Roman Catholicism: “simply making up things to justify pet doctrines and practices”

St Thomas the Train Wreck Aquinas

While our culture is talking about “fake” things, such as “fake news”, why not talk about “fake religion”?

R. Scott Clark, a professor of Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary, California, published an original piece of work dealing with Aquinas’s inability to find biblical evidence in favor of “images”. Perhaps he is still feeling the sting of a WSCal grad like Jason Stellman having turned “Drunk”, or maybe there is a “Reformed Thomist” somewhere in his life. Whatever the reason, in this blog post, Clark, who reads Aquinas in the original Latin, unloads with both barrels:

The Allure Of Unwritten Tradition:

The earliest post-apostolic Christians (some of whom are denominated the Apostolic Fathers) knew of an apostolic tradition but they did not know about a secret and unwritten apostolic tradition on the authority of which the church could justify virtually anything it wanted. Remarkably, however, over time this is just what happened in the life of the church. In preparation for the annual [“Is the Reformation Over?” conference] this Friday and Saturday (January 13–14, 2017) I have been looking at Thomas Aquinas’ appeal to an unwritten tradition to justify practices that he freely admits are not biblical. In Summa Theologica 1a2ae 25.3, where he was defending the veneration of the cross, he faced a very sensible and eminently biblical objection:

“How do you know?” – How do you begin to know?

Before we go too far into PRRD, Muller clarifies a couple of things about how the Medievals thought about religion. Keep in mind, too, that Muller is distinguishing “the Reformers” from those writers who followed, the “Reformed Orthodox”, in order to show both “continuities and discontinuities” from the times of the Reformers (including Calvin) until the later “Reformed Orthodox” writers of the later 17th and early 18th centuries, from their actual writings. He does this as a response to some of the “Calvin vs the Calvinists” writers of the 20th century who sought to create a wedge between these two.

I want to reiterate that I’m not picking up this information to suggest that we go back to living and worshiping as these men did. Theirs was a completely different era. And yet today, there is a notion that we must “recover” their “Confession” and their “Theology, Piety, and Practice”.

I’m suggesting that there are tremendous things that we can learn from these generations of writers, without “recovering” their every move.

There is a story from an old book that meant a lot to me as a young man, “The Perfect Joy of St. Francis”. This was a “biographical novel” about Francis of Assisi, who, as we know, embraced a simple life of itinerant poverty, and after whom “Pope Bergoglio” seems to have fashioned himself.

Yes, this is directly to address Scott Clark, and the method of “recovery” that he has adopted and that he has been advocating. But Clark is not imitating Francis of Assisi. In this respect, Clark rather reminds me of “Brother Jack”, a character from that novel (and for all I know, a real-life character) who sought in a very simple way to imitate Francis:

Everything was a peaceful as a scene in the Gospels. Francis was in the little chapel, praying. And Brother Jack was behind him. Whenever Francis bent over, Jack bent over too. When Francis sighed, Jack sighed also. When Francis coughed, Jack coughed after him. That was simply Jack’s way of following Francis …

Thereafter he imitated Francis in everything he did … Jack, like the simple dove that he was, merely said, “Francis is a saint. So if I imitate him, the devil will have no hold on me” (pgs 119-120).

The theologians of this era served their times by thinking through what the Christian faith meant to their own times. They did it using a language (Latin) and a philosophical thought-system (largely Aristotelian) that was prevalent in their own era. They wrote “confessionally binding documents” not for people who would live three and four centuries later, but for themselves … to set themselves apart from their own world, in terms that their own world would understand.

They lived at times when “being a Christian” (and specifically, “being a Protestant”) meant going to war and standing up to persecutions while at the same time producing “a clearer identification of the theological task in its university setting. From the very beginning of Luther’s protest, the university and university-trained theologians were at the center of the movement”.

The great mark of this era was not that the great theologians had somehow conformed themselves to some kind of outward “Piety and Practice” or another (although those things were important too, but not in the “Brother Jack” kind of way). It was because they had thought through the challenges of their own day, and they sought to address those challenges in their own terms.

“Judging by history, the natural state of things is warfare with Islam”

Regarding the attacks in Paris: This is one side of the discussion:

I don’t see how any American can have any sympathy with the notion that the magazine “provoked” the attack. Our constitution enshrines the right to make fun of the prophet and anyone else. Of course there are limits, as the court has said, but making fun of the prophet or Mormons or Christians is well within the freedoms protected by the constitution. That’s why I used the category of “taste” rather than “right” earlier. One may find the magazine distasteful but that’s quite another thing than saying that they had no right to provoke Islamists.

