A Roman Catholic View of Nature and Grace Part 1

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

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

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

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

T.F. Torrance on 1 Clement and the Doctrine of Grace (part 1)

Referring to T.F. Torrance’s work, “The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers”, I’ve posted two selections that trace the definitions of the word “grace” (χάρις in Greek, or “charis”) as used in different contexts:

1. χάρις in Classical and Hellenistic Greek usage, including Philo.

2. χάρις in Old Testament and New Testament usage.

This is the first of two follow-up comments on my comment #322 at Called to Communion, where I quoted T.F. Torrance’s summary of 1 Clement’s use of the word “grace” (χάρις in Greek, or “charis”):

Clement definitely thinks of charis as referring to a gift of God without which the Christian would not be able to attain to love or salvation. But there is little doubt that this is held along with the idea of merit before God; for grace is given to those who perform the commandments of God, and who are worthy. He may use the language of election and justification, but the essentially Greek idea of the unqualified freedom of choice is a natural axiom in his thoughts, and entails a doctrine of "works" as Paul would have said. In all His dealings with men, God is regarded as merciful; but the ground for the Salvation He gives is double: faith and ... [ellipses in original]. And so Wustmann is justified in saying of Clement’s theology: “Whoever does the will of God, him shall God bless...” Like the whole mass of Judaistic writers [following Philo’s usage], Clement thinks of God's mercy as directed only toward the pious; and if he uses the word χάρις, as in Philo, it carries with it the same principle (pgs. 54-55).

That’s Torrance’s conclusion about 1 Clement. Following that comment, I added, “That concept of being rewarded for being worthy before God [before God will give you grace] is not a concept Paul used; later writers would call that “Pelagian”. But here is “Pope” Clement, a Pelagian before Pelagius.”

T.F. Torrance on 1 Clement and the Doctrine of Grace (part 2)

Before getting into 1 Clement, I wanted to show a couple of usages from Titus where the Pauline (New Testament) concept of “grace”, especially the notion of how it relates to the notion of “good works”, is particularly clear:

Titus 2:11-14: For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

See how grace works here? It is the grace itself that “brings salvation”, “trains us”. Christ “gave himself” “to redeem us” and “to purify” us. It is God’s initiative that brings Christ in grace, and with Him, all these good things.

Later in that same letter:

Titus 3:3-6: For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior…

Again, we were not worthy at all, at which time the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, and he saved us, according to his own mercy.

1 Clement, as we shall see, while using some Paul-like language, sees grace merely as an “opportunity for repentence”.

Definitions of grace over time and in different contexts, part 2: Biblical Conceptions of Grace

In conjunction with some comments I’m going to make regarding T.F. Torrance’s “The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers” (Wipf & Stock Publishers; 1996 Reprint edition), here, briefly, is the second of the two broad categories of definitions of how the word and concept have been understood, “Biblical Conceptions of Grace”. There are a number of different shades of meaning, observed at different times and within different bodies of literature. (“TDNT” is Kittel’s “Theological Dictionary of the New Testament” (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, Company, Trans Geoffrey Bromily, © 1974, vol. IX).

THE BIBLICAL CONCEPTION OF CHARIS

Grace in the New Testament

I bring this up because there is a struggle to come up with a definition of the word “grace” over at Green Baggins. The only word study on the word “Grace” that I’ve seen is the one that T. F. Torrance did in his The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1996 reprint of his 1948 edition).

From the Introduction:

I. The Greek Conception of Charis

A. Charis in Classical Greek

B. Charis in Hellenistic Greek

C. Charis in Philo

II. The Biblical Conception of Grace

A. Grace in the Old Testament (aheb, hesed, and hen)

B. Grace in the New Testament

Of this he says:

In the New Testament charis (χάρις) becomes a terminus technicus. While other meanings are still current, there is a special Christian sense of the word coined under the impact of Revelation to convey something quite unique.

He divides “Grace in the New Testament” among three groups which he analyses: Grace in the Gospels, Grace in the Epistles of Paul, and Grace in the other New Testament writings. Of these, he summarizes, “there seems no doubt that the Pauline usage of charis became normative for the whole church”.

For Paul, it is always described as Ἡ χάρις τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ”. And of Paul’s usage, makes several points:

In Paul, there is no separation between the person and the work of Christ. He does not know Christ after the flesh, but Christ crucified and risen after the Spirit. Christ crucified and risen is God’s power and God’s grace-act among men. In the background there is always the thought that charis is the grace of God, but in the foreground it is the person of Christ, and the act of Christ that fill the focus of vision.

The simplest and the most profound expression of grace Paul gives is perhaps the following: δικαιούμενοι δωρεὰν τῇ αὐτοῦ χάριτι διὰ τῆς ἀπολυτρώσεως τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ (justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, Romans 3:24). It would be safe to say that Paul never speaks of grace, except as grounded in the self-giving of God in the person and death of Jesus, and in every instance it is the objective side of its content that predominates. There is no hint of any psychologising in his use of the word charis. ….

In its primary sense in St. Paul’s epistles grace has to do with the act of divine intervention rather than with our receiving of it. Charis is now the presupposition of all man’s relations with God and constitutive of the whole Christian life. Grace is the decisive deed [accomplished by God] which makes the ground of our approach to God an act and word of His in which He irrevocably committed. It means the establishing of something quite new among men, a new relation to God, not one in which the divine command forms the basis of our relations with God, but one in which the divine self-commitment invites us to approach Him on the grounds of love, because in Christ the divine will has been perfectly fulfilled on our behalf. Grace is a colossal deed that cuts away the ground from all our [“any other”] human religion, and establishes a new religion in the Gospel, so wonderful that men are utterly overwhelmed, and so radical that it entails a complete reversal of all previous attitudes and ideas. Such a reversal means that we cannot think our way in to the wisdom of God, which is, as Paul says, the Cross, because God has done a deed which makes our wisdom foolish and which interrupts us in our career.

“…Grace is the will of God to constitute man’s life afresh on a wholly new basis and in a renewed world, to set him free from sin and Satan; to endue him with the Spirit, to make him the possessor of a supernatural life. It is thus the presupposition of the whole Christian life, not one principle which (along with others) works within that life.”

There can be no doubt that Paul did think of the impact of grace upon men in terms of power, for “the Kingdom of God”, he said, “was not in word only, but in power”. The Gospel was not in word only, not a fiction, but in power and reality, creating its own results in righteousness and truth. … The Christian’s righteousness, wisdom, sanctification, and redemption are to be found in Christ Himself, and so Paul can speak of these as differentiations of charis even when they are manifest in the believer … Charis is never adjectival on the lips of Paul, but always dynamic.

... Grace means the primary and constitutive act in which out of free love God has intervened to set our life on a wholly new basis, but also means that through faith this may be actualized in flesh and blood because it has been actualized in Jesus Christ, who by the Cross and Resurrection becomes our salvation, our righteousness, and our wisdom. Thus any attempt to detach grace in a transferred sense from the actual embodiment of God’s grace in Jesus Christ is to misunderstand the meaning of the Pauline charis altogether.

Torrance notes here in a footnote that “To detach grace from the person of Christ and to think of it as acting impersonally upon man is inevitably to land in determinism. That was Augustine’s mistake.” The medieval Roman church, and thus the whole Roman Catholic church followed him in this mistake.

To sum up: Grace in the New Testament is the basic and most characteristic element of the Christian Gospel, It is the breaking into the world of the ineffable love of God in a deed of absolutely decisive significance which cuts across the whole of human life and sets it on a new basis. That is actualized in the person of Jesus Christ, with which grace is inseparably associated, and supremely exhibited on the Cross by which the believer is once and for all put right with God. This intervention of God in the world and its sin, out of sheer love, and His personal presence to men through Jesus Christ are held together in the one thought of grace.

“By the Cross the believer has been put in the right with God once for all—Christ is his righteousness. He is already in Christ what he will be—to that, no striving will add one iota.”

First Clement vs the New Testament

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

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

* * *

Definitions of grace over time and in different contexts, part 1: The Greek Conceptions of Grace

In conjunction with some comments I’m going to make regarding T.F. Torrance’s “The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers” (Wipf & Stock Publishers; 1996 Reprint edition), here, briefly, is the first of two broad categories of definitions of how the word and concept have been understood, “In Greek Culture”. Within this category, there are a number of different shades of meaning, observed at different times and within different bodies of literature. (“TDNT” is Kittel’s “Theological Dictionary of the New Testament” (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, Company, Trans Geoffrey Bromily, © 1974, vol. IX).

THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF CHARIS

Rome is all about aggrandizing Rome

I want to take a minute to comment on a David Anders article that’s currently on the front page of the Called to Confusion website. If your inclination is to think, off the bat, that I’m not being “charitable” in this appellation, then consider the misrepresentations that Anders is making. In his article on Tradition I and Sola Fide, there is plenty to disagree with throughout, but I want to focus on the closing section Protestants and the Problem of the First Four Centuries, where Anders misrepresents both the essence and the importance of what “leading Protestant historians” are saying about the early church. Anders cites three Protestant historians: Torrance, McGrath, and Harnack, and he misuses all three.

