Perry Robinson has made a shocking discovery about Turretin Fan. But, for reasons of propriety, I hesitate to say anything about it in mixed company. Before I proceed any further, I’d ask all underage children, as well as members of the weaker sex, to leave the room.
Are we ready? Brace yourselves! Take a deep breath. In his sleuthing, Perry uncovered the hitherto unsuspected fact that Turretin Fan is not Greek Orthodox!
Indeed, Perry has managed to unearth some highly incriminating evidence which points in the direction that Turretin Fan might actually be a closet Calvinist!
I’ll reproduce some of the damning evidence:
“Turretinfan cites material from the famous Reformed theologian Charles Hodge…The only way to stave off full blown Pelagianism after the Fall is to posit a fundamental alteration in human nature, specifically in a loss in some respect or another of the imago dei. And this is exactly what the Reformed have historically asserted. Total Depravity is therefore required to stave off a complete Pelagian soteriology while motivated by a Pelagian anthropology.”
“On the point of the original state of man, Turretinfan could have just skipped Hodge and gone to his namesake since Francis Turretin says essentially the same thing as Hodge.”
“Notice that the patristic notion of deification is impossible for Turretin.”
“God for Turretin obviously lacks intrinsically related energies or activities that can be united inherently and intrinsically to human nature without an abosrption of humanity into the divine essence.”
http://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/we-have-met-the-enemy/
In case I’m moving too fast for you, I’ll try to formalize the evidence:
1.Turretin rejects Palamite dogma (e.g. divine uncreated energies).
2.Therefore, Turretin is not Greek Orthodox
3.TF agrees with Turretin.
4.Ergo, TF is not Greek Orthodox either!
1.TF approvingly cited Hodge.
2.Hodge is a Calvinist.
3.Hodge believes in total depravity.
4.Only a Calvinist believes in total depravity.
5.TF agrees with Hodge.
6.Ergo, TF is a Calvinist too!
It seems to me that Perry’s case is well-nigh conclusive.
At a later point I may have a few additional comments to make about Perry’s devastating exposé. At the moment, though, I need to some time to absorb the body blow of seeing one of my favorite bloggers outed as a closet Calvinist.
It’s terribly disillusioning. All this time I labored under the misimpression that Turretin Fan was a smells-and-bells kinda guy.
After Perry’s revelations, I’m now beginning to fear the worst: for all I know, Turretin Fan even be a modern-day Puritan!
So permit me a decent interval of mourning as I try to cope with the shameful realization that Turretin Fan may not measure up to the unquestionable yardstick of Palamite dogma.
I was wondering when Steve would come out to play. Though I expected an argument concerning the charge of Pelagianism. Perhaps I can reasonably hope that one is on the way Steve?
ReplyDeleteIn his "Covenant and Salvation," Michael Horton argues that "Irenaeus saw the so-called deification of believers as their true humanization, another inbreathing of the Spirit to make a new creation, alive in Christ; later writers like Athanasius would say that 'God became man [so] that man might become God.' "
ReplyDeleteHorton counters, "God did not become human so that humans might become God, or even supernatural, but so that humans who had fallen into sin and death could be redeemed, reconciled, justified, renewed, and glorified as the humanity that we were created to become."
He suggests that the Orthodox category of "divinizing energies" is superior to "habitual and infused grace," but something more is needed.
"If we draw the East's concept of 'energies' into a more communicative ambit, we can identify these divine 'workings' with the Word of God, understood here as God's creative speech distinct from the eternally generated hypostatic Word, who forms its archetype. This communicative 'working' is neither an emanation of divine essence nor merely a creaturely effect. Categories of essence and cause do not provide a rich-enough ontology for describing this divine agency. God's Word, for example, "goes forth" from God's mouth, yet it is also not merely a creaturely product of divine power, but God's Word. ... We need a rich-enough lexicon to be able to talk about God's works both as a noun (products or effects) and as a gerund (God's "actings")." (302)
As he explains earlier in the introduction, is to show "the unexploited potential" of a covenantal framework in explaining human salvation.
He picks up on Kevin Vanhoozer's work that "God's self-communication is 'advenient.'" (227). That is, God speaks his Word, and it does not come back void. It accomplishes "that which I purpose, and succeed[s] in the thing for which I sent it. (227).
