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:

Special Revelation and God’s “catholicity”

“If we finally briefly sum up with Scripture teaches about Revelation”, Bavinck says, “we first of all have to understand by revelation quite generally that deliberate and free act of God by which he makes himself known to human beings in order that they may come to stand in the right relation to him” (Bavinck, vol 1, pg 349).

General revelation teaches that there is a God, and that we are separated from him; but it is Special revelation that shows us the way back to God.

“Revelation” as given in Scripture holds that “the Messiah came forth only from Israel” and that “in Scripture the initiative in religion is not taken by human beings but by God”. That is, “in Scripture it is always God who seeks human beings. He creates them in his image and calls them after the fall. He saves Noah, chooses Abraham, gives his laws to Israel. He calls and equips the prophets. He sends his son and sets apart the Apostles. He will one day judge the living and the dead” (Bavinck, vol 1, pg 327).

General revelation provides “a calling from God that comes to human beings through nature and history and that, when they do not obey this calling, renders them inexcusable”:

Since this general revelation is insufficient [to convey the saving knowledge of the salvation that God has provided] … special revelation is a revelation of special grace and thus brings into existence the salvific religion known as Christianity.

Special revelation is salvific revelation and consequently casts the subject and the means, the content and the purpose of revelation, into another form… (Bavinck, vol 1, pg 342).

God’s “catholicity”:

Hence the object of revelation cannot only be to teach human beings, to illuminate their intellects (rationalism), or to prompt them to practice virtue (moralism), or to arouse religious sensations in them (mysticism).

God’s aim in special revelation is both much deeper and reaches much farther. [And here we see God’s “catholicity”.] It is none other than to redeem human beings in their totality of body and soul with all their capacities and powers; to redeem not only individual, isolated human beings but humanity as an organic whole. Finally, the goal is to redeem not just humanity apart from all other creatures but along with humanity to wrest heaven and earth, in a word, the whole world in its organic interconnectedness, from the power of sin and again to cause the glory of God to shine forth from every creature (Bavinck vol 1 pg 346).

This is God’s “catholicity”, and it shows the “catholicity” aimed for both by Roman Catholicism and also those who want to claim “reformed catholicity” to be cheap substitutes.

You want to say, “oh, but we still should try”? But God has his job, and we have ours.

Sin has spoiled and destroyed everything: the intellect and the will, the ethical and the physical world. Accordingly, it is the whole person and the whole cosmos at whose salvation and restoration God is aiming in his revelation. God’s revelation, therefore, is certainly soteriological, but the object of that salvation (σωτηρια) is the cosmos, and not only the ethical or the will to the exclusion of the intellect, and not only the psychological to the exclusion of the somatic and physical, but everything in conjunction. For God has consigned all human beings under sin that he might have mercy upon all (Rom 5:15f; 11:32; Gal 3:22).

When we keep this goal in mind, it will not be hard for us to draw the boundary to which special revelation is extended. Special revelation, according to Scripture has occurred in the form of a historical process, which culminates in the person and work of Christ. But when Christ has appeared and is taken up into heaven, special revelation does not immediately cease as a result. Still to come then, are the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the extraordinary operation of powers and gifts through and under the guidance of the apostolate.

Without doubt, Scripture still counts all this as belonging to the area of special revelation; and the continuation of this revelation in the apostolic age was necessary to give special revelation, which had culminated in Christ, permanence and stability in the midst of the world, a permanence and stability in the text of Scripture as well as in the life of the church.

Truth and life, prophecy and miracle, word and deed, inspiration and regeneration go hand in hand also at the completion of special revelation.

But when in Scripture and in the church the revelation of God that appeared in Christ has become a constituent of the cosmos, a new dispensation begins. Just as up until this time everything had been prepared with a view to Christ, now everything is traced back to him. Then Christ was made to be the head of the church; now the church is to be the body of Christ. Then Scripture was completed; now it is worked out. No new constitutive elements can any longer be added to special revelation now, because Christ has come, his work is finished, his Word completed…

Scripture clearly teaches that God’s full revelation has been given in Christ and that the Holy Spirit who was poured out in the church has come only to glorify Christ and take all things from Christ (John 16:14).

