In the Doctrine of God, “ontology and character are bound up with each other”

In this article, Derek Rishmawy cites Turretin and makes the point about the God of Exodus (indeed, the God of the Old Testament):

I thought it might be worth presenting a chunk of Turretin’s exposition of the divine name as a prime example of the tradition. It’s instructive in itself, not because everything in it holds up, but because many haven’t taken the time to look at what this type of argumentation looks like. Also, because it makes a key point that, whatever you do with the rest of it, still needs to be heard: ontology and character are bound up with each other. There can be no simple bifurcation between being and doing.

The etymology and signification of the word is such as agrees with God alone. From Scripture, it is evident that it implies most especially three things which are seen to be connected (Is. 44:24-26):

(a) The eternity and independence of God, inasmuch as he is a necessary being, and existing of himself, independent of any other, self-existent (autoon)–“I am that I am” (Ex. 3:14). Hence he is called simply the being (ho on, as the ancient philosophers and Plato especially acknowledged). John describes him by the three distinctions of time: “which is, and which was, and which is to come” (ho on kai ho en kai ho erchomenos, Rev. 1:4). In reference to this we have that expression of the ancient heathen: “Zeus was, Zeus is, Zeus will be, O great Zeus” (Zeus hen, Zeus esti, Zeus essetai o megale Zeu, Pausanias, Description of Greece 10.12.10).

(b) It implies causality and efficiency because what is the first and most perfect in each genus is the cause of the rest (for God is by himself so that he is the cause of being to all others, Is. 44:24).

(c) It implies immutability and constancy in promises because he really performs and does what he has promised by giving to his promises being (to einai), not only self-existent (autoon), but also essentially existent (ousion) and essence-making (ousiopoios). In this sense, he says that he had not been known to the patriarch by his name Jehovah (Ex. 6:3), not as to the signifying word (for the contrary is evident from the book of Genesis), but as to the thing signified (because he had not as yet given being to his promises concerning the multiplication of seed, the bringing of people out of Egypt, their introduction to Canaan, etc.). 

He had made himself known to the patriarch by his power in the creation of the world, in its government and in the bestowal of many blessings and their wonderful defense; but he had not as yet really declared himself to be Jehovah, by fulfilling the promises given to the patriarchs. But since eternal existence, omnipotent power and immutable truth belong to God alone, the name Jehovah (which embraces these three) ought to be peculiar to him alone. –Institutes of Elenctic Theology Volume 1, Third Topic, Q. IV, Sec. V

As I said, there are a few things that are instructive about this passage. For one thing, the diversity of sources appealed to is always enlightening to note, simply because at certain times Christians, or especially Evangelicals, have been accused (and been guilty) of intellectual ghettoization. Turretin can comfortably appeal to pagan philosophical and literary tradition in order to supplement his point.

Even more important is the point we see in subsection “c”. Turretin engages in some theological exegesis by appealing to the acts of God, the character of God, in order to ensure the point about the being of God. As Vanhoozer has argued, metaphysics is unavoidable because we must give an account what God is like in order to account for who he has shown himself to be. What must the God who acts in this story be like in order to do and say the kinds of things we see in the biblical narrative? 

In the Doctrine of God, “ontology and character are bound up with each other”. However, in Rome’s doctrine of “The Church”, ontology is the heart of Rome’s claim to being “the Church that Christ Founded™, and yet the character of its popes, bishops, and foundational characters throughout history is beside the point.

Are any Roman Catholics able to say why this is so?

HT: Peter Escalante

Calvinism is Flourishing in China

Calvinism is Flourishing in China

John Calvin was a Frenchman, but he is being remembered in Geneva this week because it was here that he built Calvinism. Invited to reform the city in 1541, almost as what would now be called a management consultant, he formed an alliance with the city fathers. Over the next 20 years of preaching and pastoring they turned this tiny city, with a population then of only 10,000, into a model of church government and theology which has changed the world.

His followers now form the third-largest Christian grouping in the world. The world alliance of reformed churches claims 75 million members, and while this is a lower headline figure than the Anglican Communion's 80 million, it is not inflated by 25 million nominal Anglicans in Britain.

Although Calvinism is shrinking in western Europe and North America, it is experiencing an extraordinary success in China. I spent some time on Monday talking to the Rev May Tan, from Singapore, where the overseas Chinese community has close links with mainland China. The story she told of the spread of Calvinist religion as an elite religion in China was quite extraordinary. There may be some parallels with the growth of Calvinism in South Korea, where the biggest presbyterian churches in the world are to be found, but it's absolutely unlike the pattern in Africa and Latin America. There, the fastest growing forms of Christianity are pentecostal, and they are spreading among the poor.

But in China neither of those things are to be true.

Calvinists despise pentecostalists. They shudder at unbridled emotion. If they are slain in the spirit, it is with a single, decorous thump: there's to be no rolling afterwards. And in China, the place where Calvinism is spreading fastest is the elite universities, fuelled by prodigies of learning and translation. Wang Xiaochao, a philosopher at one of the Beijing universities, has translated the two major works of St Augustine, the Confessions and the City of God, into Chinese directly from Latin. Gradually all the major works of the first centuries of the Christian tradition are being translated directly from the original languages into Chinese.

All of this is happening outside the control of the official body which is supposed to monitor and supervise the churches in China. Instead, it is the philosophy departments at the universities, or the language departments and the departments of literature and western civilisation that are the channel.