His point of course is to challenge Rome's notion of "infused grace." In the process, he talks about Palamas and "energies." But he goes further with this, using a Covenantal framework, as he describes.
"If union with Christ in the covenant of grace is the matrix for Paul's ordo, justification remains its source, even for adoption. We do not move from the topic of justification to other ones, but are always relating the riches of our inheritance to this decisive gift. In William Ames's words, 'Adoption of its own nature requires and presupposes the reconciliation found in justification ... The first fruit of adoption is that Christian liberty by which all believers are freed from the bondage of the law, sin, and the world. Once again we can see that the antithesis between forensic and effective and legal or transformative is unwarranted. Adoption, like justification, is simultaneously legal and relational, as is the obverse: alienation and condemnation. The tendency to replace the legal the legal exchange with some notion of a transfer of substance, properties, or habits in justification would have as its corollary a concept of adoption in which the adoptee, no longer adopted, receives a transfer of DNA. To be sure there are organic as well as legal images for complementary aspects of the wider ordo. Particularly when we exchange a causal paradigm for a communicative one, however, false choices are eliminated. Reformation theology does not leave us in the courtroom, but it is the basis for our relocation to the family room." (246)
"The customary alternative of 'forensic' or 'effective' is no alternative at all. The forensic is effective, the effective forensic. That is [Luther's] answer to the much-debated question. What God says, God does. The reverse is also true ... God's work is God's speech. God's speech is no fleeting breath. It is a most effective breath that creates life, that summons into life" (246)
"We have seen that in Calvin's development of the unio motif, the objective person and work of Christ would mean nothing for us if the Spirit did not unite us subjectively to Christ. It is one thing to say that the work of Christ for us (extra nos) is the sole legal basis for his work in us (in nobis) by the Spirit, and quite another to deny either the legal basis (forensic justification) or its transformative effects (new birth and sanctification)." (261)
So yes, God speaks, and He accomplishes ALL his purposes in us -- justification, sanctification, glorification, and more. Man does not "become god" at all -- man becomes all that God created him to be.
"To speak of knowing God only by his working and not in his essence means not only that we recognize God by what he has made (thought that certainly is true), but by his making--his actual course of action as revealed to us." (302)
Michael Horton explains Reformed (Reformation) doctrines in the light of such Orthodox theologies, and in doing so, shows these Reformed theologies as more biblical and more true to reality than the earlier Orthodox explanations.
Before I proceed any further, I’d ask all underage children, as well as members of the weaker sex, to leave the room.
ReplyDeleteI am ashamed to say I did not heed your warning and read the post anyway. Now I don't know what to do with this devasting blow of information.
That's it. No more TurretinFan posts for me. Disgusting, just disgusting.
ReplyDelete“God for Turretin obviously lacks intrinsically related energies or activities that can be united inherently and intrinsically to human nature without an abosrption of humanity into the divine essence.”
ReplyDeleteWhat, translated from orthodox-speak, does this actually mean?
Mathetes: What, translated from orthodox-speak, does this actually mean?
ReplyDeleteEssentially, it is simply a statement that the Reformed do not believe in "deification," but rather, that as Horton says, "God speaks, and He accomplishes ALL his purposes in us -- justification, sanctification, glorification, and more. Man does not "become god" at all -- man becomes all that God created him to be."
Unfortunately, that "all," in Reformed theology, does not include "deification."
I see. So the orthodox believe that the faithful become "one" with God by essentially becoming a part of God Himself?
ReplyDeleteMathetes said...
ReplyDelete“God for Turretin obviously lacks intrinsically related energies or activities that can be united inherently and intrinsically to human nature without an abosrption of humanity into the divine essence.”
What, translated from orthodox-speak, does this actually mean?
2/23/2009 8:49 AM
Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. --Friedrich Nietzsche
"I see. So the orthodox believe that the faithful become "one" with God by essentially becoming a part of God Himself?"
ReplyDeleteNo, they believe that the Christian becomes one with God's energies, not His essence.
Please don't ask me to defend that distinction.
Maybe by "energies", they mean His heating and electricity (billed monthly).
ReplyDeleteMathetes said...
ReplyDelete“God for Turretin obviously lacks intrinsically related energies or activities that can be united inherently and intrinsically to human nature without an abosrption of humanity into the divine essence.”