The notion than free persons in the west can avoid “provoking” Islamists betrays significant naïveté about what Islam (the Qur’an and the Hadith) and Islamists expect from the rest of us. They will not be satisfied with not making fun of the prophet. They cannot be pacified. Read the history of Islam. Read the Qur’an for yourself (start at the back then go toward the front'; it’s an odd book, disconnected with no coherent narrative really). They will not be satisfied until we are all in submission to Allah and to them. There is a small handful of reasonable Muslims who are willing to live in peace with the rest of us. All the polls tell us, history tells us, that the vast majority of Muslims want Sharia to be imposed on the rest of us. We must not assume that they are just like us except for a different god. They are not.

As to the history, [keep in mind that] the West resisted Muslim/Ottoman military advances in the 16th century, ending 8 centuries of warfare with Muslims. The colonial powers then crushed and colonized Islamic countries. The violence we’ve seen since the revolution in Iran in 1979 is all post-colonial. Whatever evils may attend colonization it did keep them from doing what they’re doing now.

Judging by history, the natural state of things is warfare with Islam. As best I can tell it was never an enlightened culture. Most of the alleged cultural artifacts are now thought, by some historians anyway, to have been appropriated from the West. In other words, we’ve been fed a good bit of nonsense about what is even possible relative to Islam. It is an inherently violent, dangerous, threatening movement now and that is its natural condition.

If this is true, then those who value civil liberties (as the relative absence of restraint) should be truly wary about Islamic immigration to the USA and the growing number of mosques that are being established even in surprising places (e.g., TN). Mosques traditionally (and today) are not mere places of worship. They are places where social revolution are plotted. This is certainly what is happening in Nigeria where Christians live in terror. I have first hand-testimony of what happens in Nigeria, what happens in the mosques there, and what the consequences have been for Christians across Nigeria. The news is that Boko Haram has murdered another 2,000 people there.

Here is the context.

Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Christ Alone

For anyone who'd like a brief and excellent overview of the theological issues that the Reformation was all about, this is it: Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Christ Alone, from a recent Reformation Day conference.

More audio here.

Muller on “The Breadth Of The Reformed Orthodox Phenomenon”

Just a while ago Steve Hays posted a link to Paul Helm’s brief analysis of Oliver Crisp’s “Deviant Calvinism” on the discussion between “freedom of the will” and “grace” in the Westminster Confession of Faith.

I don’t intend to get into the specifics of that discussion. But in my own reading of Richard Muller’s “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics”, I’ve found that Muller has found a tremendous amount of leeway “within the boundaries established by the major national confessions and catechisms of the Reformed churches”, wherein things may legitimately be termed as “Reformed”.

This goes against the grain of some of those who require more narrow boundaries around “the Reformed Confession” – yes, I’m thinking of Scott Clark, especially with regard to some of the things he’s written about John Frame. But yes, Muller paints the “Reformed Orthodox” period with a very broad brush.

Here’s that selection from Muller.

Confessional relativism

There are presently two competing approaches to Reformed theology. One approach seeks to appreciate and appropriate the Reformed tradition and the confession of the churches and from that starting point and with those resources read the Scriptures and engage the state of the art.  

http://heidelblog.net/2013/12/should-i-buy-it-1/ 

To confessionalists – Presbyterian or Baptist – the confessional documents represent the settled corporate interpretations coming down to us from the ages.  They are not individual interpretations (no individual can authorize or adopt a confession), but rather the summary of the teaching of the church.  They are secondary standards under Scripture, but they create safe boundaries around our interpretation of Scripture.  To transgress those boundaries in favor of an individual or private interpretation is to tread on thin ice.  Whereas years or in some cases centuries of theological experience went into the language of the confession – often recognizing the dangers of certain misstatements – we live in an age in which far too many a Christian and even theologian is likely to stand alone with his Bible and say, “It seems to me…”  Confessionalism is intended to prevent this error. 

http://chantrynotes.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/re-framing-reformed-baptist-doctrine/

Both Clark and Chantry accuse Frame of being a "relativist." That's ironic because the hyper-confessionalism of Clark and Chantry is relativistic. Unless an individual Christian can appeal directly to Scripture to broker competing confessions, confessionalism becomes a language game. You can't score one game by the rules of another game. Trent is to checkers as the Westminster Confession is to chess, the Augsburg Confession is to football as the Schleitheim Confession is to baseball, the London Baptist Confession is to tennis as the Articles of Remonstrance are to hockey. 

You can judge whether a player broke the rules for a given game, but you can't apply the rules of one game to another game. If your confession becomes the filter through which you read the Bible, then the choice of one filter over another is arbitrary. 

There's nothing sacrosanct about individual interpretation. Individual Christians can be right or wrong. But that applies mutatis mutandis to collectives. A billion Catholics can be wrong–dead wrong. 

The unstable position of Clark and Chantry is a halfway house to Rome. 

By Confession Alone?