Let’s look first at what Anders has to say:

From baptism to brazen serpent

The erudite and urbane Al Kimel has posted a surrejoinder to my rejoinder:

http://catholica.pontifications.net/?p=1347

“Mr. Hays makes several errors here:

First, my last name is spelled K-i-m-e-l. A little thing, I know, but certainly annoying when people get it wrong.”

Actually, Kimel and I both have a little problem with names, as when he recently identified me as “Richard” Hays.

However, I can’t claim to be annoyed by his misidentification since, in so doing, he promoted me from a lowly blogger to a full professor!

If Kimel’s error was due to subliminal free association, perhaps I, as well, was subconsciously associating “Kimmel” with such heavenly entities as “Himmelbrot” (manna), “Himmelreich” (Kingdom of heaven), “Himmelsleiter” (Jacob’s ladder), and “Himmelsschlüsselchen” (keys of heaven).

What’s the fun of being dully correct when a paltry investment of error repays such princely returns?

Moving along:

“Second, Hays attributes to me arguments advanced by Dr. Philip Cary, whose article I was describing. I wish I had Dr. Cary’s brain, but alas, I’m just a poor blogger.”

I’m aware of the distinction, but since Kimel is using Cary to articulate and advance his own (Kimel’s) position, the distinction is irrelevant for purposes of analysis.

Continuing:

“Third, Hays is engaging in needless polemic when he says ‘Here is one of many points where the Catholic and the Calvinist inhabit different worlds. For the Catholic, it’s as if Scripture doesn’t matter.’ It’s rubbish, of course, to say that Scripture does not matter to Catholics; but it’s also completely beside the point. The argument here is between Luther and Calvin, as interpreted by Philip Cary, who happens to be an Episcopalian. Does Hays really want to say that Luther & Company do not take Scripture seriously? And why throw in the anti-Catholic jibe?”

Several things call for comment:

i) Kimel is a Catholic blogger and apologist who is using Cary to advance a Catholic doctrine of assurance.

ii) As far as Catholicism is concerned, it’s historical theology, not exegetical theology, that calls the shots.

iii) Of course Lutherans take Scripture seriously. But in the context of Kimel’s post and the combox, the objections to the Reformed doctrine of assurance consistently disregard its scriptural basis, and instead reject it on pragmatic grounds because the critics don’t care for its perceived consequences. So the authority of Scripture has figured precious little in this particular forum.

iv) As to whether Episcopalians take Scripture seriously, that can only be answered on a case-by-case basis. Some do (e.g., Roger Beckwith, R. T. France, P. T. O’Brien, J. I. Packer, John Stott), some don’t (e.g., Frank Griswold, Gene Robinson, John Spong, Rowan Williams). It’s not for naught that Kimel finally gave up on the Anglican Communion.

Moving on to the meat-and-potatoes of the debate:

“Here is where the Reformed and Lutheran disagreement comes to a head. All Christians agree that Jn 3:16 is descriptively true. All Christians believe that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” But the problem arises when we translate this descriptive statement into gospel-speech. Within Reformed and evangelical circles, faith is typically presented as a condition for salvation. By Lutheran lights this conditioning of salvation undoes the entire point of the Reformation. The gospel is unconditional promise, not law. Twenty years ago Gerhard Forde stated the Lutheran concern in a private letter to me:


‘The distinction I like to make is one between descriptive language and declarative language. Descriptively it is quite true to say that unless you believe you shall not be saved. But that is just a description of what is the case, and even though it is quite true in and of itself, it is not legitimate to jump immediately to the conclusion or the inference that belief is a condition for salvation, because the description says nothing about how such belief is to come about. Descriptive language is always tricky in theology especially and tricks us because it is so easy to translate it immediately into law language, conditional language. It is the unconditional language, the proclamation, that creates the belief, the faith, without which one cannot be saved. Faith is not a condition for salvation; it is salvation already, since it is created by the living address.’

The entire letter should be read carefully. For the Lutheran, the gospel is not a command to convert but the rendering of an unconditional promise to the sinner: Christ died for you. Christ rose from the dead for you. “This is my body, given for you.” It is this promise that creates the faith to receive it. It is this promise that is the gospel.”

It’s true that the law/gospel dichotomy is essential to Lutheran theology. This is, however, irrelevant to the issue at hand.

I am not taking, in the first instance, about a soteriological condition, but a logical condition. It is Kimel who chose to frame the difference between Lutheran and Reformed in those very terms when he reduced their respective views on assurance to logical syllogisms.

In addition, while the Lutheran may not regard the offer of the gospel as a legally conditional offer, it is still a conditional offer.

If we are justified by faith, then faith is a necessary condition of our justification.

Again, to say that faith is a condition says nothing to prejudge the origin of faith.

The promise of the gospel is not an unconditional promise. It is not enough to say, “This is my body, given for you.”

Even if we accept Lutheran sacramentology, the words of institution do not save the listener irrespective of whether he’s a communicant or not. He must still partake.

Continuing:

“But it is not just the Lutherans who have a concern for the unconditionality of the gospel. In his article “Covenant or Contract?” (Scottish Journal of Theology 23[1970], 51-76), James B. Torrance discusses the Federal Theology that became dominant in the Reformed Churches. Federal Theology, according to Torrance, distinguishes between God’s covenant of works made with Adam, and through Adam with all mankind, in which Adam is promised eternal life if he obeys the laws of nature, and God’s covenant of grace made with the elect, those chosen out of the mass of fallen humanity, with and in Jesus Christ.”

This statement lacks clarity. In Reformed theology, election is unconditional, but the gospel is conditional.

Continuing:

***QUOTE***

It appears that this Federal Theology engendered in Scottish preaching a conditional speaking of the gospel. Given that Christ efficaciously died only for the elect, and given that we do not know who the elect are, preachers cannot declare to all people unequivocally, “Christ died for you!” What they can say to all is “You are all under the law. You are all guilty and under judgment. Repent.” If they in fact repent, the preacher can take that as “evidence of election and grace and then hold out the comforts of the gospel.” “This approach,” says Torrance, “made forgiveness conditional on repentance, gave priority to the preaching of law over the preaching of the Gospel, and bred a deep lack of assurance in that it left people tortured by the question, ‘Am I one of the elect? Have I fulfilled the conditions of grace?’” The focus of Christian life thus “moves away from what Christ has done for us and for all men, to what we have to do IF we would be (or know that we are) in covenant with God. For preaching, this means that the emphasis falls less on the indicatives of grace and more on the imperatives of repentance, obedience and faith.”

***END-QUOTE***

This jumbles together a number of things needing to be sorted out:

i) It’s true that there’s a strain of Calvinism which becomes very self-conscious, mechanically preaching the law before preaching the Gospel. It inclines to Hyper-Calvinism, and turns Christian piety into a leathery and brittle affair.

ii) We also need to make some allowance for differences of national character. There’s a reason why the word “dour” attaches to Scotsmen rather than Italians.

iii) Having said all that, let’s not forget that in the teaching and preaching of Jesus himself, forgiveness was contingent on repentance.

iv) Likewise, there are many examples of evangelistic sermons in the Book of Acts, yet the preacher never says to his audience, “Christ died for you!”

I don’t think it’s asking too much if we pattern our preaching on apostolic and dominical models.

Moving along:

“In evangelical repentance, forgiveness is logically prior to repentance. God has spoken his word of forgiveness on the cross, and it is this word that summons forth our repentance and obedience.”

This sounds like something that Barth or George McDonald would say. We’re already forgiven in Christ, everyone of us. We just need to claim our forgiveness.

This is unscriptural—unless you’re a universalist. Perhaps Kimel is, given his fondness for Urs von Balthasar. I am not. Neither is Lutheranism.

“What would Dr Cary say in response to Torrance’s presentation. Certainly he would, I think, strongly support Torrance’s call for a recovery of the unconditionality of grace and the preaching of evangelical repentance. But I suspect that he would also observe that Torrance’s project is undermined by the Reformed belief that one can have assurance of perseverance and election. The gospel does not promise such certainty.”

I have marshaled a number of arguments against this facile assertion.

“In any case, with Torrance we have a Reformed theologian who shares the Lutheran concern for the preaching of unconditional grace.”

Torrance is not a Reformed theologian. He is simply a theologian in dialogue with the Reformed tradition.

“Karl Barth, with his christological interpretation of divine election, should also be mentioned here.”

It should be mentioned in order to be rebutted.

“The Reformed logic of faith requires one to look away from the promise of Christ in order to introspectively discover within oneself the fulfillment of the conditions of salvation.”

This is a persistent misstatement of the Reformed position. As the Westminster Confession says:

“This certainty is not a bare conjectural and probably persuasion, grounded upon a fallible hope; but an infallible assurance of faith, founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made, the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God; which Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption” (WCF 18:2).