What, translated from orthodox-speak, does this actually mean?
It is like a theological equivalent of technobabble. It would be just as meaningful to say 'God for Turretin obviously lacks dilithium crystals that can be united to the antimatter containment field without disruption of the subspace field..."
Horton actually spends a considerable amount of time and space discussing the essence/energies distinctions, how they compare with "infused grace," ahd how the Reformed ordo is just much more biblical in explaining "what God does" to and for redeemed people.
ReplyDeleteJohn,
ReplyDeleteThe problem with Horton’s assessment regarding Ireneaus and Athanasius is that the same exact statement is in Ireneaus as well. The supposed cleavage between Athanasius and Ireneaus at this point is a figment of Horton’s bad scholarship. He writes that the Irenean prevails over the Athanasian to the effect that the humanity of Christ is not swallowed up by the divinity but kept perfectly human. This is absurd for Athanasius gives the same arguments against an absorption of the humanity into deity as Ireneaus does. Horton is reading back into Ireneaus his own Reformed misreading of the communicatio idiomatum as a transfer of names, whereas both (Athanasius & Ireneaus) held it to be a transfer of energies or properties without a confluence of essences.
Horton constantly inserts energies into the mouths of Reformed writers without giving any demonstration that the concept is being expressed, since it is quite clear that they don’t employ that terminology and that it was ascribed by them to their theological enemies, the Lutherans, in the debates over the Eucharist. A transfer of energies was a Lutheran position against which Turretin wrote. A casual reading of Martin Chemnitz’s work the Two Natures in Christ will bear this out.
Further, Horton ignores the elephant in the room by not taking into account this debate since Turretin explicitly denies a transfer of properties from divinity to humanity on the grounds that God is simple such that to have on is to have all, which is impossible for the creature. All of God’s attributes are identical in God but distinguished by our minds into seemingly different things. Horton can’t adhere to the doctrine of energies without sacrificing the Reformed doctrine of God, and Turretin saw this clearly in his debates with the Lutherans.
And it is interesting the part that you left out on page 302 just prior.
“When we treat God’s energies (neither God’s essence nor created effect) as the source of a real communion with Christ and his benefits, a door is open to a notion of deification that finally humanizes us according to the Son as the original blueprint.”
As to the effective/forensic, Horton misses the point. The issue isn’t whether one is causally idle and the other not, but what constitutes their relation, and further that the active/passive fulcrum is still in play. Consequently the basic problem of viewing God and creation as related oppositionally remains the unfortunate heart of Reformed theology. It is just a diferent location for the pagan conception of God and the world as distinguished by opposite properties. God is cause and humans are effect. And so Horton hasn’t left the orbit of Plato. And Horton still seemingly retains the adoptionistic and Nestorianizing model of the Spirit coming to the humanity of Christ from the outside and benefiting it with created graces as in say Berkhof. This is why he lays such stress on the role of the Spirit as a mediating principle in relation to the humanity of Christ, contrary to the Orthodox sources he cites.
On the contrary, what Horton is trying to do is map Reformation criticisms on to Orthodox criticisms of Rome. He says as much in the first page of that chapter. And this is for a very good reason, since everyone in the field is scrambling to show that they too can be Orthodox and patristic by finding theosis in their sources. Horton has unfortunately been caught up in this academic fad with his new found acquaintance with Orthodox theologians.
Matthetes,
ReplyDeleteNo, the Orthodox do not think we become God by essence. We become partakers of the divine nature with respect to God’s energies or activities-love, immortality, glory, impassibility, etc.
David,
ReplyDeleteNo, it was part of an argument I was making with respect to a citation from Turretin. In the context, because Turretin thinks of God as absolutely simple such that all of the attributions we make of God are identical in God and all there is to God is his essence, it is impossible for Turretin to take the passage in a straightforward way. He has to introduce the idea of a created subsitute or analog that we partake of.
Turretin writes,
"And if we are said by grace to be ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Pet 1:4), this is not to be understood of an essential, formal and instrinsic participation, but an analogical, accidental and extrinsic participation (by reason of the effects analogous to the divine perfections which are produced in us by the Spirit after the image of God).”
