Lee defends the traditional position on eternal generation/procession. I don't. Likewise, his prooftexts for divine simplicity are Mickey Mouse. But putting that aside, this is a useful historical and exegetical overview:
http://www.upper-register.com/mp3/Trinity/Trinity-Handouts.pdf
Showing posts with label Lee Irons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lee Irons. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 30, 2018
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Monday, July 17, 2017
Saturday, June 03, 2017
Tuesday, January 03, 2017
Christology and compound words
Lee Irons is leading the charge for the eternal generation of the Son based on the traditional rendering of monogenes (μονογενής) as "only-begotten". Lee is a fine scholar, so he's a good spokesman for that position.
The word occurs in Jn 1:14,18; 3:16,18 & 1 Jn 4:9. And that understanding was codified in the Nicene Creed.
I've already explained my own position. I affirm eternal Sonship but deny eternal generation:
But now I'd like to raise a linguistic issue. Monogenes is a compound word. Sometimes the meaning of a compound word is a combination of what the constituent words individually mean. And that's the unquestioned assumption or inference when monogenes is rendered "only-begotten". Proponents of eternal generation justify their position on the supposition that monogenes has the conjoined meaning of the two individual words that compose it.
Put another way, they presume the compound word has a transparent meaning, by combining what each of the two words mean. And certainly the import of many compound words follows that simple additive principle. To take a few English examples: bedtime, dishwasher, football, footpath, headache, headlight, northwest, rowboat, shortsighted, taillight, teapot, toothbrush.
In cases like that, if you know the meaning of the uncompounded words, you can figure out the meaning of the compound word.
But many times, a compound word has an idiomatic meaning that's not derivable from the conjoined import of the uncompounded words that compose it. To take a few English examples: acidhead, callgirl, cottonmouth, cyberspace, dot.com, flying saucer, grease monkey, greenhouse, homesick, hotdog, jailbird, kickback, ladybug, soap opera.
(In English, a compound word can be solid, hyphenated, or open.)
You can't tell what these words mean by simply combining the individual import of each word.
To take an analogous example, compare these two sentences:
Luigi is waiting for the coin to drop
Let's drop the dime on Luigi
To someone who doesn't know English well, these seem to be semantically equivalent phrases, but of course, they are completely different.
Given that compound words can have, and often do have, idiomatic meanings (and I believe that holds true for Greek as well as English), are proponents of eternal generation justified in simply assuming that monogenes has a transparent meaning–or is that unwarranted unless they present an argument to exclude the real possibility that it's idiomatic?
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Saturday, October 08, 2016
Friday, July 08, 2016
“A Serious Challenge to the New Perspective on Paul”
Not to be missed: Michael Kruger’s review of The Righteousness of God: A Lexical Examination of the Covenant-Faithfulness Interpretation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015):
http://michaeljkruger.com/a-serious-challenge-to-the-new-perspective-on-paul/
http://michaeljkruger.com/a-serious-challenge-to-the-new-perspective-on-paul/
One of the major flash points in this debate is the term “righteousness of God.” Paul uses this phrase in a number of places, but it takes center stage particularly in Romans. Indeed, one might suggest that the “righteousness of God” is the theme of the entire book:
“For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith” (Rom 1:17).So, what does this phrase mean? NPP advocates say it refers simply to God’s covenantal faithfulness. Reformed theologians have argued that it refers to a righteous status received from God.
It is on this very question that NPP advocates are facing a new and robust challenge from Lee Irons ...
Monday, December 21, 2015
What does Jesus know?
Apostate Dale Tuggy recently interviewed Lee Irons, who defended traditional Christology:
Lee is a Bible scholar, Dale is a philosopher. For the most part, Lee can argue circles around Dale when it comes to exegetical theology.
There were a couple of points at which Dale tripped him up. There's the tension between Lee's commitment to the eternal generation of the Son and his commitment to the aseity of the Son. Lee tried to finesse that as well as he could, given his prior commitment to both propositions, but the tension remains.
