The Everlasting Giver

"Jesus asked at the Last Supper, 'Who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves' (Luke 22:27). And so it will be to all eternity. Why? Because the giver gets the glory. Christ will never surrender the glory of his sovereign grace. 'Nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything' (Acts 17:25). He created in order to have beneficiaries who magnify his bounty. And he will bring history to an end as the everlasting Giver. From beginning to end his aim is the same: 'the praise of his glorious grace' (Ephesians 1:6)." (John Piper, Seeing And Savoring Jesus Christ [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2004], 115)

Identical strangers

Catholic theology is centered on "the Church". Catholics try to co-opt discussions about the church. The church is less central to Protestant theology, not because the church is unimportant, but because the church is the effect of other things. In traditional Catholic theology, the church is the source of grace, whereas in Protestant theology, grace is the source of the church. (That's a bit overstated, but it highlights a fundamental difference in orientation and theological starting-points.) 

But this doesn't mean that the church is peripheral in Protestant theology, or experience. One of the striking things about the Christian faith is the Christian community. How you can go to different churches, in different parts of the country or the world, run into people who at one level are complete strangers, yet you share the same core experience. How God draws folks from all different backgrounds and walks of life. At one level they all have different stories, but at a deeper level, they have the same story. Same spiritual encounter. Same inner life. Same experience of God's call. 

Like accounts of identical twins separated at birth, reunited in adulthood, who are startlingly as if one and the same person in parallel worlds. Raised apart, in different settings, and yet they exhibit preestablished harmony, like synchronized clocks. Vacation in the same places. They share an invisible, intangible affinity. 

This is true in time as well as space. When we read Christian literature from different centuries, or sing their hymns, they tell a common story. Awakened at different times and places. 

Or, to vary the metaphor, like a lighthouse that draws people from all different directions to itself. From north, south, east, and west, the lighthouse guides them to the same destination. To a family reunion. As we meet on the journey, as we find each other, we discover that we're bearing on the same destination. We started from independent points of departure, but are converging along the way, as we head to our journey's end. 

Or to vary the metaphor yet again, like people on the same wavelength. A radio frequency that's inaudible to outsiders, but something insiders can hear. By grace, we've been tuned into the same channel. 

Or to vary the metaphor a final time, like homing pigeons released at different locations, that return to a common location. Somehow they sense the way back, through an inner map. 

The tortoise and the hare

The race is not to the swift, Nor the battle to the strong, Nor bread to the wise, Nor riches to men of understanding, Nor favor to men of skill; But time and chance happen to them all (Eccl 9:11).

20Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe…27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 28 and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, 29 that no flesh should glory in His presence (1 Cor 1:21,27-29).

Some brilliant men who were raised in evangelical churches become apostates. Some become secular philosophers or secular scientists. Some redeploy their talents to attack the faith in which they were raised. In a sense, their apostasy is a loss to the Christian faith. Why doesn't God preserve them?

One reason is to demonstrate that salvation isn't based on natural aptitude. High IQ is not a ticket to heaven. Salvation is by grace alone. God doesn't favor intellectuals. It shouldn't unsettle us that many of the best in the brightest in every generation, including some who grew up in Gospel-affirming churches, disdain the Christian faith. For that is by divine design. In the economy of salvation, the tortoise often overtakes the hare. 

Sola Gratia: The Glorious Offense of God's Gospel Grace

https://vimeo.com/240668864

You must go there by yourself

http://agentintellect.blogspot.com/2017/05/quote-of-day.html

The gift of faith

1. Freewill theists say faith is the empty hand that grasps the offer of salvation. Faith is not a product of saving grace; rather, saving grace is the result of faith. 

Let's compare that to Eph 2:8. Here's what one commentator and Greek scholar says:

In Greek, events as a whole are treated as neuter singular things with neuter articles, (e.g., to pisteuein, "believing"), neuter relative pronouns (e.g., Eph 5:5), or neuter demonstrative pronouns, as in v8b (also, for example, 6:1; 1 Cor 6:6,8; Phil 1:22,28; Col 3:20; 1 Thes 5:18; 1 Tim 2:1-3). Hence, the antecedent of touto is the whole event: "being saved by grace through faith". One implication of this proper understanding of touto is that all the components of the event are also referenced as originating not from human capacity or exertion but as God's gift. This means that even the believer's act of believing comes from God, as is said more explicitly by Paul elsewhere: "For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him…" (Phil 1:29). This is part of the evidence of Protestantism's historic position that salvation is sola gratia and sola fide). Humans contribute nothing of their own to this salvation, since even believing (which the elect are indeed enabled to do) is a divine gift (cf. Rom 3:24-25). In the context of Eph 2:8, the key to this is what Paul had been driving home so forcefully up until now: Before God's gracious intervention, believers were hopelessly dead, with their wills imprisoned by nature in acts that led only to transgression and sin (2:1-5a,12). S. M. Baugh, Ephesians (Lexham Press, 2016), 160-61.

