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.

Some thoughts on the Freedom of the Trinity

Without an ontologically independent Trinity, one cannot properly conceive of God’s relation to creation.  The differentiated Triunity of God makes possible both an ontological and personal transcendence as well as an immanent presence through his Son and Spirit.  In this way God is covenant Lord over his creation.  We say that God is Lord “in this way” in order to avoid all non-biblical concepts of lordship.

A similar temptation arises with concepts like transcendence and immanence, indeed with every ascription we make about God.  If we are not careful to invest these common terms with biblical content, they are likely to tyrannize our doctrine of God and compel it to conform to whatever cultural, political, or philosophical meaning these terms posses in our modern world.  This, of course, does not constrain the theologian to use only biblical terms, since even biblical terms can become subject to unbiblical, alien connotations depending upon how are used by any particular culture.  Rather, we must carefully determine what the Bible says about God, and in this case about God as Lord, in order to faithfully communicate his proper relations with creation.

The Word of God, however, supplies every thing we need here.  If theologians would but pay careful attention to the richness of the ways in which God has revealed himself in the Bible, especially the diverse ways in which God in his freedom interacts with and makes himself immanent in the world as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they would not have to shipwreck their theology either on the Scylla of “monotheistic” tyranny or on the Charybdis of “tritheistic” egalitarianism.  It is precisely the trinitarian lordship of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that richly transcends all such human dichotomies, as Pannenberg explains:

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.

The Triune God & Creation

Unexplored Dimensions of Our Christian Worldview

Of him, through him, and to him are all things — Romans 11:36

I.  What was God doing before he created the world?

    A.  WCF 2.2  God has all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself; and is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things.

    B.   God’s ontological/relational independence

        1.  God neither depends upon, nor needs any other (Exodus 3:14; Psalm 5:9; Acts 17:24, 25; Col. 1:16; Rev. 4:11). God has/d no need for creation.  God desired to created, he didn't need to.

        2.  As Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19; 1 John 4:8, 16) God experiences the fulness of personal relationship apart from creation.  Out of that fulness of relational happiness the Father, Son, ad Holy Spirit created the world and humanity.

The Trinity Institute

This morning I return from Birmingham after having two days of meetings for the Trinity Institute for Biblical and Culture Studies. This was the first meeting of the board of directors. We accomplished a lot, but there's still a ton of work to be done. I'm typing this on my iPad, so I'm not going to take the time now to add a lot of links. I'll do that when I get home. Look for more on the Trinity Institute in the coming months. Peter Leithart will be the President and resident scholar. We will be offering all kinds of educational opportunities designed to promote our distinctive understanding and practice of Christian liturgy and life.

Breaking Free, Part II

This is Part IV in my series analyzing Luther's Catechetical Doctrine of the Trinity. It's really a continuation of Part III.

Part I. Part II. Part III.

We ended last time promising more on Luther's break with medieval trinitarian speculative theology.

Over time, after the brilliant work of Augustine, the Trinity was marginalized in Western Theological thought. The Trinity lost its constitutive role in the presentation of the Christian faith. The existence and attributes of God de deo uno edged out discussions of God de deo trino.

Post-Augustinian Trinitarian theology tended to be more interested in developing a rational justification for belief in the Trinity independently of the revealed work of the Godhead in the economy of salvation. The threeness of God becomes a complicating factor, a puzzle that must be reasoned through. [BTW, I'm not taking sides in the debate about whether Augustine's doctrine of the Trinity caused this state of affairs in medieval theology. I have some concerns with, for example, Gunton's account of the genesis of the problem. My only point here is that there was indeed a problem with the church's theological formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity.]

Luther brilliantly recovers the constitutive place of the Trinity for the understanding the Christian faith. If Augustine’s ontological speculation set in motion a trend in Western theology to elevate the divine substance as the presupposition of divinity, the highest ontological principle, then, Luther emphatically breaks with that tradition.

The Trinity is for simple Christians who trust in the Persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not primarily for philosophers and scholastics who are interested in logically penetrating problems arising from meditation on the substance of God. The Trinity is the gateway through which one encounters God in the Person of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Otherwise stated, the Trinity simply is not a problem for Luther. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have no need of metaphysician-theologians to justify their existence philosophically. They have revealed themselves in their works. Luther has no interest in what had become a preoccupation in late Medieval Trinitarian theology in the West—logical method, systematic cohesion, terminological precision, and so on. Medieval theologians tended to downplay the existential and soteriological import of the doctrine of the Trinity. They were concerned with unpacking the logical and metaphysical implications of God’s threeness and oneness. These philosophical interests left the nature of the Triune God’s relationship pro homine underdeveloped (at best). The Patristic origin of trinitarian theology as a soteriological development was lost. In the Creed, however, according to Luther, we learn “to know God perfectly,” which means that we learn “what we must expect and receive from him.”

Breaking Free: Luther and Medieval Theology on the Trinity

This is Part III in my series analyzing Luther's Catechetical Doctrine of the Trinity. Part I. Part II.

It is time to examine Luther's way of teaching the Trinity.

The first thing we notice about Luther’s Trinitarian language is that something is missing. Luther consistently avoids any use of or reference to philosophical/metaphysical terms, problems, and distinctions traditionally associated with Trinitarian dogma.

Luther’s discussion of God the Father, for example, faithfully explains the text of the Apostle’s Creed using the biblical language of Father and Creator without introducing extraneous philosophical discussions about the divine essence. God is not defined in terms of his metaphysical properties, but according to what he does, specifically what he does pro homine ("for humanity"). “What is God for man? What does he do? How can man praise or portray or describe him so that man might know him?” (LC II, 10).

In answering these questions Luther makes what is for him a paradigmatic claim. He says that the answers are found in the Creed. “Therefore the Creed is nothing other than an answer and confession of the Christian. . .” The questions “what do you have for your God?” and “what do you know about him?” are both answered with reference to God’s relationship to the one asking the question. He is my Father by virtue of the fact that he created me and sustains me. As the Small Catechism puts it: “I believe that God has created me and all things; that he has given me my body and soul. . .”

