David F. Wells. The Courage to Be Protestant: Reformation Faith in Today’s World. Second Edition. Grand Rapids, MI. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2017. Pp. xiv + 218. $22.00.

In The Courage to Be Protestant, David F. Wells exposes the postmodern project as built upon the shifting sand of the autonomous self. He issues a clarion call for the evangelical church to stand against (certainly not upon) this foundation and instead build its house upon the only lasting foundation: the rock of the revelation of God in Scripture. This would require the church to recover the doctrines of the Reformation, which, far from being irrelevant, concretely answer the postmodern problem. Wells further observes that the emergence of the autonomous self paralleled a perceived cosmological change: man no longer viewed himself as existing in a moral world in which he found an objective reference and standard outside of himself, but in a psychological or therapeutic world in which subjectivity reigns and the self is liberated from all external constraints, whether God, the past, or religious authority. The evangelical movement has not remained unaffected by the spirit of the age, but has in many ways submitted itself to its dictates under the false guise of relevancy and reaching the culture.

So what is the church to do? “It is time for us to recover our lost universe. What we need to do is to think, once again, with an entirely different set of connections. The connections are not primarily in reference to self, but to God. The connections that have to be reforged in the moral world we actually inhabit rather than the artificial world of appearances we have manufactured. It is about making connections into the world of reality that endures rather than the one that does not” (134). Herein is the comfort of the true gospel: no matter how disillusioned the world becomes in its therapeutic world and no matter how forceful the world pushes the autonomous self, it will always be, at bottom, a fantasy that will never correspond with reality. Man cannot refashion after his own imaginings the world God has created. The church must call postmoderns back to reality, to turn from self to God in faith and repentance. This is nothing less than the Great Commission: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.

In the opening chapter, Wells surveys the history of the evangelical movement from the end of the Second World War to the present. The major weakness that has eroded evangelicalism over the span of seven generations has been “the decline in the role that biblical doctrine once played” (3). This decline, he argues, arose from a “diminished interest in the Word of God in the life of the church” (4). This is evident not so much in the forthright rejection of the Word, but deafness to its call not to be conformed to this world. The Word came to be heard not as challenging, but as “endorsing our way of life today, our cultural expectations, and our priorities” (4). Scripture was smuggled out of the moral world and into the new psychological world so that Christianity became “increasingly reduced to private, internal, therapeutic experience” (15). Consequently, the doctrinal foundation of postwar evangelicalism—which had agreed upon the essentials of the authority of inspired Scripture and the centrality and necessity of Christ’s substitutionary atonement—was compromised and soon crumbled. Out of the debris arose new experiments in how to “do church,” such as the marketing movement made infamous by Willow Creek that capitulated to consumerist modernity and the subsequent emergent movement that sought to recover the personal and relational dimensions in a postmodern form that elevated experience at the expense of objective doctrinal truth. Both were built upon sand and their collapse was inevitable. “Once the truth of Scripture lost its hold on the practice of evangelical faith, that faith lost its direction in the culture” (19). Wells calls the church away from the binding authority of culture (sola cultura) to that of the Word of God (sola Scriptura).

Wells concludes the chapter by noting the parallel between the needed repairs today and what Protestant Reformers faced five hundred years ago. He begins with four differences. First, Luther inhabited a religious world, while today secularism has expelled religion from the public sphere and confined it to private life. Second, in the sixteenth century the reality of sin, which belongs to a moral world, was not in dispute as it is in today’s psychological world. In the past there was right and wrong, but today “we are comfortable or not, psychologically healthy or not, dysfunctional or not, but we are never sinners” (25). Third, the concept of salvation has migrated out of the religious world and into the therapeutic world. “It is no longer about right standing with God. Now it is about right standing with ourselves. And that is all it is about. It is about self-fulfillment, self-esteem, self-realization, and self-expression” (25). Fourth, Luther was able to identify his enemy as the power and teaching of the Catholic Church, but today the enemy is illusive and amorphous. The factors that shape the present culture are constantly changing: massive urbanization that creates anonymous cities, globalization that spawns profound relativism, capitalism that encourages a consumer mentality, technology that expands our natural powers but evacuates God from the world, and rationalization that idealizes human techniques.

There are also substantial similarities. First, there is no confidence that Scripture is sufficient in and of itself to direct and sustain the Christian life. The Catholic Church supplemented Scripture with tradition and a magisterium, while postmoderns look to “psychology, cultural savvy, and business techniques to do the same kind of thing for us” (29). Second, while the Catholic church reduced the effect of sin to a sickness and postmoderns have gone further in rejecting any and all moral absolutes, neither conforms to Scripture, which teaches that man is dead in his sins. “[T]hen as now, dead people had to be given life. … God’s grace accomplished this transition then, and the same grace is accomplishing it today” (31). Third, the sufficiency of the death and resurrection of Christ had to be recovered in the Reformation as it does today. For neither Rome nor postmoderns can say with the apostle Paul, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).

In chapter 2, Wells excavates the foundation of postmodernity: the autonomous self. This is the wholly free self severed from the outside world and loosed from all external constraints. It is embodied in the person who “rejects all orthodoxies on principle, and for whom the sole purpose in life is realizing the full potential of their individual sense. All morality, mystery, and meaning are to be found in the self, not in God” (35). One problem with this is that “in the absence of what is [objectively] true, all that remains are power and manipulation” (64).

Chapter 3 explores two contrasting ways of thinking about God. “The one comes from Scripture and the other comes from our culture” (67). All people have an internal sense that God exists and a moral sense written on the fabric of their nature. For this reason, they are always in need of a center. We cannot change the center, but we can lose the “ability to see it, to recognize it, to bow before it, to reorder our lives in light of it, to do what we should do as people who live in the presence of this center, this Other, this triune, holy-loving God of the Bible” (69). In his sin, man as sought all of these things around a different center: the self. Yet the self has not thrived as the center. In fact, the consequence of this humanism has been the disintegration of the self. Why? “The self that has been made to bear the weight of being the center of all reality, the source of all our meaning, mystery, and morality, inevitably becomes empty and fragile. When God dies to us, we die to ourselves” (84).

In addition, the constantly changing postmodern culture demands a constantly changing self—it is perpetually uprooted and homeless. Postmodern man remakes and projects himself a million times over as he seeks to answer the question, Who am I? “This question lies behind the many answers that we hear in contemporary anthropologies today: ‘I am my genes,’ ‘I am my past,’ ‘I am my sexual orientation,’ ‘I am my body,’ ‘I am what I do,’ ‘I am what I have,’ ‘I am what I know,’ and many others likes these. The emptiness of the self is signaled in every one of these identifications” (86). The way forward is to recover a Reformed worldview that believes in what Wells refers to as the “outside God.” Evangelicalism has fashioned faith in terms of the “inside God” who aids man in his private life in terms of self-realization and self-esteem. The church must find again the outside God who has revealed himself in Scripture and tells man who he is as made in his image. This “will reach into our lives, wrench them around, lift our vision, fill our hearts, makes us courageous for what is right, and over time leave behind its beautiful residue of Christ-like character” (103).

In chapter 4 Wells argues that “what has made the psychological developments that have come into bloom in the self movement so powerful is that they have coincided with some deep cultural shifts that are outside the self. Indeed, the self movement has been the internal counterpart to the external changes that were happening as the world modernized. “Our internal life, with its disconnects, loss of roots, moral ambivalence, and psychological confusion, is really just a mirror of the external world we inhabit with all its change, anonymity, ruthless competition, and loss of transcendence” (111). The transition from a moral world to a psychological world has brought about four fundamental changes, which together tell the story of the emergence of the autonomous self.

The first shift is from virtues, which are objective norms in a moral world that are enduring for all people, in all places, and in all times, to values, which represent the moral talk of a relativistic world. The second shift is from character, which is good or bad, to personality, which is attractive, forceful, or magnetic. “Here was a move out of the older moral world, where internal moral intentions are important, to a different world. This is a psychological world. This often entails a shift from what is important in itselfto what is important only as it appears to others” (117). The third shift is from nature, which is something common to all human beings (e.g., the image of God), to self, which is unique to each individual. One effect of this was the rise in personal rights and the decline in personal responsibility. “As we left behind the moral world, as we entered the world of the individual self, rights proliferated and responsibilities disappeared. … Private choice has a privileged position, and anything that limits that choice is a violation of individual freedom. It becomes an act of self-violation, an assault, a mutilation. These personal rights are then often hitched up to the language of the civil rights movement” (128). The fourth and final shift is from guilt, which is what we are in a moral world before God on a vertical level, to shame, which is what we feel subjectively in a psychological world before other people on a horizontal level. Accordingly, salvation has to do with becoming (or feeling) entirely shameless. Sin is no longer a moral breach, but a disease or emotional deficit, and the self is believed to contain its own healing mechanisms. In light of these shifts, Wells argues that the church needs to recover the forgotten moral world. “We live in the postmodern world not just as postmoderns, consumed by the present age, but as those who are of eternity and whose eyes are on the ‘age to come.’ We live not simply as those born again, but as those who belong in God’s world, those who are learning to think their thoughts after him” (142).

In the fifth chapter, Wells observes that the West has brought upon itself a strange contradiction, which he labels the “American paradox.” On the one hand, it has “built an outward world of great magnificence.” On the other hand, this new world is “inhospitable to the human spirit.” He continues, “[I]n this world, this artificial world, we have all become psychological vagrants. We are the homeless. We have no place to stay” (145). It is this paradox that Wells credits for the rise of spirituality in the West, which he explores in this chapter along with its biblical alternative. Postmodern spirituality is “private, not public, individualistic, not absolute. It is about what I perceive, about what works for me, not about what anyone else should believe” (152). What is needed is a proper spirituality that this from above, not one that begins from below. “One starts with God and reaches into sinful life whereas the other starts in human consciousness and tries to reach ‘above’ to make connections in the divine” (145). The spirituality from “above” lives in a moral world, while the spirituality from “below” lives in a psychological world. The latter is “lethal to biblical Christianity. That is why the biggest enigma we face today is the fact that its chief enablers are evangelical churches, especially those who are seeker-sensitive or emergent who, for different reasons, are selling spirituality disconnected from biblical truth” (147). True spirituality in which heaven juts into the life of the believer, a life that is hidden with Christ in God, has been lost to the inner voice that is impotent and deceptive. “In the earthly kind of spirituality, we speak because there is no one who has spoken to us. … In the biblical spirituality, by contrast, there is address. We are summoned by the Word of God. We stand before the God of that Word. He speaks” (160-61).

Having begun the book with a brief historical survey of the evangelical movement, the final chapter is a wake-up call to return to its doctrinal roots in the Protestant Reformation. The church is irrelevant unless it stands against the culture and people find in it something different than businessmen and psychologists. “Churches that actually do influence the culture—here is the paradox—are those that distance themselves from it in their internal life. … If the church is to be truly successful, it must be unlike anything else we find in life” (191). Such a church will bear three marks: the Word of God is preached, the sacraments are rightly administered, and discipline is practiced. Preaching, for one, must demonstrate the sufficiency of Scripture for God’s redemptive work and for our life in this world. The biblical text must be rightly divided and the people need to be addressed in their world and needs. “What we really need is a way to understand our lives. We need to understand how to live in God’s world on his terms. We need not only comfort but also a worldview. … It ought to be a preacher’s goal to be able, bit by bit, Sunday by Sunday, to show what it means to have God’s Word in this world” (199). In many ways this book will aid preachers to do just that.

This is a timely volume for our day in which objective truth has been eviscerated and all we have been left with are autonomous selves vying for power and control in a therapeutic world. May the church, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, be found faithful in carrying out its prophetic mission to the world, calling all people everywhere to repent and believe. May the church not be found shaking hands with the spirit of the age, but wrestling against it in the whole armor of God. The gates of hell shall not prevail. Semper reformanda.

J. H. Bavinck. The Riddle of Life.Translated by Bert Hielema. Grand Rapids, MI. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2016. Pp. 94. $20.00.