"The [officially recognised] churches are not happy with universities, because it is not within their control. And their seminaries are not at the intellectual level of the universities," says Dr Tan. "Chinese Christianity using Chinese to do Christian thinking has become a very interesting movement."

Read more
HT: Peter Escalante

Peter Escalante puts his finger on the root of the “Two Kingdoms” debates

From Peter Escalante at “The Calvinist International”:

John Calvin, of course, said that reason and natural law themselves both point to the architectonic necessity of civil theology, ...

But more is involved here than reason and revelation. For [Roman Catholic writers], the papalist distinction between nature and supernature, and it is important to understand this lest we simply assume that evangelicals and papalists are really talking about quite the same things in these discussions.

Thus a brief reflection on the end of man is in order, since the end of man is the central affair of politics. Both [Roman Catholic writers he is referring to -- see the original articles at the link above] assert the papalist doctrine of the two ends of man, though neither really deal with the controversy about this doctrine among papalist doctors, let alone between those and the evangelical doctors. But in short the idea is that man has a temporal end – roughly what Aristotle calls happiness – and also a “supernatural” end, which is the beatific vision, in which the original nature will be aufgehoben [repealed].

The beatific vision is St Paul’s “face to face,” the final and perfect communion of man with God. Christians have always wondered what exactly the relation of this world, not simply as fallen, but even in original integrity, is to that final status promised by the Scriptures, and the controversy about that relation long predates the great reformation of religion five hundred years ago. And it continues to this day. Although it has become something of an Arcanum, it is the crucial center of the question of what it is for Christians to live in the world.

Attentive readers will see in [the Roman Catholic’s] reply not only the idea of the two ends of man, but also the idea of the donum superadditum.

Out with the old, in with the new [type of university]

Patrick Chan brought an article to our attention yesterday, “The End of the University”, in which the author makes the case that the type of thing we’ve been seeing the Internet do across the culture (i.e., change news, banking and shopping patterns, while foisting some “creative destruction” on news, banking and shopping institutions) is going to happen to the universities over the coming decades.

That will have some good benefits and bad consequences as well. This morning, Peter Escalante provides a good discussion of this, while characteristically keeping his eye on what that will mean going forward:

The bureaucratic leviathan university will not go down without a fight, but its fate is sealed. But either we take charge of what replaces it, or men for whom nothing is of worth unless it is for sale will. It is up to us to ensure that what replaces the present information-factory has the orderly pursuit of wisdom and learning at its heart, or else the new media of study will be little more than a hall of mirrors in which ignorance beholds its own infinitely diversified image, and cannot ever know it for such.

Common Sense and "the Culture of Persuasion"

While I don't agree with everything they say, Steven Wedgeworth and Peter Escalante have provided some of the clearest commentary in the last 24 hours:

http://calvinistinternational.com/2012/06/04/clericalism-or-concord/:

We must begin, as Old Princeton did, with the proper role of reason. Far from being a latent threat to vibrant faith, reason is the common light of all mankind, given to us in our creation as imago dei. Though not autonomous, reason is still authoritative, leading us away from confusion and incoherence. As such, it is itself a necessary precondition to all dialectic, even the logical and consistent reading of the Holy Scriptures. It is reason illumined by faith, ultimately, that convinces our consciences to accept a belief as certain. No external mechanism, no Pope, no presbytery, no liturgico-narrative faith community prancing in chasubles, can ever take its God-ordained place. Abandoning one’s personal reason in a move to allow someone else’s reason to work vicariously on your behalf is a moral failure and a grave sin. The answer to such a vice is the virtue of courage. Evangelical reason only speaks to brave men.

While reason is the necessary tool for reading the Holy Scriptures, it is still, nevertheless, the Scriptures which are the only infallible spiritual authority. This is true because of their nature: they are breathed out by God. And as God’s Word, there can be no standard above them to which they must answer. Rather, our job is to listen to the Word. As such, the human element is wholly responsive, seeking to clearly identify the content of that Word and then accurately apply it where appropriate. This is why the historico-grammatical method of hermeneutics must remain as the pillar of our exegesis. Only it can reasonably demonstrate the intended meaning of the Scriptures, and it can do so objectively and perspicuously. It may take varying amounts of work, even technical training in places, but it does not demand that any violence to be done to the human will, nor does it require that nature be supplanted by purportedly supernatural and thus unfalsifiable ecclesio-political apparatuses.

The evangelical doctrine of the universal priesthood has become merely nominal in many Reformed churches, which is why a number of Reformed people are predisposed to admiration of Rome. We need to reaffirm this fundamental doctrine, and its corollary of the representative character of the ministry. We must become more truly Calvinian on this score, by becoming more “Lutheran” and less clericalist. We should reject false definitions of the unity of the church, and recognize its actual unity on the ground, which underlies all the legitimate congregational forms and their modes of denominational association. We must also recognize the liberty of the Christian people to freely gather around the Word as center, without artificial ecclesial borders being enforced and policed by a clergy claiming a divine right authority. If the Smith family has good reason to be at St. Adiaphoron Lutheran Church, and their neighbors the Jones family has good reason to be at Putting Green Presbyterian across the street from it, so far from being a scandal, this is actually a fine thing.

Where all of this practically takes us is what many political scientists and historians have described as the culture of persuasion. We do not look to a political institution or other coercive power to artificially provide unity and certainty. There is no magic “key” to unity in external diversity. Rather, we respect the rights of conscience and seek to persuade others through the right use of reason and Biblical exegesis, confident that freedom and charity lead to the only unity worth having.