The Father is the Father because he created me and sustains me. In other words, I know that he is the Father because I know what he has done for me. The Son is my Lord because I know what he has done for me. The Spirit is the Holy Spirit because of what he does for me: he sanctifies me. This kind of approach has very little continuity with the Medieval method of explaining God’s nature and existence.

What is absent from Luther’s exposition speaks volumes. For example, he shows no concern for demonstrating the intelligibility of the doctrine of the Trinity by searching for vestigia trinitatis (vestiges of the Trinity) within creation and the human soul. He provides no discussion of the “attributes” of God, no explanation of God de deo uno apart from Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, no elucidation of the problem of the one and many, no definition of the words “person” or “substance” or “relation,” no proofs of divinity of the Son or the Spirit, no extended explanation of the inter-Trinitarian relationships between Father and Son and Spirit, no treatment of the way in which each Person partakes of the divine essence (circumincessio), no argument for the monarchy of the Father, no explication of the meaning of “begetting” and “procession,” no discussion of the two natures of Christ, and, finally, he studiously avoids inquiries into and definitions of classic Trinitarian terminology (substantia, ousia, persona, hypostasis, coessentialitas, homoousios, etc.).

Unlike conventional Medieval treatments, then, Luther’s Trinitarian theology is not couched in the objective, analytic language of the academy, but the personal language of the Bible. No attempt is made to dialectically penetrate the ontological mystery of the Godhead. The threeness of God is not a complicating factor, but inexorably related to how God works in creation, redemption, and sanctification. Luther refuses to engage in speculative reflection on the Trinity cast in the language of metaphysics, that is, in terms of the philosophical issues of class and number, substance and individual, unity and plurality, etc. Nor does Luther introduce epistemological questions concerning the creaturely conceptuality of God’s essence or being.

By dumping all of this, Luther breaks radically with the medieval tradition of Trinitarian theological reflection. Schwöbel writes: “It would not be a gross exaggeration to see the mainstream of the history of Trinitarian reflection as a series of footnotes on Augustine’s conception of the Trinity in De Trinitate. Augustine’s emphasis on the unity of the divine essence of God’s triune being, his stress on the undivided mode of God’s relating to what is not God and his attempt to trace the intelligibility of the doctrine of the Trinity through the vestigia trinitatis in the human consciousness, mediating unity and differentiation, defined the parameters for the mainstream of Western Trinitarian reflection” (Trinitarian Theology Today [T&T Clark, 1995], p. 5). If Schwöbel’s observations are correct (and I believe, for the most part, they are), then Luther’s catechetical doctrine of the Trinity was something fresh and exciting, a new way of theologizing about the Trinity. By breaking with the medieval methodology and terminology, Luther opens up productive new possibilities for the church’s doctrine of the Trinity.

More on that next time.

It's for the simple, stupid!

Continued from Part 2

Before we begin our analysis of his Trinitarian theology, it will be helpful for us to consider Luther’s own explanation of the “simplicity” of his exposition of the Apostles' Creed. This should serve to channel our own study, insuring that we do not misuse Luther’s words.

First, Luther writes for children and those who would teach children. Introducing the three articles of the Creed Luther says, “But in order that it might be easily and simply grasped, as it is to be taught to children, we shall briefly sum up the entire Creed in three articles, according to the three persons of the Godhead. . .” (Large Catechsim II, 6). The goal is to teach “young pupils . . . the most necessary points. ” (LC II, 12). When Luther mentions his very cursory treatment of the substance of the Second Article, he explains, “But the proper place to explain all these different points is not in the short children’s sermon, but in the longer sermons over the whole year. . .” (LC II, 32). The substance of the teaching in this article is “so rich and expansive” that we can never learn it fully (LC II, 33).

This is no doubt a note to pastors, reminding them to adjust the content of their sermons appropriately according to the situation and audience. Nevertheless, it also serves as a challenge to Luther scholars not to push Luther’s own catechetical formulations too far. His exposition of the catechism was not designed to answer the kind of questions that Trinitarian theologians ask today—or even the kinds of questions asked in his own day!—it was designed for the instruction of children and young students.

Second, Luther’s exposition of the Creed is not only aimed at children and young students, but it also attempts to provide instruction for ordinary people. Luther often uses the adjective einfältig (“simple,” “plain,” “naïve,” even “artless”) as well as the noun Einfältig to describe his intended audience. Care should be taken to ascertain the level of the student so that one can teach them appropriately.

At the beginning of his comments on the First Article, Luther admits that “for the learned and the somewhat more advanced, however, all three articles can be treated more fully and divided into as many parts as there are words” (LC II, 12). Concluding his very brief discussion of the meaning of the first article, Luther comments, “It is as much as the simple [den Einfältigen] need to learn at first. . .” (LC II, 24). Luther concludes his exposition of the Creed with the following caveat: “For the present this is enough concerning the Creed to lay a foundation for simple people [einen Grund zu legen für die Einfältigen], so that one does not overburden them. When they understand the essentials of it, they may pursue it themselves, relating what they learn in the Scriptures to these teachings, growing and increasing forever more into a richer understanding. For concerning these things we have to learn and preach daily, as long as we live” (LC II, 70).

These two target audiences (children and common people) constrain Luther’s theological exposition. This knowledge ought to serve to restrain our own theological speculation. The student of Luther must remember that the simplicity of his catechetical exposition is pedagogically constrained. He is writing a primer for children (SC) and a manual for pastors (and fathers) who teach this primer to children and common folk (LC). I think we can pretty well safely assume that Luther never dreamed of the day when academic theologians would pour over his “simple” exposition of the Creed looking for deep theological and philosophical structures. After all, Luther describes his own elucidation of the Creed as “briefly running over the words” (LC II, 8). That does not mean, of course, that a scholarly examination of Luther’s writings is inappropriate; it means that scholars who do the examining would do well not to push to find evidence of something more cryptic and sophisticated than Luther himself would probably have intended.