But to that end, accordingly, the activity of the Spirit is continually needed. For the special revelation in Christ is not meant to be restricted to himself but, proceeding from him, to be realized in the church, in humanity, in the world. The aim of revelation, after all, is to re-create humanity after the image of God, to establish the kingdom of God on earth, to redeem the world from the power of sin and, in and through all this, to glorify the name of the Lord in all his creatures (Bavinck, vol 1, pgs 346-347).

God has set the course for “catholicity” – just as “sin has spoiled and destroyed everything: the intellect and the will, the ethical and the physical world”, so too does God’s reach for his Word extend “accordingly”, to the “whole person and the whole cosmos at whose salvation and restoration God is aiming in his revelation” (Isaiah 55:10-11).

God’s word neither requires nor asks for help of “the succession”.

“He himself is our peace” and “through him we both (Jews and Gentiles) have access in one Spirit to the Father”:

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.

For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

General Revelation and Special Revelation, Nature and Grace, and how and why Roman Catholicism Minimizes the Effects of Sin

Sorry for the very snappy title there. But this is foundational material to understanding the differences between Rome and the Reformation, both as they existed at the time of the Reformation, and as they exist today (in a much more subtle form).

In recent weeks, I’ve put together several short blog posts from Bavinck on the role of “General Revelation” generally, and how that ties in with the concept of “nature and grace”. Gregg Allison touches on the topic, but before we get into his explanations, I’d like to provide a bit of context from Bavinck, whom I would consider to be an unimpeachable Reformed source.

The first three installments are:

Herman Bavinck on “General Revelation and Christian Discipleship”. The payoff here is: “dogmaticians do not first divest themselves of their Christian faith in order to construct a rational doctrine of God and humanity … in order later to supplement it with the revelation in Christ. But they draw their knowledge solely and alone from special revelation, i.e., from Scripture. This is their unique principle.”

When Bavinck speaks of “the Christian faith”, he is considering it in the area of what he calls “religion”, which is roughly “the human practice of things”. That is, it falls on the “ectypal” side of things – and not on the “archetypal” side (God as God knows it). More ....

Bavinck on General Revelation, Nature, and Grace

Yet objectively nature is antecedent to grace; general revelation precedes special revelation; Grace presupposes nature. To deny that natural religion and natural theology are sufficient and have and have autonomous existence of their own is not in any way to do an injustice to the fact that from creation, from nature and history, from the human heart and conscience, there comes divine speech to every human. No one escapes the power of general revelation.

Elsewhere, Bavinck comments upon the notion that all humans “have a habit and disposition” to worship, vis-à-vis some, any known or unknown deity – it is said that either man creates God or God creates man. Man is said to be a “religious” being. The need for “religion” derives from a “question of truth” by which every human being naturally “posits the reality of its object” and “it automatically falls under the heading of truth or untruth”.

After a long analysis, especially of 19th century science (“naturalism”) and philosophy, Bavinck says of “religion” that “God is the great supposition of religion. His existence and revelation are the foundation on which all human religion rests”. He defines “religion” as “a disposition or virtue” that arises directly from God’s revelation of himself.

“Corresponding to the objective revelation of God, therefore, there is in human beings a certain faculty or natural aptitude for perceiving the divine. God does not do half a job. He creates not only the light but also the eye to see it (“Reformed Dogmatics, Vol 1, pgs 278-279).

This concept not only stifles those who say that we (Christ’s own church) need an “infallible Magisterium” to tell us what is or isn’t revelation from God; but it helps us to live our daily lives as we understand that God reveals himself “in everything”.