Finally, near the end of the program, Dale said [slight paraphrase]:
On the two natures reply, it's not clear to us [unitarians] how it really answers the objection. Take the case of knowing everything v. not knowing everything. So the traditional answer is that he knows everything as God but he doesn't know everything as man.
Yet it's not natures that know, but the man, the person that knows or not. So if you know something through your divine nature, it looks like it follows that you know it, the one with the nature, if you're somewhat ignorant insofar as you're human…it's the man, the person which is the subject of the ignorance. But if you accept that then you just have he knows everything and he doesn't know everything. That's an apparent contradiction.
It's hard to make sense of Dale's argument. Admittedly, he's speaking off the cuff. However, this is hardly the first time he's raised this objection, so he ought to have his formulation down pat.
i) Is he really that simple-minded, or is he attempting to confuse Christians? The orthodox argument is that Jesus is omniscience in one respect, but not omniscient in another respect. That's not contradictory. That's not even an apparent contradiction. It would only be contradictory to say Jesus is omniscient and not omniscient in the same respect. So the two-natures response is hardly reducible to "he knows everything and he doesn't know everything." That ignores key qualifications. Is Dale really that uncomprehending? Is he playing dumb, or is he truly that dim?
ii) The closest Dale comes to an explanation is to distinguish nature and person. But the "two-natures" phrase is shorthand. It doesn't mean Jesus has two impersonal natures.
To begin with, the divine nature is a personalized nature. The Son of God is a person. A rational agent.
Likewise, Jesus had/has a brain and a rational soul. Therefore, his human nature is personalized.
These aren't abstract natures, but individualized natures. Although nature and person are distinct, they are not dichotomous. And even though there's a sense in which person and nature are separable for humans, they are inseparable for God.
iii) Perhaps, hovering in the background of the objection, is the traditional formula that Jesus is one person with two natures. If so, then you don't have a one-to-one correspondence between person and nature. So maybe Dale is hinting at a contradiction from that angle. It's hard to say, because his objection is so sloppy.
Maybe his implicit objection is that Jesus can't be one person if he has two minds (human and divine). If person and nature pair off, then two natures entail two persons. If that's his objection, I'd say the following:
a) There's the question of what "person" means in Latin patrology, Greek patrology, and modern theology.
b) The meaning of the Incarnation can't be captured by single words like "nature" and "person". That's shorthand. That's not a substitute for a more detailed model. What "nature" and "person" mean in that context must be unpacked with definitions and explanations. You can't produce a contradiction by simply opposing one word ("nature") to another word ("person").
c) High-church Christians are committed to the theological settlement of the ecumenical councils, so they must try to operate within that framework. For better or worse, they are saddled with the limitations of their received tradition.
But if push came to shove, many evangelicals don't think every strand in that position is equally central in the web of belief. In terms of their priorities, I think many evangelicals begin with the full humanity and full divinity of Christ. Those are nonnegotiable. If something has to give, it's not the two natures but the one person. Not what's related, but how it's related.
d) Jesus won't be "one person" in the same sense that a merely human individual is "one person". We might say Jesus is a "complex person".
In the nature of the case, this is a unique situation, without parallel among merely human individuals.
e) However, that's not special pleading. For instance, what do dogs dream about? I don't know. I'm not a dog. A canine mind is different from a human mind, and since I can't experience both, I have no direct basis of comparison. Just as I don't know what it's like to be God Incarnate, I don't know what it's like to be a dog. Human psychology is the only frame of reference.
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Faith, justification, and salvation
I'd like to make a few more quick points about Lee Irons in regard to John Piper:
1. One source of confusion is due to the fact that there are at least two conditions in play:
i) Faith is a necessary condition of justification
ii) Justification is a necessary condition of salvation
Lee oscillates between these two different, but interrelated, propositions.
2. I think some Calvinists are nervous about the word "condition" because they think it connotes uncertainly. Because "condition" is often used in human transactions, conditionality in that setting may be uncertain because human agents, unlike God, are not omnipotent and omniscient. Therefore, the parties cannot ensure the satisfaction of the conditions.