For fallen man, life is a riddle that was, and that is, and that will continue to be. A few brief notes on the history of Western thought demonstrate this point. The self-proclaimed autonomous man of the Enlightenment sought to employ either his reason (rationalism) or his sense experience (empiricism) to interpret a supposedly open, un-interpreted universe that included himself. However, unable to ground the law of cause-and-effect or even the most basic notion of a subject-object correspondence, David Hume buried the autonomous man. On his gravestone he wrote: a relativist, a skeptic, an unsolved riddle.

Eventually a shift occurred. After repeatedly arriving at the absurd and irrational as a conclusion, the absurd instead became a self-given, the assumed starting-point. This was particularly the case for consciousness and existentialist thinkers. For example, Albert Camus, in his work The Myth of Sisyphus, assumes from the outset that the life of man is akin to that of Sisyphus who was condemned to ceaselessly rolling a stone to the top of a mountain, which would only roll back down of its own weight. Yet, Sisyphus is not to be pitied, but imagined to be happy. “Sisyphus is the absurd hero,” writes Camus, “He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing” (The Myth of Sisyphus, 120). From nothing man came, to nothing man is fated, and everything in between is absurd—if only he will embrace this, he will live.

Out of the absurdity that is life or existence, others called forth monstrous beings, like Nietzsche’s Übermensch who would reject the hopes of another world as pitiable escapism, declare the death of God, fully embrace his irrational existence, and forge for himself value and meaning. Thus, the testimony to the futility of fallen thought is manifold: man is no more able to create meaning and purpose than he is able to give life to the dead or call into existence the things that do not exist. Man and his world remain an unsolved riddle, an impenetrable mystery.

Yet, we are not to despair. There is, in fact, a clear way forward as J. H. Bavinck demonstrates in his book The Riddle of Life. In a simple, understandable, and persuasive manner, he presses in to answer the big questions that have riddled life: What do we know? Who are we? Why are we here? Where do we come from? What is our destiny? How should we live? His basic point is that if we begin with the self-attesting man of the Enlightenment, then we are doomed to irrationality and absurdity. But if we begin with the self-attesting Christ of Scripture then and only then can we move forward to find the answers to the mysteries of life.

Accordingly, Bavinck argues for the necessity of a revelatory epistemology, that is, a theory of knowledge that arises from the revelation of God in Scripture. The only silk thread that leads us out of the labyrinth of life is that which God has let down from heaven: his Word. Bavinck writes, “God has spoken. The eternal mystery of the ultimate basis of everything that exists has been revealed. In Jesus Christ the Light has come, the Light that bans all darkness from our hearts and instills in us the unspeakable joy of having found and having been found” (5). Bavinck further clarifies this point by affirming that the only way to arrive at any knowledge is “to believethat we are part of a rational universe,” which can only be maintained if “we confessthat an almighty and all-wise God has created the world and the human race in mutual dependence” (16).

From this revelatory foundation, Bavinck proceeds to answer the mysteries of life in the light of Scripture. For example, in order to answer the question, “Where do we come from?” we must know whether or not God exists. Bavinck lists the various classical proofs for the existence of God that have been given, but concludes that they are “in themselves … not totally convincing” (24). The reason for this is that we are always biased in our conclusions, which means our intellect and logic “cannot possibly be the final arbiter” (25). In contrast, “the Christian faith, realizing this truth, strongly stresses the confession: I believe in God, the Father, creator of heaven and earth. That is not a scientific conclusion, not a well-rounded statement, but it rests on faith in God’s Word. When I, in this world, amidst an untold number of mysteries, ponder the question of ‘Where do I originate?’ I only can trust that the whole of this rational and yet so mysterious universe has been wrought by a superior Reason, by an all-wise Maker who is also our Father” (25).

Another question that Bavinck takes up is: “What is the meaning of life?” His answer opens with a helpful illustration. Imagine you come across the words: the silver moonlight radiated businessmen across the water. The obvious point is that within that sentence “businessmen” has no real meaning. Why? Because it is out of place there and does not fit in. “So when does a word make sense? It makes sense when it can seamlessly melt away in the context, when it fits in the totality. When does the life of a human make sense? It only makes sense when it has harmoniously inserted itself into the greater meaningful totality, when it is part of an overall world concept” (33). Man is not capable of forming the totality for himself because he is finite and limited. Rather, this totality is only found in Jesus Christ who repeatedly has told us that “the ultimate meaning of human life is the kingdom of God. … Measured by that criterion everything makes sense, every human act contains something of value” (34).

In keeping with this revelatory base, Bavinck utilizes the threefold scheme of man found in Scripture. Man is rational, moral, and spiritual, which corresponds to knowledge, righteousness, and holiness as well as his office as prophet, priest, and king (see Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 12). This scheme proves very useful for Bavinck in explaining the full-orbed nature of man’s original design and purpose, the effects of sin on him, the redemption he needs, and the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Bavinck also utilizes this scheme to expose the inadequacy of the other world religions: Buddhism and Islam. Common to both is the belief that deliverance is solely a matter of knowledge, so all that is needed is a prophet. The prophet, whether Buddha or Mohammed, preaches the truth and so offers the possibility of salvation. It then becomes a matter of self-redemption: we must apply the truth to ourselves in order to be saved. The problem is that this does not penetrate to the deepest parts of man. Man’s misery is not singular, but threefold. “We lack the knowledge, the insight into the truth. We also lack the peace, the true justice, the harmonious attitude to God. Finally we also lack the holiness, the will to do good. To be truly free we must surrender the entire structure of our existence: our redemption must be threefold, just as our misery is threefold” (71). Herein is the peculiarity of Christianity. Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, answers to the threefold plight of man. He is the Prophet who reveals true knowledge of God and man, the Priest who offers peace by his sacrifice on the cross, and the King who offers holiness by eradicating the desire for sin and fills us with life eternal. These three benefits are represented in what Jesus calls the “kingdom of God,” which “is composed of all that life contains, the world and all that it is” (80). It is only those who repent and believe who find entrance into this kingdom (83).

The final question that Bavinck asks has to do with the completion of life: “What is behind that strange, mysterious curtain that we usually call death?” (90). The Gospel, according to Bavinck, teaches that all men either face death alone or with Jesus Christ (92). The person who enters death apart from Christ belongs to the kingdom of darkness doomed to eternal destruction. But the person who enters death “in Christ” will have it proved “the great revelation” (93). He explains, “As soon as we see the reflection of God’s presence in the distance, then an infinite joy will be born in us. … With inexpressible rapture I will flee to him and embrace him as my all, as my salvation. And observing him, the pure sight of him and his glory, I will go from joy to greater joy, from light to greater light. In the joyfulness I will then experience lies the hallmark of eternity, because God is eternal” (94).

While the book is to be recommended on the basis of the previous analysis, especially its commitment to a revelatory epistemology, there are still a few areas that warrant critique. First, Bavinck states that the essence of humanity is that they are “children of God” (27). This language, however, does not seem helpful because of the salvific connotations of it in Scripture (e.g., Rom. 8:16-17) and the more clear description found in Genesis of man being made in the “image of God.” It is true that Adam is entitled the “son of God” in Scripture, as well as Israel and David’s kingly sons, but this phrase has covenantal and eschatological implications that Bavinck seems to overlook. Furthermore, it does not allow for the adoption that takes place in Christ, so that those who were once “children of wrath” are made “children of God” (Rom. 8:14-17; Eph. 2:1-10; 2 Pet. 2:14).

Second, Bavinck speaks about the “law of service,” which he observes is evident in the various levels of creation from the inorganic to the organic to humanity, as the fundamental law of creation and the “overarching purpose for every being” (18). Bavinck seems to arrive at this law by way of natural observation and so deviates from the revelatory foundation he argued for earlier. Because of this his conclusion from nature can be labeled naïve since while the creation is seen to serve each other at some level, it is also seen to devour one another at an even higher level. The fact that creation is not in harmony with itself is not self-evident, but only properly understood on the basis of the biblical doctrine of sin. Likewise, the law of service must be drawn from God’s revelation to man. In addition, Bavinck construes this law with a predominately horizontal focus, while the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Third, in a couple of places Bavinck seems to deny the historicity of Adam and the fall, though this may not have been his intention. Regarding the former, he writes, “We are Adam … God’s children” (30). This suggests that Adam was a mere symbol of every person, rather than the historical federal head of humanity, in whom all died when he sinned (Rom. 5:12ff.). Regarding the latter, Bavinck says, “The Good News shows us that the history of the world, from its very inception, is dominated by two factors” (88, emphasis mine). The two factors that he identifies are sin and grace. But in Scripture neither sin nor grace (understood redemptively) dominated until the historical fall of man in Genesis 3. Furthermore, Bavinck says that these two factors “will give us some insight into the meaning of the world, and why we are here” (88). On one level this is true, but it is also problematic because it makes the soteriological absolute, rather than the eschatological. Scripture is clear that there is an absolute end posited for humanity and the world beforeand apart fromsin. To this pre-redemptive eschatology is added a soteric force on account of the historical entrance of sin into the world, but this addition does not eclipse or eliminate man’s original destiny, a destiny that is fulfilled in Christ (Ps. 8; Heb. 2:5-9).

Overall, this book would benefit believers by helping them better understand the worldview implications of the doctrines of God, man, sin, and redemption and by equipping them to better share the gospel with their neighbor. It would also be useful to give directly to unbelievers who will find in it a concise and clear commendation of the Christian faith as the only sound and coherent way of viewing oneself and the world. It demonstrates that Christianity is not a conglomerate of abstract propositions designed for esoteric cloud-gazers and irrelevant spiritualists, but draws its life source from the concrete acts and words of God that have entered our world and our history, preeminently in Jesus Christ, who forms its organic center from which the whole world will one day be consummated a new creation.

“And though this world with devils filled, should threaten to undo us…”—so penned Luther in his famous hymn A Mighty Fortress is Our God. But on what epistemological basis could Luther (and the whole Christian church for that matter) affirm the existence of devils and spirits in this world? Was it rational to believe that spirits could interact with material bodies so that they could even be deemed a real threat to undo the church? The claim of the existence of the supernatural and the working of the supernatural upon the natural world, including men, was not a self-given, nor a datum of sense experience, but ultimately founded upon the simple teaching of Scripture. There, in the revelation of the triune God, the real struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness is made known, in which heaven and earth, the spiritual and the material, angels and men are shown to be in a dynamic relationship with one another, all according to the wisdom and providence of God.

It should come as no surprise, then, that as submission to God’s revelation in Scripture was replaced with the autonomy of man (whether in the form of rationalism or empiricism, as happened with the Enlightenment), the reality of Satan, spirits, and the supernatural would be, at first, doubted and, eventually, rejected in favor of either a dualistic or purely naturalistic conception of reality. This occurred not only in the realm of secular philosophy, but unfortunately also within the church as Cartesian philosophy began to infiltrate and theologians attempted to synthesize it with their theological systems.

One such figure within the church, Balthasar Bekker (1634–1698), a Dutch Reformed preacher, came under the “spell” of the new philosophy dominating the age and so deemed it his life mission to “disenchant the world.” And he pursued this in the most dangerous fashion: under the guise of Reformed language and concepts. He received heavy opposition, however, from those within the Reformed church who saw behind his façade, most notably from Petrus van Mastricht (1630–1706). Mastricht responded to Bekker’s internationally influential work, Betoverde Weereld (The World Bewitched), in a treatise presented to Classis Amsterdam, entitled, Ad Verum Clariss. D. Balthasaren Beckerum, S. S. Theol. Doct. Epanorthosis gratulatoria.[1] Mastricht recognized that Bekker’s teaching ultimately compromised the basic Reformed principle of the authority of Scripture by subordinating it to an alien philosophy.

Yet, there was more than just the relationship of Scripture and philosophy at the (pastoral) heart of Mastricht’s polemic against Bekker. Mastricht also perceived that by not beginning with Scripture as his principium cognoscendi, Bekker had removed the only foundation for true religion, which prohibited him entirely from building a practical superstructure of doxology and worship. In other words, Mastricht’s polemic against Bekker included the fact that by not beginning with Scripture, his theology did not and could not end with worship. Thus, it was not merely a matter of whose principium was correct, but who worshiped the one true God in spirit and truth. The teleological end (worship) of doctrine and theology was directly dependent upon its protological beginning (Scripture) in the mind of Mastricht.