Furthermore, the simplicity of Luther’s treatment of the Trinitarian nature of God follows from the obvious fact that Luther is not setting forth a theology of the Trinity per se; rather, he is expounding the Trinitarian content of the Christian faith as it is articulated in the Apostles’ Creed. Surely Luther himself did not intend to incorporate into his catechetical writings anything like a comprehensive theology of the Trinity, or even everything important he might have said about the Trinity were he to address the topic specifically. He is not only writing with a specific audience in mind, he is also working with a particular text and his Trinitarian theology will be bound, in some sense, by the limitations of the text of the Apostles’ Creed.

Moreover, Luther does appear to allow for a more sophisticated theology of the Trinity. When he sums up the importance and usefulness of the Creed for our knowledge of the “whole divine essence, will, and work,” he notes that such an exalted topic is nevertheless described in “altogether brief and yet regal words” (LC II, 63). There are later sermons where Luther’s purpose is to set forth the doctrine of the Trinity itself, but that is not the purpose of his catechetical explanation of the Creed. All of which serves to remind the modern student of Luther that Luther’s entire doctrine of the Trinity must not be thought to be contained here in his catechetical exposition of the Creed. We need not necessarily fault Luther for leaving out of his exposition points that we might think important. And we must not attempt to discover points that Luther never intended to make. Care must be exercised so as not to artificially build up a Trinitarian theology from the catechisms alone without consulting his later writings. It is our purpose now to examine these kurtzen und doch reichen Worten (“short and yet regal words”) in order to outline Luther’s rich and majestically simple doctrine of the Trinity.

Go to Part III.

Luther’s Trinitarian Doctrine Prior to his Catechetical Work (—1528)

Continued from Part 1

Luther, like Augustine and Calvin, received the traditional substance of doctrine of the Trinity from the Early Church Councils while reserving the right to criticize some of the traditional philosophical terminology used to formulate the doctrine. Luther only infrequently discusses the subject of the Trinity as a distinct topic or doctrine. Consequently we have no systematic presentation of the doctrine of the Trinity by Luther himself as we have, for example, in Melanchthon’s later editions of the Loci and or in Calvin’s Institutes.

Nevertheless, Luther unambiguously embraces the orthodox Trinitarian doctrine of the church. Luther’s Christmas sermon of 1514, provides us with an early reference to Luther’s commitment to classic Trinitarianism. At this stage in Luther’s development we find him following Augustine’s lead by introducing various analogies as aids for understanding the problem of the Trinity. Luther, however, begins to break with long-standing scholastic categories in that his analogies are not restricted to the realm of human psychology. Prenter interprets:

In scholasticism the doctrine of the Trinity and anthropology are united in a manner that makes the inner essence of the human soul a reflection of the essence of God. Already in the sermon of 1514, we notice that Luther is beginning to deviate from this view, which also was very contrary to his concept of sin which held that the inner soul was touched by the fall. And when the concept motis, which also later plays a part in Luther’s presentation of the doctrine of the Trinity gets into the foreground, it seems to prove that the Trinity doctrine is no longer oriented on the basis of God’s passive nature as reflected in man’s process of understanding, but on the basis of God’s activity in revelation as it is seen in the history of revelation (Regin Prenter, Spiritus Creator, trans. John Jensen [Philadelphia: Mulenberg Press, 1953], 175).

Prenter’s comments are plausible. Luther does seem to be moving beyond traditional scholastic categories. Even so, he still has a long way to travel before he arrives at formulations that eschew the language of philosophy and metaphysics. One might indeed wonder whether Luther’s Aristotelian analogies are truly proleptic or whether we are only too willing to allow our own active imaginations anachronistically to read into Luther’s earlier works vestigia of his later insights. One thing is clear. Luther’s doctrine of the Trinity is at this point only very loosely related to God’s revelation of his fullness in salvation history. The same kind of analysis might be made of Luther’s doctrine of the Trinity in the his early lectures on Romans (1515-16), Galatians (1519), and his Dictata super Psalterium (1513-1515). Although Luther sometimes uses language that might imply a creatively dynamic way of speaking about the Trinity in relationship to man, his Trinitarianism remains largely bound to traditional categories of analogy and ontology.

Of course, we do find Luther faithfully confessing the doctrine of the Trinity whenever he has the opportunity to craft a confession of faith. As Lohse puts it: “Whenever Luther formulated confessions or articles of faith, he regularly began with the doctrine of God in its Trinitarian form. For this reason it would seem appropriate to give the doctrine of God the central position in Luther’s theology." Lohse may be correct about the “centrality” of Luther’s doctrine of the Trinity, but such an assertion will certainly not be established merely by noting that Luther always “began” his confessions with an article on the Trinity. Just about everyone’s confession—Roman Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran—contained an article on the Trinity somewhere near the top. What does this prove? Can one really establish doctrinal primacy or centrality in this way? Whether the doctrine of the Trinity is “central” in Luther’s pre-catechetical writings can be established only by examining how Luther utilizes the Trinity when it really counts. Placing an article on the Trinity at the head of one’s confession evidences Luther’s faithfulness to received doctrine, nothing more.