That, however, is not inherent in the nature of a condition. Rather, that's context-dependent. Incidental to the agent in question.
For instance, the eternal decree has conditionality. The Resurrection is contingent on the Crucifixion, which is contingent on the Incarnation. Likewise, the death of Christ is contingent on the action of human participants like Judas, Pilate, and the Sanhedrin.
That, however, doesn't render the outcome uncertain. These are determinate means to determinate ends. There's teleology within the decree, where the occurrence of one event depends on the occurrence of another event. Nested events; nested decrees. Yet the outcome is inevitable, as are the intervening events which facilitate the outcome.
Trinitarian salvation
Lee Irons has responded to a post by Mark Jones:
Most of this doesn't interest me. I'm just going to comment on two or three of his statements:
For if we are accounted and accepted as righteous for Christ’s sake alone, then we are righteous, and being righteous means we are legally entitled to the reward of righteousness, namely, eternal life. To say that we need to add other conditions or qualifications would be to deny the sufficiency of Christ’s righteousness. It is to imply that Christ’s righteousness is not sufficient to qualify us to attain heaven. I am confident that Piper would disavow that implication with vehemence.
i) "Qualify" is Lee's word, not Piper's.
There's more to salvation than the forensic dimension. Salvation is not reducible to justification. Salvation is not reducible to the Cross.
ii) Traditionally, the sufficiency of Christ's righteousness stands in contrast to the Roman system of human merit. And there's no doubt that Christ's righteousness is sufficient.
But in Reformed theology, salvation is tightly Trinitarian. The work of Christ is not self-sufficient in isolation to the Father's work and the Spirit's work. These are integrated. The work of Christ is not independently sufficient. Rather, the work of the Father, Son, and Spirit in our salvation is interdependent. Reformed soteriology is Christocentric, not Christomonistic.
One wonders if this doesn't reflect "the Escondido Theology", with its quasi-Lutheran orientation. It's striking that D. G. Hart sides with Irons rather than Jones in this dispute. Moreover, Lutheran apologist Jordan Cooper wrote a supportive post, which Lee said was "excellent."
All of that is to say, the best of the Reformed tradition generally thinks it is better and safer to define faith as the instrument of justification rather than as the condition of justification.
But I would urge people, if they use it, to immediately clarify the sense in which they are using it. Preferably, we should not use it at all. It’s too ambiguous, as Owen said. We should use instrument instead—just as the Westminster Confession does. Besides, if faith is an instrument, then it is in some sense a condition. But not every condition is a mere instrument. So “instrument” is better because it is more precise.
Sure, you can define faith as an "instrument." But if you do that you, then have to define "instrument." What do most people think when they hear the word "instrument"? An electric guitar? Both "condition" and "instrument" need to be defined.
Moreover, I don't think "instrument" is "better and safer" than stating that faith is a necessary condition of justification.
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Is faith a condition of justification?
The debate over Piper's foreword to Schreiner's monograph of justification has reignited:
Justification is simply the forgiveness of sins (negative removal of guilt) and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness (positive reckoning as righteous).
That's an accurate, compact definition.
Entering into a right relationship with God is not part of it. Entering into a right relationship with God is a consequence of being forgiven and reckoned as righteous. In traditional terminology, we would speak of this right relationship as our adoption as God’s children and reconciliation with God (or peace with God). Justification is a purely forensic verdict in which we are freed from guilt and are reckoned as righteous before God.
Up to a point, that's true. That's God's side of the transaction.
However, justification is, in part, a result of a human mental act: justifying faith. So justification is a consequence of divine and human acts alike. Hence, there's a theologically accurate sense in which a sinner can enter into a right relationship with God (Piper's colloquial synonym for justification) by exercising faith in Christ. Justifying faith is a part of it. A human part of it.
Of course, from a Reformed standpoint, faith is, itself, a result of monergistic regeneration. So it's not an independent human contribution to the transaction.