Thus, “religion” [that sense in every human being which perceives “revelation”] belongs to the essence of a human. The idea and existence of God, the spiritual independence and eternal destiny of the world, the moral world order and its ultimate triumph—all these are problems that never cease to engage the human mind. Metaphysical need cannot be suppressed. Philosophy perennially seeks to satisfy that need.

It is general revelation that keeps that need alive. It keeps human beings from degrading themselves into animals. It binds them to a supersensible world. It maintains in them the awareness that they have been created in God’s image and can only find rest in God.

General revelation preserves humankind in order that it can be found and healed by Christ and until it is. To that extent natural theology used to be correctly denominated a “preamble of faith,” a divine preparation and education for Christianity. General revelation is the foundation on which special revelation builds itself up.

From “Reformed Dogmatics”, Vol 1, pgs 321-322.

This is foundational material. It is the background to Bavinck’s entire program, as he discusses nature and grace (a topic which I’ll be focusing on, Lord willing, in the coming weeks and months, as one of the key differences between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism – in conjunction with my ongoing discussions of the Leonard De Chirico and Gregg Allison works on Roman Catholicism.

More Bavinck on General Revelation

… Christ is the center and content of the whole special revelation, which starts in Paradise and is completed in the Apocalypse. Now special revelation has recognized and valued general revelation, has taken it over and, as it were, assimilated it. And this is also what the Christian does, as do the theologians. They position themselves in the Christian faith, in special revelation, and from there look out upon nature and history.

And now they discover there as well the traces of the God whom they learned to know in Christ as their Father. Precisely as Christians, by faith, they see the revelation of God in nature much better and more clearly than before. The carnal [non-Christian] person does not understand God’s speech in nature and history. He or she searches the entire universe without finding God. But Christians, equipped with the spectacles of Scripture (Calvin, Instititues 1.6.1), see God in everything and everything in God. For that reason we find in Scripture a kind of nature poetry and view of history such as is found nowhere else.

With their Christian confession, accordingly, Christians find themselves at home also in the world. They are not strangers there and see the God who rules creation as none other than the one they address as Father in Christ. As a result of this general revelation, they feel at home in the world; it is God’s fatherly hand from which they receive all things also in the context of nature.

From “Reformed Dogmatics”, Vol 1, pg 321.

Herman Bavinck on “General Revelation and Christian Discipleship”

When Christians confess their faith in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth—that is Christian faith in the full sense of the term. And dogmaticians do not first divest themselves of their Christian faith in order to construct a rational doctrine of God and humanity … in order later to supplement it with the revelation in Christ. But they draw their knowledge solely and alone from special revelation, i.e., from Scripture. This is their unique principle.

From “Reformed Dogmatics”, Vol 1, pg 320.

Bavinck and Berkhof

"Bavinck and Berkhof" by Paul Helm.

The Decline and Fall of Reformed Churches in America

In his first volume, Bavinck offers a brief history of what he calls “Reformed Dogmatics”, or Reformed Theology, beginning with Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, through the period of Reformed Scholasticism, Rationalism, Mysticism, through “the Decline of Reformed Theology” beginning in 1750, then 19th century streams of thought in Europe, and a chapter that he calls “Reformed Theology in North America”.

Bavinck was writing right around 1900, and was a contemporary of the “Old Princeton” of Warfield and Vos. Not long afterward, we recall the adoption by “Old Princeton” of the liberalism that Machen railed against. Many of us are familiar with 20th century events in the history of the Reformed churches, but less so for the period of 1600-1900.

In that regard, Bavinck’s assessment is a discouraging, though useful trip “down memory lane” about some of the high points and low points that Reformed theology has faced over the centuries. Given that it is Independence Day, I thought this historical overview might be appropriate:

Updating Bavinck?

One of the best things to happen to Reformed theology in years is the recent translation of Bavinck's four volume Reformed Dogmatics set. Bavinck goes into a great deal of historical detail on the major doctrines he discusses, and I've found that to be very helpful. But one drawback to Bavinck is that the set is more than a hundred years old.