In response to this comment, I attempted to post the following at Scott Clark’s Heidelblog. (My comment was “awaiting modification” for some time today, but as of the last time I checked, it has been removed):

* * *

Scott – of course I still believe in Sola Scriptura, justification Sola Fide. And no popes, anywhere.

I’d like to preface my comment here by saying that I believe that the Reformation was absolutely a movement of the Holy Spirit, and that the fruitful period of theological study that followed the Reformation (for 100 years and more) was absolutely the richest and most profitable period of study in the 2000 year history of the church. The many confessions of faith that came out of that period are absolutely worthy of our study and reverence.

I also can’t fail to comment on the tendency, which has historically been manifested among Christians, to the effect that “if you believe A, therefore you believe B. Since you believe B, and B is heretical, you’re a heretic”. I believe that tendency to be both unChristian and unhelpful.

You defend biblicism, in this case, you defend the apparently even more radical biblicism of Frame’s lieutenant. In every case of biblicism someone is still interpreting Scripture. That interpretation leads to some confession, whether formal or informal. In this case, it’s his reading of Scripture that trumps all. There’s your pope.

First, I would urge you to re-think your comment here that Hays is anyone’s “lieutenant”. He is a clear thinker in his own right, and he has no problem to challenge anyone, including Frame.

Appearances can be deceiving

R. Scott Clark said:

This passage gets us closer to the heart of the problem, his apparent revision of the traditional Reformed doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God. As a matter of truth, God's essence is a dark, unrevealed entity. God, as he is in himself (in se) is hidden from us...We know that God's hidden essence is but we don't know what God's essence is. We're not capable of knowing or understanding that essence. We know what God has revealed of himself to us. God has given us pictures, illustrations, analogies, but he has not revealed himself as he is in himself...The Reformed want to affirm both the mystery of God's hiddenness and the utterly reliability of his self-revelation.

This seems to allow for the possibility that God could be a sort of chaotic evil God. More like the Norse god Loki who was a liar and a trickster than the God of the Bible. After all, we don't know God's true essence, and God has not revealed himself in Scripture "as he is in himself," so perhaps even what he's revealed to us doesn't necessarily reflect who he truly is.

On the one hand, we don't and can't know God's essence. But on the other hand, God doesn't reveal his essence to us except by "pictures, illustrations, analogies." So who's to say there's much truth in even the "pictures, illustrations, analogies" God has given us in Scripture? At best, it'd seem to be verisimilitude. The appearance of truth rather than truth itself. But we don't know to what degree, if any, the appearance is true to the truth.

As such, Clark's statement seems to allow for the possibility that God gave us half-true or even false pictures, illustrations, and analogies about himself in Scripture.

Pious nonsense

This is my third installment:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2013/12/pious-agnosticism.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2013/12/confessional-arians.html

Scott Clark recently said:

As a matter of truth, God’s essence is a dark, unrevealed entity. God, as he is in himself (in se) is hidden from us…We know that God’s hidden essence is but we don’t know what God’s essence is. We’re not capable of knowing or understanding that essence. 

Now, I don't deny that many Biblical statements about God are analogically true. But is that universal? Is God-talk intrinsically analogical? Does that pertain to every Scriptural statement about God? Let's consider two or three examples:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (Jn 1:1).

According to Clark, when John says the Word was God, that doesn't reveal the essential nature of the Son. That's just a "similitude."

If, so, I'd say Clark's understanding has more in common with John Hick than John Boanerges. 

God is not man, that he should lie,    or a son of man, that he should change his mind.Has he said, and will he not do it?    Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? (Num 23:19; cf. 1 Sam 15:29)

According to Clark, when Scripture denies that God is man, that is not to be taken univocally. Rather, something like that is true.  

nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything (Acts 17:25).

According to Clark, when Scripture denies that God needs anything, that doesn't reveal the essential nature of God. That's not a univocal truth. 

We could go down the list. Quote passages about God's knowledge of the future, &c. 

Confessional Arians

Scott Clark responded to my statement that

If God’s essence is unknowable, then Scripture is not a divine self-revelation. God hasn’t revealed himself to us in Scripture. Rather, God has revealed something other than himself.

by saying:

His first conclusion is false. It doesn’t follow.

Asserting that my conclusion is false, asserting that it doesn't follow, is not an argument.

What is God if not his essence? The essence of God is God. That's what God actually is, right? If that's not what Clark means by God's essence, what could he possibly mean?

Well, if according to Clark, Scripture cannot reveal the essence of God, then Scripture doesn't disclose what God is really like. Rather, it reveals something other than God. 

If that's a fallacious inference, where is Clark's counterargument? 

 It is true that we don’t and can’t know God as he is, as I showed from Scripture...

He didn't show that from Scripture. Quoting Scripture doesn't show that your claim is Scriptural. You need to explain and defend your interpretation. You need to explain and defend your inferences from Scripture. 