Both the outward promise and the inward grace combine to ground the assurance of salvation.

And, yes, you cannot eliminate the subjective aspect. The promises of God are promises to believers.

“The recollection of baptism, however, is simply recollection of God’s promise that was spoken to us in the past and renewed in the present. The promise remains unconditional. The word to which faith clings remains external.”

The word is objective while the faith is subjective. The promise only applies to believers. Christ is the Savior of Christians.

Try as you might, you can’t escape both elements. Each element is a necessary condition of assurance, which becomes a sufficient condition in combination with the other.

“Is believing in the sacrament equivalent to direct faith in Christ? Yes! Yes! Yes! The answer of both Lutherans and Catholics is a resounding YES! Nobody but the risen Christ himself can speak and fulfill an unconditional promise.”

Take a deep breath and think about what you’re saying. If a promise is unconditional, then there’s nothing to fulfill. If there’s something to fulfill, then the promise can’t be unconditional.

“Nobody but the risen Christ himself can baptize sinners and regenerate their souls by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

This assumes, without benefit of argument, the doctrine of baptismal regeneration.

“The Church is his deified body and sacrament.”

Another stranded assertion, waiting for a supporting argument.

“The gospel is not a third-person description about Jesus. The gospel is Jesus.”

This is rhetorical cotton candy. Try reading the NT again. The gospel is a set of propositions about the person and work of Christ.

Sure, you also need the Holy Spirit to ingenerate faith in the gospel, but let us not confound the gift of faith with the object of faith.

“And it is this gospel, spoken by Christ in the sacrament, that creates the faith that receives it. As Forde writes, we do not need “to go somewhere else and get something called faith.” The sacrament is the place where faith is evoked and generated; the sacrament engenders the faith that receives all the blessings of Christ. It summons us to believe in the promise of Christ, to believe in the sacramental deed itself. Christ Jesus is both minister and gift.”

You’re getting carried away with gushing rhetoric that bears no correspondence to reality. How do you account for the moribund state of contemporary Catholicism in France, Spain, Italy, and so forth if the sacraments enjoyed this faith-inducing power?

Kimel venerates the Eucharist the way the Israelites venerated the Nehushtan (2 Kgs 18:4). Faith becomes gross superstition.

Eastern Orthodox priorities

I'm going to post a recommended reading list from a prominent Orthodox blog. Notice what's missing from this lengthy list: it's all historical and philosophical theology. Nothing specifically on exegetical theology. No commentaries. No OT or NT theologies. No exegetical monographs.

Eastern Orthodox theology isn't based on divine revelation; it's based on man-made tradition and speculation. Eastern Orthodox theology is an exercise in the history of ideas.

Now there's nothing wrong with historical and philosophical theology. But Christianity is first and foremost a revealed religion. That's the starting point. That's the primary source and standard.

What's in a name?

***QUOTE***

pontificator Says:
January 24th, 2006 at 6:46 am

BTW, folks, Hays has issued a rejoinder over at his blog…Also, he actually claims that the late James B. Torrance was not a true Reformed theologian—what balderdash! The Torrances are probably the most famous Reformed theological family in Britain!

***END-QUOTE***

Compare this what Roger Nicole has to say:

***QUOTE***

J.B. Torrance presses the thesis that the successors of Calvin operated with a scholastic Aristotelian conception of God, which in turn undermined the biblical idea of divine love, stiffened the concept of God’s covenants with humanity, asserted the priority of law over grace and thus damaged the thrust of Calvin’s biblical insights and articulation. Torrance holds that the logic of the incarnation must emphasize the priority of grace and love throughout God’s opera ad extra, so as to manifest the perfect unity in triunity of the Father who loves all his creatures, the Son who died for all, and the Spirit who draws humans to the Father. Torrance does recognize a mystery here, but he does not face sufficiently squarely the fact that this construction leads to outright universalism (which is surely not Calvin’s view) or introduces a fundamental disparity between the Father’s and the Son’s saving will, which is universal, and that of the Holy Spirit, which is particular. It is not surprising that he names favorably Barth, Moltmann, and Rahner (to whom he infelicitously conjoins the name of the Jansenist Pascal) and quotes with great approval James Orr in a passage of Progress of Dogma where Orr is critical of Calvin as well as of the later Calvinists! What Torrance advocates here can in any case not be promoted in the name of Calvin, even if some perplexity remains as to what his exact teaching may have been concerning the extent of the atonement and the nature and number of the covenants. Calvin’s endorsement of double predestination, of the ultimate bifurcation of human destiny, and of the forensic nature of the atonement is too clear to permit any doubt on that score. Torrance is surprised that a supralapsarian like Samuel Rutherford could also be “the saint of the covenant,” but this is not really puzzling to a thorough Calvinist.

http://www.apuritansmind.com/Arminianism/NicoleRogerCalvinsLimitedAtonement.htm

***END-QUOTE***

As to his brother, it’s abundantly clear from his books on Karl Barth and Scottish theology that Thomas Torrance was a convinced Barthian who could in nowise subscribe to confessional Calvinism, a la Dordt or Westminster.

Kimel is trying to mount an argument from authority by appealing to James Torrance as a Reformed theologian, when he’s not.

The historical analysis of James Torrance deserves a respectful hearing, which I gave it. But he’s no spokesman for Reformed theology. I will not be party to identity theft.

Apostolic Succession in the First Generation

Bryan Cross said

The whole idea that Jesus must give up His claim to infallibility in order to have a ‘fair’ discussion with men presupposes that there can be no fair or just discussions between an infallible God and a fallible man. In other words, it presupposes atheism. But that’s not something a theist should concede in the first place, because it is a question-begging presupposition against the theist. So likewise, and for the same reason, the notion that one cannot have a ‘fair’ or ‘just’ discussion with a Church that claims to be infallible under certain conditions, is also a question-begging presupposition against the Catholic.

Bryan has back-handedly equated “a Church that claims to be infallible under certain conditions” with Jesus himself. This is a huge stretch, and it assumes very many things that ought not to be assumed.

Called to an Unfalsifiable Refuge

My conversation with Bryan Cross on the topic of Torrance's analysis of Clement of Rome (try saying that one three times fast!) seems to have come to an impasse. I've posted the following over there; I believe every one of my comments has been getting through over there.

* * *

Bryan, it seems as if we’ve come to an impasse here, as you have retreated (as Mike did above) into an unfalsifiable refuge. You can’t allow Clement to speak for himself. You can’t allow an analysis by Torrance to say what Clement was saying.

But Paul said, “I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I utter words of sober truth. For the king knows about these matters, and I speak to him also with confidence, since I am persuaded that none of these things escape his notice; for this has not been done in a corner (Acts 26:26).”

Paul did not hide behind an unfalsifiable refuge. Paul preached a Christ and a Christianity that the whole world could see.

It sounds very pretty and even obedient to say that you are “reading Scripture through the Fathers”, but assuming that Torrance is correct in his analysis (and if Torrance is wrong on any specific point, other than his presupposition, I am open to seeing just where his analysis is flawed), here we have one of the “Fathers”, evidently making “Tradition”, in a usage which very much seems to be somewhat different from the New Testament concept of grace.

[It’s funny, but when David King’s work came out, “Holy Scripture, the Ground and Pillar of our Faith” – that title citing Irenaeus, by the way], no Roman Catholic had any really substantive responses to him. The only thing that all the Catholics were saying around the echo chamber in those days was “it wasn’t peer reviewed” And that was a good enough reason to reject it. Now, here you are, telling me, in a non-peer-reviewed way, what Irenaeus meant (up above), and what Clement means here, and the “peer-reviewed” Torrance is dismissed because he doesn’t hold to the correct paradigm. It’s definitely ironic.]

For me, as a Roman Catholic who was attending Mass weekly, attending Opus Dei “evenings of recollection”, in fact, wanting to *do* all the right things, it was this type of thing that sorely turned me off. There are just too many places where the unverifiable had become dogma -- from the supposed “perpetual virginity” of Mary (contra such words as “adelphoi”) to the Immaculate Conception (sourced from a late second-century gnostic/fictional work) to the [in my opinion simply brazen] “Assumption of Mary” dogma (sourced from fifth century transitus literature) -- those were places where I began looking, but there were plenty more, and the weight of the momentum of my investigations on various topics has carried me through to where I am today.

I know that there is such a thing as “obedience of faith”, that you hold that “the Church that Christ founded” had “authority”, but there are just far, far too many things where one must “exercise obedience” and put aside good and sound analyses like the one done by Torrance. He is not one of those bitterly skeptical “critical scholars”. He was one of the truly helpful theologians.

At some point I just came to say “the Church” really isn’t wiser than I am. There are too many such incidents where one has to make excuses, to hide behind the “unfalsifiable refuge”, such as your quick rejection of “the assumption of solo scriptura” or “the Catholic Interpretive paradigm” -- you all just seem to me to be hiding behind things like that.