Herein we are given a view into the wedding of doctrine and life, theology and piety in the Post-Reformation Reformed thought of Mastricht, which recent scholarship has been beginning to notice in this time period in general. Mastricht does not formulate his doctrine in a rigid, cold way, but in correlation with the exegesis of Scripture and a deep concern for right praxis, a true living to God.

This article will first place Mastricht’s work within its historical context, with special attention given to Balthasar Bekker and his controversial four-volume work, Betoverde Weereld. It will then proceed to consider the main arguments of Mastricht’s treatise, noting his fourfold approach that incorporates exegesis, doctrine, elenctics, and praxis.

1. Philosophical Context in General: Cartesianism and Spinozism

Cartesianism in the Netherlands

Descartes moved to the Netherlands in 1628 since he realized that the intellectual atmosphere in Paris was not conducive or tolerant of his new ideas. As a result, his rationalism would come to be a mighty force in the Netherlands that the Reformed church would have to reckon with. In these early stages, Voetius would fend off the influence of Descartes on the Dutch Reformed church from his academic post at Utrecht, always with an eye on the well-being of the church.[20]

Cartesianism, however, would develop in a much more variegated way than any kind of strict allegiance to Descartes—resulting in a true Descartes vs. the Cartesians. While it goes beyond the scope of this paper to trace out these differences, it can be noted that “the Dutch Cartesians shared a common viewpoint, a common openness to the New Science, and a common hostility to the Voetian Counter-Reformation.”[21] McGahagan goes on to describe the philosophical climate as follows:

Both early and later Cartesians were also equally insistent on the separation of philosophy and religion. Even the alliance of later Cartesianism with Cocceianism rested on the fact that Cocceianism seemed to offer a theological legitimation of this separation. This separation was not derived from Descartes, who indeed distinguished philosophy from theology, but who also grounded the possibility of an a priori physics in the doctrine of God’s free creation of eternal truths. Rather, the Dutch Cartesian separation of faith and reason can only be understood in the context of their opposition to the Voetian Counter-Reformation.[22]

This would no less be the case with regard to Mastricht’s contention with Bekker in his consideration of the relationship of Scripture and philosophy as well as the proper use of reason as a handmaiden of theology.

Spirits and Spinozism

Jonathan Israel observes, “During the last third of the seventeenth century, the scene was set for a vast triangular contest in Europe between intellectual conservatives, moderates, and radicals overthe status of the supernatural in human life and the reality of the Devil, demons, spirits, and magic.”[23] It was Naude and Hobbes who led the charge in “injecting a measure of scepticism about diabolical power and the reality of spirits.”[24] This eventually led to a full-force campaign that sought to extinguish belief in Satan, spirits and supernatural forces altogether “in complete defiance of received ideas.”[25] This is the expected result when a revelatory epistemology is replaced with a Cartesian rationalism and thorough going philosophical Naturalism that attributes an autonomous existence to the mind of man. Accordingly, nothing beyond man’s rational capacities or immediate sense experiences can be permitted to have any real existence—a case of whatever my net cannot catch, is not fish. Israel notes that this philosophical move was not irreligious, but “part of a broader conceptual attack on authority, tradition, and Revelation.”[26] He continues,

The new philosophy, however, could not totally repudiate the existence of the supernatural. While the Scientific Revolution, the rise of the mechanical world-view, and Lockean empiricism all helped erode the foundations on which older notions about magic, wonder-working, and the supernatural rested, neither Cartesianism with its dichotomy of substances, nor Locke’s epistemology, nor any mainstream trend of the Early Enlightenment provided a rationale for total repudiation of belief in spirits and magic.[27]

The debate over the supernatural was the surface level concern of a deeper and more foundational issue regarding the epistemological significance (or insignificance) of God’s revelation in Scripture. Was Scripture, which spoke of spirits and Satan, authoritative? Or must Scripture submit to the scientific advancements of man and the natural limitations of his mind? The goal of the Reformed and traditional proponents was not to maintain the supernatural for the supernatural’s sake, but to maintain the worldview of Scripture in submission to the Creator of all things. Furthermore, as we will see in Mastricht’s polemic against Bekker, this debate over the supernatural had direct bearing upon man’s knowledge of God and the proper worship and enjoyment of him—the supremely practical concern that wedded doctrine and piety, theology and life in Mastricht’s polemic.

Spinoza was one of the strongest protagonists of the campaign against diabolical power and magic. He argued against the existence of devils and spirits in his Korte Verhandeling and was pronounced by Bayle to be the pre-eminent modern adversary of credence in spirits and the supernatural. Bekker was primarily accused of Spinozism by Reformed theologians, most notably Jacobus Koelman,[28] and was specifically criticized for his utilization of a hermeneutic that approximated Spinoza’s, especially with respect to the doctrine of accommodation,[29] and his similar position to Spinoza on the activities of spirits.[30]

Bekker, however, criticized Spinoza outright, though his opponents, such as Koelman, objected that this was not genuine but only a guise to cover his heretical ideas.[31] Bekker accused Spinoza of “violating the Dutch Cartesian principle of the separation of religion from philosophy by making philosophy the ‘master of things of belief.’”[32] In addition, he called Spinoza’s philosophy “absurd” and listed as his chief “errors” the following ideas:

1) That there is not substance, that is, independent entity, outside God; and that creatures are but modes, that is ways of God’s existence. 2) That this one substance has two essential characteristics: extension and thought. And there are infinite others that we do not know about. 3) That all depends on an infinite number of causes, following each other in an infinite order and in infinite ways. 4) That no thing or deed is in itself good or bad. 5) That the Holy Scripture was not originally from God and that the holy writers erred in much. 6) That miracles are caused by and can be explained by natural causes.[33]

Andrew Fix, in his evaluation of Bekker’s relation to Spinoza, notes that “although he did not go as far as Spinoza, he did use Spinoza’s exegetical methods for his own attack on spirit belief.”[34] Similarly Jonathan Israel notes, “Spinoza’s influence … clearly underlies Bekker’s claims that philosophical reason is the only valid criterion when investigating ‘natural things,’ and that Scripture is not intended to teach truly about worldly phenomena, but provides explanations adapted to the understanding of ordinary folks so as to help instill obedience to God’s commandments.”[35] The basic issue here is that by utilizing Spinoza’s methodology, which was essentially non-Christian, Bekker’s system itself could not be considered Christian, even if it utilized Christian, even Reformed, language and concepts, as it trended toward skepticism and atheism.

2. Theological Context

Locating Mastricht within Post-Reformation Reformed Orthodoxy

According to the periods proposed by Richard Muller, Mastricht is located within the era of high orthodoxy (ca. 1640–1685–1725). Muller notes that now the “architectonic clarity of early orthodoxy is replaced to a certain extent or at least put to the service of a more broadly developed and even discursive system.”[36] There is an expansion of polemical argumentation and the creative phase of early orthodoxy gives way to a phase of elaboration, refinement, and modification, which is evident in such prominent theologians as Voetius, Turretin, and Mastricht. Muller goes on to describe the posture towards philosophy during this time:

Among the major transitions that took place as Reformed theology passed from early orthodoxy into the high orthodox era was the transition from a philosophical development focused on the reception, assessment, and critical appropriation of the various trajectories of Christian Aristotelianism and of the late Renaissance developments … to the encounter of these older, highly nuanced approach with the new rationalists of the seventeenth century. … [T]he high orthodox, ca. 1640, were beginning to feel the impact of Cartesian thought. Just as the early orthodox era manifests not a monolithic appropriation of the older Aristotelian philosophies, but the reception of elements of various trajectories, so does the high orthodox era manifest varied receptions of the newer rationalism among the Reformed, and, indeed, the continuance of themes and issues from the older trajectories, now modified and altered by the changed philosophical context. Specifically, elements of the older Thomism, Scotism, and nominalism can still be detected as mediated through and modified by philosophical currents in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries—and elements of Cartesian thought and its modifications can also be found both debated and appropriated by various individual Reformed thinkers.[37]

Theological Context in General: Reformed Opponents Embracing Cartesianism

The negative influence of Cartesian rationalism was felt by Reformed theologians on numerous fronts. Old enemies were embracing Cartesian thought, which augmented Reformed skepticism toward and rejection of the new philosophy.

For one, the Remonstrants—with whom the Reformed already had to contend with, culminating in the pronouncements against them at the Synod of Dort (1618-1619)—continued to veer further and further away from Reformed theology as it embraced Cartesian thought. Muller observes, “[T]he Remonstrant theology posed a major threat to the Reformed and called forth new argumentation, since it was, in its beginning, an offshoot of the Reformed system and, in its development, a highly rationalistic structure allied with Cartesian and eventually with Lockean thought.”[38]

Likewise the Socinians more and more embraced the rationalism of Cartesianism that was dominating the age:

The increasingly rationalistic biblicism of the Socinian movement in its seventeenth-century forms posed an even more intense problem for the Reformed orthodox. … [T]he Socinians opposed the balance of revelation and reason advocated by the Reformed and claimed a fundamental biblical basis for their doctrine and repudiated natural theology—at the same time that they argued against the simplicity and infinity of God, denied the Trinity and the two natures of Christ, and proposed an alternative view of the work of Christ. From the Reformed perspective, all of these doctrines appeared to be at the same time the result of a new rationalism and a radically deviant exegesis.[39]

While not as radical as the Remonstrants or the Socinians, Cocceians were also embracing Cartesian philosophy to greater or lesser degrees:

Cocceius himself did not take part in the controversy over Cartesianism – he did not advocate any particular philosophy as a basis for or intellectual partner with theology, but maintained a somewhat eclectic attitude, viewing all philosophy, whether Platonic or Aristotelian, Ramist or Cartesian, as at best a handmaid to theology.[40]

Cocceius’ associate, Heidanus, however, “overtly approved of Cartesian philosophy. … His definition of God as ‘an uncreated, independent, thinking substance’ is clearly Cartesian, as is his discussion of the body and soul in man in terms of thought and extension.”[41] Bekker himself writes concerning Cocceius’ separation of the natural and supernatural: “He held the same course as Descartes, although he sailed in another fairway: wishing all prejudices abolished, and supernatural knowledge sought from Scripture alone; just as the other built natural science exclusively on nature and sound reason.”[42]

It should be noted that the Reformed, and particularly Voetius and Mastricht, did not reject Cartesianism simply because its enemies embraced it—as if a friend of my enemy is by necessity my enemy too. Rather, the differing responses to Cartesianism simply manifested previous points of contention between these theological parties. It was the most basic and fundamental Reformed principle of Scripture as authoritative and the sole principium cognoscendi, which neither the Remonstrants nor Socinians consistently embraced in the formulation of their own theological systems, that raised Reformed suspicion against the new philosophy. In other words, this issue only brought to light earlier principial commitments that had surfaced before with respect to other theological loci, but now having an acute bearing on their prolegomena. These theological camps were, therefore, forced to show their cards as to the foundation upon which their systems were built. This is the bottom-line reason for the contention of Mastricht and other Dutch Reformed theologians against the new philosophy of Descartes, Spinoza, and their followers, including Bekker.