The second confusing terminology is his use of the word “conditions.” He wants to say that faith is the sole condition of entering into a right relationship with God. But if we replace “entering into a right relationship with God” with “being justified,” then it is not true that faith is the sole condition, since faith is related to justification not as a condition but as a means. Faith has never been viewed as a condition of justification in Reformed theology or in the Reformed confessions.
Evidently, "condition" evokes certain connotations for Lee. One problem is a failure to define the term.
"Condition" is a standard term in philosophical usage. As I define it, a condition involves a dependence relation. Take a necessary condition: a sinner is justified if and only if he exercises justifying faith. Faith is an antecedent condition that must be met for justification to obtain.
Put another way, if A is the case, then B is the case. If justifying faith obtains, then justification obtains.
Conversely, unless justifying faith obtains, justification will not obtain.
Lee says faith is a "means" rather than a "condition." But that's a false dichotomy. If faith is a necessary means to an end (=justification), then that's equivalent to a necessary condition. If the end cannot obtain apart from that particular means, then it's a necessary means–which is equivalent a necessary condition.
Faith is not the ground of justification, but the means by which we are justified…
Which suggests that for Lee, "condition" denotes "a ground." But Piper said "condition," not "ground." Moreover, although a ground might be a condition, it doesn't follow that a condition is a ground. Sometimes they overlap, but "condition" is a broader concept, a more general category, than a "ground"
Faith is a purely passive and receptive instrument.
Hovering in the background of that nomenclature is the conflict with Rome. The traditional jargon is fairly opaque unless you contrast it with the opposing viewpoint. One objective is to preclude the notion that faith is meritorious. Preclude the notion that faith merits justification. Without that background, the significance of the terminology is obscured.
In addition, Catholicism has a different concept of justification. Infused righteousness rather than imputed righteousness.
Although these crucial distinctions, and it's important to educate people on what they mean, Piper's paragraph is consistent with all that.
It's also a mistake to think we must repeat traditional formulations. There's nothing wrong with introducing newer words to denote older concepts. For one thing, we sometimes need to update our language to communicate to the current generation. Language changes.
In addition, the newer terminology may, in fact, be an improvement over the older terminology. Using philosophical jargon for theological concepts can lend greater precision to the formulation.
Faith is an open hand that receives the gift…receiving and resting on him and his righteousness, by faith.
"Resting…the open hand" is picturesque imaginary. Dear to people who were raised on that. Nothing wrong with that. But metaphorical language is loose and illustrative. So I don't see why that's superior to a technical term like "condition."
To say the justified "rest" in the righteousness of Christ is not self-explanatory. That's something you have to unpack. So I don't see how that's an improvement over faith as a necessary condition for justification.
It's beneficial to use both kinds of language. Philosophical jargon is more precise while figurative terminology can enable to the reader to "visualize" the concept. They work best in combination.
Piper goes on to say, “There are other conditions for attaining heaven, but no others for entering a right relationship to God. In fact, one must already be in a right relationship with God by faith alone in order to meet the other conditions.”
This is terribly confusing. If we have been justified by faith, we are righteous in God’s sight and therefore entitled to heaven. Christ’s righteousness is sufficient. We do not need to meet any other conditions for attaining heaven. If we have the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, then we are legally righteous in the eyes of God and qualified to attain heaven.
Actually, I think Lee's objection is confused. In Calvinism, the various conditions of salvation are coordinated: all and only the elect are redeemed, regenerated, justified, adopted, sanctified, glorified, &c. So it's true that if anyone condition obtains, all the other conditions will obtain.
If you were justified, then that ensures your salvation. But the same could be said with respect to the other conditions. If you were regenerated, that ensures your salvation. If you are redeemed, that ensures your salvation. If you were elected, that ensures your salvation.
Likewise, if you were justified, that ensures that you were regenerated. If you were regenerated, that ensures that you will be justified. And so on. Each condition entails salvation. Each condition entails every other condition.
