What obligation do Christians have towards the affairs of government at all levels. Self-government, family government, neighborhood, church, and including the exercise of civil authority and rule.

To be continued. . .

Foolish Expectations

We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
We wailed, and you did not weep (Luke 7:32)

I regularly receive phone calls from other men in the pastorate, asking my advice when there is trouble in their congregations. I don’t say this to make you think that I'm some kind of ecclesiastical guru or that I have all the answers to these kinds of church problems. I'm not and I don't. Most of these appeals come from friends or former seminary students with which I have maintained friendly relations.

Many of the problems arise when people in these congregations air their grievances with letters or emails to the pastor or session.

And, just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that this is wrong or that you should never address your elders or pastors with corrections and suggestions. That process can be quite healthy. I welcome genuine criticism. My leadership, and our church, is always in need of reformation and development. And, just to be balanced, there are times when Pastors and sessions do things that are very wrong or don't do things that are quite necessary. In situations like these, people in the congregation are justified in addressing their leaders.

Even so, I have a sizable collection of examples of these complaints and written accusations as they are passed on to me. And there's a disturbing pattern. Everybody has certain expectations about what the church is supposed to be doing, especially for them. And, to be honest with you, often these complaints sound like whining from spoiled children. The church isn't doing this enough or that enough. Or it's doing too much of something and not enough of something else.

I should also confess here that I myself am not free from this problem. As I grow older I have to repent of the way that I once criticized former churches and pastors and sessions and even my own presbytery and denomination. This is just to say that I am not only pointing my finger, I am reflecting on my own sinful foolishness as well.

The reoccurring, disturbing pattern is to demand that the church meet all of your own personal expectations. Which is often simply another way of saying: God needs to give me this and do that, or serve me this way and that, or I'm not gonna be happy with his church. You know how it goes. The pastor talks about sin and judgment too much. Then in the next paragraph; there's too much feasting and joking and partying in this church. The details of these grievances are often quite petty, even when they are dressed up with spiritual, pious talk and accented with biblical proof texts.

Each of us is that proverbial child in the market place that is never satisfied, whose expectations are never met. This is at the heart of our sinful condition. We think we know what we want and need and therefore sit down with our arms folded and wait for God to meet our expectations. Like spoiled children. Adult babies. Brats, I think is the proper word.

What you have in the Gospel stories is the Lord of heaven and earth, appearing in the flesh to serve his people, to serve the world, and nobody is satisfied with what he is doing. Everybody thinks that it's not enough or it's too much. Confounded, we know what we need and want, and this is not it.

And we know how it ends. Where it ends. It ends with the cross. Humanity doesn't get what it thinks it needs, what it expects from God, and and so we crucify the Lord of heaven and earth.

You and I must read the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—as if they were mirrors. Not just windows on the foolishness of the Jews or the arrogance of the Romans, but mirrors. If the Spirit of God is at work in your heart and mind, you will see yourself in these stories.

As I have said so often, you have to learn to identify yourself, your behavior, your motives, with the sinful foolishness of the people of God when they are face to face with their Lord. You cannot say, "I would never do that. I'm not like that. I'm better than that. If I were there, I would have followed and defended Jesus." No, you wouldn't have. No, we don't. We would have done exactly what they did.

The questions Jesus puts to the crowds in passages like Luke 7:31-35 are questions put to us. They are not merely history, but the Word of God written for us. We stand before Jesus and our expectations are challenged, and by God's grace transformed and redefined so that we are able to receive and follow Jesus as he is, to receive the ministry of Jesus as he in fact works—whether he meets with our bratty, childish expectations or not.

PCA General Assembly Colloquium on the Sacraments

I finished my presentation on sacramental efficacy for the General Assembly Colloquium this year. I need to get it to the convener tomorrow. The stipulated question that each of the 4 speakers were asked to address is: What do the sacraments actually accomplish in their administration?

I sought to answer this question from a slightly different perspective. I've broken the question up into two parts, each adressing two dimensions of the problem. First, it's not enough to simply ask what the Lord's Supper, for example, accomplishes, but what ought it to accomplish?

And once we answer that, then the more difficult question is: Does the Lord’s Supper actually accomplish what God intends in our churches? And if it doesn’t, what’s the problem?