The evidence indicates that sometime during the years 1520-23, Luther began to articulate the reciprocal, dynamic relationship between what we now call the “economic” and “ontological” Trinity with increasing clarity and profundity. It is evident already in his A Short Form of the Faith (1520). [I don't have an English translation of this work in front of me, only the German. I've been away from my German for a while, but I'll see if I can translate it on the fly.] In this little work Luther is concerned not just with the proper formulas and terminology describing the Trinity. When he is explaining the Creed we begin to see evidence of Luther’s desire to wring out of the doctrine all of its soteriological significance for the believer. Luther may have shared certain dogmatical Trinitarian formulations with his opponents, but they are now beginning to function for Luther in a way that they did not for the Late Medieval church. Evidence of this occurs only when Luther begins to explain the Second Article. After quoting the Creed, Luther explains:

I believe that Jesus alone is truly the one Son of God, in one divine nature and essence as the eternally begotten, but also that with the Father he created all things, and with my humanity is Lord over all. .

The “but also” might give the impression that the two parts of this confession concerning Jesus Christ—Christ in se and Christ pro me— are only very loosely connected. Luther does not explicitly explain the relationship between these two dimensions of Christology. Later, as we shall see, he drops the “but also” language altogether and unites what Christ “is” and what Christ “does” in the strongest possible way. Here Luther is struggling to mine these ontological statements ("divine nature and essence") for their significance pro me. This same language and order occurs in Luther’s explanation of the Third Article. One can perceive here the seeds of what will shortly blossom into a profound doctrine of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’s unified work of salvation pro me. Luther is not satisfied with explicating ontological relations between the Persons. This is not the real meaning of the Trinity.

Lohse makes a suggestive comment in reference to Luther’s statement on the Trinity in the Smalcald Articles that may help explain the substance and function of the "but also" clauses in this early work. At the conclusion of Part I of the Smalcald Articles (treating “the sublime articles of the divine majesty”) Luther notes: “These articles are not matters of dispute or contention, for both parties *believe and* confess them. Therefore, it is not necessary to treat them at greater length.” After noting that the words “believe and” were crossed out by Luther and not included in the official printed texts of the Articles, Lohse explains, “Naturally, Luther did not intend to imply that the dogma of the Trinity was not firmly maintained in the Roman Church. For Luther, however, faith in the triune God simultaneously required a specific doctrine of the human person and a specific doctrine of salvation; that is, faith in the triune God required the Reformation doctrine of justification. For Luther, simply accepting dogmas as true was not enough.”

Luther, then, not only affirms that the each of the Articles of the Apostle’s Creed are true, he not only assents to the received doctrinal explanations of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, he believes they bear significantly upon the meaning of the Christian’s relationship with God. The ontological relations are only significant because they can only be known and confessed insofar as the Holy Spirit brings us to the Father through Christ. In 1520, these ideas were in the process of germinating. When Luther returns eight years later to the Creed and its exposition he is prepared to communicate the biblical Trinitarian Gospel to “simple” Christians in his catechetical writing and preaching.

Go to Part II.

The Trinity for the Simple

Twelve years ago I wrote an interesting (to me!) paper on Luther's doctrine of the Trinity for a graduate seminar class at Concordia on Luther's Small and Large Catechism. The title of the paper was "Die Dreifaltigkeit für die Einfältigen: Luther’s Catechetical Doctrine of the Trinity." The German phrase means "The Trinity for the Simple."

I've been looking over my past work on the Trinity lately, wondering if I might actually be able finally to finish that book I've always wanted to write. We'll see. At any rate, I'm going to simplify (remove all the German and dispense with the academic references) and update this old essay of mine and publish it here as a series of posts. Perhaps someone will find it helpful.

Now, one caveat: my observations and analyses are dated, especially with regard to the literature available to me in 1996 on Luther's doctrine of the Trinity. There's been some advance in Luther studies re: the Trinity. So if I had the time to do the research, I would probably qualify some of the first few paragraphs. So here goes.

When the Lutheran theologian Walter Elert describes Luther’s traditional theology of the Trinity, he makes this charge: “In general, the doctrine of the Trinity came to a standstill in his theology like an erratic boulder.” The French Roman Catholic theologian Yves Congar’s opinion was similar. “Luther is not a man for the mystery of the Trinity.” Edmund J. Fortman’s The Triune God devotes only four of its 380 pages to the Reformation understanding of the Trinity: Luther and Melanchthon are treated in less than one page each. Fortman’s conclusion: “His [Luther’s] Trinitarian doctrine remained largely a simple, devout expression of his belief in the traditional dogma.”

One might have anticipated a more positive evaluation of Luther’s doctrine of the Trinity to emerge in the wake of the modern renewal of Trinitarian theology in the last few decades. So far, however, recent opinions appear not to have altered much. The contemporary Roman Catholic Trinitarian theologian Edmund J. Hill says, “In Luther’s own writings, the Trinity plays only a very minor theological role, serving largely to buttress his real concerns, which are those of faith and justification.” At least Hill says something about Luther’s doctrine of the Trinity. Most contemporary Trinitarian theologians ignore Luther altogether on this subject. Nobody, as far as I have been able to discover, even notices the theological potential in the Trinitarian shape of Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms.

Was Luther’s doctrine of the Trinity as unsophisticated and slavishly tradition-bound as these authors would lead us to believe? Did Luther’s use of the Trinity have no more profound motivation than an unselfconscious “traditionalism”? Does the doctrine of the Trinity appear in Luther’s catechetical work as something sterile and inert? Granted that Luther does not utilize most of the traditional metaphysical terms and distinctions available to him as heir of a rich repository of Western Trinitarian reflection, does this necessarily imply that his Trinitarian theology is unsophisticated, artless, and ultimately barren? That it has no deep roots in the historical church’s Trinitarian heritage? Why indeed does Luther “neglect” certain aspects of classical Trinitarian theology? Does that neglect arise self-consciously as a critique of Scholastic/Augustinian Trinitarian speculation or does it simply point to Luther’s own theological ignorance, possibly even stubbornness?