Whether you call it “solo” or “sola Scriptura”, God HAS spoken in the Scriptures. He HAS proposed what must be believed. In Micah 6, and similar verses, he even clarifies: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”, to cite just one example.

The type of “binding” that the Roman Catholic Church has done is just a travesty when you consider what God himself has said, in many words that are, yes, telegraphed to be perspicuous. “These things were not done in a corner”.

I’m not saying that no “ministerial teaching” is required. And I allow that the church in earliest times did exercise a “ministerial” teaching function.

But the whole authority structure that evolved out of that -- and yes, I mean “evolved” in the way that’s described by even Roman Catholic scholars such as Francis Sullivan and John Meier and others I’ve mentioned – Catholics in good standing whom you choose to reject – the first and second century church did not have the kind of “divine authority” that you all here attribute to it.

I very much appreciate what the Apostles went through. They shaped the world around them by preaching the Gospel to them – a Gospel of things that could be verified by independent investigation. And I appreciate the struggles and the persecutions that the church went through in the second and third centuries. But these were just men - guided by the Spirit, yes, but in no way infallible. They erred, too, in some very important things, and over the centuries, Rome just seemingly ossified those errors under the cover of “infallibility” and for the sake of protecting its own perceived authority.

And on the other side of this, no, I do not believe Roman Catholics are damned. As I continue to think through the implications of my position, I think it’s fair to say that Roman CatholicISM retains many Christian features, which are obscured, first of all, by the supposed (yes, supposed) authority of the present Roman Catholic hierarchy. But what I see is not an infallible body, protected [in some supposed “infallibility”] by Christ, but a very large body of men simply play-acting at authority, who are doing real harm, not only to the cause of Christianity by their posturing at authority, but harm to many thousands of sex-abuse victims.

Have you all seen just how swiftly the Penn State Board of Trustees has been acting to simply uncover the whole story about the Sandusky sex abuse, and Paterno’s efforts to hide it? They can’t rid themselves of Paterno fast enough. And yet, we are talking about this body of bishops and their motivations to hide the abusers, in a completely opposite response.

IMO, at best, Roman CatholicISM is one of many denominations -- a bad one that has gotten many things wrong. I do appreciate the spirituality of someone like my mother, who remains Roman Catholic. (My sister has since become a Baptist and my brother is one of those who just simply doesn’t go to church, even on Christmas and Easter.)

I’m glad to have had an opportunity to go through this long exercise here, just to see where you do and don’t draw the lines. And how you draw them.

If you all honestly want “the Reformation” to “meet Rome”, it seems to me that you need to do a lot better job of genuinely responding to objections, rather than just hiding behind your own presuppositions.

More about the ancient church at Rome

Sean – (317), you said:

What you are saying is that church fathers are 'muddy' or 'wrong' where they disagree with your theology and 'better' or 'close' or 'good' when they agree with your theology. Its that simple.

No it's not. The studies I've followed and reported on are done by leading, respected theologians. They are very clear about what they say. T.F. Torrance did a significant study on the use of the word “grace” in the Apostolic Fathers, for example. He was not a schlock. And his study was a thorough one. He compared the various uses of the word charis, used (a) in Greek culture, (b) as a translation of the Old Testament concept of hesed (God’s “lovingkindness”, and (c) in the New Testament. Here is Torrance’s assessment of Clement:

Clement definitely thinks of charis as referring to a gift of God without which the Christian would not be able to attain to love or salvation. But there is little doubt that this is held along with the idea of merit before God; for grace is given to those who perform the commandments of God, and who are worthy. He may use the language of election and justification, but the essentially Greek idea of the unqualified freedom of choice is a natural axiom in his thoughts, and entails a doctrine of "works" as Paul would have said. In all His dealings with men, God is regarded as merciful; but the ground for the Salvation He gives is double: faith and ... [ellipses in original].

Clement "thinks of God's mercy as directed only toward the pious" (55)

That concept of being rewarded for being worthy before God is not a concept Paul used; later writers would call that “Pelagian”. But here is “Pope” Clement, a Pelagian before Pelagius. But it wasn’t just Clement whom Torrance analyzed. He analyzed all the writers who wrote during this period, and there was widespread evidence of this phenomenon.

Cullmann agreed with this assessment, and expanded upon it.

Both of these men, especially, are widely regarded by both Protestants and Catholics (Barth had joked that Cullmann, who was one of the few Protestant theologians selected to be an observer at Vatican II, was “an advisor to three popes”), and it is far, far more likely that they “tell it like it is” than that they were writing to support my supposed prejudices. It is unfortunate that their work didn’t get a wider hearing, but the events of Vatican II overshadowed the writings of theologians.

* * *

You said:

It’s worth repeating that for all the bluster of the scholarship you present you are still unable to answer the challenge:

Can you name one piece of historical evidence that meets these two conditions:

(1) it shows that there was no monarchical bishop in Rome until the second half of the second century, and;

(2) it is stronger evidence than is the list of St. Irenaeus (Against Heresies III.3.3)

(Please show why it is stronger evidence than is St. Irenaeus’ list.)

Your challenge, too, is a silly one. Consider the process by which history is written. It's not about a piece of evidence or two that meets some arbitrary conditions, and therefore it overshadows a whole body of research. It's about the weight of research supporting and building a broad understanding of what was happening in that day. And the account that is being written not by one man, but by a whole body of thought, which is now the prevailing understanding. It’s simply not the case that one piece of evidence gets to trump a whole body of work.


Just as an example of all of this, you must have read Eusebius. Eusebius writes at some length about a pair of letters -- one from Abgar (a historical Syriac ruler of the kingdom of Osroene, located at Edessa) to Jesus, the other from Jesus to Abgar.

Two things are evident:

1. Eusebius is so completely convinced of the reliable historicity of these letters that he cites them verbatim as history.

2. The letters are so obviously not authentic that Schaff calls them “a worthless fabrication” and even the 1912 Catholic encyclopedia dismisses them as having no historical value and the "authenticity" "disproved"; these are "legends" with dates established centuries after Christ.

Now, wasn't Eusebius, one of the earliest historians of Christianity, a confidante of that emperor-convert Constantine, worthy of being believed in this case? In many cases, he is our best source, And yet, this very reliable early testimony is completely discounted via critical means.

So critical methods must be employed, even in assessing such an early and generally (but not totally) reliable source as Eusebius.

We have gone round and round about the value of Irenaeus as a historian

First off, his value as a historian is diminished by his statement that the church at Rome was "founded and established by Peter and Paul". This statement looks impressive but it cuts two ways: (a) he is clearly wrong about Paul, who neither founded nor set up the church at Rome. The only chance that Peter would have had to visit Rome would have been the vague mention in Acts 12:17, when he “went to another place”. But in that case, if (as in another Eusebian “whopper”), the “other place” had been Rome, then he would have had to travel, in that world, from Jerusalem to Rome and back for the Jerusalem council in just the space of a few years. That is highly unlikely, given that he was documented to be in other places during those years. Barrett posits an “itinerant ministry”. Marshall, who wrote a commentary on Acts, suggests that accounts that put Peter in Rome during that time are “highly fanciful”.

Aside from that, the whole purpose of the 2nd half of Acts was to talk about how Paul got to Rome. Do you think that if Peter had gotten there first, that it would have been far more important to Luke to note that Peter was there? Yet Paul’s arrival there was the entire focus of the book.

Look at Romans 16:7. What is being said here?

Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.

In fact, it is very likely that someone like Andronicus and Junia (Rom 16:7) “in Christ before me”, had traveled from Jerusalem to Rome shortly after Pentecost and established one of many house churches there. That Paul mentions that they were “apostles”, but more, they were “outstanding among the apostles”, and also, they were “in Christ before me”. That latter phrase opens a space of about a year before the conversion of Paul, and as “apostles”, it is quite likely that Andronicus was the first (or, at the very least, an early)“bishop” of a Roman church. Thus, contra Irenaeus, it is far more likely that Andronicus and Junia “founded and established” a church at Rome.

Second, even if it Irenaeus’s list does have the names of presbyters from Roman history, its “neatness” betrays the tumult of that era in that city. The Shepherd of Hermas, for example, speaks of “the elders (presbuteroi) who preside (proistamenoi – plural leadership) over the church.” (all at the same time - Vis 2.4). This is a primary source document from within the city of Rome that provides support for all of the “scholarship” that you decry, the “snippets” which speak of a “gap” in the “unbroken succession within the first century of the church”. But this is not all there is. Later, Hermas reiterates the structure of this leadership, and the fact that they are not leading, but rather that they fight among themselves. He calls them “children”.