So the gift in the second clause refers, via touto, to "For by grace you have been saved through faith." So God's gift is salvation by grace through faith". Faith is included in the gift. Faith isn't something by which Christians receive the gift, but a part of God's gracious saving endowment. 

2. On a related note, freewill theists typically say that for something to be a gift, the recipient must be able to refuse it. Compare that to John Barclay's Paul and Gift (chap. 2), where he reviews different connotations of a "gift" or benefaction in antiquity. Take his category of "efficacy", where gift-giving is powerful, accomplishing its purpose–as when parents give the gift of life to their children or someone is rescued from death. In those situations, the recipient is passive and helpless. 

By the same token, he cites a passage from Philo stressing the efficacy of grace to the point of human passivity and inactivity, attributing all to the sovereignty of God.

Moreover, in patronage system of the Roman Empire, a powerful benefactor isn't offering a gift. Rather, he confers a gift. 

And the asymmetrical dynamic between social superiors and social inferiors in the ancient world is far more analogous to the relationship between God and creatures than birthday gifts and Christmas presents between peers.

The efficacious concept of gift-giving is incompatible with grace in freewill theism, which is resistible and therefore inefficacious. 

Why Christmas Apologetics Is Important

"Advice is counsel about what you must do. News is a report about what has already been done. Advice urges you to make something happen. News urges you to recognize something that has already happened and to respond to it. Advice says it is all up to you to act. News says someone else has acted….The biblical Christmas texts are accounts of what actually happened in history. They are not Aesop's Fables, inspiring examples of how to live well….These Gospel narratives are telling you not what you should do but what God has done….If we are saved through our efforts, then stories about Jesus have just one function: to inspire us to imitate him and follow his example. It doesn't matter if the stories are fiction or not. What's important is that they give us examples to live by. But if we are saved by grace, not by what we do but by what he has done, then it is crucial that the great events of the Gospels - the incarnation, the atonement on the cross, and the resurrection from the dead - actually occurred in time and space….Robert Yarbrough, a New Testament scholar, says that the verbs [in 1 John 1:1] correspond to the varieties of witness attestation in ancient jurisprudence. And so when John writes, 'We have seen it and testify to it' - and then speaks of hearing, seeing, and touching - 'he is not making conversation but virtually swearing a deposition.' This is court language. John is saying, 'This is not just a set of nice stories. Many others and I were eyewitnesses. We testify to it. We really saw him. He really lived; he really died; he really rose from the dead.' If Christmas is just a nice legend, in a sense you are on your own. But if Christmas is true - and John says that it absolutely is true - then you can be saved by grace." (Tim Keller, Hidden Christmas [New York, New York: Viking, 2016], 21-2, 132-3)

See here for a collection of our resources on Christmas apologetic issues.

A Roman Catholic View of Nature and Grace Part 1

When Protestants think of the various topics or loci that comprise the various systems of “systematic theology” that have been studied over the centuries, the lists of these loci might include the “prolegomena” (which might encompass a discussion of philosophy and a doctrine of Scripture or a doctrine of “revelation”) – and following that we might find the doctrines of God, the Trinity, creation, humanity, sin, the person of Christ, the atonement, the Holy Spirit, soteriology, “the church”, “last things” – we tend to see these things as inter-related, but each having their own “self-contained-ness” as well.

In Roman Catholicism, which (following De Chirico and Allison) may and should be thought of as a “system”, there are two “core doctrines” or ideas or themes which underlay all of the other loci -- these two are what Allison has referred to as the nature-grace interdependence.

Now, one of the first things I’ll say is that, as Reformed believers, we tend to think we know what is meant by “grace” – after all, we talk about things like “salvation by grace” and the “doctrines of grace”.