Others have analyzed Luther’s general doctrine of the Trinity; my purpose in this brief essay is to explore Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms in order to examine the “simplicity” of his catechetical exposition of the Trinity. I will argue that Luther’s catechetical understanding of the Trinity is not simply simplistic, but deceptively, even elegantly simple. Even though, or very possibly because it is aimed at instructing simple or ordinary Christians rather than impressing metaphysically minded academics, Luther’s catechetical construal of the Trinity is more profound and potentially productive than what was passed on to him in the classic Western tradition. Luther’s own metaphysically uncluttered exposition of the Trinitarian structure of God’s relationship with his people implies (even if he does not always explicitly argue for it) a deep-seated critique of the philosophically cast tradition of the church and academy of his day. In fact, Luther’s Trinitarianism evidences both a return to a more biblically faithful instruction concerning the Godhead as well as a creative rediscovery of the soteriological foundations of Patristic Trinitarian creedal theology. These three concerns—biblical faithfulness, soteriology, and catechetical fitness—combine to insure the elegant simplicity of Luther’s catechetical Trinitarian theology.

Continued in Part 2

This Much At Least

This lecture is worth careful consideration.

I agree with his conclusion. In the past I've made my own guarded attempts at grounding the cross in the eternal intra-trinitarian personal relations. I have stated it a bit more provocatively than Joel. But I think his formulation is the least we can do. Here's his conclusion:

Even if we cannot strictly speaking say that God, in his own being “suffers,” there yet remains an eternal analogue to suffering in which the redemption of the cross is already provided for and included in the eternal offering, self-surrender and—may we even say—sacrifice among the divine Persons within the Trinity. This is what Hans Urs von Balthasar terms the “supra-suffering” of the impassible God.

The Trinitarian God of Scripture, therefore, is also the God of classical theism who, as being itself and pure act, remains immutably and impassibly transcendent over creation as Trinity. It is precisely in the plentitude of the intra-Trinitarian relations that God already is passionate, loving, and responsive to his creation, even, in some sense, taking up the suffering of his creatures for their redemption. This divine weakness and vulnerability is, paradoxically, the fullness of the saving power of God, that dynamic and over-abundant love that lies beyond passibility and, indeed, beyond any shadow of turning.

If you are interested in theology proper, read the entire lecture.

A Trinitarian Wedding Meditation

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1Cor. 13:4-7).

What family would you identify as a model for your marriage and future household? In terms of this reading, where have you seen or where will you see the love of 1 Cor. 13 lived out? Is there a couple or a family that you would name as exemplifying the kind of life together that you would experience?

I can’t read your minds and I’m not going to ask you to tell me of whom you are thinking, but I will wager that you are setting your sights too low, way too low.

Whatever human couple or family may have come to your mind and however radiant and attractive their relationship may be, it is but a dim reflection of the fullness of love, the eternal riches of love resident in the Holy Trinity. That’s right. The Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in their shared eternal life together.

Well, I will tell you both that God himself holds the key; God himself is the key to marital happiness and fulfillment. He is the definition of, the very living embodiment of love. As the Apostle John says, "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him" (1 John 4:16). This does not mean simply that God is nice—the dear, kind God. Reduced to this, "God is love" comes dangerously close to being innocuous and sentimental nonsense.

Rather, John means that in himself, in his own inner life, God is characterized by love. Love binds Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternally covenanted companions. God is in himself the fullness and perfection of love, in loving and being loved, in giving and receiving. And this eternal communal existence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as God is the ultimate model for every human social bond. Today, of course, that means your marriage.

Cornelius Plantinga has put it this way: “The precincts of heaven are occupied by more than one divine person. The unity of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is more like a marriage, or like persons bound together in a single community.”

The active movement of reciprocal love within the eternal being of God is the one ultimate source of all love in the universe. What that means for us, for you, is that the Triune God constitutes the very ground and possibility of love between human beings, not the least of which is marital love. The marriage covenant, you see, is grounded in the original covenant of love and companionship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But wait a minute, isn’t that like telling you that Robert and Jennifer Smith possess the secret of marital happiness and love? Robert and Jennifer Smith? That would be all well and good, but who are they? Where do they live? If you have no access to their household, to their personal relationship, what good is it to you?

You might find out where the live and go and stand in front of their house and look through the windows or even bang on the door. You could park in front of their house and try to get glimpses of them as they come outside. You might even get a listening device and try to catch bits and pieces of their conversations. A telescope to see them interact. But unless they graciously invited you into their circle of love, unless they allowed you in, you would never benefit from what they had.

Similarly, we cannot know of or experience God’s love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit from the outside. God as he is in himself is not open to our inspection. We cannot pry into his Three-Personed being for the purpose of examining his life.

And just as the Smith’s must invite you into their family for you to know them, so in a similar way, God himself must invite us in if we are to know him as the perfect communion of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God himself must open up himself to us and draw us into his life of communion so that we can experience and know his covenant love.

That is exactly what has happened in time and space history as the Father loves the Son so much that he finds a bride for him that will be his eternal covenanted companion. This is the wonder of God’s love. This is what God has done for us in Christ.

Jonathan Edwards puts it well: “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.” Jonathan Edward’s again: “The end [goal] 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 that the Son of God might communicate his love and goodness to a spouse.”

I need to stop here to make sure that everyone has this right. God didn’t create the world to have people to dominate and manipulate. To command and control. He created the world and humanity to share his glory, to turn his eternal love outward on humanity and to bring us into the circle of his blessed fellowship.

Your life in the covenant of marriage must model that eternal covenant of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as it has been revealed, manifest, uncovered for us in Jesus Christ.

Now, you may be thinking, what? He’s talking about the Trinity at our wedding? Isn’t that just some abstract, confusing ecclesiastical doctrine invented to confound simple people about the nature of God? Shouldn’t the pastor just give some pointers on how to act as husband and wife and get on with it. Some practical "how to" advice. Absolutely not!

Have you ever noticed that whenever the Apostle Paul addresses a very practical problem in one of his churches, he doesn’t offer some cute emotional story or merely quote or construct some catchy religious aphorism, rather he gets very theological.