Now, therefore, I say to you [tois – plural] who lead the church and occupy the seats of honor: do not be like the sorcerers. For the sorcerers carry their drugs in bottles, but you carry your drug and poison in your heart. You are calloused and do not want to cleanse your hearts and to mix your wisdom together in a clean heart, in order that you may have mercy from the great King. Watch out, therefore, children, lest these divisions of yours [among you elders] deprive you of your life. How is it that you desire to instruct God’s elect, while you yourselves have no instruction? Instruct one another, therefore, and have peace among yourselves, in order that I too may stand joyfully before the Father and give an account on behalf of all of you to your Lord.” (Vis 3.9)

That makes it far more likely to believe Irenaeus’s list is an after-the-fact "construct" created from names known to the community, than that it was some sort of on-going list maintained as an on-going record.

And third, the list is offered as evidence that "teaching” at Rome had been “preserved and transmitted” to that time. There was no hint that Irenaeus believed that it would be some kind of “continuous line of succession until the end of time”. There is no warrant for that at all.


 

Aquinas, “existence”, and the failure to observe the Creator-creature distinction

Van Til, in his Introduction to Warfield's “Inspiration and Authority of the Bible”, notes that Roman Catholicism does not “start with the Creator-creature distinction as basic to all their interpretation of doctrine. They started with the idea of being as such and introduced the distinction of Creator and creature as a secondary something” (p. 49).

Protestants, from the earliest days of the Reformation, understood a “categorical distinction” between God and all of the rest of creation: the “Creator-creature distinction”. On the other hand, while God is Creator within the Roman Catholic system, God is not “above and beyond”, in a totally other category. He shares a trait, and that trait is “existence”.

In other words, the first category in Roman Catholicism is to start with “existence”: God has “existence”, and he passes this characteristic along to every other created thing. Down below and in subsequent entries I’ll begin to show how that cashes out in the Roman Catholic understanding of the universe.

This is not something that “damns them all to hell”. But this kind of difference at the starting point does lead to the kind of confusion in which Roman dogmas and Protestant doctrines cannot be reconciled after 500 years of differences.

There is also a caution that goes along with all of this.

The ‘λόγος of God’: a Hebrew Concept Packed into a Greek Word

Image source: Accordance

There is still a good bit of activity over at Green Baggins on the thread “Conversions to Roman Catholicism”.

In a side discussion, on the topic of whether the New Testament writers were more influenced by Greek, Pagan, or Gnostic concepts, or whether they drew their sources from the Old Testament, I wrote this comment (#194):

CD-Host said #174 –

The word “logos” is in Greek without a corresponding Hebrew word. The fundamental problem of the logos, how an unchanging god can interact with a changing universe, that is act in time, doesn’t exist in Hebrew though. In Hebrew though God exists in time and experiences reality sequentially.

I’m not going to deny that there are concepts in the Hebrew literature that tie in. For example it is possible to make such a case like Yahweh being the material realization of El. But then you are have to have “Old Testament Judaism” as henotheistic not monotheistic and there you have the “son” being Yahweh not Jesus. The angelic “Son of God” / “Son of Man” concept which does have Aramaic ties and might go back to Hebrew could work.

I don’t see how you can argue that the Christian Logos, John’s Logos isn’t a variant of Hellenistism’s Logos. The Logos for Christians is an intermediary who interacts with matter on behalf of the supreme God.

I think Pagan Hellenism -> Hellenistic Judaism (Philo) -> Christianity (Gospel John) is such an obvious derivation. I’m not sure why you would want to bypass it.

We don’t have to relegate this to opinion. I’ve mentioned to you that T.F. Torrance found Philo in 1 Clement’s use of the concept of “grace”. But that same study of the Apostolic Fathers traced Paul’s usage and it had no discernable reliance on Philo, but rather it relied heavily on the OT concepts of hesed and related concepts of God’s lovingkindness.

Just as some background, (and in response to Bryan’s article “The Tradition and the Lexicon”), I cited G.K. Beale to the effect that:

By standards that Beale relates, there may be more than 4,000 “allusions” or “echoes” of the Old Testament found within the New. Given that there are 7956 verses in the New Testament, more than half the New Testament can be seen as bearing at least some form of “echo of” or “allusion to” some Old Testament concept or idea.

Thus, when a New Testament writer talks of “tradition” “handed down” (παρέδοσαν) to him by “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word”, which in Luke 1:2 is a clear reference to the apostles, the “content” of that “tradition” was oozing with Old Testament words and concepts.

Beale traces three different types of phenomena: “direct references”, “probable allusions”, and “possible allusions”.

An “allusion” may simply be defined as a brief expression consciously intended by an author to be dependent on an OT passage. In contrast to a quotation of the OT, which is a direct reference, allusions are indirect references (the OT wording is not reproduced directly as in a quotation).

This is an exercise in determining “where the language of the New Testament came from”. And it is no surprise that Christ’s Apostles were steeped in the culture of the Old Testament.


With that said, looking to John and λόγος, D.A. Carson, for example, in his analysis of John’s prologue (John 1:1-1:18) while allowing that the word exists in Greek culture (i.e. Plato and Philo), but he says (after a lengthy analysis) “there is little evidence for the existence of full-blown Gnosticism before John wrote his gospel”.

Of Philo and other Greek sources he says:

Still others think John has borrowed from Philo, a first-century Jew who was much influenced by Plato and his successors. Philo makes a distinction between the ideal world, which he calls ‘the logos of God’, and the real or phenomenal world wihich is but its copy. In particular, logos for Philo can refer to the ideal man, the primal man, from which all empirical human beings derive. But Philo’s logos has no distinct personality, and does not itself become incarnate. John’s logos doctrine, by contrast, is not tied to such dualism. More generally, logos can refer to inner thought, hence ‘reason’ even ‘science’. That is one reason why some have advocated ‘Reason’ as a translation of logos. Alternatively logos can refer to outward expression, hence ‘speech’ or ‘message’, which is why ‘Word’ is still thought by many to be the most appropriate term, provided it does not narrowly refer to a mere linguistic sign but is understood to mean something like ‘message’ (as in 1 Cor 1:18).

Kostenberger, too, in his commentary notes the various Greek concepts, and points out that “in Stoic thought, logos was Reason, the impersonal principle governing the universe … Yet while John may well have been aware of the Stoic concept of the logos, it is doubtful that it constituted his primary conceptual framework (and he cites an earlier work of his to that effect).

Neither Carson nor Kostenberger (nor Beale) is unaware of the DSS and other sources you cite. Nevertheless, Carson gives what I believe is a superb summary of the source for λόγος in John 1:

However the Greek term is understood, there is a more readily available background than that provided by Philo or the Greek philosophical schools. Considering how frequently John quotes or alludes to the Old Testament, that is the place to begin. (And the chapter on John in “Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament” covers nearly 100 pages).

There, ‘the word’ (Hebrew: dabar) of God is connected with God’s powerful activity in creation (cf. Gen 1:3ff; Ps 33:6), revelation (Jer 1:4; Is 9:8; Ezk 33:7; Amos 3:1, 8) and deliverance (Ps 107:20; Is. 55:1). If the Lord (Yahweh) is said to speak to the prophet Isaiah (e.g. Is 7:3), elsewhere we read that ‘the word of the Lord came to Isaiah (Is 38:4; cf. Jer 1:4; Ezk 1:6). It was by ‘the word of the Lord’ that the heavens were made (Ps 33:6); in Gen 1:3, 6, 9, etc., God simply speaks and his powerful word creates. That same word effects deliverance and judgment (Is 55:11; cf Ps 29:3ff).

When some of his people faced illness that brought them to the brink of death God ‘sent forth his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave’ (Ps 107:20). This personification of the ‘word’ becomes even more colourful in Jewish writing composed after the Old Testament (e.g. Wisdom 18:14, 15). Whether this heritage was mediated to John by th Greek version of the Old Testament that many early Christians used, or even by an Aramaic paraphrase (called a ‘Targum’), the ultimate fountain for this choice of language cannot be in serious doubt.

Carson goes on to cite other post-OT writings, especially related to the concept of logos as wisdom and concludes, “However, the lack of Wisdom terminology in John’s Gospel suggests that the parallels between Wisdom and John’s Logos may stem less from direct dependence than from common dependence on Old Testament uses of ‘word’ and Torah, from which both have borrowed.”

Concluding with his discussion of Greek thought:

In short, God’s “Word” in the Old Testament is his powerful self-expression in creation, revelation, and salvation, and the personification of that ‘Word’ makes it suitable for John to apply it as a title to God’s ultimate self-disclosure, the person of his own Son. But if the expression would prove richest for Jewish readers, it would also resonate in the minds of some readers with entirely pagan backgrounds. In their case, however, they would soon discover that whatever they had understood the term to mean in the past, the author [the Apostle John] was forcing them into fresh thought (see on v. 14: there Carson discusses and unpacks this comment: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth”.

It is interesting to note that Carson is finding the same phenomenon in John and “λόγος” that Torrance found regarding “grace” in Paul: the word, prevalent in Greek thought, has a totally new meaning [for pagans] that is filled with Old Testament concepts.

One could go into much greater detail with this. Brown and Cullmann both interact extensively with the literature you cite and both place the identity of the λόγος firmly in the Old Testament.