3. Balthasar Bekker

His Life and Work in General

Jonathan Israel echoes Luis Antonio Verney as to the four strongest protagonists against diabolical power and magic of the seventeenth century: Anthonie Van Dale, Fontenelle, Christian Thomasius, and Balthasar Bekker.[43] “Of the four, moreover, it was unquestionably Bekker who raised the greatest storm and became the prime focus of controversy.”[44] Israel deems him as “indisputably one of the foremost figures of the European Early Enlightenment.”[45]

The severity of this danger was exponentially increased by the fact that Bekker worked under the guise of a Reformed preached and true Christian. Bekker believed that the new philosophy could provide positive support for Reformed theology.[46]This meant that his teaching was not explicitly anti-Christian, yet it was undermining the true faith and led down the path of atheism and skepticism, as Koelman, Mastricht and others would point out. He was ultimately declared an agent of Spinozism and ‘atheism,’ and lumped in with the other novelty theologies that deviated from orthodox belief.[47]

Bekker began his studies at Groningen in the early 1650s when the conflict between Cartesianism and anti-Cartesianism first began to shake the university. Israel notes that Bekker desired to be seen by others as a cutting-edge intellectual, which made Cartesianism very attractive for him. He would soon become a fervent Cartesian, even while he began his career as a preacher in the Reformed church.[48] However, he encountered heavy opposition from his ecclesiastical colleagues in Friesland and so transferred to a rural church in Holland in 1674. During this time he recounts a long discussion that he had with Spinoza. “This encounter,” writes Israel, “reflected no liking for Spinoza’s philosophy but rather intellectual commitment and a desire to be at the forefront.”[49] Though as we noted earlier, while Bekker formally rejected the influence of Spinoza on his own thought, this was more of a façade.

In 1679 he moved to Amsterdam and began his campaign against the empire of Satan, which would be the defining project of the rest of his life. There he jumped into the controversy over whether comets could be supernatural portents, which he, of course, rejected. Bekker distinguished himself as one eager to “accommodate to theology the latest findings in philosophy and science,” though he was always more willing to sacrifice the former to the later.[50] His real life “mission was to disenchant the world.”[51]

Betoverde Weereld

Bekker began his magnum opus, the Betoverde Weereld (The World Bewitched) in the late 1680s. It consisted of four volumes and would have a major influence not only in the Netherlands, but internationally.[52] The material issue was that of the relationship between spirits and corporal bodies and the doctrine of Satan, whether he was real or merely symbolic. But underlying all of this was the more foundational issue of the relationship between Scripture and philosophy, and whether philosophy must submit to Scripture or Scripture to philosophy.

Book I provides an historical survey of views on the supernatural, including spirits and demons. Bekker argues that the Jews, early Christians, and Church Fathers commandeered the distinctly pagan notion of magic and spirits, which was otherwise foreign to Christianity. He then observes that this paganism was exponentially worsened by the Medieval church, which led to deep-rooted superstition regarding the devil and witches and speculation over trite matters regarding angels. While Bekker believed the Reformation restored some sanity to the church in these matters, it did not, in his view, fully exorcise the basically pagan infiltration of the supernatural into Christianity.[53]

In Books II-IV he “expounds his philosophical and Scriptural objections to received ideas about magic, Satan, spirits, and witchcraft.”[54]While he claimed to believe whatever is stated clearly in Scripture, his exegetical method indebted to Spinoza and his Cartesian presuppositions, lead him to distinct conclusions that were really opposed to Scripture, as Mastricht will demonstrate.

What he denied was the near universal conviction that Satan, demons, or any spirits can, through spells, possession, bewitchment, or any magical device, alter the normal workings of nature’s laws and influence men’s lives. Sticking rigidly to Descartes’ dichotomy of ‘thought’ and ‘extension,’ he claims their being distinct substances precludes all interaction between the two, so that evil spirits, the essence of which is ‘thought,’ can no more influence bodies than bodies can spirits. Contact between disembodied spirits and humans is completely impossible.[55]

Bekker did believe that God was able to change the course of nature and effect the lives of men, being neither thought (spirit) nor extension (body), for he preceded and transcended all substance.

In Book II he disproves various interpretations of Scripture passages that have been garnered in support of the notion that Satan can influence men. His basic exegetical approach was to demonstrate that every such passage that speaks of the intervention of the devil in the lives of men in Scripture was “purely figurative.”[56] Satan, according to Bekker, could not have become a serpent to tempt Eve, nor appear in the wilderness to tempt Christ. Bekker goes on to argue that Satan has actually been chained by God in hell so that he remains completely powerless to effect anything on earth. These passages will be addressed by Mastricht in his treatise against Bekker.

In Book III he denies the possibility of men making deals with the devil, which would then exclude all witchcraft, spells, exorcisms, or magic of any kind. The supernatural wonders worked by Pharaoh’s magicians in Scripture accordingly became purely figurative—the common hermeneutic principle utilized to rid Scripture of any teaching on the real interaction of spirits and bodies, the Devil and men.

In the final book, Book IV, he “examines a vast catalogue of supposedly attested cases of witchcraft, possession, exorcism, haunted places, soothsaying, and apparitions, showing mankind’s inherent proneness to attribute exceptional events for which a natural explanation is lacking to supernatural forces, and the unfortunate consequences of our doing so.”[57] He then states that it is the Christian duty of the Churches, schools, and courts to insure that men no longer believe magic exists, that the world be disenchanted.

4. Petrus van Mastricht, Ad Verum Clariss. D. Balthasaren Beckerum

Overview of Mastricht’s Fourfold Approach to Theology: Exegesis, Doctrine, Elenctics, Praxis 

Neele observes that in each of the loci of his Theoretica-practica theologia, Mastricht organizes his thoughts into four parts: exegesis, doctrine, elenctics, and ‘pars practica.’[58] This same approach is found in his Ad Verum Clariss. D. Balthasaren Beckerum. While his work addressing Bekker is primarily polemical in nature, this fourfold approach to theology structures the document.

In sections XX–XXIX, Mastricht expounds and vindicates Scripture passages that teach the real and historical operation of Satan and spirits in the world and upon man. He also addresses the proper relation of Scripture and Philosophy. In sections XXX–XXXVII, the doctrine of Satan is stated in contrast to Bekker’s formulation. This then leads to a lengthy polemical section, in which the doctrine is defended against possible objections and apparent contradictions with other doctrines (XXXVIII–LVIII). Mastricht then turns to the offense to show the contradictions of Bekker’s position (LIX–LXVII). He finally concludes with a practical concern for the church, addressing the matter of worship and piety (LXVIII–XCV).

Scripture and Exegesis (XIX–XXIX)

As was observed earlier, Bekker, in Book II of Betoverde Weereld, looks to undermine various passages of Scripture which have been used to affirm the interaction and influence of the Devil on men by understanding them as purely figurative. Mastricht makes direct mention of this book and its underlying problem in section XIX. Before looking at specific passages, Mastricht states, Interim tibi plurima objucis Scripturae testimonia, utriusque Instrumenti, quibus, Angelis verae operationes asseruntur. He then notes the positive activity of the angels in announcing to Abraham the future birth of his son, Isaac (Gen. 18:10) and to Mary the birth of Jesus (Luke 1). Scripture also records angels announcing the birth of Christ to the shepherds (Luke 2:8-14) and his resurrection to the disciples at the end of each gospel, as well as his ascension (Acts 1:10-11). Mastricht notes the positive role of the angels in rescuing Lot from the destruction of Sodom (Gen. 19), Daniel from the lion’s den (Dan. 5), and the apostles from prison (Acts 5:19; 12:7). Angels are also said to accompany Christ when he comes again (Matt 25:31; 1 Thess. 4:16; 2 Thess. 1:7; Heb. 1:14). So, says, Mastricht, et quae sunt hujus generis fexcenta alia.

If spirits are mere thoughts, as Bekker proposed, then how can they have this influence upon the world, as Scripture ascribes to them: quia, ceu spiritus, non sint nisi merae cogitationes, quibus non competant operationes ad extra.[59] These cannot be mere figments of man’s imagination, as Bekker argued.[60] Mastricht will next take up more specific passages in order to vindicate them against Bekker who would read them as purely symbolic or figurative.

 Vindication of Scripture Passages

The main question of section XX is whether evil spirits, after the primal temptation, still work in humans? Bekker, Mastricht notes, has consigned every evil spirit to chains in hell so that they can no longer be at work in the world. Whereas Bekker has no place in Scripture to maintain this position, Mastricht claims many (infinita) places for his position. He then appeals to the Classis on the basis that Bekker ultimately makes God out to be a liar who would fool the common person by accommodating his revelation to their error and false ideas. He writes,

Dic tibi quaeso Clariss. per tuam conscientiam si daremus quod non facimus Deum in negotiis naturalibus levioris momenti se quandoque componere ad erroneam vulgi opinionem num tibi persuadere possis ad unum omnes Prophetas, Apostolos, ipsumque Servatorem circa errorem tanti momenti per quem tibi Scriptura non potest esse verbum Dei per quem tibi Scriptura non potest non potest esse nec Jehova Deus nec Christus Messias…

Following this general critique, he takes up in section XII, 2 Peter 2:4, which Bekker appeals to in order to affirm that the devils and evil spirits are currently chained in hell and so incapable of being at work in men. Mastricht affirms that the devils are damned to eternal prison, but he denies that they should no more deceive at present because their sentence at present does not limit them to a specific place since they wander in chains (velut in catenis vagetur). However, it is true that they cannot escape their sentence to aeternae condemnationi.

Next in section XXII Mastricht considers the temptation narrative in Genesis 3 to vindicate it against Bekker who does not read it as historical. He makes the point that Scripture does not say that Satan deceived through or by means of a serpent, but that the serpent who deceived esse satanamunder the providence of God. Mastricht utilizes the Reformed principle of Scripture interpreting Scripture and appeals to Revelation 12:9 to support this reading of Genesis 3, as well as contrasting it with the account of Balaam’s donkey. Mastricht concludes that Bekker’s interpretation has two main problems: (1) it destroys the factuality of the temptation and (2) paves the way for skepticism and atheism.

He makes a similar argument in the vindication of the historical nature of Christ’s temptation by the devil in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1-12; Mark. 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-14) in section XXIII. Mastricht argues that if you say the devil truly tempted Christ, then you must be able to say that he was also at work in the first temptation. But Bekker says that they are not to be understood as literal (non omnia inquis ad literam hic sunt intelligendae). Again, Mastricht charges this interpretation as leading to skepticism and atheism: Quo tandem ista sese exoneraunt, nisi in Scepticismum & Atheismum?

In section XXIV Mastricht seeks to vindicate Jude 9 from Bekker’s interpretation that does violence to the text. He does not see a problem with this passage if one simply learned to, first, believe the Scriptures, second, overturn ratiocinations& omnem sublimitatem,and third, have their mind captive to the obedience of Christ. He refers to 2 Cor. 10:4-5, “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…”

In section XXV he considers the account of Satan inciting David to take a census, which was punished by the Lord, in 1 Chronicles 21:1. How does this relate, he asks, to 2 Samuel 24:1 where it is said that not Satan, but the Lord incited David? Mastricht answers this apparent contradiction by stating the simple point that the way in which God and Satan cause the same even can differ. God is the efficient cause and wisely permits it, while Satan is the perpetrator (idem diverso sensu possee tribui, & Deo & satanae: Deo, ut causae efficaciter & sapientissime permittentidirigentique; & satanae, ut pessime perpetranti).

He then takes up the vindication of Job 1:11 in section XXVI. He sees a good argument for evil spirits conversing with men in 1 Samuel 28 and Acts 16:16. He then takes up Bekker’s objection to Satan being granted permission by the Lord to inflict Job with dirissmus calamitatibus and for Job to have been declared by the Lord to be in Satan’s hand (Job 1:12; 2:6). His basic argument again uses Scripture to interpret Scripture, appealing to Psalm 37:37. He also appeals to the analogia vel fidei and the context (vel contextus), and utilizes the original languages. He again notes how this passage does not coincide with Bekker’s point that Satan is chained in hell so that he cannot roam the earth. Mastricht affirms that while Satan does not operate outside the power, knowledge, and providence of God, he does still in fact operate nonetheless.