But the word “grace” in the context of all of church history has a long and convoluted history and meaning, and we do need to be careful of context if we are to understand what is meant by “grace” in any given instance. For example:

We live in a meaningful world; God gives it meaning.

Creation and Grace

Stephen Wolfe makes this argument:

If Protestants want to reject modernity, then they ought to reject the nominalist assumptions that go into religious observance outside of revelation. This means rediscovering the regulative principle of worship as the means of reconnecting oneself to God’s creation. Only through this principle will one properly join the choir of creation.

Think of C.S. Lewis’s “Great Dance”. Although Lewis is perhaps guilty of the thing that Stephen argues against here:

How the Regulative Principle of Worship Affirms, Supports, and Ensures a Meaningful World.

I think this is one of the most clear and important things he has written. In fact, this piece helps us to think through God’s program in this world, for man and creation, from beginning to end. He says:

This argument is directed at Protestants. For I can see how Roman Catholics can answer this. They would simply say that the Church has the divine authority to recognize and make certain ceremonies meaningful, and by this authority God becomes active in the event. So I think that Roman Catholics are consistent in this regard.

Of course, the idea that the [Roman Catholic] Church has such authority is false, but at least they are consistent. Protestants, on the other hand, do not have the [JB note: I would put the word “benefit” in quotes] benefit of such authority. We could form fuzzy notions of pursuing “catholicity,” but this suffers for want of clear criteria and it cannot legitimately be anything more than an attitude toward pre-reformational traditions.

In making this argument, I think Stephen is showing the difference as well between what we might call “God’s metaphysic” [my term] vs the “classical metaphysics” of Aristotle and Aquinas. Because in truth, “God’s metaphysic”, however that is characterized, is based on that which is given in his own special revelation, and not from the cobbled-together thoughts of human philosophers over time.

The principle is evident in what follows:

"Death with dignity"

"Death with dignity" is one of the popular euphemisms used to defend euthanasia. In one sense, proponents are correct. The aging process can be very undignified. Losing control of your mind and/or body is painfully undignified. 

Of course, when you stop to think about it, human life is replete with little indignities. Childbearing is undignified. Childrearing is often undignified. Sex is undignified. Defecation is undignified. Breaking wind is undignified. Sickness is often undignified, both for the patient and the caregiver. 

Comedy is undignified. Comedy lampoons human foibles. 

Many essential occupations are undignified. Indeed, there's a whole TV series (Dirty Jobs) which explores that topic.

To a great extent, we are grubby little creatures. That's an ineluctable component of our physicality. We take ourselves far too seriously if we imagine that our "dignity" is all that important. 

There is, however, a different kind of dignity. Moral dignity. This requires a contrast between a person's undignified situation and how, through grace and courage, they cope with their undignified situation. There's a special kind of beauty that only shines forth in the midst of moral and physical ugliness. Goodness in spite of badness. Bringing good out of evil. 

That's a central feature of the Christian worldview. That's one reason God predestined the Fall in the first place. There's a unique kind of good, a second-order good, that's only possible in the face of evil. That's when it rises to the occasion–like a flower rising out of the underlying decay.

"True love never kidnaps"

I believe that true love never kidnaps, and never forces itself on another…Love must always be chosen. 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/formerlyfundie/love-doesnt-kidnap-why-i-believe-in-free-will-over-predestination/

This is a popular Arminian trope. It reflects the superficiality of Arminians, who don't bother to consider obvious counterexamples. For instance:

16 Again the word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations, 3 and say, Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. 4 And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. 5 No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.6 “And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ 7 I made you flourish like a plant of the field (Ezk 16:1-7).

In this passage, Israel is like foundling. A newborn abandoned to die of exposure. Yahweh adopts the foundling and raises the foundling. Needless to say, the baby didn't choose the adoptive parent. 

Take another example of a mother who, at grave personal risk, kidnapped her own daughter in a rescue mission:

A desperate mother dressed head-to-toe in Islamic dress and hid her face behind a veil to carry out a daring mission to snatch her daughter back from the child's Egyptian father. Alex Abou-El-Ella, 29, of Slough, Berkshire, risked everything to rescue her daughter Mona, three, two years after her husband spirited the girl out of Britain and took her to his home country. She ignored Foreign Office warnings not to travel to the country, which is gripped by civil unrest, tracked down the child and disguised herself as a local to carry out the audacious rescue. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2384622/Mother-dons-veil-snatch-daughter-rescue-mission-Egypt-years-child-kidnapped-father.html

There are quite a few stories like this. That's true love–maternal love.