Now Zondervan has announced a major 15-volume project in constructive theology. The series is called New Studies in Dogmatics and is edited by Michael Allen (Knox Theological Seminary) and Scott R. Swain (Reformed Theological Seminary). Volumes and authors will include:

Holy Scripture: Donald Wood, University of Aberdeen
Trinity: Fred Sanders, Torrey Honors Institute of Biola University
The Divine Names: Scott R. Swain, Reformed Theological Seminary Orlando
Election: Oliver D. Crisp, Fuller Theological Seminary
Creation: Marguerite Shuster, Fuller Theological Seminary
Divine Action and Providence: Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Humanity: the Image of God: Matt Jenson, Torrey Honors Institute of Biola University
Person of Christ: Michael Allen, Knox Theological Seminary
Redemption: Accomplished and Applied: Henri Blocher, Faculté Libre de Théologie Évangélique
Holy Spirit: Christopher R. J. Holmes, University of Otago
Justification: Michael Horton, Westminster Seminary California
Sanctification: Michael Allen, Knox Theological Seminary
Church: Gerald Bray, Knox Theological Seminary
Sacraments: J. Todd Billings, Western Theological Seminary
Last Things: Ivor J. Davidson, University of St. Andrews

I have to say, I'd question the addition of Marguerite Schuester of Fuller Theological Seminary on the topic of creation seems to be a letdown in advance. She is an ordained PCUSA minister (This is not to say she's not a leading scholar in this topic. However, her background seems to hint that the presuppositions she brings to the project won't necessarily be in line with Reformed presuppositions). Something like this could sour the series before it gets started (for me, it was much like the notion that James Dunn doing Romans had on the Word Biblical Commentary series).

Some of the other authors in the series are exceptional, however.

The Donum Superadditum, Aquinas, Pseudo-Dionysius, and the false and empty nature of Roman Catholic Tradition

WSC professor of historical theology Scott Clark has put up a post that I think gets to the heart of the disagreement between the Reformers and Rome.

http://heidelblog.net/2012/10/defining-nature-grace-dualism/

To begin to come to some understanding consider these passages from an essay by Herman Bavinck, “Calvin and Common Grace,” trans. Geerhardus Vos The Princeton Theological Review 7 (1909): 437–65, in which he gave an account of his understanding of the differences between the medieval and Reformation churches on the relations between nature and grace. In the medieval period,

The Church, however, is not merely the possessor of supernatural truth; in the second plea it is also the depository and dispenser of supernatural grace. As the Church doctrine is infinitely exalted above all human knowledge and science, so the grace kept and distributed by the Church far transcends nature. It is true this grace is, among other things, gratia medicinal is, but this is an accidental and adventitious quality. Before all else it is gratia elevans, something added to and elevating above nature. As such it entered into the image of God given to Adam before the Fall, and as such it again appears in the restoration to that original state. In view of its adding to exalted nature a supernatural element, it is conceived as something material, enclosed in the sacrament, and as such dispensed by the priest. Thus every man becomes, for his knowledge of supernatural truth and for his reception of supernatural grace, that is, for his heavenly salvation, absolutely dependent on the Church, the priest and the sacrament. Extra ecclesiam null salus.

The most important thing to observe here is that, in this conception, grace elevates nature. Thomas (Aquinas) taught that grace “perfects” nature, that creation is inherently imperfect. It is not that, as the Reformed would say later, creation was created awaiting glorification. It was, rather, that creation was inherently corrupt. As Bavinck wrote,

The world, the state, natural life, marriage and culture are not sinful in themselves; only they are of a lower order, of a secular nature, and unless consecrated by the Church, easily become an occasion for sinning.

Again, the thing to notice is the hierarchical conception of existence. Gradually, through the medieval period, the Western church came to think of the relations between God and man as an ontologically hierarchy with man at the bottom and God at the top.

The whole hierarchical idea is built on the sharp distinction between nature and grace.