So far Mastricht has shown that Scripture clearly teaches the activity of Satan and evil spirits in the world after the first temptation. He summarizes: hactenus sinfulis militavimus Scripturae testimoniis, & expugnavimus, satanam vere seduxisse Protoplaftos, tentasse Christum, dimicasse cum Michaele, incitasse Davidem, ut Israelem numeraret, Jobum exagitasse, confestis in eum calamitatibus; dimicasse exagitasse congestis in eum. In section XXVII, he adds to this the manifold teaching of Scripture about Satan and devils, including their nature (indole) in 2 Cor. 11:3; Rev. 11:24; John 8:44; strength or power (viribus) in Acts 26:18; and business or activities (negotio). The third is described in general in 2 Thess. 2:9. In addition, Satan is said to take away the word in Mark 4:15. In 2 Cor. 7:5; 1 Cor 2:10; Rev. 12:9, 10 he is said to accuse. There is also his activity mentioned in Luke 22:31; 22:3; John 13:17; Acts 5:3; 1 Thess. 2:18; Rev. 2:9, 13. Scripture also includes Satan’s mode of agency (agendi modo) in 2 Cor. 11:14 as he disguises himself as an angel of light. He is also presently captured (captivus) in Rev. 20:7 and nearing his destruction (de appropinquante ejus exitio) according to Luke 11:18; Rom. 16:20; Matt. 25:41; Rev. 20:10.

Having considered all those passages of Scripture that have now been vindicated, Mastricht says that we are to be convinced that Satan continues to operate in humans and that we must acknowledge snakes and witches (Pythonibus & Pythonissis), the angel Satan (Angelis satanae), the possessed (de energumenis), evil spirits (malignis spiritibus), demonic apparitions (apparitionibus daemoniorum), the kingdom of Satan (regno satanae), kingdom of darkness (regno tenebrarum), that he is the god of this world (Deus sit hujus seculi), the prince of this world (princeps hujus mundi), emperor of the dead (imperium mortis habeat), lord of the air (in aere dominetur), etc. Thus, argues Mastricht, Scripture attributes much to Satan and therefore all Christians (universali Christianismo) receive this doctrine of Satan. And for those who reject it, si Deus juvet.

Scripture and Philosophy

In section XXIX, Mastricht guards against the abuse of philosophy (cavendum ab abusu Philosophiae) that would otherwise do violence to the Scriptures and theology. He rhetorically asks, if there is no passage in Scripture that affirms Satan is no longer active with men after the primal temptation, and if the common consensus of all Christians is that he is still at work, then what can possibly be Bekker’s objection against it? In short, his objection cannot be based on Scripture or the analogia fidei. Bekker is opposed to the totality of Scripture (adversus totam Scriptram) and not only the general knowledge of the Church, but also the sense of the world (mundi sensum).

So Van Mastricht asks, Cum igitur Scriptura, sicut demonstravimus, non potuerit; quid potuit, si non Philosophia? The objection does not arise from Scripture, but from an a priori commitment to alien philosophical system. In other words, his theological conclusions are formed by a more basic philosophy, not revelation. Quae doceat, spiritum non operari extra se?

Van Mastricht points out that Bekker says in the preface to his first book that he rejects the operation of spirits in humans ex Philosophia agnosceres. Van Mastricht points out that in most controversial heads, Scripture is said to err because his thought is governed by philosophy. He finds support for this in chapter 25, paragraph 15 and chapter 9, paragraph 6, and the preface to book one, as Bekker writes, te omnium minime satisfacturum his, qui Cartesii fundamenta rejiciunt, juxta quae, spiritum & corpus distinguas.

Van Mastricht follows Paul in warning and guarding against deceptive teaching and philosophy that would overturn the wisdom and revelation of God in Scripture, as he cites 2 Cor. 11:1ff.; 1 Tim. 6:20; Col. 2:8; 1 Cor. 1:20; 2:4; 2 Cor. 1:12. This was true long ago with Paul and continues to be the case (quae tot olim praecipites dedit, & etiamnun dat). This knowledge is not pleasing to God that exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ (extollit adversus cognitionem Christi). He concludes by asking whether Scripture must give way or concede (cedat) to philosophy or philosophy to Scripture? “Mastricht argued that Bekker placed philosophy above Scripture and that theology was being relinquished to the axiom ‘philosophy is the infallible interpreter of Scripture.’”[61]

Scripture and his Fourfold Approach

It is telling that Mastricht begins his polemic against Bekker with the vindication of Scripture since it is for him the principium cognoscendi of his theology. With that being said, this means that his Scriptural exegesis cannot be isolated from the subsequent sections that deal with doctrine, elenctics, and praxis. As Neele observes, “Mastricht’s exegesis cannot be evaluated without reading of his doctrinal, elenctical, and practical reflections on the theological subject in which consists the interconnectedness of his fourfold approach arising from the text of Scripture a parallel approach integrally present in Calvin’s Scripture commentary.”[62]

Doctrine (XXX–XXXVII)

Mastricht next looks at the reasons Bekker proposes for why spirits cannot interact with the body. He reproduces Bekker’s logic: If the devil is a spirit, and spirit is only thought, and thought does not have contact with the body, then (working backwards), the spirit does not act on the body, and if the spirit does not act on the body, then neither does the devil who is spirit. Mastricht goes on to affirm that the devil is spirit, but he rejects the proposition that there is no communion or interaction between spirit and body and instead proposes in section XXXV that spirits can operate in and on bodies. He rejects Bekker on the basis that his proposition is owing to a Cartesian dualism that assumes that spirit is thought and body is extension. Mastricht, on the other hand, affirms the operation of spirits on bodies on the basis of Scripture. While Cartesianism cannot find a unity within creation to bring together spirit and body, the spiritual and material, and so end up with a hard dualism, Mastricht locates the unity of the two with God who ultimately brings them together.

Elenctics (XXXVIII–LXVII)

Having affirmed the doctrine that Satan can operate on and influence men even after the primal temptation in the Garden, Mastricht proceeds to defend this claim against possible objections, before going on the offense against Bekker’s teaching.

Defense (XXXVIII–LVIII)

He argues that the monarchy of God is not annulled by this teaching, nor the oneness of God denied—that is, the affirmation of the Devil does not require ditheism or Manicheanism. Furthermore, the doctrine of Satan does not impede the kingdom of Christ, nor does violence to the deity of the Son and the Spirit. It does not do harm to the authority of Scripture or to the Christian religion. The operation of Satan, states Mastricht, does not tear down the authority of Scripture. Neither does this doctrine take away from the fear of the Lord, detract from the holiness of God, harm the truthfulness or goodness of God, nor the honor of angels, nor love towards one’s neighbor. It does not teach that sins or crimes are derived from the temptation of Satan, which would relinquish man of his responsibility, nor does it lead to any sins against God or other men.

Offense (LIX–LXVII)

The teaching of Bekker, on the other hand, subverts the authority of Scripture and, on account of that, the whole Christian religion (see esp. sections LX and LXII). Bekker’s teaching also defaces the fear and reverence of God and leads to positioning people in morally dangerous positions as it encourages disregard for guarding against the temptations of the evil one. It also leads to the neglect of love toward one’s neighbor.

Summary: Doctrine Measured by Love

Overall, Mastricht’s polemic against Bekker considers whether the doctrine lends itself to love for God and for neighbor. In other words, along with its goal in worship, as will be demonstrated in the following section, there is also the practical working out of faith in love that fuels Mastricht’s thought. The affirmation of Satan is required for a true love for God and neighbor in fulfillment of the law of God.

Praxis (LXVIII–XCV)

In section LXVIII, Mastricht states that the doctrine of the devil is efficacious to the worship of God, that is, to true piety (efficax esse ad pietatem). This is so because it emphasizes or illustrates the majesty and glory of God as it sets up a diametrical contrast of him with Satan, who is opposed to every good thing. This doctrine also explains the misery of those who are under the power of the devil and, therefore, again by contrast, the joy of those who have come under the reign and rule of Christ. This doctrine further warns that the convocation of sin is demonic, which keeps God’s people from indulging themselves. It also incites God’s people to shrink back from the image of Satan and to desire conformity to the image of Christ and fellowship with the Son of God. It forbids fellowship with all evil and sin, and makes God’s people strong and resilient through trials and temptations. Finally, it provides comfort from the assaults of the devil against God’s people and his church, since they know that Satan is under the power and knowledge of God and must serve his ultimate purposes.

5. Comparing Mastricht and Bekker

Having now considered the historical context and teaching of Bekker in Betoverde Weereld, as well as the correlation of exegesis, doctrine, elenctics, and praxis in Mastricht’s polemic against him, we now turn to a comparison of the two on a couple key issues.

First, as to the subject of the relationship between Scripture and philosophy, Bekker sought to subordinate Scripture to his Cartesian philosophy. This was especially evident in his exegetical and hermeneutical method that sought to conform the clear and simple teaching of Scripture on Satan and evil spirits to the dualistic spirit/body schema of Descartes. Accordingly, spirits as thought and bodies as extension could not have any interaction. This meant for Bekker that every passage in Scripture that seemed to teach their interaction must be written off as purely symbolic or figurative.

Mastricht, on the other hand, subordinated philosophy to Scripture as its servant and handmaiden. Philosophy was helpful insofar as it aided in the explanation of Scripture, but was to be rejected wherever it contradicted its clear teaching. Thus, because Scripture affirms the interaction of spirits and bodies, Satan and men, so did Mastricht.

Exegetically Mastricht avoids the elaborate and circus-like playing with the text that was required by Bekker to fit Scripture into his philosophy. Instead, Mastricht drew out the clear meaning and intention of the Scripture text, used Scripture to interpret Scripture as was common in the Reformed tradition, and appealed to the analogia fidei and the Reformed catechism as a catholic-Reformed Christian.

We also recognize that while Bekker was playing games with philosophy under the guise of theology, Mastricht refused to join him by pitting Aristotelianism (or any other philosophy) against Bekker’s Cartesianism. Mastricht, instead, was a Reformed theologian of the highest order who was faithful to the only foundation of the true, Christian religion: the self-revelation of God in Scripture.

Finally, Mastricht exhibits a heart for true piety, which is absent from the intellectualizing of Bekker. Mastricht saw that the rejection of this doctrine of Satan not only revealed a deeper epistemological issue as to the autonomous princpium cognoscendi in Bekker’s thought, but also a corrupting of piety and the true worship of God. Whereas Mastricht aimed at living to God in true piety, Bekker sought dying to man in philosophical inquisitiveness.

Conclusion

Mastricht has yet to fully penetrate the English world, which makes him ripe for further study. While past scholarship has only noted his epistemological concern with Bekker who was subordinating Scripture to philosophy, this article has attempted to draw out his equally crucial concern for piety in his polemic. All doctrine, including the doctrine of Satan and spirits, has a doxological purpose and is efficacious towards the true worship of God. Mastricht demonstrates this by wedding Scriptural exegesis, doctrine and praxis as a threefold polemical response against Bekker. The foundational error of Bekker, which stemmed from the improper formulation of the relationship between Scripture and philosophy, led to the teleological error of compromised (and, therefore, false) worship of God. Thus, far from a mere desire to maintain rigid, cold doctrinal standards, the placement of his doctrine and elenctics between Scripture and doxology in this polemical work is telling. Doctrine was not an isolated discipline for Mastrict. Rather, for him it had its beginning in the proper exegesis of Scripture—as to its simple meaning and in accordance with the analogia fidei and the Reformed confessions—and served the worship of God as its ultimate end. Theology and piety, doctrine and life were woven together in the polemical concerns of Mastricht who began with Scripture and ended with worship.

[1]Petrus van Mastricht, Ad Verum Clariss. D. Balthasaren Beckerum, S. S. Theol. Doct. Epanorthosis gratulatoria. Occasione Articulorum, quos Venerandae Classi Amstelodamensi exhibuit. die XXII Janu. 1692. Exarata a Petro van Mastrioht(Anthenium Schouten, 1692).

[2]Ernst Bizer, “Reformed Orthodoxy and Cartesianism,” in Journal for Theology and the Church, vol. 2, Translating Theology into the Modern Age, ed., Robert Funk (New York, 1965); orig. “Die reformierte Orthodoxie und der Cartesianismus,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 55 (1958).

[3]Ernst Bizer, “Die reformierte Orthodoxie und der Cartesianimus,” in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche55 (1958), cited by Adriaan C. Neele, Petrus van Mastricht(1630-1706), Reformed Orthodoxy: Method and Piety, Brill’s Series in Church History vol. 35 (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2009), 7.