Most Reformed people would respond to the problem of the Supper's not accomplishing what God intends with a reference to the individual communicant’s lack of faith. Efficacy depends on the faithful reception of the Supper. No faith, no benefits. True enough. But is that the whole story? What if the way we do the Supper, the way the Supper is performed and then experienced is a major part of the problem? What if even faith-filled Christian people are hindered from receiving all the gifts God intends to give in the Supper because we pastors and elders are not being attentive to the proper manner in which the Supper is to be performed?

That's the question I will address in my presentation. Maybe I'll post it after it's delivered on June 10th.

The Challenge of Theological Terminology

The issue of theological language is huge. Unfortunately, venerated ecclesiastical documents, especially the Westminster Standards, have bequeathed to us the idea that theology is about defining terms ("Justification is. . ." "Sanctification is. . ."). Consequently, conservative Reformed churches usually work with an incredibly wooden understanding of the function of theological and biblical language. We do theology by sloganeering.

And what's worse, we read the Bible as if the definitions we have attached to our theological vocabulary must be dumped into every biblical occurrence of these same words. So when we see "Son of God" in the Scriptures it must always refer to Jesus' divinity. "Justification" to the imputation of Christ's alien righteousness. "Sanctification" to the process of growing in holiness. "Regeneration" to an invisible event in the soul of man. When we read of "deacons" in the New Testament, then it must be referring to what we in the PCA call "deacons." Same with "elder," and so on. If you suggest a different "meaning" for any of these words or phrases, if you believe that a particular biblical context demands a meaning other than the traditional theological definition, then you are obviously departing from the faith. Never mind that technical meanings we have attached to these terms in our tradition don't seem to be present in many biblical passages.

At the very least, every theological student must read Vern Poythress's Symphonic Theology and John Frame's Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. These are essential books for theological and pastoral students. Here's my challenge to you, reader. If you are engaged in any way in any of the current debates about election, baptism, regeneration, justification, deacons and deaconesses, but have not read either of those two books, then don't say or write another word until you read at least one of them. I would start with Symphonic Theology.

When terminological definitions become security blankets in our denomination we are in serious trouble. They keep us from thinking like adults about the biblical texts that are supposed to be authoritative for us. Demanding that everyone define terms in precisely the same way has the appearance of keeping everything nice and manageable. This tactic seems to protect the system of doctrine, which effectively means the stipulated definitions that we have assigned to these words. Unfortunately, it also means the end of all theological development; it insures that we will continue to live in the 17th century.

I have a paper that illustrates this problem by examining Romans 1:4, where Paul says that Jesus was "declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead." In that passage "Son of God" doesn't refer to his eternal divine sonship. You can download the paper as a PDF file from this page.

Rich Bledsoe's Deep City Thoughts

Go listen to the interview with theo-guru Rich Bledsoe at St. Anne's Pub. Cool stuff.

Denominational Police States

I spent the last few days at A Conversation on Denominational Renewal, which thankfully met in St. Louis. The conference was well attended, about 300 or more people. The audience was mostly PCA ministers and elders, but because it was held in St. Louis there were a good many Covenant Seminary Students and a few professors.

I'm not going to summarize the conference. All I will say is that it was quite stimulating and helpful. When they post the mp3s of the lectures on their website, you need to listen to them. I'll try to alert everyone when they are posted.

I'd like for us to discuss on part of Jeremy Jones's lecture on Wednesday morning. The title was "On Renewing Theology." I think it was one of the most challenging lectures of the lot.

Jeremy addressed problems with the way we tend to conceive of and do theology in the Reformed world, especially the PCA. Early on he talked about "The Ecclesial Culture of Reformed Sectarianism." He lamented that fact that so many Reformed ecclesial cultures end up as little more than "denominational police states." How does this happen?

Read the rest of the story

Thomas F. Torrance (1913-2007)

I wish I had more time to write about the death of Thomas F. Torrance this past Sunday. Well, not so much about his death but about his life and writings. His work has made a big impact on me. But he is not always appreciated by contemporary conservative Reformed pastors and theologians. If you know anything about the current controversies that plague our little corner of Christendom, you know that's an understatement. Presbyterians that appreciate Torrance's insights have to be careful.

A number of years ago a respected member of the Reformed academic community preached at our presbytery's Reformation day worship service. At one point in the sermon he told a story about a chaplain in WWII. He also quoted that chaplain. Of course, I immediately recognized that he was talking about Thomas F. Torrance. But he never mentioned him by name. And I understood why. After the service I spoke with him and told him I appreciated the story about Torrance. He tensed up and looked at me sideways with a bit of suspicion. I assured him that my appreciation was genuine. I had learned a lot from reading Torrance, etc. I listed the books I had read and loved. Then he winked and said something like, "Well, you can't be too careful these days."