And in case you don't know, he's essentially advocating the scholastic doctrine of created grace. If Turretin thought of God as more than his essence, he could take the passage in a straightforward way without his stated worry that we are absorbed into the divine essence.
I'd suggest you at least read Horton's discussion, but maybe he is afflicted with theological technobable too in your estimation?
it is impossible for Turretin to take the passage in a straightforward way.
ReplyDeleteAh, heeerree we go...Please exegete 2 Peter 1:4 and demonstrate that the Orthodox understanding is the straightforward meaning of this text.
Acolyte -- First of all, you are wrong to say that Irenaeus and Athanasius are "Orthodox" sources. These are writers of the whole church and are the heritage of all Christians. Your taunt that Horton is "caught up in this academic fad with his new found acquaintance with Orthodox theologians" misses the point. Reformed theologians, beginning with Calvin, have no fear of consulting these writers. Unlike you, though, Reformed writers disagree with them when it is warranted. [As you have noticed, Reformed writers will disagree with Luther when it is warranted.] Maybe if you had read Horton more carefully, you would have noticed that, while he is looking for areas of confluence with Orthodox thinkers, he ultimately thinks the Orthodox doctrine of "Theosis" is a bad thing.
ReplyDeleteHorton is headed in another direction. He is not producing an in-depth analysis of Irenaeus vs. Athanasius. For your information (and for the edification of the commenters here), Horton is following the discussion of Douglas Farrow in "Ascension and Ecclesia," in which Farrow does point to a major distinction in Athansius and Irenaeus. Athanasius "takes a small but dangerous step" toward "theological prostitution" "as he attempts to define the divinity of Christ by way of the works achieved in his resurrection." (Farrow 116). Farrow of course is concerned to protect the idea that "Christ Ascended." That means he is not bodily here on earth, though some theologies (such as Athanasius's) point to a "creeping process by which [Christ's] absence is converted into presence by degrees (116-117). Irenaeus, he says, "sets us off in the right direction," "letting Jesus-history and its ecclesial consequences govern his thinking to a most unusual degree, generating an understanding of the world which highlights rather than obscures the actual situation of the church" (85). That is, Christ is ascended; man will follow him, but not yet. "That understanding, encouraged no doubt by the persecutions and martyrdoms in Lyons, militated strongly against any false secularizations. It also enabled him to look ahead, following the pointing finger of Jesus and the prophets, in order to warn us against the deceptive character of our age, which today more than ever gives the impression of 'minglings' without cohesion" (85).
In "Covenant and Salvation" Horton is talking about the Reformed Ordo. The work is a wide-ranging treatment of competing views of salvation which challenge the Reformed doctrine of salvation. He interacts with a broad range of ideas from the New Perspective on Paul, "Radical Orthodoxy," "The New Finnish interpretation of Luther" -- he is very careful to contrast all of these with the Reformed ordo. He says, somewhat in conclusion of an earlier chapter, citing a range of Reformed writers, "to the very last, therefore, the forensic Word of justification reverberates throughout the entire ordo" (292). That is his point, to frame all of salvation within a covenant framework.
In the process of concluding this work, he begins to point to the next work in the series, "People and Place." The danger, as Horton sees it, is that, creeping notion that "the church is the ongoing incarnation of Christ." Horton keeps Christ in heaven; the church all too willingly abandons that notion and seeks itself to become Christ in the world.
The church is not "Christ in the world" nor is it part of the "totus Christus." We are close, and we are united, but we are not Christ. (Van Til's circles.)
John,
ReplyDeleteI might think that Ireneaus and Athanasius were writers of the whole church if you could tell me what constituted the “whole church.” And secondly, I don’t consider Protestants part of it in any case. Which is fine, since they reciprocate. Or do you consider the Orthodox part of the true whole church? And it seems odd for Calvinists to claim people like Ireneaus since it was Calvinists who destroyed the tomb of Ireneaus.