Faith Alone In Celsus And His Sources

I've often mentioned that we need to take more than the church fathers into account when thinking about the patristic era. (See here for one of my posts discussing the topic.) Several decades ago, Thomas Torrance published a book that was highly critical (overly critical) of how the earliest church fathers viewed grace (The Doctrine Of Grace In The Apostolic Fathers [Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 1996]). Despite being so negative about the earliest fathers, he was more positive about some sources later in the second century:

Which came first, the “apostolic succession” or the New Testament?

The second of Michael Kruger’s three “criteria for canonicity” is “Apostolic origins” of the New Testament canon. With his use of the term “Apostolic Origins” as a criterion for canon, Dr Kruger recognizes that the Apostles played a unique role not only in the development of the canon but in the foundation of the church.

The message of redemption in Jesus Christ was entrusted to the apostles of Christ, to whom he gave his full authority and power: “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me” (Luke 10:16, pg 109).

                                                                                            

Roman Catholics are accustomed to hearing this verse in conjunction with the notion of “apostolic succession”, the notion that the Apostles somehow passed on this authority to “the Church”, and that this “succession” of apostolic “authority” was “handed on” in full measure not only from Christ to the Apostles (which it was), but from the Apostles to the church that came after them.

And while the concept of “apostolic succession” really has nothing to do with the growth and acceptance of the New Testament canon, it’s important to place this into the context of the overall discussion about the New Testament canon.

The question often is asked, (as Trosclair places it in this comment):

the same men who saw the need to ‘fix’ the Biblical canon also saw the need to ‘fix’ the lists of those who were successors to the Apostles. As a matter of fact, the Apostolic sees were more important for Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, etc. for the purpose of combating the Gnostic sects than was the Biblical canon. This contradicts Cullmann’s thesis. The Church fathers make it clear that the Scriptures could be twisted but the Apostolic sees had the sure ‘charism of truth’ which would preserve orthodoxy.

The short answer is that the “canonical core” of Apostolic writings was in place long before Irenaeus (c. 180), Tertullian (c. 200), and Cyprian (c. 250) ever commented about “lists”. Prior to the time these men wrote, both the Old Testament and the “canonical core” (of the collected works of Paul and the four gospels) of the New Testament were actually were the source of orthodoxy and the precursor of the “rule of faith” (see Canon Revisited, pgs 133-141). I’ll discuss the specifics of this as I move forward through the book.

Suffice it to say that Cullmann’s thesis (“Scripture and Tradition,” reprinted in “The Early Church,” London: SCM Press LTD © 1956, reprinted ©2011) does account for this fact, in a way that Trosclair may not have seen in the short selections I’ve posted from Cullmann’s writings. The writings of the New Testament came first, (in the form of the “canonical core”, to be sure), and the “Apostolic sees” came later. Someone may protest that “the canonical core” wasn’t quite complete, but it was authoritative nonetheless.

Here is how Cullmann described the apparent unreliability of “oral tradition” in maintaining “the apostolic witness”, which was regarded to be unique and unrepeatable, in comparison with later “ecclesiastical” traditions, which were certainly not binding on the universal church (especially not the church of the Reformation or the church in our time):

For a long time it has been noted that, apart from the letters of Ignatius, the writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers, who do not really belong to the Apostolic age but to the beginning of the second century—[1 Clement, Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas]—despite their theological interest, are at  a considerable distance from New Testament thought, and to a considerable extent relapse into a moralism which ignores the notion of grace, and of the redemptive death of Christ, so central to apostolic theology. [See Torrance’s “The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers,” 1948].

It has also been noted that the Church Fathers who wrote after 150—Irenaeus and Tertullian—although chronologically more remote from the New Testament than the authors of the first half of the century, understood infinitely better the essence of the gospel. This seems paradoxical, but is explained perfectly by that most important act, the codification of the apostolic tradition in a canon [a “canonical core”], henceforward the superior norm of all tradition.

The Fathers of the first half of the century wrote at a period when the writings of the New Testament already existed, but without being vested with canonical authority, and so set apart. Therefore they did not have any norm at their disposal, and, on the other hand, and on the other hand, they were already too far distant from the apostolic age to be able to draw directly on the testimony of eye-witnesses. The encounters of Polycarp and Papias with apostolic persons could no longer guarantee a pure transmission of authentic traditions, as is proved by the extant fragments of their writings.

But after 150 contact with the apostolic age was re-established through the construction of the canon, which discarded all impure and deformed sources of information. Thus it is confirmed that, by subordinating all subsequent tradition to the canon, the Church once and for all saved its apostolic basis. It enabled its members to hear, thanks to this [“canonical core”], continually afresh and throughout all the centuries to come the authentic word of the apostles, a privilege which no oral tradition, passing through Polycarp or Papias, could have assured them (96).

The writings of Irenaeus (c. 180), Tertullian (c. 200), and Cyprian (c. 250), came much later than this “canonical core” of Paul’s writings and the Gospels. Cullmann goes on to note that, of course “scripture needs to be interpreted” and “the church ought to feel responsible for this interpretation” (97).

However, if the notion of “apostolic sees” was helpful in combating the Gnostic heresies of the day, it must be recognized that this was a still-later development (late second century), and the church at large ought in no way to be bound by what really was an “interpretive hermeneutic” of the second century.  It was by no means a “structural component” of “the Church that Christ founded”. An apologetic tactic that worked in the context of Gnostic heresies by no means subjects the later church to that hermeneutic and tactic.

And comments by late second and third-century writers ought by no means to provide the basis for a governmental structure that clearly became not merely open to abuse, but which itself became a form of abuse, and desperately needed to be changed.

This is precisely where the heart of the conflict between Rome and the Reformation lies. Once the notion of “apostolic succession” is put into perspective as a mechanism for addressing heresies (and not a mechanism by which the “authority” of the apostles was “handed down” to later popes and bishops), it clears the way for us to understand that the Reformers rightly cast off Roman authority when they did.

The Reformation holds that the role and “office” of Apostle was unique and unrepeatable. Rome holds, too, to some form of lip service that the “office” was unrepeatable, but somehow, the authority made its way to “bishops” (and from Peter to “the successor of Peter”), as somehow “structural” to the church – an “ontological reality” of the church. “Bishops must be in charge”, and not only are they “in charge”, but they somehow have interpretive mastery over the texts of Scripture.

Cullmann goes on to say that, in its acceptance of core canonical works of the New Testament as normative (based on the apostolic testimony therein), it is tacitly making the agreement that it “does not impose on future generations to take as a starting-point and as a norm of their interpretation of the same text the decision that it feels bound to take, but it remains conscious of the superiority of the scripture as the immediate testimony of the divine revelation to the interpretation which it feels compelled to give, and which can only be a derivative testimony…” (97).

So, the concept of “apostolic succession” within the “apostolic sees” did not, for the church of this period, constitute a “structural element” of the church, in the same way that the “apostolic testimony” (or “apostolic tradition”) was normative and foundational for the church. 

God is not himself today–come back tomorrow

I'm going to comment on this post, by a Barthian universalist:

http://acthe.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/eschatology-and-the-character-of-god/

In fact we object to violence and to the destruction of our enemies because this is precisely what God does too; this how God manifests himself when he is in us. The virtue lists in the New Testament depict human likeness of God in fundamentally nonviolent, benevolent terms: poor in spirit, mourning, meek, hungry for righteousness, merciful, pure, peacemakers, persecuted (Mt 5.3-10); lovers of enemies (Mt 5.43-8); loving, joyful, peaceful, forbearing, kind, good, faithful, gentle, self-controlled (Gal 5.22-3); not angry, not malevolent, beneficent in speech and deed, not bitter or rageful, kind and compassionate and forgiving (Eph 4.25-32); pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and goodness, impartial, and sincere (Jas 3.17). Persons who embody and manifest these traits are not violent; they are not descriptions of persons acting violently or malevolently. If this is what it means to have God present in you, then we infer that this is what God is truly like.

i) Nemes is burning a straw man when he equates retributive justice with violence. And the fumes rising from his straw man become even more acrid when he equates retributive justice with rage, bitterness, and malevolence. He isn't even attempting to accurately characterize the opposing position.

ii) Then there's his flawed theological method, where he resorts to non-eschatological, common grace passages to negate passages specific to eschatological justice and judgment. But our primary source of information about eschatology ought to come from passages directly concerned with eschatology. 

“But God is demonstrably violent and malevolent to some.” Yes, but he is not being himself. This is an important insight Jon D. Levenson mentions in his analysis of Torah in Creation and the Persistence of Evil: in his battle against sin and the forces of evil, God is forced to behave himself in a way with which he does not identify, which he does not desire. His ultimate goal is to be the benevolent, sovereign ruler of a freely cooperative world in which all flourish; but when evil threatens to destroy everything, he must cease to be benevolent to work towards preserving his threatened sovereignty.This is why it is important that we do not accept depictions of divine violence, of divine judgment, of damnation, etc., as final and definitive realities: God must be himself, he must be his true self in the end, and his true self is not the damning God but the saving God. Like Levenson says, God may not be proximately good, but he must be ultimately good.