My favorite example of this is the church at Philippi. Read Philippians 2:3-7. It was because Jesus was God that he humbled himself. It was because he was in very nature God that he emptied himself. This is God's mode of life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They live together is self-giving humility and love.

This, then, is your God! This is the one in whose image you have been created. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . in the image of God he created them, male and female, he created them. This is the image that you are being renewed in. The likeness of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is love.

As Christians, we do not look primarily to an abstract impersonal idea or set of ideas for our model. We are imagers of God. We have been made to resemble God. We are to actively seek to conform ourselves as creatures to his perfect character. “Be ye holy as I am holy”

Another way to put this is that our flawless exemplar is the Person(s) of God himself, especially the Father and the Son! When we ask what does it mean to love, how can I know what it means to love, we, as Christians (who bear the name of Christ) answer: It means to imitate the Lord, Jesus Christ.

1 John 3:16, “By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” John 15:12 "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

Without this context, this list in 1 Cor. 13 degenerates into pious platitudes, religious mush. So substitute the word “Christ” for the noun “love” in this list and you make explicit Paul’s reason for using this literary device called personification. “Jesus Christ suffers long, Christ shows kindness, Jesus does not envy. . . .”

Here then is a positive, healthy ideal towards which to strive. Here in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 is a vivid picture of purity and spiritual health.

You know we might have settled this afternoon a fast-food, sugar-high from cute little aphorisms and sentimental sayings about marriage. Or we could have gotten a temporary emotional buzz from the current fad in psychological marital advice and techniques. But that kind of thing will never satisfy your need for lasting nourishment as a couple. As you begin your life together, do not settle for such junk food.

You’ve got something more nourishing. Something that will transform you through and through. Let me suggest to you that thinking, reflecting, meditating on your own participation in the covenantal love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as husband and wife is worth more than whatever techniques or marital slogans or psychological advice you can find in the millions of how-to-books on marriage.

As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord."

If you have experienced the love of God in Christ, if your marriage is going to be rooted and grounded in love, then you will have to this life-long goal of making progress towards understanding what is the width and length and depth and height of the love of God in Christ which surpasses human comprehension.

By means of the marriage covenant God permits you both to taste something of the inexpressible bliss of the personal intimacy and companionship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

You are called upon this afternoon to begin a life of love towards one another just as God is love.

"For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3:14-19). Amen.

This is my Brother's World

For many the Christian world view is relatively simple.

1. God created the world and man.
2. Man was created to obey God.
3. Man disobeyed and so God justly punished him.
4. But God mercifully decided to send his Son into the world to save man.
5. The Son then became man at the appropriate time for man's salvation.
6. Now those who trust the Son can go to heaven when they die.

For some #4-6 are important to understand for the purposes of attaining eternal life. But when Christians think about and interact with their culture, it is sufficient to impress upon people the fact that the world and man have been created by God and things would go better for everyone if we heeded his moral law. Getting people to confess the existence of a "Creator" is what really matters.

I'm overstating this, of course. But only a little bit. We tend to read Genesis one with deistic results. Even though the text talks explicitly about the participation of the Spirit in creation and on the sixth day the Creator says, "Let us make man in our image," nevertheless, we resist reading the creation account with trinitarian eyes.

But according to the inspired commentary given to us in the New Testament, the Son and Spirit do not begin their association with the world and humanity only after the fall. The eternal Son was intimately involved with creation from the start. More than that even, the Son was the reason God the Father created the world in the first place. The Father created the world as a gift for his Son. He created humanity to be the Son's brother, or if we think about humanity as whole as feminine, then we were created to be the Son's wife.

Now, there's all sorts of things to say about this. But I'll settle for a few brief comments.

First, according to the New Testament, the eternal Son was/is the original Image of God the Father (2 Cor. 4:1-6; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:2-3; ). Actually, "image" is just another way of saying "son" (see Gen. 5:2 or Luke 3:38). Adam was a created son. Jesus was the eternal Son. The model or archetype for Adam was the original Image, the eternal Son. In other words, humanity was made to be like the eternal Son. There was a special affinity between the Son and humanity, an affinity which makes the Son's incarnation fitting.

Second, the NT makes is abundantly clear that the Son was a participant in the work of creation. When John tells us that "all things were made through him" (that is the Word) and apart from him nothing was made (John 1:3), he is drawing out the full meaning of the narrative of Genesis one. God fashioned the world by speaking, as we here in Psalm 33:6, "By the word of Yahweh the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth." The Son/Word was a divine agent of creation, according to Col. 1:16, 1 Cor. 8:6, Eph. 3:9, and Heb. 1:2.

Third, more than that, however, according to the inspired commentary in the NT, the Son not only participated in the act of creation but he was the reason for creation. It is not enough to say that he was there and acted with the Father and the Spirit during the process of creation. The astonishing revelation in the NT is that "all things were created for him" (Col. 1:16). God the Father created all things FOR the Son. Let's be clear about this. Even before the fall, God the Father intended the created world to be for his Son. The created world was intended to be a gift for his Son.

This has huge implications for the way we present the Christian world view. We are not being faithful to the nature and purpose of created reality if we are content to talk simply about a generic God creating the world. It's much more complex than that. And the complexity introduces richness into the vision. Our vision is not like Islam's. The world is related to God in richly complex ways because God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This rich trinitarian vision (which I've not really even begun to unpack) has great evangelistic potential, IMHO.

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:

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.”

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:

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

Trinity & Covenant Part IV

Continued from Trinity & Covenant Part III

Let'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,
may they also may be in us.

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.

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,
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”

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.

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.