This gets at the crux of the issue: “the sharp distinction between nature and grace.” Which, distinction, according to Bavinck, was repudiated by the Reformation.

…the Reformation of the sixteenth century differed from all these attempts in that it not merely opposed the Roman system in its excresences but attacked it internally in the foundations on which it rested and in the principles out of which it had been developed. The Reformation rejected the entire system, and substituted for it a totally different conception of veritias, gratia, and bona opera.

This is an under appreciated element of the Reformation, the reassertion of the distinction between the Creator and the creature. That distinction destroyed the hierarchy and asserted a strict analogy between God and man. According to the Reformation, salvation was no longer to be considered deification, participating in the divine being, or “elevation” but deliverance from wrath, free acceptance by God on the basis of Christ’s righteousness imputed and received through faith (trusting in Christ). Sanctification, conformity to Christ, became the consequence of justification.

This account of the difference between the medieval and Reformation is consistent with the way the Reformed saw the issue.

Thus, for Bavinck, the issue seems to have been two things: a hierarchical ontology (view of being) and the “sharp distinction” (dualism) between nature and grace.

The key difference is this: in the Protestant scheme, the Biblical statement (Gen 1:31) is authoritative: that “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good”. Man, as created, was “very good”.

But in the Roman Catholic scheme, created man was not “good enough”, and a “donum superadditum” (“superadded grace”) needed to be “added”. In the Roman Catholic scheme, in the fall, man only lost this “donum superadditum”. But in the Protestant scheme, there was no “superadded grace” to lose. Man simply became dead in sin.

This “ontological” distinction had some history in the early church.

Another egregious difference, more importantly, that Clark points out, is “the hierarchical conception of existence”. As he says, “gradually, through the medieval period, the Western church came to think of the relations between God and man as an ontologically hierarchy with man at the bottom and God at the top.”

Aquinas relies heavily on this “hierarchy”, which is a neo-Platonic concept, which Aquinas got from a sixth century theologian named “Pseudo-Dionysius”. He is “pseudo” because he tried to portray himself as the first-century Dionysius, a companion of Paul, from Acts 17:34.

Aquinas believed that Pseudo-Dionysius was the real thing, and he relied on him as a source almost as authoritative as Scripture. Such is the vacuous nature of Roman Catholic “Tradition” that it relies so heavily on an imposter, and they didn’t even know it.

I suspect more of this sort of thing will follow.

[Bryan Cross’s name inserted here so it comes up on a Google Alert, and he can try to respond to this one.]

Vos on Bavinck

In Dutch Reformed theology you have an intramural debate between infras and supras, as well as those, like Bavinck, who try to steer a middle course. It’s interesting in that regard to read Vos comment on Bavinck’s position in his review, which you can access here:

http://www.biblicaltheology.org/reviews.html

Scroll down to section:

B

And click on:

Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, Volume II (Herman Bavinck)

Go to pages 4-5.

“Double Predestination”?

I’ve been taking part in a Reformed and Lutheran discussion group that was started by occasional Triablogue commenter Andrew Clover. One of the Lutheran commenters there brought up the question of “double predestination”.

But the concept of “double predestination” does not exist in Reformed doctrine. It is merely a caricature of the Reformed position.

Bavinck on Justification and Adoption and Perseverance and Assurance

Jason Stellman asks (118):

I am asking how you, John Bugay, would reconcile your insistence that Protestants can have assurance without having to “do anything” (unlike with Catholics) with the statements in the NT like “Unless you forgive others, your heavenly Father won’t forgive you,” etc.

Here is the great 19th century Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck on how justification and adoption and perseverance and assurance all work together:

The Roman Catholic Bait-and-Switch on Justification

Over at Green Baggins, Jason Stellman is making the argument that, “under the New Covenant” (Galatians 3), “disobedience brings death”, and that Protestants and Roman Catholics “believe in exactly the same phenomenon but call it different things”:

The problem here is that because of our different paradigms, we both believe in exactly the same phenomenon but call it different things.