…but apparently quoting Scripture doesn’t count if a confessionalist does so. Quoting Scripture only counts if a revisionist does it.

i) Everyone quotes Scripture to prove their respective position. I've had Scripture quoted to me by atheists, Anabaptists, annihilationists, Dispensationalists, Lutherans, Arminians, unitarians, universalists, Muslims, &c. So, no, just quoting Scripture doesn't count. You need to exegete your prooftext. And you need to argue for your application. 

ii) There are confessional Lutherans. There are confessional Baptists (e.g. the London Baptist Confession of Faith). What would Clark do if he got into a debate with a confessional Baptist? One confessionalist quotes paedobaptist prootexts while the other confessionalist quotes credobaptist prooftexts. Confessionalism won't adjudicate that disagreement, for both sides are confessional.

iii) Clark is not even entitled to drape himself in the mantle of a confessionalist. He's not a strict subscriptionist. He picks and chooses which parts of the Reformed creeds he prefers to espouse. When it comes to the days of creation or the duties of the civil magistrate, his confessionalism goes out the window. 

That’s the point of the Reformed doctrine of accommodation. God is pleased to reveal himself analogically, which includes the various forms of speech in Scripture. We do know God truly—to deny that is skepticism and to deny salvation—but we know him in the way that God wills.

I don't object to saying our knowledge of God is analogical knowledge. But how does that warrant treating what's analogical as an antonym for what's essential? He apparently assumes that an analogy can't show you what something is essentially like. Well, how does he justify that arbitrary dichotomy? 

I could use a boat to illustrate the principle of transportation. I could use an airplane to illustrate the principle of transportation. In that respect, a boat is analogous to an airplane, and vice versa.

Does that mean the analogy fails to show us what a boat or airplane is essentially for? No. Both are essentially for transportation. They are both modes of transportation. That's not just what they are like. That's what they are. 

The Reformed have NEVER thought that we must know God as he is in himself to be know him truly. That’s a rationalist premise. The Reformed faith isn’t rationalist. 

Ironically, Clark is the rationalist because he refuses to submit to the testimony of Scripture. His a priori commitments to his tradition gag the voice of Scripture. Take how he mishandles his prooftext:

No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known (Jn 1:18, ESV).

He uses that to prove his assertion that:

As a matter of truth, God’s essence is a dark, unrevealed entity. God, as he is in himself (in se) is hidden from us…We know that God’s hidden essence is but we don’t know what God’s essence is. We’re not capable of knowing or understanding that essence. 

i) First of all, lets try to map that back onto his prooftext. How does Clark understand the contrast?

The Father is the archetype to the Son's ectype? Well, I guess that's good Arian Christology. But it's hardly Johannine Christology.

The Father is essentially God, whereas the Son is not essentially God? Again, that's good Arian Christology.

ii) Now let's exegete the text. Clark seems to begin and end with the first clause. Now the first clause states a principle that goes all the way back to Exodus. God is invisible. God is spirit. God is not an object of direct observation. Possibly, we might take that a step further, if divine invisibility is emblematic of divine transcendence. 

However, unless Clark is a radical empiricist, how can he assume that what's invisible is essentially unknowable? 

iii) Does Jn 1:18 say that God's essence is an "unrevealed entity"? No, just the opposite. 

God is inaccessible from our side. But God can make himself accessible. The Incarnation makes the empirically unknowable Father known to us in the person of his Son.  

Jn 1:18 involves a like knows like principle. Like reveals like principle. The Son is God made visible. Because the Father and the Son are two of a kind, if you've seen the Son, you've seen the unseen Father (Jn 14:9). This is one way that Jesus is intrinsically superior to Moses (1:17). 

In defiance of Jn 1:18, and other like passages, Clark makes the impious claim that the Incarnate Son does not and cannot reveal what God is truly like. 

As I keep saying, once the triperspectivalist magicians are done, they think they have God in a headlock. That’s why it’s near impossible to argue with them, which is why I generally don’t do so.

i) To begin with, there's no evidence that Clark even understands triperspectivalism. 

ii) More to the point, I didn't use triperspectivalism in my analysis. So he's burning a straw man. 

Pious agnosticism

I'm going to comment this post by Scott Clark's on John Frame's new systematic theology:

http://heidelblog.net/2013/12/should-i-buy-it-1/

I think readers should read widely but they shouldn’t believe everything they read. So we should read liberally but we should read critically, i.e., thoughtfully and always asking ourselves: “Is that true?”

That's excellent advice. Unfortunately, Clark fails to heed his own advice. 

The second divergence, closely related to the first, is theological. Frame has come to defend views that are flatly contrary to the Reformed confession on a number of topics from the definition of theology through to Christian ethics.

Of course, one could say the same thing about Clark. He's a selective confessionalist. It's a pity that Clark is a hardened hypocrite. He constantly exempts himself from the consistency he demands from others.