The sanctification debate

I'm going to briefly comment on this post:

http://heidelblog.net/2014/05/faith-alone-is-the-instrument-of-justification-and-salvation/

It's striking that Scott Clark has decided to side very publicly with Tullian Tchividjian on the sanctification debate. To my knowledge, Tullian's prominent critics hadn't linked his position to WSC. Ironically, Clark is now playing right into Frame's indictment of "the Escondido theology."

Some orthodox Reformed pastors are being charged with antinomianism because they allegedly over emphasize grace—how sinners who face eternal condemnation apart from the free favor merited for them by the perfect, whole obedience of Christ can over emphaize grace I am uncertain but that is the charge. Further, it is charged that some of these advocates of free grace downplay the moral, logical necessity of sanctification and good works as a consequence of Christ’s free justification of sinners. 

Clark doesn't quote any critics who say Tchividjian and his ilk "overemphasize grace." It's revealing that Clark frames the issue in the same way antinomians (i.e. the Evangelical Grace Society) frame the issue. They allege that making good works (or sanctification) a condition of salvation compromises salvation by grace.

That, however, reflects, a truncated view of grace. They are defining grace in purely external terms. Justification. What Christ did for us on the cross. 

That denies the internal aspect of grace: spiritual renewal. 

In Calvinism, salvation by grace covers both the external dimensions of salvation (e.g. justification; Christ's imputed merit) and the internal dimensions of salvation (e.g. monergistic regeneration, sanctification, preservation). 

Reformed critics of antinomianism are by no means overemphasizing grace. To the contrary, antinomians are underemphasizing grace by reducing grace to what God does to and for us in contrast to what God does in us and with us. 

Put another way, if you lack good works, you lack grace. If you lack sanctity, you lack the grace of sanctification. That's not law v. grace. Rather, that's a graceless state. 

With those caveats out of the way, one feature of the response by some to the renewed emphasis on grace is the assertion that though we are justified by grace alone, through faith alone we are saved partly through works. 

i) It would be more accurate to say we are justified by faith alone and we are saved by grace alone. Moreover, there's a cause/effect relation. Justification is contingent on faith, faith is contingent on regeneration, regeneration is contingent on grace. 

ii) Are the critics of Tchividjian actually saying we are "saved partly through works"? Do they use that phrase? Or is that Clark's summary attribution?

It would be more accurately to say we are saved party through the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and sanctification. Because sanctification has a cooperative aspect, the Holy Spirit prompts born-again Christians to use the means of grace. 

It's not that we're saved partly through works. Rather, good works are the fruit of a spiritual root. If you lack the fruit, you lack the root. 

The difficulty is that some Reformed folk are not satisfied with making Spirit-wrought sanctity, which produces obedience that comes to expression in good works, a logically necessary fruit of justification and the evidence of their regeneration, justification, union with Christ,  adoption etc.

It's unclear what Clark means by saying good works are a logically necessary fruit of justification. Justification is not a cause of sanctification. Justification is categorically different. Justification is a forensic status. Sanctification is the fruit of regeneration. A necessary extension of regeneration.

Perhaps Clark means you can't have justification without good works. True. Justification and sanctification are a package deal. The God who justifies the elect, sanctifies the elect.

But, of course, the logic is reversible. If you can't have sanctification without justification, you can't have justification without sanctification. 

“Bringing fuller clarity”

A week ago, I noted the discussion between Tullian Tchividjian and Rick Phillips (TCG vs Ref21) on sanctification. This week, Tchividjian reiterates, “Sin Remains”, and Phillips reiterates, “We are Debtors to Grace”.

I think we are looking at two sides of the same coin, two different emphases on the same phenomenon: Christians are not perfect, and never will be perfect in this life, but God assists us to grow in grace.

But the more important part, as I said, is the “fuller clarification” that comes from these kinds of discussions.


This week, Tony Phelps, Pastor of Christ Our Hope PCA in Wakefield, RI, consulted the Westminster Standards to say just how much God assists us in our sanctification.