Trinity & Covenant Part III

Continued from More on Covenant & Trinity

One Lord Jesus Christ

We must begin with Christology. First, the Reformed tradition has agreed with the historic creeds and confessions and concluded that the words and actions of Jesus in the flesh are the words and actions of God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity. That although he spoke with a human mouth and acted with the fleshy legs and arms of our humanity, Jesus’ words and acts are the words and acts of a divine personal agent, the eternal Son of God. This is demanded by the Bible. Consider how John puts it in the first chapter of his Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made . . . . He was in the world. . . . he came to his own. . . . The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

There is one divine Person, the Son of God, who assumed to himself our human nature in order to speak and work on our behalf. For example, when Jesus speaks, he speaks using the larynx and lips and of our flesh, but the One who speaks is God the Son, the Eternal word. When Jesus eats and touches even when he spreads out his arms to be nailed to the cross beam that will lift him up from the earth, it is God the Son who eats, touches, and feels the nails driven into his hands and feet. This may seem like an obvious point, but it is not often appreciated in our circles. We often speak as if there were two subjects or two agents, one human and one divine. That sometimes Jesus the man is speaking and acting and that at other times God the Son is speaking and acting. This is not the case. Through Jesus ministry there is one personal agent, one subject—the eternal Son of God who speaks and acts in the flesh. Sure enough, he is “God and man in two distinct natures” but he is not two persons. Rather he is “one Person forever” (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 21).

This is not the place to delineate the precise way in which God the Son united with and lived out his life united to our humanity. I only want to emphasize that there is one divine Person who acts in union with our humanity. Otherwise stated, everything Jesus says and does God the Son says and does.

Do not shrink back from this confession. It was the eternal Son of God who suffered and died in the flesh for us. Indeed, the eternal Son of God assumed our nature just so he could live and die in the flesh. It was the Person of the eternal Son who experienced suffering and death on the cross in the flesh.

To fail to affirm this surprising truth is to tinker with the Nestorian heresy. Unfortunately, too much of popular Reformed theology is often found to be slouching toward Nestorianism. Christ is not a union of two persons, one divine and one human. Rather he is one divine Person, and this divine agent acts, speaks, and experiences human life in the flesh. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor.5:19). Happily, our hymnody often keeps us orthodox even when our human reasoning attempts to sidestep this astonishing truth.

Amazing Grace, how can it be that thou my God should die for me.
Alas! And did my savior bleed and did my Sovereign die!
When Christ, the mighty Maker died for man the creature’s sin.
When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died.
Forbid it Lord that I should boast, save in the death of Christ my God.

We are now well on the way to solving the riddle of Jesus’ personal interaction with the Father. But the riddle is not entirely solved. To affirm one divine Personal agent means not only that everything Jesus said and did and experienced in relation to us was that of the eternal Son of God. It also means that the words and acts of Jesus spoken and performed in relation to God the Father are the words and actions of God to God, God for God. What we hear and see in the biblical record of Jesus interaction with the Father is God interacting with God. Not simply God and man, but God and God. But that raises more questions. How is it that God converses with God? That God loves God? That God obeys God? That God serves God? That God glorifies God? That God offers himself to God? What does this tell us about the nature and life of God?

More on Trinity & Covenant

Everyone who reads the story of Jesus in the Gospels with an eye on the astonishing interaction between Jesus and the Father is faced with some difficult questions. I called attention to this in my previous post. But let me try to flesh this out some more.

What are we to make of Jesus' conversations with the Father? Who’s talking to whom? Who is listening to whom? What does their conversation and behavior toward one another tell us about the form of their relationship?

Were Jesus’ words and actions in relation to the Father human words and actions directed to God? Was a man talking to God the Father? Was a man giving and receiving from God the Father? Was Jesus’ obedience to the Father the performance of a duty that the human creature owes to its Creator and God? Was Jesus’ offering himself on the cross to the Father as a sacrifice, a self-offering of a man?

How shall we answer these questions about Jesus’ words and actions? A human conversation with God the Father? Yes. A human obedience to God the Father? Absolutely. The self-offering of man to God the Father on the cross? Surely. But is that all we can or should say? Have we fully adequately answered these questions when we identify Jesus’ words and actions as simply human speech and acts directed to God the Father? Is there more?

When Jesus speaks to and acts with reference to his Father was this an instance of God relating to God? Was God talking to God? Was God obeying God? Was God offering himself to God? God the Son to God the Father? May we speak of the sacrifice of God to God? The obedience of God to God? Can we talk meaningfully about God’s obedience or God’s sacrifice or are these categories limited to the relational acts performed by created humanity with reference to God? Human creatures can sacrifice to and obey one another. They can, of course, sacrifice to and obey God. Human creatures can also speak to God.

But can God sacrifice to and obey God? Is it possible that Jesus’ conversations with and obedience to his Father reveal something more than simply the human creature’s proper response to his Creator?

The answers we give to these questions will have vast implications for our theology, especially for our understanding of the nature and character of the covenant. That may not be immediately evident to everyone reading the first few paragraphs of this post. Questions like these may strike many readers as esoteric and speculative. Nevertheless, I hope to show that that answers we give to questions like these ought to govern how with think about God’s own covenantal life as well as our covenantal relations with the Triune God.

In order to unpack the significance of Jesus’ words and actions in relation to the Father we must move carefully through a series of theological affirmations which the Christian church has arrived at after careful reflection on the biblical record. Although it has been the Reformed church that has been most attuned to the central place of the covenant in God’s relations with man, nevertheless, I want to suggest that our tradition’s exposition of the character of the covenant has not always been securely grounded in orthodox Christology and Trinitarian theology.

This is not to say that traditional Reformed theologians have been unorthodox in their understanding of Christ and the Trinity, only that we have not always adequately constructed our theology of the covenant, especially the eternal covenant between the Persons of the Godhead, with these considerations in mind. Which is to say that the Reformed teaching on the covenant, especially the place of the inter-trinitarian covenant, sometimes called the pactum salutis or Covenant of Redemption, may profit from a careful reevaluation of the nature of the Son’s personal interaction with the Father as recorded in the Scriptures.