You believe that if a baptized person who professes to be a Christian lives a life characterized by disobedience and sin, that he, despite his profession, will most likely be condemned on the last Day.

So do I.

Augustine, Pelagius, and lost councils

Following up with my previous post, “How the early church lost its understanding of grace”, I’m picking up with Bavinck’s discussion of Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism, from Chapter 9, “The Order of Salvation”, of Volume 3: Sin and Salvation in Christ.

Pelagius (ca. AD 354 – ca. AD 420/440) strayed much farther from the doctrine of grace than any of his predecessors; he abandoned the Christian foundation on which all of them still based themselves and renewed the self-sufficient principle of pagan philosophy, specifically that of the Stoics. Not only did he sever all connections between Adam’s sin and ours, so that neither guilt nor pollution nor even death was a consequence of the first transgression, but Christianity itself lost its absolute significance. Salvation was not bound to Christ but could also be obtained by following the natural law (lex naturae) and positive law (lex positiva). Hence, in Pelagius’s theology there could be no internal grace, no regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit which not only illumined the mind but also bent the will (508).

Here is where we begin to see some resemblance between Pelagianism and Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism holds that human nature “is wounded in the natural powers proper to it”, compared with the Reformed doctrine of “total depravity”. Not that this resemblance with Pelagianism is causation. There is some more history here, and Bavinck captures it well.

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).

The ‘Rule of Faith’ and the New Testament Canon

David Anders #224:

I think perhaps I was not sufficiently clear in my question.

I wasn’t asking about how we identify the canon.
(For the record, however, I have glanced at Kruger.)

For the sake of argument – even if I were to grant Kruger his thesis – (‘self-attestation’) – this still does not get at my question.

The question is not, “how do we identify the canon?”

It is, rather, “How do we know that the canon is (or is not) the rule of faith?”

My understanding of the Protestant confessions leads me to the understand that

1) All articles of faith must be established by divine revelation.
2) Sola Scriptura is an article of faith.
3) Sola Scriptura means that the canon (however we come to recognize it) is the Rule of Faith.

Presumably, then, Sola Scriptura must be established by divine revelation.

My question: where does divine revelation establish that this canon of Scripture we possess (however we come to recognize it) is the Rule of Faith.

“God needs our help”

I’d like to take off on something that Joshua Lim said, and the hope is that it will have some value in showing what some of the differences are here.

Only what the Catholic Church teaches as binding is binding. The Church is fairly clear as to what is binding and what is not binding. If you have a particular issue in mind it might be better to speak of it specifically rather than in generalities. A Protestant confession or teaching authority has no authority to say what is binding--the only authority a pastor has is to say that he (or she) thinks that Scripture teaches that such-and-such a thing is binding, but going back to the first question, it is not always clear from Scripture whether certain things are binding or not and it ultimately comes back down to the issue of who has the authority to interpret Scripture…

This phrase caught my eye: Only what the Catholic Church teaches as binding is binding. The Church is fairly clear as to what is binding and what is not binding.

Consider this scenario, which I offer as a summary:

1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.


2. God created merely by speaking things into existence. God said “Let there be…” and there was.

a. What God says has power; it actually accomplishes things.

b. This is the point at which the Roman Catholic insistence on “interpretation” presses itself, saying “God’s word is insufficient; therefore, you need an infallible interpreter”.

c. Protestants accept (a), and resist (b).