He writes:

As I read Westminster, for example, I find such expressions as “sanctification is synergistic” or “effort in sanctification” woefully inadequate…

After we are reminded that the Holy Spirit alone enables us to do good works – and that His influence is essential to any truly good work – yet we are not “hereupon to grow negligent, as if [we] were not bound to perform any duty unless upon a special motion of the Spirit; but [we] ought to be diligent in stirring up the grace of God that is in [us].” No “letting go and letting God” in the Christian life! We have Christian DUTIES – outward and observable things we are to diligently DO – in the Christian life.

In fact, one of our duties is to stir up the grace of God that is in us. Yet if this is truly a good work, it too is the result of God’s sanctifying work within us. Nonetheless, WE are to do it! And as we do, by the grace of God, we will grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord.

This is not to say that any of these things contributes an iota to our standing in Christ. But the world depends on us to be salt and light – preserving and edifying in the things we do in the world.

Bonhoeffer on Luther and Costly Grace, part 2

Justification by God’s costly grace involves the justification of the sinner, not the justification of the sin.

Following up on the first part of Bonhoeffer’s treatment of Luther and Costly Grace, I want to point out that it’s Roman Catholics who want to “justify sin”.

Consider this explication from the not too distant past:

What’s tripping you up here is thinking that venial sins are violations of God’s law. So you’re not yet seeing the basis for the difference between mortal and venial sins. Venial sins are not violations of the law; they are not violations of love. They are deficiencies or defects in carrying out the love that is the spirit and principle of the law.

Venial sin in relation to God is very much like doing something minor or unintentional that troubles one’s spouse but does not break the friendship with one’s spouse (say, failing to remember to readjust the seat in the car, so that it is easier for the other person to get in). It is not a violation of the law of love. When you get into the car and find the seat not readjusted, you don’t justifiably turn to your spouse and say, “You violated the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.” That would obviously be way over the top, because the failure was not purposely chosen out of spite or apathy; the spouse loved and loves you, and the inaction did not destroy that love or indicate its absence.

Bonhoeffer on Luther and Costly Grace, part 1

In his formerly world-renowned book “The Cost of Discipleship” (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. edition, printed 1963), Dietrich Bonhoeffer made the distinction between “cheap grace” and “costly grace”. In his words, “cheap grace is the deadly enemy of the church” (45).

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap? …

How are forgiveness and baptism linked?

Peter said to them, “Repent, and be immersed, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus the Messiah, on the basis of the forgiveness of sins…” (Acts 2:38).

The preposition “for” (eis) in the expression “for the forgiveness of sins” raises the question of the relationship between immersion in water (baptism) and the forgiveness of sins. Some interpret the preposition as expressing purpose (the purpose of baptism is the forgiveness of sins), some as expressing result (baptism results in forgiveness).

A contextually more plausible interpretation assumes a causal meaning (forgiveness of sins is the cause of baptism); the Jews who had heard Peter explain that Jesus was the crucified, risen, and exalted Messiah and Lord who saves Israel in the “last days” had repented of their sins and come to faith in Jesus. Otherwise, they would not have been willing to be immersed in water for purification “in the name of Jesus the Messiah”; they were immersed in water for purification “on the basis of the forgiveness of sins,” which they had received from Jesus.

E. Schnabel, Acts (Zondervan 2012), 164-65.

How the early church lost its understanding of grace

Salvation is all grace.

Bavinck begins his discussion of “The Scriptural View of Salvation” (pgs 491 ff.) noting that “In the Old Testament already, it is God who immediately after the fall, out of grace, puts enmity between humanity and the serpent and brings humanity to his side (Gen. 3:15). It is he who elects Abraham and the people of Israel born to him to be his possession (Gen 12:1; Exod. 15:13, 16,; 19:4; 20:2; Deut 7:7f.), who makes a covenant with them and gives his laws to them (Gen. 15:1; 17:2; Exod. 2:24-25; Deut 4:5-13), who gives the blood on the altar for atonement (Lev. 17:11), and does all that is needed for his vineyard (Isa. 5; Jer 2:21). To be sure, Israel incurs some obligation with the law, but the covenant relationship “did not depend on the observance of the law as an antecedent condition; it was not a covenant of works, but rested solely in God’s electing love” (493-494).

In Christ, God consolidated His own reign in the The Kingdom of God, with the ascension (2 Cor 3:17-18) and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who dwells “at Christ’s initiative in the church as in his temple” (500).