There are presently two competing approaches to Reformed theology. One approach seeks to appreciate and appropriate the Reformed tradition and the confession of the churches and from that starting point and with those resources read the Scriptures and engage the state of the art. 

Is that the starting point? Didn't Clark just admonish us to read critically, i.e., thoughtfully and always asking ourselves: “Is that true?”

Why is Clark a confessional Calvinist rather than a confessional Lutheran? Do they just have different arbitrary starting points? How does Clark think we should come to believe the Reformed confessions in the first place? Does he think we always ought to read the Scriptures through the lens of Reformed tradition? If so, what about a Lutheran who shares the identical methodology, but plugs that into Lutheran creeds rather than Reformed creeds? 

The other approach, however, seems to regard the tradition with a wary eye and seeks to revise Reformed theology in sometimes radical ways. The volume before us, though it has traditional elements, falls into the second category. This approach, which is more “biblicist” than confessionalist (on this see Recovering the Reformed Confession), has produced some significant divergences from historic Reformed theology.

Does Frame seek to revise Reformed theology? Is that his objective going in? Or is that the occasional, unpremeditated result of his studies? 

By dialectical I mean an approach to theology that affirms and denies something at the same time. Frame does this through a method he describes as triperspectivalism. 

Clark makes it sound as if Frame affirms and denies the same thing in the same respect. But there's nothing incoherent or contradictory (if that's what Clark is insinuating) about affirming something in one respect, but denying that in another respect. 

In his earlier volume on the doctrine of God, he defended the proposition that God is three persons and one person, a view at which, in the present volume. he seems only to hint. Last I knew, few reviewers noted this significant departure from catholic (i.e., universal Christian) dogma and the Reformed confession.

i) In what sense is that a departure from dogma? Is he saying Frame's conceptualization of the Trinity marks a departure, or Frame's terminology? 

ii) In Trinitarian and Christological usage, "person" (along with its Greek and Latin cognates) is a term of art. The terminology was fluid in early church history. And theological jargon has stipulative definitions. So it's a question of how the term is used. 

iii) We need to distinguish between Frame as an expositor of Van Til, and Frame's own preferred formulations. In explaining and defending Van Til, Frame is exegeting Van Til's usage. How Frame interprets Van Til is not the same thing is how Frame might choose to formulate the issue when speaking for himself. 

iv) Clark mentions Frame's conclusion while ignoring his supporting arguments. 

The doctrine of divine simplicity, however, is not a remnant of Thomas’ neo-Platonism. It is the interpretation of Holy Scripture and the confession of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches. 

i) To begin with, his claim is a non-sequitur. How does the fact that it's nominally codified in Reformed confessions entail that it's not a remnant of Thomistic Neoplatonism? 

ii) What does Clark mean by saying divine simplicity is the interpretation of Scripture? For instance, does Clark think there's no difference between divine justice and divine mercy? Are these identical? If so, that's a problem for Reformed theology, according to which God can be unmerciful, but never unjust. 

The churches have not confessed a conviction about every theological question or debate but where they have confessed we are bound to it and we do not confess that God is simple and complex. We confess one thing: that he is simple, that he is without parts and we do so, as Luther said, without horns (we don’t say this and not this or Sic et Non). Neither the Trintarian persons nor the attributes make God complex. 

i) What happened to Clark's admonition that we should read critically, i.e., thoughtfully and always asking ourselves: “Is that true?”

ii) Does Frame say God is composed of parts? 

iii) Clark uses "simplicity" as a buzzword. He stays on the verbal surface. Does he even grasp the metaphysical machinery or varied models? For instance:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/divine-simplicity/ 

In The Christian Faith (2011), pp. 228-30, Mike Horton...appeals to the essence/energies (working) distinction in Basil.

So Frame stands accused of deviating from Reformed tradition because he doesn't recast Reformed theology in Greek Orthodox categories. I didn't realize Gregory Palamas presided at the Synod of Dordt or the Westminster Assembly. I salute his Methuselean longevity. 

More recently, the classical Reformed doctrine of simplicity has been a bulwark against the heresy of Open Theism, the doctrine that future contingents are unknowable to God. 

i) Why would we rely on such a convoluted argument to refute open theism? Surely there are more direct arguments we can deploy against open theism.

ii) Since an open theist won't treat divine simplicity as a given, it would first be necessary to argue for divine simplicity, then argue for how that's at odds with God's ignorance of future contingents. An approving quote from Berkhof is not an argument.  