[4]Aza Goudriaan, Reformed Orthodoxy and Philosophy, 1625-1750: Gisbertus Voetius, Petrus Van Mastricht, and Anthonius Driessen, Brill’s Series in Church History vol. 26 (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2006).

[5]Ibid.,2.

[6]Ibid., 5.

[7]Ibid., 331.

[8]Adriaan C. Neele, Petrus van Mastricht(1630-1706), Reformed Orthodoxy: Method and Piety, Brill’s Series in Church History vol. 35 (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2009). This study arises from his earlier doctoral dissertation The Art of Living to God: A Study of Method and Piety in the Theoretica-practica theologia of Petrus van Mastricht(1630-1706)(Th.D. thesis, University of Utrecht, 2005: Pretoria: Pretoria University Pres, 2005).

[9]Ibid., 1.

[10]Ibid., 1.

[11]Also observed by Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1: Prolegomena to Theology(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 1:62.

[12]Neele, Petrus van Mastricht, 285.

[13]See Neele, Petrust van Mastricht, 54-55; 103; 285.

[14]Neele, Petrus van Mastricht, 55. “Mastricht’s concern was, in a broader context, whether Scripture yielded to philosophy or the latter to the former. Either Scripture is the eternal, true, and authentic Word of God, held Mastricht, or the world will be overrun by philosophy, skepticism, and atheism” (ibid., 103).

[15]“Accommodation—Orthodox, Socinian, and Contemporary,” Westminster Theological Journal 75 (2013): 335-48.

[16]Lee cites Mastricht’sVindiciae veritatis et authoritatis Sacrae Scripturae in rebus philosophicis(Utrecht: Jonhannis Waesberge, 1655).

[17]Andrew Fix, “Bekker and Spinoza,” in Disguised and Overt Spinozism Around 1700: Papers Presented at the International Colloquium, Held at Rotterdam, 5-8 October, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History vol. 69 (Brill, 1996), 29.

[18]Balthasar Bekker, De philosophia cartesiana admonitio candida et sincera(Wesel: Andrea Hoogenhuysen, 1668), 10, cited by Lee, “Accommodation,” 337. See also Bekker, De Betoverde Weereld(Deventer, 1739.) 2:143-79.

[19]Lee, “Accommodation,” 337.

[20]For a study on Voetius and Descartes’ interactions, see Thomas Arthur McGahagan, Cartesianism in the Netherlands, 1639-1676: The New Science and the Calvinist Counter-Reformation(Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1976). His study primarily deals with Voetius and makes only a brief comment about Mastricht that he “maintained the anti-Cartesian campaign after 1676,” which goes beyond the focus of his study (p. 53). The same historical limitation is found in Theo Verbeek’s work Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian Philosophy 1637-1650(Cardondale and Edwardville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), who accordingly makes no mention of Mastricht. For more on Voetius and Descartes, see Von Erst Bizer, “Die reformierte Orthodoxie und der Cartesianismus,” 307-29; B. Hoon Woo, “The Understanding of Gisbertus Voetius and Rene Descartes on the Relationship of Faith and Reason, and Theology and Philosophy,” Westminster Theological Journal75, no. 1 (Spr 2013): 45-63; Andreas J. Beck, Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676): Sein Theologieverständnis und seine Gotteslehre(Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007).

[21]McGahagan, Cartesianism in the Netherlands, 106.

[22]Ibid.,109.

[23]Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 375.

[24]Ibid.

[25]Ibid.

[26]Ibid., 376.

[27]Ibid.

[28]Jacobus Koelman, Wederlegging van Balthasar Bekker’s Bestoverde Wereld(Amsterdam, 1692), 118.

[29]Wiep van Bunge, “Balthasar Bekker’s Cartesian Hermeneutics and the Challenge of Spinozism,” The British Journal for the History of Philosophy1 (1993): 55-79.

[30]Fix, “Bekker and Spinoza,” 23.

[31]Ibid., 23.

[32]Ibid., 24.

[33]Kort Begryp del Aldemeine Kerkelyke Historien, Zedert het Jaar 1666 daar Hornius eindigt, tot den Jare 1684 (Amsterdam, 1739), 38, cited by Fix, “Bekker and Spinoza, 24.

[34]Fix, “Bekker and Spinoza,” 35.

[35]Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 384.

[36]Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 1:73.

[37]Ibid., 1:74.

[38]Ibid., 1:75.

[39]Ibid.

[40]Ibid., 1:77; see also Willem J. van Asselt, The Federal Theology of Johannes Cocceius (1603-1669)(Netherlands: Brill, 2001), 81-89.

[41]Muller, PPRD, 1:78.

[42]Bekker, Kort begrijp, cited by McGahagan, 386. For more on the relationship of Cocceianism and Cartesianism, see McGahagan, Cartesianism in the Netherlands, 365-67.

[43]Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 378.

[44]Ibid.

[45]Ibid., 405.

[46]McGahagan, Cartesianism in the Netherlands, 11.

[47]Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 378.

[48]Ibid.

[49]Ibid.

[50]Ibid.

[51]Ibid., 379.

[52]See Israel,Radical Reformation, 392-405; Andrew Fix, “What Happened to Balthasar Bekker in England? A Mysery in the History of Publishing,” CHRC90.4 (2010): 609-31.

[53]Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 379.

[54]Ibid., 380.

[55]Ibid.

[56]Ibid.

[57]Ibid., 381.

[58]Neele, Petrus van Mastricht, 139.

[59]He also writes, Quantum assequor, non aliud, quam quod, ex placitis Philosophiae, spiritui, ceu merae cogitationi, non possint competere vires, quibus operetur extra se, id quod suo loco, ex prosesso discutiemus.

[60]Existimant, pleraque Scripturis narrata, de Angelorum operationibus, tibi non esse nisi figmenta & imaginationes, quibus nihil minus intendatur, quam quod verba sonant.

[61]Neele, Petrus van Mastricht, 55. “Mastricht’s concern was, in a broader context, whether Scripture yielded to philosophy or the latter to the former. Either Scripture is the eternal, true, and authentic Word of God, held Mastricht, or the world will be overrun by philosophy, skepticism, and atheism” (p. 103).

[62]Neele, “The Reception of John Calvin’s Work by Petrus van Mastricht,” Church History and Religious Culture, 91, no. 1-2 (2011): 163.

The great Dutch theologian of the Nadere Reformatie, Petrus van Mastricht (1630-1706), has only recently been introduced to the English-speaking world with the publication of his Theoretica-practica theologia (Theoretical and Practical Theology). In this article we will survey past scholarship on Mastricht, anticipating that further studies will emerge in the light of this new translation.

Jonathan Edwards: Better than Turretin

In 1747, Jonathan Edwards wrote the following to Joseph Bellamy:

As to the books you speak of: Mastricht is sometimes in one volume, a very large thick quarto, sometimes in two quarto volumes. I believe it could not be had new under 8 or 10 pounds. Turretin is in three volumes in quarto, and would probably be about the same price. They are both excellent. Turretin is on polemical divinity, on the 5 points & all other controversial points, & is much larger in these than Mastricht, & is better for one that desires only to be thoroughly versed in controversies. But take Mastricht for divinity in general, doctrine, practice & controversy, or as an universal system of divinity; & it is much better than Turretin or any other book in the world, excepting the Bible, in my opinion.

Richard Muller: Locating Mastricht

In his Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Richard Muller locates Mastricht within the era of high orthodoxy (ca. 1640–1685–1725). Muller notes that at this time the “architectonic clarity of early orthodoxy is replaced to a certain extent or at least put to the service of a more broadly developed and even discursive system.”[1] There is an expansion of polemical argumentation and the creative phase of early orthodoxy gives way to a phase of elaboration, refinement, and modification, which is evident in such prominent theologians as Voetius, Turretin, and Mastricht. Muller goes on to describe the posture towards philosophy during this time as Reformed theology now encountered the new ideas of autonomy introduced by the Enlightenment:

Among the major transitions that took place as Reformed theology passed from early orthodoxy into the high orthodox era was the transition from a philosophical development focused on the reception, assessment, and critical appropriation of the various trajectories of Christian Aristotelianism and of the late Renaissance developments … to the encounter of these older, highly nuanced approach with the new rationalists of the seventeenth century. … [T]he high orthodox, ca. 1640, were beginning to feel the impact of Cartesian thought. Just as the early orthodox era manifests not a monolithic appropriation of the older Aristotelian philosophies, but the reception of elements of various trajectories, so does the high orthodox era manifest varied receptions of the newer rationalism among the Reformed, and, indeed, the continuance of themes and issues from the older trajectories, now modified and altered by the changed philosophical context. Specifically, elements of the older Thomism, Scotism, and nominalism can still be detected as mediated through and modified by philosophical currents in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries—and elements of Cartesian thought and its modifications can also be found both debated and appropriated by various individual Reformed thinkers.[2]

Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676) had waged a strong polemic against the encroachment of Cartesianism upon the church and theology, which sought to subvert the authority of Scripture to an alien philosophy and special revelation to autonomous human reasoning. This mantle of maintaining the basic Reformation principle of sola Scriptura would be taken up by Mastricht at the University of Utrecht. In a future article we will consider Mastricht’s polemic against Cartesianism.

Ernst Bizer: Mastricht First Introduced into the English World

The Reformed scholastics in the Netherlands, including Mastricht, were first introduced into the English world with Ernst Bizer’s essay that was translated from the German in 1965.[3] This was the primary source at the time in English on conservative Calvinism in the Dutch Republic. He purports a pro-Cartesian interpretation of the Dutch Reformed theologians and argues that while Mastricht and others opposed Cartesianism, they were nevertheless “bound to confuse their outmoded worldview with their faith [and] their concept of truth was closer to the ‘new philosophy’ than is suspect.”[4] This view, however, has been challenged by more recent scholarship.

Aza Goudriaan: The Relationship between Philosophy and Scripture

Aza Goudriaan, in his volume, Reformed Orthodoxy and Philosophy, 1625–1750, focuses on the relationship of theology and philosophy as formulated in the thought of three key Dutch Reformed theologians: Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676), Petrus van Mastricht (1630–1706), and Anthonius Driessen (1684–1748).[5] All three were at the forefront of the philosophical debates that swirled in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially instigated by the arrival of Renee Descartes (1596–1650) in the Netherlands in 1628. “If it is true,” Goudriaan writes, “that orthodox Protestant theologians made more extensive use of philosophy than the Reformation itself, the question can be posed how they actually used philosophy. Or it can be asked what theological positions they held in areas that philosophers could also reckon to their territory.”[6] By studying these three theologians, Goudriaan “seeks to understand better how Dutch Reformed theology integrated and responded to philosophical views in the period from 1625 through 1750.”[7]

Voetius, professor of theology at the University of Utrecht, was initially the premier defender against the Cartesian encroachment upon the Dutch Reformed Church that sought to undermine both her theology and piety. This mantle would be taken up by his successor at the university, Petrus van Mastricht. As might be expected, Goudriaan demonstrates that Voetius and Mastricht were in essential agreement with one another in their theology and polemic against Cartesianism as they engaged it from distinctly Reformed premises and commitments.

Goudriaan deals successively with specific loci where the relationship between theology and philosophy was acutely tried and tested, including: reason and revelation; creation and the physical world; the providential rule of God over the world; anthropological issues of the relationship between the soul and the body; and divine and natural law. He notes that both Voetius and Mastricht had aligned themselves with the older Aristotelian philosophy against the newer Enlightenment philosophy, yet the debate was not waged over whose philosophical system was correct. This in itself would have been a losing concession, for it was precisely their aim that Reformed theology not be corrupted by alien philosophical concepts or categories that ultimately undermined Scriptural authority and teaching.

Philosophy was instead viewed by them as an instrument or servant of the most basic Reformed principle, namely, the authority of Scripture as their principium cognoscendi. For them Scripture was not subordinated to philosophy, but philosophy to Scripture. This starting point alone accounted for the full-orbed nature of creation with its rich diversity, including spirits and bodies, heaven and earth, which Cartesian dualism could not account for or bring into any real, dynamic relation. Because of this common commitment to the Reformed principle of Scripture’s authority, Goudriaan observes, “the theological development from Voetius to Driessen supports the broader claim that biblical Christianity outlives the philosophical and conceptual apparatus with whose help it is explained.”[8] To put it another way, philosophy was not the indispensable lord of theology, but its disposable handmaiden—it would, therefore, continue even when philosophies changed or failed.