Here, Bavinck picks up the “historical-theological” account of salvation through the earliest church:

That faith in Christ was the way to salvation was, of course, a certainty in the church from the beginning. Believers, after all, knew themselves to have been placed in a special relationship to God and continuously preserved in it by his grace. They were the elect of God adopted by Jesus Christ to be his own people. By the agency of Christ they had taken refuge in his mercy and were the new people with whom God had established his covenant. And this Christ not only was the revelation of God by whom they had learned to know God but also gave his blood for their sins. He gave himself up to purify them by the forgiveness of sins, to vivify them by his wounds. In that way, then, he is the Lord and high priest of their confession, the object of their faith who also continually preserves them and builds them up in the faith.

He speaks of “grace” being “anterior to our works”, and traces this through Justin and Irenaeus and Origen. “The moral corruption of humanity and the necessity of the grace of the Holy Spirit have been even more strongly expressed by the Latin fathers (Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose), on whose pronouncements Augustine therefore based himself. Tertullian says, ‘This will be the power of the grace of God, more potent indeed than nature, exercising its sway over the faculty that underlies itself within us—even the freedom of our own will.’ From Cyprian come the words that are repeatedly cited by Augustine: ‘We must boast in nothing since nothing is our own.’”

Yet in those first centuries, the doctrine of the application of salvation was not at all developed and in part already steered in wrong directions early on. Although there are a few “testimonies of evangelical truth” here and there, on the whole the gospel was soon construed as a new law. Faith and repentance were generally regarded as the necessary way to salvation but were ultimately the product of human freedom. Though salvation had objectively been acquired by Christ, to become participants in it the free cooperation of humans was needed. Faith as a rule was no more than the conviction of the truth of Christianity, and repentance soon acquired the character of a penance that satisfies for sins. The sins committed before one’s baptism were indeed forgiven in baptism, but those committed after baptism had to be made good by penance. Penitence was frequently still viewed as sincere contrition over sin, but the emphasis shifted increasingly to the external acts in which it had to manifest itself, such as prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and so on, and these good works were viewed as a “satisfaction of work.” Soteriology was altogether externalized. Not the application of salvation by the Holy Spirit to the heart of the sinner but the achievement of so-called good—often totally arbitrary—works was regarded as the way of salvation. Christian discipleship consisted in copying the life and suffering of Christ, which was vividly portrayed before people’s eyes. Martyrs, ascetics, and monks were the best Christians (508).

Grace and Salvation: Is it Personal? Or is it Mystical?

Several weeks ago, I went round and round with some of gang at Called to Communion on the topic of Grace in the New Testament.

Grace in the New Testament: An Overview

Grace Part 1: Ancient Greek Conceptions of Grace

Grace Part 2: Biblical (OT and NT) Conceptions of Grace

And I worked through the letter of First Clement and showed how Clement misunderstands not only “grace” but also a number of other things in the New Testament.


Just a short while ago I came across a work by Donald Fairbairn, who picks up some of these “misunderstandings” and traces them further through church history.

Fairbairn is the Robert E. Cooley Professor of Early Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the author of (among other things), a work called Grace and Christology in the Early Church (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press ©2002), in which he traces a “personal” (in contrast with a “mediated”) view of grace through a number of fourth and fifth century church fathers.

More recently, he’s published a work entitled Patristic Soteriology: Three Trajectories, which again traces three “trajectories” of salvation (and hence grace) through patristic soteriology.

One of these is the Western, or “personal” understanding, as espoused by Irenaeus and later Cyril of Alexandria (in a more “precise” way). The other two are those espoused first by Origen, and later modified by Gregory of Nyssa. Here are some of his comments on both of those “trajectories”.

First, he describes the view of Irenaeus and the “personal” understanding of salvation:

The centrality of a personal understanding of salvation in Irenaeus’s thought, the gift (described as eternal life, adoption, and incorruption) is connected to the Logos himself, to Christ. To be united to Christ is to share in his eternal life, his incorruption. Moreover, we again see that adoption lies at the heart of Irenaeus’s soteriology. When we receive the Logos, the true Son of God, he makes us adopted sons and daughters, and then we are able to share in the Son’s incorruption.