This passage gets us closer to the heart of the problem, his apparent revision of the traditional Reformed doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God. As a matter of truth, God’s essence is a dark, unrevealed entity. God, as he is in himself (in se) is hidden from us…We know that God’s hidden essence is but we don’t know what God’s essence is. We’re not capable of knowing or understanding that essence. We know what God has revealed of himself to us. God has given us pictures, illustrations, analogies, but he has not revealed himself as he is in himself…The Reformed want to affirm both the mystery of God’s hiddenness and the utterly reliability of his self-revelation. 

i) Clark confuses the order of being (i.e. what God is in himself) with the order of knowing (what God is like). Since we're not God, we can't know God as he knows himself. But that doesn't mean we can't know what God is truly like. We just can't can see it from God's unique, first-person perspective. And God must take the initiative in disclosing himself.   

ii) If God's essence is unknowable, then Scripture is not a divine self-revelation. God hasn't revealed himself to us in Scripture. Rather, God has revealed something other than himself. 

Our Lord himself said:  

No one has ever seen God. The only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known (John 1:18).

So, according to Clark, the Son isn't God in himself? The Son isn't essentially God? The Incarnation of the Son fails to reveal what God is really like? We can't know God's true nature by knowing Christ? 

1Timothy 6:16 says “no one has ever seen or can see” God. 1John 4:12 says that “no one has ever seen God.”

How does Clark make the logical leap from verses about the invisibility of God to to the incomprehensibility of God? 

Frame has defended the right of the self-described Federal Visionists to teach their doctrines. In the present volume he offers a (remarkably revisionist) defense of the principal godfather of the FV theology, Norman Shepherd. 

It's unclear what exactly Clark is alleging. His accusation seems to amount to this:

i) Frame's exposition of justification is traditionally Reformed.

ii) Shepherd's exposition is contrary to traditional Reformed theology.

iii) Frame superimposes his own exposition onto Shepherd. Frame imputes to Shepherd a position at odds with Shepherd's actual position. 

But if Frame's own formulation is sound, then Frame's association with Shepherd, even if that's injudicious, is a red herring. 

Put another way, even if Frame's friendship with Shepherd affects his objectivity, making him an unreliable interpreter of Shepherd, how is that germane when Frame is speaking for himself rather than putting in a good word for an old friend? 

….His method is not only dialectical, it is a latitudinarian, i.e., the goal is that we should tolerate doctrines that the Reformed churches have condemned. 

That raises an interesting question. Since the classic Reformed confessions weren't responding to the Federal Vision, modern-day Reformed churches must go beyond the historical purview of 16-17C Reformed confessions to adjudicate the specifics of that particular position. 

If it quacks like a duck...

http://bylogos.blogspot.com/2013/07/creation-qirc-and-quack.html

Rome is a dialog partner that is not to be trusted

In a post entitled “Of Catholicity and Confusion”, Scott Clark reports on a USCCB (US Catholic Conference of Bishops) agreement “with representatives from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Christian Reformed Church in North America, the Reformed Church in America, and the United Church of Christ to accept as valid baptisms performed in those communions”, through the aid of what he calls “the mediating/hosting organization, Christian Churches Together.”

This is a non-event for a lot of reasons, and Clark nails it at the end:

So, this heralded breakthrough does not seem to be much of a breakthrough at all. It probably has the same status in Rome as Evangelicals and Catholics Together: none.

On the other side, news of the “agreement” prompted Bryan Cross to post the pithily-titled article, “Catholic Church and Four Reformed Denominations Agree to Recognize the Validity of Each Other’s Baptisms.”

And this he posted right at the top of his regular front-page feature, “Christian Unity in the News”. [Most of the artciles in this list refer to a Roman overture to wayward Anglican churches entitled Anglicanorum Coetibus, a program by which Anglicans are snookered into believing that they can find “unity” with Roman Catholicism, while still retaining their Anglican identity. More on this below]

But it is a non-event. Generally, Reformed denominations have not required Roman Catholics joining Reformed churches to be re-baptized [and Clark cites Berkhof to this effect], and nor has the Roman Catholic church required baptized Reformed individuals converting to Rome to be rebaptized. Citing CCC §1271:

Baptism constitutes the foundation of communion among all Christians, including those who are not yet in full communion with the Catholic Church: “For men who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in some, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church. Justified by faith in Baptism, [they] are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church.”

It brings up the larger question, “why bother trying to do business with the Roman Catholic Church, in any event.

Again, Clark correctly identifies the useless nature of the USCCB: “it is not entirely clear what the status of the USCCB actually is in Rome. For American evangelicals, any organization that gathers and says something may have significance but in my ecclesiastical world, an informal gathering of pastors that produces a statement has the ecclesiastical weight of the pixels by which it appears.”

But further to that, if these [Reformed] folks did get a chance to negotiate with anyone significant in Rome, it’s pretty clear that they’d end up with the bitter taste of dust in their mouths.

In recent years, there have been a number of these “from-the-ground-up” types of agreements, such as the ECT series, the “Joint Declaration” with [some] Lutherans on Justification, and so on.