Goudriaan’s conclusions are consistent with what we see in Mastricht’s Ad Verum Clariss. D. Balthasaren Beckerum. He does not utilize Aristotelianism to combat Bekker’s Cartesian and Spinozistic intention of disenchanting the world by casting doubt on the existence of spirits, including the devil, and rejecting any interaction between spirits and bodies. Rather, he formulates his argument on the basis of Scripture as its starting point and the true worship of God as its goal, thus wedding theology and piety.

Adriaan Neele: Doctrine and Piety

The only book-length treatment devoted wholly to Mastricht in English is Adriaan Neele’s Petrus van Mastricht (1630–1706), Reformed Orthodoxy: Method and Piety.[9] In this work Neele “deals with the post-Reformation Reformed concern for right doctrine and piety.”[10] He addresses a misunderstanding of past scholarship that has essentially separated the two. Neele describes the situation as follows:

In respect to [doctrine], scholarship has tended to appraise the theology of the seventeenth-century Reformed orthodox era, which includes the Nadere Reformatie, Puritanism and Pietism, as rigid and polemic; i.e., an abstract doctrine with little or no regard for practical significance. Consequently, the concern for orthodox doctrine has been seen as stalling the biblical exegesis of that era. In particular such exegesis has been critiqued for serving only to proof-text dogmatic and polemic works. Furthermore, the concern for doctrine has been regarded as leading to the relapse to Scholasticism and the neglect of the vitality of the Reformer’s humanism. … In respect to piety or praxis pietatis, which is a distinct feature of the seventeenth-century Reformed thought, scholarship has often negatively appraised its subjectivism, mysticism, and pietism, which deviated from Scripture. In addition, piety usually is described in opposition of the post-Reformation Reformed (Scholastic) orthodoxy. Contrary to these two emerging perspectives, more recent scholarship recognizes that piety is a working out of the theology of the seventeenth-century Reformed orthodoxy, which includes methodological aspects of scholasticism and Renaissance humanism.[11]

Neele redresses these issues by demonstrating the way in which Mastricht wedded doctrine and piety, theology and life, and correlated Scripture, doctrine, and praxis in his Theoretico-practica theologia, with particular focus on his Doctrine of God.[12] As this was Mastricht’s magnum opus, Neele has laid a substantial foundation for the direction of future Mastricht studies. The aim of his study, however, was not exhaustive, even as he invites “further study on Mastrich’s life and work, so that a fuller portrait may emerge and more completeness may be achieved in respect to the content of his publications.”[13] This invitation Theoretical and Practical Theology now available from Reformation Heritage Books.

[1] Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 1:73.

[2] Ibid., 1:74.

[3] Ernst Bizer, “Reformed Orthodoxy and Cartesianism,” in Journal for Theology and the Church, vol. 2, Translating Theology into the Modern Age, ed., Robert Funk (New York, 1965); orig. “Die reformierte Orthodoxie und der Cartesianismus,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 55 (1958).

[4] Ernst Bizer, “Die reformierte Orthodoxie und der Cartesianimus,” in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche55 (1958), cited by Adriaan C. Neele, Petrus van Mastricht(1630-1706), Reformed Orthodoxy: Method and Piety, Brill’s Series in Church History vol. 35 (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2009), 7.

[5] Aza Goudriaan, Reformed Orthodoxy and Philosophy, 1625-1750: Gisbertus Voetius, Petrus Van Mastricht, and Anthonius Driessen, Brill’s Series in Church History vol. 26 (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2006).

[6] Ibid.,2.

[7] Ibid., 5.

[8] Ibid., 331.

[9] Adriaan C. Neele, Petrus van Mastricht (1630-1706), Reformed Orthodoxy: Method and Piety, Brill’s Series in Church History vol. 35 (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2009). This study arises from his earlier doctoral dissertation The Art of Living to God: A Study of Method and Piety in the Theoretica-practica theologia of Petrus van Mastricht (1630-1706) (Th.D. thesis, University of Utrecht, 2005: Pretoria: Pretoria University Pres, 2005).

[10] Ibid., 1.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Also observed by Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1: Prolegomena to Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 1:62.

[13] Neele, Petrus van Mastricht, 285.

Part of a good transcendental critique must be drawing the lines between the dots for people to see clearly.

If I have any critique of Van Til, it is that he could have done better connecting those dots. He observes things in people’s thought with uncanny penetration and insight. And he will often state that their position entails something else, often an unwelcomed theological conclusion. And he seems to be right when he draws the dots. However, he often leaves us dangling and does not always connect the dots explicitly. If we can improve on Van Til anywhere it is here: connect the dots more explicitly, while penetrating deeply and critiquing transcendentally (as Van Til did).

An example of what I am talking about is found in his The Theology of James Daane. There Van Til says that Arminians cannot do justice to the idea of an infallible Bible (p. 24). On the surface that sounds absurd because many Arminians believe in infallibility. But his point is that once you deny an absolutely sovereign God who stands back of all history and events, direct inspiration and the assurance that human authors are kept from error fails. In other words, a god that is not absolutely sovereign cannot have contact with creation, and even if he could he cannot speak with any level of absolute certainly. But he does not write that large with explicit clarity. He does not walk us through the logic of why “A” necessarily entails “B” (not just in this instance, but in almost every system of thought he critiques).

I think that is how we can advance Van Til today. Not by changing or toning down what he said (as some “Van Tillians” would have it), but by making more explicit and lucid what he did say.

As we read about in Matthew 3, John the Baptist breathed in an “atmosphere surcharged with the thought of the end.”[1] In his mind his baptism was the final opportunity before “water” would be eschatologically outmoded by “the Holy Spirit and fire.” He thought that the time for repentance would reach its terminus with the appearance of the Christ—then water would be superseded by the Holy Spirit and fire, no longer for repentance but for final salvation and judgment.[2]

Jesus, however, steps onto the scene and rather than enacting a redemptive-historical transition to his eschatological baptism, he comes to be baptized by John. But John protests. Now his protest was not for them to reverse roles as if Jesus was simply to administer John’s own baptism of water. Rather, John believes that it was now time for his baptism to be superseded by the eschatological baptism of Christ.[3] In John’s eyes, the appearance of the Messiah alone was enough to transition redemptive-history into the eschatological era of the Messiah. His protest reveals he was ignorant of what must first be fulfilled in order for this to happen. This confusion over the timing and nature of Christ’s coming will persist with John and his disciples (9:9-13; 11:2-6).

In order to correct John’s redemptive-historical misunderstanding (or mistiming), Jesus responds, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness (Ἄφες ἄρτι, οὕτως γὰρ πρέπον ἐστὶνἡμῖν πληρῶσαι πᾶσαν δικαιοσύνην, 3:15). The first clause (“Let is be so now”) affirms that John was correct to expect a redemptive-historical transition, but it was not yet time—more than just the appearance of the Christ was necessary. It was thus fitting for Jesus to be baptized now (ἄρτι) because he and John had not yet fulfilled “all righteousness” (πᾶσαν δικαιοσύνην). If Jesus’ words are responding to this larger redemptive-historical timing issue, then it would seem natural to understand “all righteousness” here as including, but also going beyond his baptism to encompass all that he accomplishes in his life, death and resurrection. For it is only after these accomplishments that the transition John anticipated takes place and Christ commissions his disciples to baptize the nations in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (28:19).[4] Jesus, therefore, does not submit himself to John’s baptist as a mere example to be followed, but to propel redemptive-history forward in himself as the true Israel who repents not for his own sins, but for the sins of his people whom he came to save (1:21).

It is important to keep in mind that John does not administer a different baptism to Jesus; it is still a baptism with water for repentance on account of sin. Already the presence and problem of sin has been elucidated and deliverance from it has been tied to the mission of Jesus, the son of Abraham, the son of David (1:1). In Matt. 1:21 the people are understood not in the abstract, but specifically as those who belong to Jesus (“his people,” τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ) and who personally possess their own sins (“their sins,” τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν). How is someone saved from their sin? Forgiveness (see 9:2, 5, 6; 12:31). And how is someone forgiven? By the poured out blood of Jesus Christ (see 26:28). Therefore, the death of Christ was a necessary redemptive-historical accomplishment for John’s preparatory ministry and the eschatological shift that he anticipated (16:21; 17:22-23; 20:17-19)—much more than the mere appearance of the Messiah was necessary.

In Matt. 3:6 we read of people confessing (ἐξομολογέω) their sins as they are baptized by John. In relation to Christ and his work, sin is forgiven by him and on account of him. In relation to people, sin is confessed. The confession (or repentance) cannot be isolated from its Christological basis, the death and resurrection of Jesus, that makes it effectual for salvation.

But we may be able to say more than this, for Jesus himself undergoes John’s baptism with water for repentance. As the true Israel (cf. 2:15), he makes a true confession of sins, not for his own sins, but vicariously for the sake of his people he came to save. In fulfilling all righteousness, “[Jesus] had no other calling than to comply with the demands that God had imposed on every Israelite. … [So Matthew] brings out Jesus’ solidarity with the human race and, indeed, with sinners.”[5]

[1] Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology, 318.

[2] On the Holy Spirit and fire pertaining to salvation and judgment, respectively, see Herman Ridderbos, Matthew, 54. The same juxtaposition can be found in Ezek. 36:26-32; Joel 2:28-31; Zech. 12:9-10.

[3] Herman Ridderbos, Matthew, 57.

[4] It seems this is the same eschatological baptism expected by John, but now expanded to include the Father and the Son, possibly corresponding with the revelation of the Son by the Father and the Father by the Son (so 11:25-27).

[5] Herman Ridderbos, Matthew, 58-59.

Matthew often speaks of Christ as fulfilling the Scriptures (e.g., Matt. 1:22; 2:23; 8:17). When the Scripture referenced is a promise or a prediction, the idea of fulfillment is relatively straightforward (as in Matt. 21:4–5). But what can Matthew mean by saying that Christ fulfills the Scripture when the Old Testament passage in question was a historical notice? Consideration of one passage, Matthew 2:13–18, where this is the case may shed some light on the general meaning.

This pericope contains two episodes, each ending with a fulfillment formula (Matt. 2:15, 18). These two episodes relate how Joseph took the child Jesus to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod, who wound up destroying all the young children in the environs of Bethlehem. In this brief section, there are allusions to Genesis and Exodus, as well as quotations from Hosea and Jeremiah, which will be considered in turn.

Genesis 46

The patriarch Israel and his sons have been summoned to go into Egypt by Joseph, the betrayed brother who has risen to be ruler of the land. This news came as a shock to his father (Gen. 45:26), who had previously refused to be comforted for Joseph’s non-existence (Gen. 37:35; 42:36). As the journey reached its first stage, Jacob/Israel was confirmed in his purpose by speech with God “in visions of the night” (Gen. 46:2).

God promised to go with them into Egypt, and bring them out again, as well as the note that Joseph would be present at Jacob’s deathbed (Gen. 46:4). It was thus by faith in God’s promised presence and restoration that Jacob left the land of promise to sojourn in the land of Egypt.

These thematic echoes make this a suitable passage for Matthew to allusively incorporate into the fabric of his narrative of the early life of Jesus. The question of presence is important for Matthew’s account of Jesus. He is God with us (1:23), he is present wherever two or three gather in his name (18:20), and he is with his disciples as they pursue his commission until the very end of the age (28:20). Thus the promise of God’s presence in Egypt in the text of Genesis was likely to attract Matthew’s attention. Furthermore, Matthew relates the descent of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus into Egypt with a view to explaining that they came out: that juxtaposition of entrance and exodus is also found in Genesis 46.