I hope to demonstrate that some of the traditional ways of characterizing the pactum salutis have not always adequately taken into account certain biblical and theological data concerning the interaction of Father, Son, and Spirit. Careful attention to this data will help to restore the importance of God’s covenantal life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for our understanding of creation, redemption, and the eschatological end of history.

Now, let's see if I can live up to that claim in the coming posts.

Covenant & Trinity

David Booth has asked some good questions here. His questions are about the first affirmation in the Federal Vision Joint Statement that reads: "We affirm that the triune God is the archetype of all covenantal relations."

I responded on his blog already, but let me add something here. David asks if calling God's eternal, inter-Personal relations "covenantal" makes any difference. Let me put this in a way that makes the significance crucial.

When the disciples and apostles pondered everything Jesus had said and done, especially what he had said to his Father and done on the cross in obedience to his Father they were confronted with a riddle. The riddle of all riddles. How would they understand the meaning of his conversation with the Father? What would they make of his obedience to the Father? What would they judge its significance to be? Did Jesus speak with God the Father simply as a created man? Did he obey his Father as human or was there something more going on, something more amazing being revealed?

Were his words and actions in relation to the Father merely human actions? Or was he truly the eternal God talking, acting, obeying, serving, suffering, and dying in the flesh? When they call him "Lord," what kind of lord was he? When they refer to his "obedience" and "service" what kind of obedience was this? The obedience of a man? Surely, at least! But was it also the obedience of God? Can we talk meaningfully about God's obedience or is this just a category, a relationship for creatures.

A great deal depends on one's answer to these questions. If obedience is strictly speaking a human or creaturely duty, then it is easy to conceive of our obedience as a function of who's got more power. Since God has the power, we must submit and obey. If a king or a employer has more power, then we must obey. But is that the only way to understand obedience--as a way of relating to one more powerful and dangerous than oneself?

To put this in the context of the current discussion about the nature of the covenant the quesetion is: is covenant obedience restricted to the creature's response to his almighty Creator? If the answer is yes, then it would be blasphemous and dangerous to push this dimension of the covenant back into God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are "equal in power and glory" as our Westminster Shorter Catechism nicely puts it. Sovereign human lords make treaties with vassals and those subservient vassals must obey without question or suffer severe repercussions. But can such a relation make sense of Jesus obedience to the Father?

If we accept these categories, then Jesus' obedience to his Father must be the obedience of his human nature, of the creature to the Creator. But does this really work? Christologically, this is suspect because Jesus is not a human person at all. Rather, he is a divine Person. The eternal Son. And as the eternal Son he assumed a human nature and lives his divine life as the Person of the Son in union with his assumed human nature. Can we be content with assigning his obedience to his assumed created nature? This appears to divide the natures in a way that seems too Nestorian. [I recognize that this paragraph assumes an awful lot and might need to be fleshed out a bit.]

But if it is the eternal Son who obeys the Father, then we have obedience, as it were, expressed in the relations of Father and Son. And if the incarnation of the Son reveals the true nature of God, as John tells us in chapter one of his Gospel, then the true God is obedient. According to the New Testament it is not simply the human nature of Jesus that has this obedient orientation, but it is Christ Jesus who lives as morphe theou, who in accordance with his divine mode of life becomes obedient unto death, pouring himself out for us (Phil. 2). That's my take, anyway, on Philippians 2. God the Son living as a man humbles himself and is obedient unto death.

It is the Person of the God the Son who is an obedient Servant—Servant of his Father on our behalf. There is nothing accidental or alien about this way of living and relating to the Father. This is not simply a foil for his divine glory, as if divine glory is really primarily about power. His "lordship" has nothing to do with the way fallen human political tyrants perceive glory—pushing people around and manipulating others.

In other words, Jesus does not become for a time something that he is not. The Son does not become a man so that he might be submissive and obedient. He does not need to be a man so that he can be a servant. He does not assume a role that does not express who he is. Obedience and service characterize at some crucial level the eternal, inter-trinitarian personal relations. The Son becomes a man because he is submissive to the Father. He, the Son, gave himself up (Gal. 2:20, Eph. 5:2). He, the eternal Son, humbled himself (Phil. 2:7). He, the divine Son, emptied himself, pouring out his life to the Father for us (Phil. 2:8; Isa. 53:13).

But doesn't God's covenant with the human creature involve man's obedience? If obedience is a necessary dimension of covenantal relations, then the Son's relations with the Father are covenantal. More than that, is it too much of a stretch to conclude that God's expectation of obedience from man is not something utterly foreign to God himself? That God's own covenantal life includes obedience—at least the obedience of the Son to the Father, but also the obedience of the Spirit to Father and Son, and possibly even the obedience of Father to the will of the Son and Spirit.

To state this in a way that some might find shocking, God does not ask his creatures to do something that he himself is not willing to do.

You see, we have to clean up our thinking a bit. Obedience, especially an obedience that willingly serves and puts oneself at another's disposal in order to see the other glorified, is a divine mode of life. Maybe this is why John says "God is love" and that "love is obedience to the command of the other." Father, Son, and Spirit love one another so much that they are obedient servants one to the other. And this eternal covenantal submission and service is the ground of the human creature's covenantal obedience to God. To be godly means to be obedient and imaging God means obedient, self-sacrificial service to God and to other human creatures.

If our conception of the covenant degenerates into purely external, extrinsic acts of God, acts that are only loosely related to the real life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, if they only assumed these roles in order to get something accomplished, then we know and worship an unknown god behind the purely economic, covenantal relations expressed in his covenantal dealings with us.

Think about this. The submission/obedience/service of the covenant is not external to God, but expressive of his true life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And this is not myth, but history. God's history. This is the solution to the riddle of Christ's conversation with and obedience to the Father. What is recorded in the New Testament Scriptures—what the Son said to his Father and to us, as well as what the Son did in obedience to his Father in time and space is nothing else but the history of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit's covenantal relations with each other pro nobis.