While some of these “breakthroughs” get reported, the real substance is that, negotiation with Rome will get you nowhere.

For example, one of the biggest proponents of our time, of trying to get “Evangelicals and Catholics Together”, wrote with genuine disappointment at Rome’s failure to endorse the “Joint Declaration”. He wrote in an article entitled Setback in Rome:

In June the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) formally approved a “Joint Declaration” (JD) on the doctrine of justification that had been worked out over many years of theological dialogue with the Catholic Church. Shortly after that, Rome made its official response in a joint statement issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity (CCU). These developments received considerable play in the general media with stories about an “historic agreement” on the chief doctrine that had separated Lutherans and Catholics for almost five hundred years. The reality is somewhat more complicated than that.

Rome did officially “receive” JD in the sense that it affirmed that very significant progress had been made in removing past misunderstandings, and in moving toward full agreement on what it means to say that the sinner is justified by faith. However, many of the Catholics and Lutherans involved in producing JD are saying—mainly off the record, for the present—that the Roman response is, in the most important respects, a rejection of the declaration. JD proposed that, with the new understandings achieved by the dialogue, the mutual condemnations of the sixteenth century no longer apply, and remaining differences over the doctrine of justification are not church-dividing. The Roman statement does not accept that proposal.

It would be an understatement to say that the theologians involved in the dialogue, both Lutheran and Catholic, were taken aback by the Roman response. During the process, Rome had indicated problems with aspects of the declaration and, almost up to the last minute, revisions were made to take those concerns into account. The participants in the dialogue thought they had been assured that JD would be approved by Rome. Certainly that was the understanding that informed the LWF's approval of the declaration. In the immediate aftermath of the statement by CDF and CCU, the mood among dialogue participants was bitter and despondent. One Lutheran pioneer of the dialogue declared that the theologians, both Lutheran and Catholic, had been “betrayed” by Rome. For decades to come, he predicted, it would be impossible to reestablish confidence in any theological dialogue with the Catholic Church.

I’ve bolded key sections from Neuhaus. Rome will smile and nod, and smile and nod, and just when you think that some agreement has been reached, they say “no, it’s our way or the highway”, and you get to experience the bitterness of “buyer’s remorse”.

Fr. Robert Hart, an writer for Touchstone Magazine and at the blog The Continuum (referring to a “continuum” of Anglicans whose efforts revolve around “continuing” to understand and hold the doctrines of the historical Church of England), wrote in a characteristically “uncharitable” blog post entitled Baiticum and Switchorum (That’s “Bait-and-Switch” for those who don’t understand Latin):

"What this means for the average small [Anglican] parish thinking of accepting the offer is that the entire parish will no longer have autonomy.

*[you] will begin Roman catechism for 2 years, [your] clergy will step down and become laymen and will have to complete their education if lacking before being able to serve anyone; your buildings, if any, will need to be disposed of.

*you will be directed to a local RC Diocese since ours are far flung and overlapping many RC dioceses in between.

*you will likely be directed to a local RC parish (100 families is the minimum standard for a RC parish) for worship in the early am.

* you will be somewhat segregated from the RC congregation.

* your priest if he can pass muster will be counted on to do Vatican II services as directed by the local Bishop (so don't count on the level of pastoral care you had before.)

*your children will learn Roman Catholicism, you will die, the Roman Church will go on as before and that will be the end of that….

Let us be clear. Unlike the "uniates" and "rites," former Anglicans will not have their own church within the Church. They will be absorbed, but with permission to use something different, but as of yet undefined.

Rome=”The Borg”. Lots of folks don’t yet know this, however.

Recovering the Reformation: A Response to Sam DeSocio

I’m just a common tater. I don’t hold a church office; I’m not an elder or a deacon or a scholar. In fact, I couldn’t have made it limping through the last year, while my wife was ill, without the help of the elders and deacons of my own PCA church.

It wasn’t long ago that I was working with Sam DeSocio, then the Assistant Pastor at our five-year-old church plant, setting up chairs and toting heavy things in order to prepare for worship services in our rented gymnasium.

Given that history, I was surprised to see that Sam, now the pastor of a start-up church himself (two years old?) has made the big time, getting response blog posts from both Darryl Hart and Scott Clark for his suggestion that it may be practical to think about dividing up the PCA into three smaller denominations.

He gives a couple of reasons:

Was Calvin a tyrant?

http://rscottclark.org/2012/09/the-calvin-as-tyrant-meme/

When Roman Catholics show up at your door

WSC prof Scott Clark published this account of how he handled it:

I asked her how she planned to present herself to God, how well she was doing in her program of cooperating with grace. She admitted that her cooperation wasn’t perfect. I asked her what she makes of Galatians 3:10, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law” (emphasis added). She admitted that her obedience isn’t perfect but she hoped that her best would be acceptable to God. The late-medieval Franciscans had an expression for this view of grace and justification: “To those who do what lies within them, God denies not grace.” She is relying on what the medievals called “congruent merit,” literally the merit of agreement or covenantal merit. She’s hoping that God will impute perfection to her best efforts. …

One of the two most striking points she made had to do with authority. The first is that she is Roman Catholic because that’s where she feels most comfortable, where she finds peace. She testified that when she has strayed from the church she has lost this sense of peace….