But by the same token, we do not attain heaven apart from the other conditions. Each and every condition must be met to attain heaven.
That doesn't mean we do it on our own steam. This is all the result of saving grace. But that's the point: salvation by grace is a package deal. All or nothing.
For instance, you can't be justified unless Christ died for you. The atonement is a necessary condition of justification. Justification is grounded in the merit of Christ's sacrificial death. Penal substitution.
I suspect that Piper is shadowboxing with antinomianism.
In this sense, it is true to say that no one who enters heaven will be devoid of good works and evangelical obedience. But these things have no role to play as means or conditions of attaining heaven. They are the fruit and evidence of saving faith. We do not attain heaven by means of or on the condition of producing the fruit of faith.
Once again, the problem here is that Lee is working with an undefined notion of "condition." That word triggers certain connotations for him. He doesn't indicate where he derives his operating definition.
Sanctification is a condition of attaining heaven. A necessary condition.
We are saved by the work of the Spirit (in regeneration and sanctification) as well as the work of the Father (in election and justification) and the Son (in redemption).
Is justification a sufficient condition to "attain heaven"? Sufficient insofar as justification entails the satisfaction of the other conditions. But insufficient in itself.
Wednesday, September 02, 2015
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Reframing the church’s debate on homosexuality
I think most of Lee's review is useful except for the bit about "pastoral accommodation":
http://upper-register.typepad.com/blog/2015/01/2014-reading-contemporary-issues-homosexuality.html
http://upper-register.typepad.com/blog/2015/01/2014-reading-contemporary-issues-homosexuality.html
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Irons on Adam
Lee Irons has been doing a series on Adam and evolution. He's a protege of the late Meredith Kline:
http://upper-register.typepad.com/blog/adam/
http://upper-register.typepad.com/blog/adam/
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Being as communion
In the past, it was somewhat easier for Arminians to attack Calvinists because universalism wasn't a live option. Now that "evangelical universalism" has made a comeback, the universalists are co-opting Arminian prooftexts. Moreover, universalists can accept these passages as they stand, without further qualification. So they have an advantage over Arminians.
Nicene subordinationists may find themselves in a similar quandary vis-a-vis unitarianism. That's because unitarianism is also making a comeback.
Let's begin with a succinct and lucid statement of eternal generation:
The role of a father is “to beget,” just as the meaning of sonship is “to be begotten.” The Father, therefore, is unbegotten, but is origin and progenitor of the Son, who himself does not beget, for there is no “Son” in the Godhead other than himself. That is to say, the whole reality of the Father is to beget, to generate, to give all that he has, namely, his whole divine nature, to the Son. And the whole reality of the Son is to be begotten, to be generated, to receive all that he has, namely, his whole divine nature, from the Father…The life of the Father is an eternal giving of himself whole and entire to the Son. The life of the Son is an eternal receiving of the Father whole and entire.
http://dhspriory.org/thomas/JohnApp.htm#III
That's a classic, Thomistic definition. Some theologians (e.g. Turretin) tweak it.
Notice the radical ontological asymmetry between the Father and the Son. The asymmetry could not be more radical. The Son is purely and totally the effect of the Father's action. The Son's subsistence is completely contingent, completely derivative. The Son is like a shadow or echo of the Father.
The Son exists only because the Father wills the Son to exist. If the Father momentarily ceased to will the Son's existence, the Son would instantly cease to exist. (Of course, Aquinas would hasten to add that the Father necessarily wills the Son's existence.)
It's like Berkelean idealism, where the world is a divine projection. God is like a lucid dreamer in whose imagination the world subsists.
It reminds me of 2009 reboot of The Prisoner. In the reboot, the "Village" is a dream world. The Village exists in the mind of Helen. Most of the characters in the Village have real-world counterparts. Helen has a sedated, real-world counterpart.
However, Helen and her husband have a son who was "born" in the Village. He can never leave The Village, because he has no real-world counterpart. If Helen ever awakens in the real world, their son will cease to be.