3. “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31). I suppose you would say “this is a verse that requires interpretation”.

a. An exegetical understanding of this verse is given in John Currid, (“A Study Commentary on Genesis”, Volume 1, Genesis 1:1-25:18, Darlington, UK an Webster, NY: Evangelical Press ©2003). “And he pronounces a verdict: ‘Behold it was very good.’ The term ‘Behold…’ [Hebrew hinneh] often serves to call special attention to a declarative statement. And when the word for ‘very’ [Hebrew meod] occurs after an adjective it is an absolute superlative. Therefore, the writer is describing God’s judgement of his own creation with great emphasis – it is perfect in every detail, even down to the very intricacies of its being.” (Currid, pg 89).

b. Creation being “very good”, language also is “very good”.

c. Man, as created, was also “very good”.

i. Roman Catholic Church holds that man was somewhat less “very good” than God says he was, and introduces a “ donum superadditum”, some kind of “superadded gift” of grace an “ontic” (or “ontological” gift) that “elevates” man into supernatural fellowship with God.

ii. Protestants, however, accept that Man was “very good” and reject the notion of a “superadded gift” of grace. Man, in the condition in which God created him to be, was lacking nothing “ontologically” necessary to be in “fellowship” with God, and was already in a “very good” [“perfect in every detail”] fellowship with God.


4. Man fell

a. Roman Catholics hold that sinful man is only “wounded” in his nature – only having lost this “superadded gift” in the fall. The result of this is: “original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called ‘concupiscence’”.

b. Protestants hold that sinful man is far worse than wounded:

i. WCF: By this sin [our original parents] fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body.

ii. They being the root of mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by original generation.


5. God’s remedy:

a. in Roman Catholicism: “Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.” God’s “grace” comes through an “infusion” [“ontological”] and man must “co-operate” with this “grace”.

i. An imperfect metaphor of this is that “grace” is a kind of “oil” that provides for a kind of “healing”; it “enables” the parts to get moving again. But it is imperfect, of course.

ii. Eschatologically, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger looks at the “ontological” meaning and asserts: “we are inserted into Christ and united with him as a single subject” (“Called to Communion” Herder and Ignatius ©1991, 1996, pg 25), a “fusion of existences”; just as in the taking of nourishment the body assimilates foreign matter to itself … in the same way my “I” is assimilated to that of Jesus”.

But as I’ll relate below, this is a misunderstanding of the eschatological end that God has in store for us.

b. Michael Horton, in “Covenant and Salvation” (Louisville, KY and London, UK: Westminster John Knox Press ©2007), [summarizing Reformed theologians] posits that what really happened to man in the fall was not “ontic” – no “loss” of “superadded grace”, but rather, it is an “estrangement”, a broken fellowship based on a judgment of “guilty”.

i. Man, being created “very good”, did not change ontologically in the fall; hence, God’s solution, “forensic justification”, re-enables the koinonia, or “fellowship”, that man lost with God.

ii. This restored fellowship manifests itself not in a “fusion of existences”, but rather, a restoring of the original fellowship [again, rejecting the need for some “superadded grace”]. The “unity” of fellowship is rather a gathering together by God, and his everlasting covenant:

This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I will surely gather them from all the lands where I banish them in my furious anger and great wrath; I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety. They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me and that all will then go well for them and for their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and [I] will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.

This is very simple, I admit, again, it is only an outline, and it only contains the emphases I’d like to make here.

The Protestant theologian Herman Bavinck (“Reformed Dogmatics”, Vol 1, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, trans. John Vriend, ©2003, pg. 359) speaks of this:

The doctrine of a supernatural end … is integral to the entire Catholic system, which is constructed, not on the religious antithesis between sin and grace, but on the graduated scale of the good, on the ranking of creatures and virtues, on hierarchy both in a physical and an ethical sense.

The Reformation, by contrast, had but one idea, one conception of human beings, that is, of human beings as the image bearers of God, and this was true for all human beings.

The question comes down to, “what is God doing?” And in this, we need to be very careful to understand what he is doing, and not to “read into” what he is doing, things that he is not doing. (See Deuteronomy, as I have cited it above, says: “You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you … Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it.”

Bryan qualified this to say “another possible interpretation of those verses is that they are prohibiting adding to or subtracting from divine commands. And the existence of a divinely authorized oral Tradition and Magisterium is fully compatible with that interpretation of these passages.”