The centrality of a personal understanding of salvation in Irenaeus’s thought is further illustrated by his later work Demonstratio praedicationis apostolicae (written ca. 190). As he introduces the three articles of faith (that is, the three persons of the Trinity), Irenaeus writes that the Son “became a man amongst men, visible and palpable, in order to abolish death, to demonstrate life, and to effect communion between God and man.” Later, he writes of Christ’s preeminence: “Thus, in this way, is the Word of God preeminent in all things, for He is true man and ‘Wonderful Counsellor and Mighty God,’ calling man back again to communion
with God, that by communion with Him we may receive participation in incorruptibility.” Here one should note the order of the statements: communion with God is foundational, and incorruptibility is the result of sharing communion with God …. Participation, for Irenaeus, does not mean merely sharing in some qualities of God, and it emphatically does not mean virtual absorption into God’s being. Instead, Irenaeus uses the idea of participation in a decidedly personal way: through our union with the natural Son of God, we become adopted sons and daughters, and thus we share fellowship or communion with God. Sharing in God’s qualities (such as incorruptibility) follows from this primarily personal way of looking at salvation. By using the idea of participation in God to refer to adoption and communion, Irenaeus plots what I call a personal trajectory, which part of the Church will subsequently follow in describing salvation [emphasis added].

This sounds very much like Calvin’s [monergistic] doctrine of Union with Christ – a thing effected by God’s grace, to which man can never aspire on his own efforts.


Eastern writers Origen and Gregory of Nyssa went in a different direction:

Here one should recognize how sharp the difference between Irenaeus and Origen is, even though both are arguing against the same opponent, Gnosticism. Irenaeus’s rejection of Gnostic dualism enables him to accentuate the importance of the whole person, body and soul. He is then able to describe salvation in personal terms, as the communion of a human being with God through adoption into God’s family, with the result that the whole person shares God’s incorruption. In contrast, Origen’s rejection of Gnostic fatalism pushes him, ironically, toward somewhat of an acceptance of Gnostic dualism: he postulates a cosmos in which the very existence of the physical realm is a result of sin. In such a cosmos, the pre-existence of the souls gives those souls a kinship with God that the bodies, created later, can never have. This, in turn, prevents him from seeing human beings as whole persons, and thus makes it difficult for him to see salvation in personal terms. As a result, in Origen’s system salvation becomes the task of the human soul to achieve mystical union with God, and this soteriology bears an unmistakable resemblance to the Middle Platonic philosophy that had seeped into second-century Alexandrian Christianity through Philo and Clement.

This strong emphasis on salvation as the task of the human soul leads Origen to view participation in God primarily as sharing in God’s holiness, wisdom, and other qualities, not as sharing in his personal fellowship.

Fairbairn calls this the “mystical” trajectory, and it seems to lead to such things as the “chain of being” types of theology (to which a lot of Eastern theologians and some Medieval western theologians adhered).

There are several ways in which Origen’s understanding of salvation serves to plot what I am calling the mystical trajectory. His focus on the free human action to ascend to God, in contrast to a paradigm in which God’s downward action is the primary focus, promotes a view of Christian life in which our action is the key to union with God. His depiction of salvation as participation in God’s qualities, as purification so that we can see God as he really is, creates a climate in which the personal dimensions of salvation are underemphasized. And his insistence that the final state of believers (and indeed, of all creatures) will be immaterial paves the way for a view of salvation that comes dangerously close to blurring the distinctions between individual creatures, and even the distinction between God and all creatures [emphasis added].

That sounds very much like the kinds of things I’ve cited Joseph Ratzinger as saying.

Of Gregory of Nyssa, who provided “a minimalist correction” to Origen, he says, “Gregory continues to see through Origen’s eyes in many ways”.

Where does this “mystical trajectory” lead?

it seems to me that what I am calling the mystical trajectory was the one that gained preeminence during the Byzantine period. The emphases of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa were echoed prominently in the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius early in the sixth century [upon whom Aquinas relied, mistakenly thinking that “Pseudo” Dionysius was the real Dionysius from Acts 17]. Later, Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580–662) launched an extensive critique of Origen’s cosmology, allegedly solving once-for-all the problems inherent in it, but in my opinion he did not significantly depart from the overall vision of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa. This trajectory may be traced further through Gregory Palamas (ca. 1269–1359), who crystallized the distinction between God’s essence (in which we do not share) and his energies (in which we do share through salvation). With Palamas the Eastern Orthodox Church was locked onto a trajectory in which salvation consists more of participation in God’s qualities, his energies, rather than participation in a relationship [between persons].