Now I'm going to comment on a defense of eternal generation:
i) Not surprisingly, Lee handles the exegetical side of the argument pretty well. I'm sympathetic to his defense of "only-begotten" as the correct rendering of monogenes. However, that stops well short of his desired destination.
ii) For one thing, John uses several related designations for Christ: the Son, the "only-begotten" Son, the Son of God. Why assume that "only-begotten Son" is intended to emphasize generation, rather than viewing this as a synonymous variant in Johannine usage?
iii) And at the end of the day, we're still dealing with a theological metaphor. Father and Son are theological metaphors. So what's the intended scope of the metaphor? Is it derivation of essence? What about community of essence? Like Father, like Son.
First, it should be obvious that we are using an analogy from human experience to describe something about the eternal, immutable God. Clearly, then, the manner in which a human father begets a son differs significantly from the manner in which the Father begets the Son. For one thing, in human begetting, there is a time when the son does not exist; but in the divine original of which the human begetting is but a pale reflection, there never was a time when the Son did not exist (pace Arius).
Yes, there's a difference, but if you think about it, that's more a difference of degree than a difference in kind. For instance, there was never a time before God willed the creation of the world. Just as the Father always willed the generation of the Son, God always willed the creation of the world. So appealing to divine timelessness has limited value in differentiating a creature from the eternal generation of the Son, on this scheme.
And a human father's begetting is a free and voluntary act, while the Son's filiation is an eternal and necessary act. Otherwise, the Son would be a contingent being, but no contingent being is divine.
But on this paradigm the Son is a contingent being. His existence is contingent on the Father's will. It hangs by the thread of the Father's will.
Also, what's the prooftext for the necessity of the Father willing the Son?
Calvin attempted to resolve the problem by claiming - as we have seen - that the eternal generation of the Son only implies a communication of the personal property of Sonship, not a communication of divine essence. If the latter were the case, then, Calvin assumed, the deity of Christ would be a derived deity and hence no true deity at all…Turretin agreed with Calvin that the true deity of Christ necessarily dictates that the Son be autotheos. Yet Turretin also taught that the eternal generation of the Son involved a communication of essence. Thus, Calvin's solution was not open to him. So Turretin resolved the problem by asserting that aseity is properly attributed to the Son's divine essence not to his person.
i) What's the Biblical warrant for these proposed distinctions?
ii) Shouldn't we consider the possibility that Nicene subordination creates an artificial problem? Instead of laboring to solve that problem within the confines of the Nicene framework, why not question the framework itself?
iii) Apropos (ii), we'd be on further ground if we said the Trinity is a se. Aseity is a property of the Trinity, rather than the Father, or the three persons individually.
Second, such language is unavoidable in any sound doctrine of the Trinity. For we do not maintain that there are three divine beings, but one God in three persons. Were we to argue that the three persons of the Godhead each had aseity in the sense that each had its own divine essence independently of the other two, would we not be committed to tritheism? If so, then we cannot escape the notion that these three hypostases must be related to one another in a way that involves dependence or derivation. But then derivation is the opposite of aseity.
Lee's argument depends on using dependence and derivation as interchangeable concepts. But on the face of it, these are different concepts. A triangle depends on having three sides. But that's not a derivative relationship, that I can see.
May I remind you that this odd language is strikingly similar to the teaching of Jesus himself, "Just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself" (John 5:26).
Does "life" in that verse refer to the inner life of the Godhead? In context, isn't that kind of life a communicable attribute? God grants eternal life to Christians?
Eternal generation, far from detracting from the Son's ontological equality with the Father, actually provides its most profound logical ground.
Except that eternal generation clearly does detract from the Son's ontological equality with the Father. That ontological inequality is built into the radical asymmetry of the relation.
As I've often argued, it would be better to scrap the Nicene subordinationist paradigm rather than tweaking it. I appreciate the way Frame, Warfield, and Helm have redirected the issue.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
"He Descended Into Hell"
Lee Irons has done a miniseries explaining and defending this article of the Apostles’ Creed:
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