Nevertheless, I would rather rely on an exegesis of the text, using a hermeneutic that seeks to understand the original meaning of the text – what the writer wrote, in the cultural context, with an eye toward understanding it as the original readers would have understood it.

In this context, the “donum superadditum” is something that is “added” by the Magisterium; if you’re Roman Catholic, you accept it, and if you are a Protestant, it is just one more reason to ask, “how infallible is the Magisterium if it’s adding such things all the way through the Scriptures?”

Just how “binding” should something like this be?

[This notion of a “donum superadditum” has an element, too, that touches on the idea of “special revelation”; it is the notion that “God’s revelation is not sufficient” – in the Genesis 1 sense. What the Roman Catholic Church adds to this is something like the notion that its own “interpretation” is required as a kind of “superadded gift” because God’s own word is somehow not able to be understood properly by God’s own creation. I’ll talk more about this at some future point, Lord willing.]

“The word of God is the foundation of the church”:

According to Bavinck:

“Scripture itself clearly teaches, accordingly, that not the church but the word of God, written or unwritten, is trustworthy in and of itself (autopistos). The church has at all times been bound to the word of God insofar as it existed and in the form in which it existed. Israel received the law on Mount Horeb; Jesus and the apostles submitted to OT Scripture. From the very beginning the Christian church was bound to the spoken and written word of the apostles. The word of God is the foundation of the church”:

Deuteronomy 4:1:  Now, Israel, hear the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.

Isaiah 8:20: Consult God’s instruction and the testimony of warning. If anyone does not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.

Ezekiel  20:19: I am the Lord your God; follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Luke 16:29: Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

John 5:39: You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me …

Ephesians 2:20: … built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

2 Timothy 3:14: But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it …

2 Peter 1:19: We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

“The church can indeed witness to the word, but the word is above the church. It cannot confer on anyone a heart-based belief in the word of God. That is something only the word of God can do by itself and the power of the Holy Spirit”:

Jeremiah 23:29: “Is not my word like fire,” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”

Mark 4:28: All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.

Luke 8:11: “This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God.”

Romans 1:16: For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.

Hebrews 4:12: For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

1 Peter 1:23: For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

“And for that reason alone the church appears to stand on a level below Scripture. Consequently, the church and believers in general can learn to know the inspiration, authority, and canonicity of Scripture from Scripture itself, but they can never announce and determine these attributes on their own authority.”

From “Reformed Dogmatics”, Vol 1, pg 458

Nothing may be put on a level with Scripture. But Vatican II Rome puts itself there.

There is no question that the Roman Catholic Church thinks highly of itself. But lots of folks think that the Roman Catholic Church “softened up” itself and its image at Vatican II. That is not the case. Just to show a small example of why the Roman Catholic Church, post Vatican II, is a more ravenous wolf than its predecessor of just 100 years earlier, consider what Bavinck, writing about 1900, says:

The Catholic Church has not yet progressed to the point where it dares to equate ecclesiastical interpretation with divine truth. A twofold distinction still remains. In the first place, the church receives no new revelations. The pope possesses only interpretive power; he can and may proclaim as dogma only that which was, at all times, materially implicit in Scripture and tradition. And in the second place, in proclaiming the church’s dogmas the pope is not, like the prophets and apostles, the recipient of the inspiration but only the special assistance of the Holy Spirit (Vol 1, pgs 118-119).

On the other hand, as I’ve noted in the blog post below, Rome at Vatican II places its own “tradition” on the same level as Scripture. In “Dei Verbum”), it speaks of both “sources” “flowing from the same divine wellspring,” “merging into a unity” and “to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence”:

there exists a close connection and communication between sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For Sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit, while sacred tradition takes the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hands it on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth, they may in proclaiming it preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known. Consequently it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore both sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence.

While Bavinck is clear, “Nothing may be put on a level with Scripture” (pg 86), and was fairly certain that the Roman Church of his day had not crossed that line, Vatican II Rome had the audacity to do just that.