That incident still makes me mad. I'm not angry with the speaker. I understand his situation. What burns me up is the petty little index of approved and disapproved authors and theologians that most conservative presbyters use to judge another man's theological commitments. Oh, you've read and liked portions of Karl Barth. You are dangerous. So you say you've read Pannenberg and learned something from him, too. Hmmm, that can't be good. You are recommending books by Thomas F. Torrance on the trinity? How dare you support someone who denies the covenant of works!

Spare me. Deliver me. Better yet: O Lord, deliver us all.

Torrance was a giant of a theologian, surely the greatest British theologian of the 20th century. Sure, he got things wrong. At least, I believe he did. He was on the wrong side of women's ordination debate. No question about it. When his masterful little book on the theology of the ordained ministry The Royal Priesthood was republished with a new forward by him promoting the ordination of women, I was very disappointed. The book is still worth reading. Sometimes his philosophical presuppositions restricted his theological vision. But after all, who can claim to be free from this error?

His studies of the history of Reformed theology were a bit one-sided. Even so, his Scottish Theology provides us with a anti-hagiographic account that so many American conservative Presbyterians so desperately need.

But above all, his works on theology proper, the doctrine of God, are priceless. I cut my trinitarian teeth reading Torrance's works on the Trinity. He's not usually easy to read. But it's grade A prime red meat for those who wish to theologize on the Trinity. Torrance's work inspired a trinitarian theological revival in recent years.

It was a delight to read Alister McGrath's intellectual biography of Torrance a few years ago. It's worth reading.

Like I said, I wish I had more time to talk about Thomas F. Torrance. Here and there on the net eulogies will be available. When I find them, I'll post them here.

George Hunsinger on Torrance

Thomas F. Torrance

And the Sign Said You Have to Have a Membership Card to Get Inside

Ponder this paragraph from Michael Bauman's Pilgrim Theology (Summit, 2007):

". . . young theologians are right to believe that if they write with candor, imagination, or creativity about certain theological realities many doors will close to them. They will not be able to make a living. They will not be allowed to participate in the life and activities of various important institutions and professional societies. Participation in new research and in publication programs will be denied them. Influential people will be alienated, and the opinion that a particular young theologian is unsound and unsafe will be disseminated quickly, widely, and slanderously — all under the pretense that evangelical scholarship is objective, reflective, and teachable. Pressure is exerted either to accommodate (i.e., to dissemble) or to leave: 'We'll have none of that kind of thinking around here!' they are told. Those who agree, and those who can and do accommodate, become the teachers of the next generation; and they perpetuate this sinister tyranny on those who follow. Those who do not accommodate are excluded and are believed to be the enemy. The danger to truth and to integrity can hardly be greater. In theology, as in politics, there are dictatorships it is our sacred duty to oppose, if not overthrow" (p. 40).

The Son of God - Part II

Continued from Part I

“Son of God” in Systematic Theology

One danger must be addressed before we move on. Systematic, dogmatic, and polemic theology have largely come to identify the ascription “Son of God” with Jesus’ divinity. Most systematic theological treatments of the title “Son of God” take it to refer to Jesus’ essential or substantial oneness with the divinity of the Father. A few examples from Reformed and Lutheran theology will illustrate this.

First, toward the beginning of his locus on “The Doctrine of Christ,” the Lutheran systematic theologian John T. Mueller writes under the subheading “The True Deity of Christ” that “Scripture ascribes to Christ— a) The name "God" (theos, John 1:1) and "Son of God" ( Matt. 16:16), and these not in an improper sense, in which they are applied also to creatures (1 Cor. 8:5; John 10:35), but in their proper, or metaphysical sense, so that Christ is said to possess not only divine functions, but also the one divine essence" (John Theodore Mueller, Christian Dogmatics [St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1955], p. 256.)

This nice, neat division between the name as applied (improperly?) to creatures and metaphysically to Jesus as possessing the one divine essence gives the impression that the biblical phrase “Son of God” has some fixed technical meaning equivalent to its traditional use in trinitarian theology. Of the two biblical proof texts offered by Mueller, John 1:1 probably fits with this specific technical sense. One might wonder, however, how Mueller would exegete Matt. 16:16 in order to prove that Peter’s confession “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” references Jesus possession of the “divine essence.” Mueller’s statement illustrates the problem with technical theological terms like this. They tend to constrain and limit a reader’s openness to the rich semantic possibilities of biblical words and phrases.