In any case, I sat under Horton personally for almost five years. Spent time at his house, with his family, etc. Horton has a problem with reading primary sources. For example, the debate that he was participant to for example in the 1990’s with three other Protestant participants against four Catholics in Pasadena is a good example. Prior to the debate he hadn’t read any substantial amount of Catholic sources like Newman’s lectures on justification or Journet on Grace or Lagrange. Zippo. In fact, I and a few others were asked what they should read privately prior to the debate because they knew we had read that material. He goes through material to construct a hatchet job. He did the same thing with Theonomy/Christian Reconstruction. This is why he would never debate North, Demar or Bahnsen, even though they called him out on his hatchet job. I was personally there. I know. You can see the same problem in the Three Views chapter he did. Most of the sources are either pop sources or when he does cite primary source material it is from a citation in some popular work. This is pretty much true in his comments on Orthodoxy in Covenant and Salvation.
I haven’t read the Farrow book, but I have read a good number of monographs on Ireneaus and Athanasius., as well as everything written by them in English. And I fully concede that Horton isn’t attempting to give an in-depth treatment of Ireneaus and Athanasius. That is obvious. The division being proffered between Athanasius and Ireneaus is absurd since as I pointed out that the exact same language of deification can be found in Ireneaus, not to mention the same kind of theology regarding baptism, deification and the divinity of Christ.
And it is irrelevant and adds nothing to the argument that Calvin was comfortable citing and disagreeing with the Fathers. So is Rome, the Anabaptists, Servetus, and just about anyone else. So what?
Unlike me? Really? So you think I swallow Origen or agree with Nyssa’s apocatastasis? How about Augustine’s teaching that unbaptized babies go to hell? Of course not. Your comment here indicates that you do not understand or know of the criteria of how I ferret out errors like this among various writers. And this tells me that you haven’t really grasped my position. What you impute to me here is not something I affirm.
If you think that Horton says it is a “bad thing” per se please cite the text. It should be easy enough since we both own a copy of the book. And it seems odd that he is at pains to try and claim that the distinction between essence and energies is present in Reformed writers, even to the point of injecting the word into texts. It’s the typical modus operandi of the fad. It’s obvious that Horton, like other authors, goes as far as he can to co-opt what he can from Orthodoxy. Just notice the change in attitude between this section and what he wrote in the Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy. In the latter he practically throws us to hell, but in the former he is singing our praises, at least so far as he can use them as a foil against Rome.
In any case, it wouldn’t surprise me if Horton ultimately disagrees with theosis as the Orthodox understand it. His doctrine of God via absolute simplicity and his defective Christology simply won’t permit it.
I am aware of what Horton is trying to do with the Reformed ordo. He seems the problems with the pretty much standard way of glossing justification and sanctification as contiguous relation between the forensic and the real. He is trying to reground them in an effective word together. This is in fact I’d wager a function of one of two things, either his concentration on Calvin’s Christology with its defect of the hypostasis of Christ being “out of” two natures (contra Chalcedon) or his incipient Lutheranism. It is sufficiently known that Horton has a more Lutheran slant. Look at his political theology as well as his teaching, or lack thereof on sanctification. This is why he detests Theonomy. He pretty much won’t even preach progressive sanctification. It was quite strange to see when Gerstner came to our church and was preaching all this standard Puritan stuff on progressive sanctification and Mike flipped out, claiming it was Rome through the back door.
Horton’s position of keeping Christ in heaven effectively forces him to advocate the Catholic invention of a Corpus Mysticum, albeit in a more nominalized form of an extension of will and power. Biblically this position has a hard time making sense out of material about the body of Christ, being conformed to Christ’s form or image, and hearing ministers as hearing Christ, etc. I doubt you think so, but it is a throwback to Roman inventions. (See Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, and Agostino Paravicini-Baglioni, The Pope’s Body.)
The Orthodox view of theosis does not posit us hypostatically or essentially Christ. To think so is to create a strawman. The church does the activities and is empowered by Christ and is in fact his glorified and immortal body. The kind of contiguity you posit smacks of the same kind of Docetism that motivates Nestorianism, a fear of the material and created might contaminate the deity. But none of that will be washed out until you make a serious and prolonged study of Christology.
Acolyte:
ReplyDeleteif you could tell me what constituted the “whole church.”
The sum total of all the elect.
And secondly, I don’t consider Protestants part of it in any case. Which is fine, since they reciprocate. Or do you consider the Orthodox part of the true whole church?
I'm sure there are Orthodox believers who, in spite of the many erroneous and harmful Orthodox beliefs and practices, nevertheless believe in Christ in such a way that they received the justification/sanctification/glorification that God predestined from before the foundation of the world.