Finally, he discusses Cyril of Alexandria, who distinguishes between “unity of substance (which God does not share with us at all), and unity of fellowship (which is the heart of what he does share with us)”:

like Irenaeus and Athanasius, and unlike Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, he places his dominant emphasis on salvation as personal participation. In fact, Cyril’s treatment of this theme is more extensive than that of other patristic writers. He emphasizes that Christians receive both the status of adopted sons and communion with the Father and the Son. More important, Cyril develops technical terminology to emphasize that believers do not share in any way at all in the substance of God, but that we nevertheless do participate in the fellowship that the persons of the Trinity have with one another because they are of the same substance. By developing this terminology, Cyril guards against a mystical concept of salvation (in which the distinction between the saved person and God is blurred) and also affirms the most personal concept of salvation possible. …

…[I]t should be clear that Cyril of Alexandria represents the same trajectory as Irenaeus and Athanasius, but he is considerably more precise than either of them. He guards sedulously against any idea of mystical absorption into God, and he tirelessly promotes a personal concept of participation in which we share in the very love between the Father and the Son. Cyril also places a great deal of emphasis on our human inability to rise up to God, and thus on God’s downward action through the incarnation and crucifixion in order to make us his adopted sons and daughters. These emphases stand in marked contrast to Origen and Gregory of Nyssa. Virtually all Greek Fathers use the words “participation” and “deification,” but as I have sought to show, there are at least two quite different ways of understanding these concepts in the patristic period. And I believe that the personal participatory way of understanding salvation deserves a great deal of our attention. We should not let the problems of the mystical pattern lead us to write off altogether the concept of salvation as participation.

Of course, I’m certain that understanding these “trajectories” will require a great deal more study. He applies this to a current evangelical understanding:

Of course, evangelical spirituality, the typical concept of Christian life present among the people in evangelical churches, is abundantly personal. We focus on Jesus as our friend. We speak about “a personal relationship with Christ” or “knowing God personally.” Evangelical sermons and Bible studies stress that Christ is there for us, pulling for us. But I fear that this personal spirituality is often rather distantly removed from the primarily juridical theology common in evangelicalism. Most laypeople—and perhaps even many pastors—are unable to connect the juridical and the personal aspects of evangelical faith, and these aspects remain in separate boxes in people’s minds, relegated to separate sermons from evangelical pulpits.

This is just a very broad-brush view, but my hope is that many more Reformed and Evangelical scholars will follow these threads through history.

Meanwhile, around the turn of the third century, Tertullian asked, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” The context for this notes that importing secular ideas into Christs teaching is mixing chalk and cheese together.

It seems important to be able to understand how they got mixed, and what the effects were.

First Clement vs the New Testament

A number of the comments at the Green Baggins thread on the Papacy have turned to “evidence in the second and third centuries”. I’ve written a number of things about 1 Clement over the last several years; I’ve cobbled together some of them and I’ve posted them as a series of comments over there.

In short, it seems to me that 1 Clement relies far more heavily on Roman and Greek cultural elements. He relies heavily on the Roman military as a model for church authority structure – but he is a “wanna-be”, he does not seem to have actual authority. His concept of “grace” as I’ve written, is borrowed more heavily from the Hellenistic understanding than the New Testament understanding. And in an effort to bring in elements from Judaism, he contradicts the writer of Hebrews.

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A clarification about this work on Torrance and 1 Clement

Just for the sake of clarification, with this series of posts on 1 Clement, I’m attempting to build the type of case that Cullmann talked about: the notion that, for one reason or another, writers in this era of 100-150 “lost something” that was very important for Christianity. In the case of Clement (and indeed, all the “Apostolic Fathers” writings that he discussed), the concept of grace, freely given, was lost.

And it took something like the “canonical core” that Kruger wrote about to help focus the minds and attentions of more orthodox later writers like Irenaeus and Tertullian on what the “apostolic teaching” really was. Prior to that, a reliance on the viva vox (and cultural considerations as well) had permitted these writers to lose track of such a vital concept.

This, too, may be why Augustine, the great searcher of the Scriptures that he was, was able to come up with his own “doctrine of grace” – something that was (to borrow from Warfield) confused and obscured by the bright glory [I say this sarcastically] of the nearby Church of Rome – fresh with infusions of cash from emperor-converts, and to be sure, muddled a bit with notions of some Roman-ish “sacramental” ideas already in place. But also, to be sure, a foundation for later understandings by Luther and Calvin and the other Reformers.