The second appeal to authority was to implicit faith (fides implicta). The Roman Catechism §82 confesses:

Both Scripture and tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.

Faithful Romanists must accept the tradition of the church on implicit faith. They are to trust that what Rome teaches is true even though it cannot be verified from Scripture. Indeed, she was much more certain that Rome must a priori be correct than she was about what Scripture says.

Before she left I asked her what were Jesus’ last words on the cross. After some thinking she said remembered, “it is finished.” I told her that, according to Rome’s view of salvation Jesus should have said, “It is begun” to which she agreed, that’s what the words must mean. She said that Jesus has opened the way for us to do our part toward eventual acceptance with God.

Jesus, however, didn’t say, “It is under way.” He said, “It is finished.” The only way to benefit from Jesus’ work is not by grace and cooperation with grace but by God’s free favor alone, through faith resting in Christ’s finished work alone….

America is still exceptional

America is still exceptional:

Even though Christianity has become increasingly marginal in the life of the country it is remains more vital here than in most places in Europe. Further, the fact that the founders established the American republic as a secular state serves the interests of those of us who still believe the faith.

Unlike Europe, because we have not had a national church and because the states gradually adopted the same policy the church is free to flourish in ways that it was not in Europe.

The future of the church and the Christian faith is not tied to the fortunes and whims of the state in the way that it was in Europe. It is not a tool in the hands of the magistrate that it often was in the old world Christians in America have a great deal for which to be thankful this election day. Chief among those them is the relative absence of civil restraint on the practice of the Christian religion. There are other ways in which the USA may be said to be exceptional but this one is enough for today.

Get in by Grace, Stay in by Faithfulness?

This is Part 1:

http://heidelblog.net/2012/10/in-by-grace-stay-in-by-faithfulness:

To desire sanctity in God’s people is a very good thing. God clearly reveals himself in Scripture as desiring, even demanding it of his people. What Scripture teaches and what the Reformation rediscovered, however, is that making our acceptance with God in any way conditional upon our obedience or our cooperation with grace will never produce the sanctity desired.

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.]

The Puritan Writer William Perkins on Roman Catholicism

Not long ago I listened to a lecture series by J.I. Packer (through RTS) entitled the “The English Puritans”. Packer spent a great deal of time discussing the works of William Perkins, whom he called one of the earliest, most prolific, and most influential of the English Puritan writers.

Yesterday, Scott Clark posted a selection from one Perkins’s works entitled “Who Are the True Catholics? (1)”. The following selection is from his work “A Reformed Catholic” subtitled “Or a Declaration Showing How Near We may Come to the Present Church of Rome in Sundry Points of Religion and Wherein We Must Forever Depart From Them”. Clark notes, “This treatise is an interesting and useful example of the way the Reformed responded to the Roman response (the “Counter Reformation” or the “Catholic Reformation”). Perkins responded by challenging a central Romanist assumption: that the Roman communion is the “Catholic Church.” Yet while they call themselves “The Church”,

… consider, how they of the Roman Church have razed the foundation.

For though in words they honor Christ, yet in deed they turn him to a Pseudo-Christ, and an idol of their own brain. They call him our Lord, but with this condition, that the Servant of Servants of this Lord, may change and add to his commandments: having so great power, that he may open and shut heaven to whom he will; and bind the very conscience with his own laws, and consequently be partaker of the spiritual kingdom of Christ.

Again, they call him a Savior, but yet in us: in that he gives this grace unto us, that by our merits, we may partake in the merits of the saints. And they acknowledge, that he died and suffered for us, but with this caveat, that the fault being pardoned, we must satisfy for the temporal punishment, either in this world, or in purgatory. In a word, they make him our Mediator of Intercession unto God: but withal, his Mother must be the Queen of Heaven, and by the right of a Mother command him there.

Thus, in word, they cry Hosanna, but indeed they crucify Christ. Therefore we have good cause to bless the name of God, that hath freed us from the yoke of this Roman bondage, and hath brought us to the true light and liberty of the Gospel. And it should be a great height of unthankfulness in us, not to stand out against the present Church of Rome, but to yield our selves to plots of reconciliation.

Clark summarizes, “Perkins was concerned about a false ecumenism then and we have just as much right to be concerned about it now. As Rome begins its year-long celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Vatican II it is well to remember that Vatican II changed none of the doctrines against which the Reformation reacted. The issues remain.”