And it seems odd for Calvinists to claim people like Ireneaus since it was Calvinists who destroyed the tomb of Ireneaus.
I personally have never destroyed a tomb, nor have I been persuaded to do so by any Calvinist I know of, living or dead.
... hatchet job....
Your perceptions of his method and work ethic have nothing to do with the quality of his printed work. His editors and publishers, his many readers, and heck, the folks at Oxford seem to have no problem with his work.
Can you tell me you've read through the entire corpus of Origen? If not, on what other ground don't you "swallow" him? And why can't Horton use that same method?
If you think that Horton says [theosis] is a “bad thing” per se please cite the text....Horton, like other authors, goes as far as he can to co-opt what he can from Orthodoxy
Pg 267 he says he is "attempting to locate areas of convergence" between Reformed and Orthodox soteriologies. And in that chapters he finds some convergences, but clearly finds lacking the Orthodox version of theosis and divinization. I'm sorry if calling that a "bad thing" doesn't quite precisely fit what you think he is saying.
The Orthodox view of theosis does not posit us hypostatically or essentially Christ. To think so is to create a strawman.
I am referring primarily to this statement: But the debate is precisely about the extent to which something called "the Church," the Mystical Body of Christ which, together with the risen Christ, makes up "the whole Christ," has been granted such authority."
http://mliccione.blogspot.com/2009/02/authority-question-restated.html
I realize that is Catholic, but both Catholic and Orthodox are relying on the same kinds of early church writers saying "man becomes god" to build the case for this. Clearly Rome extends this metaphor to inflate its own image of the church -- Such "contiguity" is found in official documents as well as as expounded by writers like Liccone.
John,
ReplyDeleteSorry, but I was out of town for the better part of last week, so I am catching up on comments and email.
If the “whole church” is comprised of all and only the sum total of the elect, then either Ireneaus, Athanasius, etc. must be elect or you are ignorant of whether they are in the church or not. If the former, then this seems to violate Reformed theological commitments, namely that the elect are known to God and the individual. But given the fact that you aren’t God and you don’t happen to be any of these figures, I don’t know how you could plausibly claim that they were elect. If you can’t know that they were elect, then I don’t know how you can claim them as “Fathers” of the “whole church.” Of course you could claim them as such if you didn’t limit the “whole church” to the indivisible church.
I would also invite you to consider what constitutes being a “Father” of the church. Paul speaks of himself as such through the transmission and teaching of the Gospel. (1 Cor 4:15) Consequently since such figures did not adhere to Reformation distinctives like sola fide for example and in fat held contrary views such as baptismal regeneration as found in say the Fathers of Nicea, I don’t see how you can consider them “fathers” in any substantial sense. If they were elect in spite of what they taught then it seems difficult to claim them as Fathers through their gospel.
As for what you personally may have not done, Calvinists nonetheless felt the need motivated by their theology, which you share to destroy the tomb of St. Ireneaus.
My pereptions of Horton’s bad habits are hardly my own. As I pointed out in the past, plenty of Reformed writers and scholars have said and written as much. As I noted previously, just look at his interactions with Theonomists. Editors and publishers say little as to the arguments of his printed works. And the treatments in question, say his contribution to the Three Views book was not reviewed by Oxford Dons. Besides, I know people at Oxford and other academic venues who made the same types of observations independent of my own. What was it that Steve wrote? Horton was a “populiarizer?”
I agree that he says that on page 267 that he is trying to find areas of convergence, but that is not what I asked. I asked where he says that theosis per se was a bad thing.
Liccione is Catholic and I don’t think you can map his theology on to mine for the simple reason that the notion of a corpus mysticum was a post schism medieval Latin construction, which the Orthodox profess no adherence towards.
Moreover, Catholicism and Protestantism both fundamentally agree that there is no participation in the divine nature but in a created simultude that functions as an intermediary. They just disagree about the nature of the simultude with the Catholics being more realists about that which the union consists in and Protestants being more nominalistic. This is why both adhere to the doctrine of created grace, which the Orthodox reject. So I am afraid tarring me with Catholic teaching just won’t work here. In any case, the Orthodox view does not posit the church as hypostatically or essentially Christ and is a strawman.
Thanks for the exchange.