Similarly, the Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck uses “Son of God” to refer to Jesus’ ontological union with his Father. Bavink’s initial discussion of the name “Son of God” carefully notes the redemptive historical origin of the term in Israel’s corporate life, especially the theocratic origin of the term during the time of the Davidic Kingdom. Quickly, however, Bavink moves from the historical to the metaphysical. Referencing Psalm 2:7, Bavink explains,

With a view to David this refers to the decree of God of which mention is made in 2 Sam. 7, and with a view to the Messiah—of whom David is a type—Heb. 1:5; 5:5 interprets it as referring to eternity, in which Christ as the Son was generated by the Father, that is, in which he was brought forth as the effulgence of God’s glory and the very image of his substance. Moreover, according to Acts 13:33; Rom. 1:3, the second person of the trinity was declared to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection of the dead. (Herman Bavink, The Doctrine of God, trans. by William Hendriksen [Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eermans Publishing Company, 1951], p. 269).

Aside from Bavinck’s questionable explanation of Heb. 1:5 and 5:5, the other two texts he cites (Heb. 13:3 & Romans 1:3 [4?]) appear to say that Jesus became Son of God by God’s appointment at his resurrection/ascension. For Bavinck, the verb orizo in Rom. 1:4 must mean “declare.” Bavinck goes on to clarify what he means by “Son of God.”

But the name Son of God when ascribed to Christ has a far deeper meaning than the theocratic: he was not a mere king of Israel who in time became an adopted Son of God; neither was he called Son of God because of his supernatural birth, as the Socinians and Hofmann held; neither is he the Son of God merely in an ethical sense, as others suppose; neither did he receive the title Son of God as a new name in connection with his atoning work and resurrection, an interpretation in support of which John 10:34-36; Acts 13:32, 33; and Rom. 1:4 are cited; but he is Son of God in a metaphysical sense; by nature and from eternity (p. 270).

This passage illustrates well the ever-present semantic temptation theologians are faced with when they exegete biblical texts. Because various heretics and heresies have advocated erroneous senses in which Jesus “became” the Son of God at some point in his temporal existence, Bavinck succumbs to the temptation to reject any sense in which Christ might have been so designated in time and history. Clearly Bavinck is not comfortable with understanding “Son of God” as a honorific title given in connection with his atoning work and resurrection. The resurrection can only declare or manifest to the world what as already true—that the second person of the Trinity is Son of God in a metaphysical sense from eternity. Whether this is the meaning of orizo in Rom. 1:4 remains to be seen.

At this point, we should note again the temptation to read into Paul’s words the precise systematic theological meaning that has come to be associated with this common New Testament christological ascription. For our purposes, we can note here that the designation “Son of God” or even “Son” does indeed refer to Christ’s divinity and essential unity with the Father in many places in the New Testament (e.g., John 1:14, 18; 3:17; 1 John 4:10; Heb. 1:2), and especially in Paul’s letters (1 Cor. 8:6; Gal. 4:4; Phil. 2:6ff.; Col. 1:13, 16-17).

I am not denying Jesus eternal divine sonship. Everyone should be clear about that. What I am denying is that this phrase does not always refer to this reality in every place it is found in Scripture. I believe that even in the epistle to the Romans Paul sometimes uses “Son” with this "metaphysical" nuance (Rom. 1:3; 8:3; 32). But even so, it would be difficult to prove, even in these passages where the context (the Father’s sending his Son) favors the “systematic theological definition” that Paul intends to exclude any reference to the incarnate Christ.

It is extremely doubtful that the Apostolic authors intended everything that post-Nicea orthodox theologians mean when they speak of the eternal “Son of God.” This is because in response to various christological and trinitarian heresies the technical theological phrase “Son of God” has been assigned a very precise meaning based on a large number of New Testament texts bearing upon the larger question of Jesus’ essential divinity, some of which do not even use filial language. Thus, the meaning of the technical theological term “Son of God” has been built up from passages that do not necessarily use the phrase itself.