That's an arresting notion of God. It reminds me of movies in which the villain gives the protagonist a choice: he can shoot one of his friends to save the other, or if he refuses to choose, the villain will shoot both of them. 

To judge by this, the God of Barth, Torrance, and Moltmann is a finite deity at the mercy of a rebellious creation; a God who is "forced" to act out of character–forced to commit heinous crimes in the short-term as he struggles to regain control of the situation. 

Three views of eastern orthodoxy-3

"Most Protestant Evangelicals with their generally dualistic--if not epistemologically Nestorian--methodology inherited from the Scholastic heritage, which starts not with a person but with a written text, the Bible, telling us about the person of Jesus Christ...," (60).

"The differences are reminiscent of the contests between ‘personal’ (Christ himself) and propositional (Scripture) forms of revelation within the evangelical community in its reaction to Karl Barth. It would be an overstatement to label Orthodox theology as ‘Barthian,’ but the similarities are clearly there...The problem itself derives from making a disjunction between personal and propositional revelation, which itself is but a further instance of the false dichotomy set up by the Protestant Scholastics and others between Scripture and tradition, a dichotomy that implies an adversarial relationship between the two...God’s primary revelation of himself being personal through Jesus Christ...yet which is also propositional through the written Word which tells us about the personal Word," 61.

By way of reply:

i) One wonders if Barthian influence is what accounts for the resistance of Nassif and other Orthodox contemporaries to directly equating Scripture with divine revelation. Do they believe, a la Barth, that Scripture becomes, at best, a secondary witness to revelation?

ii) The reason that evangelical conservatives rejected the Barthian reconstruction of Scripture is owing to the fact that it ran counter to the self-witness of Scripture, period.

iii) One also wonders if Nassif and others find affinities between Barthian universalism and Orthodox universalism.

iv) Nassif fails to draw an elementary distinction between ontological priority and epistemic priority. Christ is prior in the order of being, but not of knowing.

v) This confusion causes Nassif in turn to misalign personal and propositional revelation. The person is ontologically prior to the proposition; but, for most of us--excepting the Apostles--our only access to the personal revelation of Christ is via the propositional revelation of Christ.

vi) Even this oversimplifies the relation. For the spoken word is another port of entry in getting to know the person. Even for the Apostles, their personal knowledge of Christ came largely through the teaching ministry of Christ.

vii) We need to guard against exaggerating the analogies and disanalogies between the personal Word and the written word. The "logos" is an economic title for Christ--one of many titles. It is a figurative title. It has its primary antecedents in the OT word of the Lord, which had written as well as spoken modes of transmission.

viii) The whole Scholastic etiology is based on a single article by Thomas Torrance, a Barthian, and hotly contested by the likes of Roger Nicole, Paul Helm, John Woodbridge, and Richard Muller. Muller, for one, is the world authority on Reformed Scholasticism. Nassif would be well advised to steer clear of issues far outside his area of expertise unless he’s going to bone up on the standard literature, which is not in evidence.

"In the area of biblical exegesis, Orthodoxy consistently manifests and tolerates a hermeneutical pluralism that generally falls within the third and fourth-century Alexandrian school or allegorical exegesis or the Antiochene school of literal exegesis," 61.

By way of reply:

i) For the umpteenth time, Nassif advertises the Orthodox incapacity for self-criticism. The central question is not, "What do the Orthodox believe?" but "Whether the Orthodox are right?"

ii) Is it coherent to affirm both literal and allegorical exegesis? Does this have any basis in the self-understanding of Scripture?

iii) Couldn’t allegorical exegesis be used with equal ease to prooftext heresy?

Quoting from a couple of Orthodox sources, Nassif cites the following:

"They [the Scriptures] are at once divinely inspired and humanly expressed. They bear authoritative witness to God’s revelation of himself...as such, they express the Word of God in human language," 62.

"Inspiration is the operation of the Holy Spirit in the authors of the holy scripture so that they may bear witness to the revelation (Jn 5:39) without erring about God and God’s ways and means for the salvation of humankind. Expressions and concepts of biblical authors about God are inspired because they are unerring guides to communion with God...Authentic interpreters of the holy scripture are persons who have had the same experience of revelation and inspiration within the body of Christ as the biblical writers had. Therefore, it is necessary for authentic understanding that anybody who reads or hears the Bible be inspired by the Holy Spirit," 64.

Then, adding his own commentary, Nassif says that "in Orthodoxy one can be an inerrantist, as were some of the Fathers," 65.

By way of reply:

i) What we have here is a classic restatement of limited inerrancy or partial inspiration.

ii) In addition, we have a doctrine of continuing revelation, which amounts to an open canon.

iii) One can be an Orthodox churchman is good standing without adhering to the plenary inspiration of Scripture.

There’s a lot that one could say about all this, but I’ll confine myself to a few remarks:

i) We might dub this the "fits-and-starts" school of inspiration. According to Orthodox pneumatology, the Holy Spirit would evidently run out of steam if he tried to inspire the entire Bible. So inspiration must be strictly rationed.

The first job of an Orthodox commentator is to go through the Bible with a pencil in one hand and a highlighter in the other. He highlights every sentence that tells us how to get to heaven, but draws a line through every sentence that doesn’t.

At this point, my only question is, Why even pretend to uphold the inspiration Scripture? Why go through this charade of affirming the first sentence, disaffirming the second sentence, affirming the second clause of the first sentence while denying the first clause of the second sentence, and so on?

This makes a mockery of inspiration, the purpose of which is to confer certainty on the message.

ii) Some one-time evangelicals convert to Orthodoxy under the misimpression that the Orthodox Church is the last bastion of conservative values. Take a long hard look at what Nassif has just said. What we have here is just another one of the infinite permutations of liberal theology.

iii) Nassif never bothers to ask himself if his doctrine of Scripture is Scriptural. Does this comport with the self-witness of Scripture? A good place to find an answer to would be the classic essays of Benjamin Warfield on the subject.

iv) Likewise, where does the Bible ever make an inspired audience a condition of understanding? Indeed, if everyone were inspired, then no one would need to listen to the Apostles and prophets, for they could hear God directly.

v) Imagine how easy it would be for a heretic to claim inspiration on Nassif’s open-ended view?

vi) Nassif denies a dichotomy between Scripture and tradition, but affirms a dichotomy between one part of Scripture and other part, between witness and revelation, between the Word of God and human language.

vii) Yes, divine revelation is expressed in human language. But what is the source of human language? God, as Adam’s Creator, is the source of human language (Gen 2). And linguistic diversity falls under the sovereign providence of God as well (Gen 11).

viii) Ordinary language is perfectly adequate to describe historical events--as well as the divine intent driving historical events.

ix) Appeal to the ineffable is a double-edge sword. For there are things which the liberal theologian and the Orthodox theologian wish to affirm as much as the evangelical theologian. But they cannot invoke ineffability against evangelical theology without dismounting their own hobbyhorse in the process.

"Chronologically [speaking], tradition is anterior to Scripture because it transmitted the gospel within the liturgical community of the church...the church later decided which texts constituted the canon of Scripture by ‘recognizing’ their apostolic origins, content, and usage within the worshipping community...the church was inseparably united with its sacred texts as the mediating authority," 66-67.

"Whether they are aware of it or not, when evangelicals give assent to the canonical texts, they are simultaneously validating the church’s tradition as an authoritative norm of canonicity, just as it has actually functioned within the life of the Orthodox church itself...the irony of this disdain is that evangelicals rely on the church’s authoritative charismatic judgment on the colossal issue of canonicity but not on its consensual agreement on fundamental matters of historic interpretation, such as the sacramental meaning of baptism and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist," 67.

By way of reply:

i) This is a classic, High-Church objection to the Protestant faith. But one problem with such an objection is that it classic to more than one High-Church tradition. Both an Orthodox apologist and a Catholic polemicist deploy this argument.

But if two opposing communions can use the same generic argument, then how is that an argument for one or another communion in particular?

ii) Why do high churchman constantly leave the OT canon out of account when they talk about the priority of oral tradition or the priority of the NT church? The prooftexting for the apostolic kerygma came from the OT.

It is also striking that when God constituted the nation of Israel, he did so by means of a written constitution (the Mosaic Covenant), just as, when he constituted the NT church, he did so by means of a written constitution (the NT).

iii) It wasn’t the church which wrote the NT, but chosen individuals over and above the church. The transmission of the message is no more charismatic than the scribal activity of the Jews who copied the OT text.

iv) When Nassif talks about an "authoritative charismatic judgment," he is imputing his own criterion to the evangelical, then accusing the him of inconsistency for failing to carry that criterion over to hermeneutics.