In systematic theology the phrase now functions as a kind of short hand, an abbreviation, if you will, of a theological composite of teachings centering on questions concerning the divine nature of the Son in relation to God the Father. There is nothing wrong with this. But it does complicate the exegete’s work and naïve readers are often prone to making such a basic category mistake when they come across familiar theological terms in the Bible. We must recognize that in systematic theology we have developed technical phrases and titles that have a precision not found in the New Testament writings. Traditionally “Son of God” has come to refer almost exclusively to Jesus divine nature. Theologians use other terms and phrases that designate his humanity. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), things are not so neat and tidy in the New Testament.

But now, the question before us is this: what does Paul mean by "Son of God" in Rom. 1:4? Our investigation will proceed in three stages. First, we will examine the immediate context and the language of Rom. 1:4. Second, we will survey the Old Testament background, concentrating on the connection between Rom. 1:4 and the Davidic covenant (1 Sam. 7; Ps. 2; Ps. 89; etc.). Finally, some modest conclusions will be outlined and the significance of our findings will briefly surveyed.

To be continued.

The Son of God - Part I

What does Paul mean when he confesses that Jesus Christ has been appointed the “Son of God with power/authority” in Romans 1:4? Is he referring to Jesus' divinity - his eternal sonship as the second Person of the Trinity? Or is Paul talking about the man Christ Jesus?

To answer this we will have to broaden our inquiry beyond Paul’s epistle to the Romans and even the larger New Testament context by collecting evidence from the Old Testament regarding the motif of sonship. I will argue that the meaning of "son of God" is considerably more multi-faceted than the way it is typically employed by orthodox systematic theologies. Specifically, I will argue that confessing Jesus as the “Son of God” brings together many Old Covenant themes that are not always associated with this Messianic title, and, without denying or minimizing the confession of Jesus’ eternal filial relation to God the Father—indeed, presupposing it—Paul confesses that Jesus as the incarnate Lord now bears the title Son of God and that it was the elevation of Jesus’ humanity to the throne of his Father that constituted his investiture as the royal “Son of God with power.”

I will make some modest suggestions about the nature of Jesus sonship and the content of the preaching of the Gospel in the New Testament, which means that even a narrow focus on the meaning of this name or title in Paul’s epistolary introduction to Romans ought to provide us with a fruitful perspective on christology and soteriology as a whole. Indeed, Paul sums up the apostolic preaching of the Gospel with this climactic statement: Jesus Christ has been appointed to be the Son of God with power/authority.

Go to Part II

God Suffers For Us

Most modern scholars recognize that behind Arius's campaign to differentiate Jesus from God was the Hellenistic theological conviction that the high God cannot suffer. Rowan Williams argues that Arius had the right idea about divine suffering, but the wrong idea of God, which “puts the unavoidable question of what the respective schemes in the long term make possible for theology.” One must honestly admit, according to Williams, the “odd conclusion that the Nicene fathers achieved not only more than they knew but a good deal more than they wanted.” (Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition [London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 198]), p. 22). Now, what does that mean?

The Arians recognized the importance of the genuine sufferings and death of Christ as God. R.P.C. Hanson notes that “at the heart of the Arian Gospel was a God who suffered” (The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318-381 [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988], p. 121). Unfortunately, they would not (or could not) go the whole way with this insight because they too were under the control of the Greek philosophical impassability axiom. The Arians argued that God must have suffered in Christ, but only a god whose divinity was somehow reduced could suffer. Therefore, the Son was god (theos), but not the one high and immutable God (o theos). He was something of a demigod: created by the high God, but not of the same substance or being as the impassible God.

Although Hanson praises the Arians for not “shying away from the scandal of the cross,” in fact, their own theological program was its own attempt to explain away the scandal of the crucified God. If the Nicene theologians, as Rowan Williams argues, did not fully understand the implications of contending for the homoousios of the Father and Son, they nevertheless rightly emphasized the unity of the one Lord Jesus Christ in such a way that eventually the question of God’s participation in the suffering and death of Jesus would have to be addressed.

We're still addressing this issue. Many Christians are uncomfortable with affirming that God the Son experienced death as a man (the theopaschite formula). They feel the need to distance God from the suffering of the man Jesus. This is a huge mistake. It's pretty close to Peter insisting that what Jesus had said about his suffering and death in Jerusalem would "never happen" to him (Matt. 16:22). Jesus pushes Peter aside as a Satan, saying that he does not have "his mind on the things of God, but on the things of man" (16:23). Indeed.

God the Son lived as a man, suffered, and experienced death. There is no Gospel if this is not the case.