But this is an instance of mirror-reading. To the extent that the evangelical appeals to external attestation, this does not commit him to the idea of an "authoritative norm" or "charismatic judgment." He is simply treating the early church fathers as a historical witness to the origin of the canonical books. But an appeal to historical testimony in no sense assumes or necessitates an authoritative norm or charismatic judgment. Why does Nassif apply a totally different standard to canonicity than he ever would to archeology or historiography?

It should go without saying that a man can be a competent historical witness without being an especially competent exegete. The son of Albert Einstein may be highly qualified to write a biography about his father, and utterly unqualified to write an exposition of general and special relativity. Evangelicals don’t treat canonics and hermeneutics the same way for the simple reason that they’re not relevantly the same.

v) Perhaps Nassif would say that nothing short of an authoritative church will yield an authoritative canon. However, the Calvinist regards the historical process as under the sovereign providence of God. I also deny that the case for the canon is limited to external attestation.

vi) Did the church decide at a later date which books constituted the canon? This represents a very canned view of the process--one which is endlessly regurgitated by writer after writer. But it’s not as though Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, James and Jude, Peter and Paul, or the author of Hebrews simply stuffed a scroll into a bottle and cast it upon the waves to go wherever the currents happened to take it.

To say so betrays very little historical imagination, as well as specific data to the contrary. Luke, for one, tells us that he had a specific audience for his gospel (Lk 1:1-4). John says the same thing (Jn 20:31). Same thing with the Book of Acts.

And you have only to read the beginning and ending of a NT letter to see that it had a specific recipient. Indeed, that’s in the nature of a letter. A letter is sent to someone. The NT church was a small, tight-knit association in which everyone knew everyone else. It operated very much like an extended family, and--in no small measure--really was an extended family.

There was a preexisting constituency for the NT. All of the NT writings are either by first or second generation Christians. Many of the NT writers are affiliated with the mother church in Jerusalem, either as members or via members.

The NT authors share a number of documented contacts and go-betweens. Mark is an associate of both Peter and Paul (Acts 13:5; Col 4:10; 2 Tim 4:11; Phlm 24; 1 Pet 5:13). Timothy is an associate of both Paul and the author of Hebrews (Acts 16-20; 1 Cor 4:17; 16:10; 2 Cor 1:19; Col 1:1; Phil 1:1; 1 Thes 1:1; 3:2,6; 2 Thes 1:1; 1-2 Tim; Heb 13:23). Luke is an acquaintance and/or associate of Paul, Mark, Mnason, Philip, and James (Acts 21:8,16,18; Col 4:10,14; 2 Tim 4:11). Barnabas is an associate of both Paul and the Jerusalemite apostles (Acts 4:36; 9:27; 11-15; 1 Cor 9:6; Gal 2:1,9, 13; Col 4:10). Silas/Silvanus is an associate of both Peter and Paul (Acts 15-18; 2 Cor 1:19; 1 Thes 1:1; 2 Thes 1:1; 1 Pet 5:12). And for every documented associate who is mentioned in passing, you can sure bet there are many more whom the author had no occasion to mention.

vii) Nassif is setting up a very wooden two-stage process between the phase of composition and the phase of canonization. But the process was much more organic than that. It has more to do with diffusion in time and place from a local church to the church-at-large. Geography and chronology distinguish one phase from another.

viii) Even when it comes to the church at large, it is not as though the church sat down with a random pile of books, and sorted them out book-by-book. For the books of the NT fall into several natural groupings, based on various levels of literary dependence. For example, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are synoptic. 2 Peter and Jude are synoptic.

In addition, there would also be preexisting blocks of material based on common authorship: This would include the Lucan corpus (Luke-Acts), the Pauline corpus (Romans—Philemon), the Petrine corpus (1-2 Peter), and the Johannine corpus (John; 1-3 John; Revelation).

So the NT canon consists of several literary units and cross-references to form a larger, interlocking corpus.

"In this liturgical setting the evangelical theology of the Orthodox Church is very vividly confessed...the necessity of personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is made absolutely clear through the direct questions that are powerfully addressed to the candidate no less than three times by the priest, along with the candidate’s public declaration of Jesus as his/her personal King and God and a solemn confession of the Nicene faith," 70.

By way of reply:

i) Given that, to my knowledge, infant baptism is the rule in the Orthodox Church, I can only marvel at how precocious are the offspring of Orthodox parents. Whether or not this is a recommendation for Orthodox theology, it is certainly a recommendation for enrolling your young children in an Orthodox daycare in case some of this precociousness were to rub off.

ii) As Nassif has to admit on the next page, the necessity of personal faith is not, in fact, expressed by the baptismal candidate, but by the child’s parents or godparents.

Now, whatever you may make of paedobaptism, per se, if personal faith is a necessity, then that condition cannot be exercised on behalf of the candidate, and in his place, by a sponsor, for whatever the merits of a sponsor, proxy faith is the antonym of personal faith.

On either count, the theology of the Orthodox church is sub-evangelical: either the exercise of personal faith is not necessary after all--or else it is necessary, but that condition is not satisfied by the terms of the baptismal ceremony.

Again, I’m not commenting on whether infant baptism is a good or bad thing, or whether evangelical theology is a good or bad thing. I am simply pointing out that Nassif has, himself, stated the condition which must be met, only to fail in its fulfillment.

This is reinforced by yet another condition of his:

"Baptism does not and indeed cannot ‘depend’ for its reality (e.g., for truly being our death, our resurrection with Christ) on personal faith. this is not because of any deficiencies or imitations of that personal faith, but only because baptism depends--totally and exclusively on Christ’s faith," 72.

By way of reply:

i) If the reality of baptism "depends totally and exclusively on Christ’s faith," then personal faith cannot even be a necessary condition, for the faith of Christ, which is a proxy faith, is a sufficient condition.

ii) Where does Scripture ever say that the faith of Christ is a necessary, much less a sufficient, condition for the reality of baptism?

Once again, Orthodox theology seems to think that truth is a matter of sheer stipulation: if we say it’s so, then it must be so! If we say the moon is made of green cheese, then the moon is made of green cheese!

"The Orthodox understanding of freewill rejects the need for a special act of God’s prevenient grace, which includes the freedom of choice given to humans in creation and remaining within them in a dysfunctional condition even after the fall. Our basic orientation, or compass, toward God and the freedom to choose him remains intact, yet we fail to see that compass clearly or to exercise that freedom to believe and obey properly, because our will is now wayward and because sin has dramatically blurred our ability to see God and know ourselves.

For the Greek church fathers, sin was understood not primarily as a deliberate act of willful disobedience (which it is) as much as the inability to see and know God and ourselves clearly," 74.

By way of reply:

i) One more time: where is the supporting argument? The Orthodox theologian has it pretty easy. He never has to prove a thing. He has only to quote a church father or two. How do I know that such-and-such is thus-and-so? Because tradition says so. How do I know that what tradition says is thus-and-so? Don’t ask!

ii) Now, the imago Dei is a Scriptural category. Since, therefore, he is appealing to a Scriptural category to begin with, you just might suppose that it would be important to actually exegete his version of freewill from the imago motif in Scripture. And to do so by responsible methods.

But, no. Like an astronaut, he floats about in an evidentiary vacuum, unencumbered by any burden of proof. In this weightless environment, he has no onus to discharge. Like God’s verbal fiat, he can speak reality into existence.

iii) Note, the question here is not whether freewill in general or some particular version thereof is true, possibly true, or false. The question is not abstract, but concrete. How do we convert this hypothetical to an object of knowledge?

Assume, for the sake of argument, that it is the case. How does Nassif or anyone else happen to know it to be so? How is the reader in a position to judge the claim?

iv) On the face of it, though, his claim is incoherent. If an ability to clearly discern the will of God is a precondition for choosing to obey his will, then an inability to discern his will renders it impossible to do his will. And in that event we would need a special act of prevenient grace to choose between good and evil.

Why is it that Nassif cannot connect his own dots? Presumably because he is reciting rather than reasoning. He is faithfully reproducing his tradition instead of asking whether his tradition makes any sense on its own or is faithful to the Scriptures.

There is nothing wrong with commitment to a theological tradition. But there is something very wrong with blind commitment--with a commitment which is not answerable to the word of God.

I could comment on some additional things, but why bother? At one level, it’s entertaining to poke fun at this, but there’s a deadly serious side to it. On my deathbed, as I look over my life and the lives of those I’ve taught, and as I stare into eternity, should it not be a matter of no little concern whether I founded my faith on solid ground rather than quick-sand? Rommen, Nassif, and Berzonsky are too wrapped up in the part they’re playing to step outside their role and see how much they’ve taken for granted.

The Orthodox do not have a monopoly on groupthink. One can find this in the Reformed community as well. But because the Reformed tradition is also a polemical tradition, used to debating its claims with the Romanist, the Remonstrant, the Lutheran, the Socinian, and a host of others, it has a capacity for criticism and self-criticism alike--whereas the Orthodox, who boast of never having had a Reformation, are so used to seeing the world through their Orthodox window that they cannot see either the window or the world apart from the window. This renders them unteachable.