Although God addresses the patriarch as “Jacob, Jacob” (Gen. 46:2), the text itself speaks of Israel as journeying, and God speaking to Israel (Gen. 46:1–2). There is a certain ambiguity to the name, because it can refer to Jacob as an individual, or to the whole clan and nation springing from him. This ambiguity creates room in which Matthew can present Jesus as Israel, the one who finally recapitulates and encapsulates what is true of God’s people. Jacob went into Egypt, but only his embalmed corpse came out (Gen. 50:2, 13). Jesus went down into Egypt and returned, because God was with him, as the original promise given to Jacob in Genesis 46 guaranteed. How could it be otherwise when Jesus is the locus of God’s presence with his people (Matt. 1:23)?

Exodus

There are multiple allusions to the events of Exodus in this part of Matthew. There are at least tacit comparisons between Jesus and Moses on the score of being infants threatened with death by tyrannical monarchs (Matt. 2:13 and Exod. 2:3).[i] The fact that other infants die when the one special named infant does not is another point of similarity between the two narratives. There is also an echo of God’s words to Moses in Exodus 4:19 when Joseph is told that “those who sought the child’s life are dead” (Matt. 2:20).[ii]

In the text of Exodus itself, it is clear that the experience of Moses the deliverer and Israel the delivered contain parallels. Both left Egypt in haste (Exod. 2:15; 12:39). Both were in a manner drawn out of water (Exod. 2:9; 14:22). Later revelation points out that ultimately both spent forty years in the wilderness (Acts 7:30; Num. 14:33).

The dialectic of individual and people again allows an ambiguity where Matthew can represent Christ as the new Moses, as well as the new Israel.[iii] For instance, when Christ spends forty days fasting in the wilderness and being put to the test (Matt. 4:1–2) this inevitably reminds the reader both of Moses’ extended fast on Sinai (Exod. 34:28) and of Israel’s long years of trial (Deut. 8:2). This dual presentation is not an inconceivable stretch, because Moses was the representative and mediator of Israel as they were constituted a nation.

It should also be noticed that in both Genesis and Matthew, Egypt is a place of safety and provision, whereas in Exodus it is the place of danger and bondage. Herod’s rule, then, makes Bethlehem into an analogue of Egypt, returning the promised land to the state it was in before God’s promises to Abraham were fulfilled through Joshua. The deliverer is born as promised in Bethlehem (Matt. 2:6), but as far as his safety went, pagan Egypt was a better place than the city of David. It is hard to imagine a more stinging indictment of the national condition at the time of Christ’s birth: the only way it could get worse is if they were to succeed in killing Christ…[iv]

The importance of Exodus as a source of Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus is further confirmed by his explicit quotation of Hosea, since he chooses a passage in which Hosea remembers the events of Exodus.

Hosea 11:1

The prophet Hosea addressed an impassioned appeal to the disobedient kingdom of Israel (i.e., the northern ten tribes which had broken away from allegiance to the house of David). As part of that appeal he reminded them of the great watershed event of Exodus – their deliverance from Egypt.

Thus God speaks of his love for Israel as a child, a love which was exhibited in calling his son out of Egypt. Here Hosea himself is alluding to the terms of God’s word to Moses in Exodus 4:22, as well as to the successful departure from Egypt recorded in the following chapters. The affectionate terms as well as the historic facts bore witness to the depth of God’s love for his people. And yet that people did not respond in kind, but were constantly unfaithful (Hosea 11:2).

When Matthew took up that great word that God called his son out of Egypt, the quotation is from Hosea, but that quotation includes the allusion to Exodus 4:22. Thus the affectionate term for Israel, “my son” was applied to Jesus. He is truly God’s Son, the firstborn. The terms of Exodus and Hosea apply most fully and properly to him. The process of inner-biblical exegesis which led Hosea to reflect on Exodus 4 is continuing, with ever-increasing clarity.

The faithlessness of corporate Israel (or “Ephraim” as Hosea says in 11:2, 8–9) placed an enormous question mark over its status as God’s son. Can it be that this is how the son of God behaves? The answer is no; but the full solution of this dilemma awaited the appearance of God’s ultimate Son, who fulfills all righteousness (Matt. 3:15).

Blomberg argues for seeing in Matthew’s usage of Hosea an instance of “pure typology,” that is to say, “divinely intended ‘coincidence’” discerned in “striking parallels between God’s actions in history.”[v] This is not quite strong enough. The striking parallels are present because God is gradually making clear over time the ultimate referent of all these events. It is not that the Exodus was similar to the life of Jesus because God repeats himself. Rather, the meaning of the Exodus was Jesus. The deliverance of Israel from Egypt was a model meant to point to the greater deliverance of God’s true and natural Son, and of all God’s people in and through him. It is thus not sufficient to say that Exodus or Hosea can be appropriated to explain Christ: rather, Christ was the point all along (see Vos on Christology and Hermeneutics).[vi] As Ulrich Luz put it: “It is true for Matthew and for all of early Christianity that the OT alone makes it possible to proclaim and understand the risen Jesus.”[vii]

This was made clear in the unfolding of revelation not only by successive recapitulations and the individual-corporate dialectic already mentioned, but also by the failures of the people which are so strongly emphasized in the context of Hosea 11:1. The deliverance of the people from Egyptian bondage was not an ultimate deliverance; in no small measure, they carried their bondage with them. That was why Herod could recreate Egypt in Bethlehem.

The types necessarily looked forward. Their good features suggested categories within which God’s great work on behalf of his people and presence with them could be understood. But their very imperfections highlighted their prospective nature. Because of this future orientation, it is not the case that God did again with Jesus what he did before through Moses. Moses was just a preparatory prologue.

Because Christ was not just another in a series of parallels, but the culmination and goal of the whole redemptive-history, fulfillment of prophetic utterance comes to its height in him. Matthew shows this by highlighting that even the surroundings of Christ are fulfilling prophetic words, in this case those of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 31:15

As Blomberg points out, this verse contains one note of sorrow “that reflects the current grief surrounding the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles” in a chapter that is otherwise full of glorious promises.[viii] The sorrow of mothers bereaved of their children is personified as Rachel weeping for her children. As pointed out above, the language here may draw on Jacob’s grief over Joseph’s loss.

Rachel is mentioned only three times in the Hebrew Bible outside of Genesis. There is reference to the location of her grave in 1 Samuel 10:2; her name is linked with Leah’s as a term of blessing in Ruth 4:11; and there is Jeremiah 31:15. The citation of this text in Matthew 2:18 provides the only New Testament reference to her.

It is thus an interesting question why Jeremiah chose to speak of Rachel weeping for her children. The Genesis narrative reveals her as envious (Gen. 30:1), and as seeing herself in conflict with her sister Leah (Gen. 30:8). Her sorrow over her initial barrenness was perhaps only partially alleviated by Joseph’s birth (cf. Gen. 30:22–24). As she died giving birth to her second son and named him “Son of my sorrow”, she was a sufficiently natural choice as a type of grief (Gen. 35:16-19). It seems likely that the text was suggested to Matthew’s mind because of the association of Rachel’s burying place with Bethlehem (Gen. 35:19; 48:7).

She weeps in Ramah because this was “a stopping-off point for the captives from Judah and Jerusalem on their way to exile in Ramah.”[ix] This last point can be verified by a reference to Jer. 40:1, which shows that Jeremiah was taken with other captives of the Babylonians as far as Ramah before being released. Perhaps the sight of the other captives who were not so fortunate added a very immediate pathos to Jeremiah’s composition of these words.

In the sorrow of bereaved mothers, Matthew sees a point of contact between Jeremiah’s words and the aftermath of Herod’s massacre. It is as though all the sorrows of loss in the long record of Israel’s oppressions were now revealed in the desolation surrounding the unsuccessful attempt on the life of Jesus. Perhaps this fulfillment also suggested some comfort. Jesus would return from his time in Egypt, as Matthew goes on to narrate: just as Jeremiah had prophesied that the children who were not would return (Jer. 30:16).[x] Rachel ultimately need not weep for her non-existent children when Jesus has come in fulfillment of the prophetic word, as the presence of God with us, and as the one who saves his people from their sins.

However that may be, it is clear that all kinds of prophetic words are finding their fulfillment in and around Christ. It is not the occasional messianic prediction only that he fulfills, but the meaning of the prophets taken quite broadly.

Conclusion

The preceding discussion leads to the conclusion that Matthew thinks of the prophetic word as something that required fulfillment, even when that word was not obviously predictive. Neither the quotations nor the allusions found in the section considered have any obviously future connotation in their original contexts, but are historical remarks. Even the quotation from Jeremiah, which does come from a context of promise, refers to the sorrow as a past or present event, not as something to be looked for in the future.

For Matthew, however, these historical notices are not mere statements of fact, nor even (as might have been expected from the Hosea reference) the basis for strong exhortation or rebuke. Rather, they have a referent ultimately beyond the boundaries of the historical events considered in themselves. History can be fulfilled only if it had a meaning, a goal whose character was in some sense sketched out in the events leading up to it.

In other words, Matthew’s typology is not simply a question of repeating patterns, but involves the whole concept of redemptive-history. It is a very clear lesson of the fulfillment formula that God is in control of the events. And in the events of the life of Jesus, the plan of God which was adumbrated in the past experiences of Jacob, Rachel, Moses, Israel, and Jeremiah is coming to its culmination.

This has implications for Matthew’s hermeneutical method. If he is interpreting the Scriptures typologically within a redemptive-historical framework, it is not possible to say that he twists the Scriptures[xi] except by rejecting his presupposition of a genuine advance in the progress of redemption that is focused on the coming of Christ. “The concept of fulfillment is at the heart of biblical theology.”[xii] On Matthew’s presuppositions, then, the genuine twisting of the Scriptures would be by trying to understand them without reference to Jesus Christ. He is the fulfillment of all the prophetic word.

For Further Reading

Apart from the books mentioned in the endnotes—Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament and the collection of essays, The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Text?—readers may find these studies of particular interest.

• R.T. France, Jesus and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1971)
• Hugh Martin, The Abiding Presence (Fearn, Ross-Shire: Christian Heritage, 2009)
• “Fulfillment in Matthew as Eschatological Reversal” and “The Last Adam: A Theology of the Obedient Life of Jesus in the Gospels”—two interviews with Dr. Brandon Crowe.

[i] Noted by Craig L. Blomberg, “Matthew” in G.K. Beale and D.A. Carson, eds., Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 7.

[ii] Both parallels are mentioned by Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1–7: A Commentary on Matthew 1–7 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 119.

[iii] Cf. the explanation of corporate solidarity in terms of “the interchange between the nation and its representative, with the Messiah being the embodiment of Israel’s hopes and the ultimate recipient of God’s promises to his people” by Richard N. Longenecker, “Who Is the Prophet Talking About? Some Reflections on the New Testament Use of the Old,” pp.375–386 in G.K. Beale, ed., The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts?: Essays on the Use of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994), 377.

[iv] Luz, Matthew, 121 is right in saying that “What we have here, however, is not a merely biographical interest in documenting the various stations of Jesus’ vitafrom the OT but a christological statement made with geographical statements.”

[v] Blomberg, “Matthew,” 8.

[vi] Cf. the comment of Douglas A. Oss, “The Interpretation of the ‘Stone’ Passages by Peter and Paul: A Comparative Study,” (JETS1989), 182: “Primary to the approach of the New Testament is a pronounced Christocentric perspective that resulted in interpretations being conducted along Christological lines in a very consistent manner.”

[vii] Luz, Matthew, 131.

[viii] Blomberg, “Matthew,” 9.

[ix] Gerald L. Keown, Pamela J. Scalise and Thomas G. Smothers, Jeremiah 26–52 (Dallas: Word Books, 1995), 119

[x] So Blomberg, ”Matthew,” 10.

[xi] As does S.V. McCasland, “Matthew Twists the Scriptures,” pp. 146–152 in The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts, when he says (147–148): “As only Matthew records the flight to Egypt, there is a strong possibility that the entire episode is an inference from the misunderstood Hosea 11:1.”

[xii] Longenecker, “Prophet,” 376.

Matthias Konradt, Israel, Church, and the Gentiles in the Gospel of Matthew. Translated by Kathleen Ess. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014. Pp. xii + 485. $79.95 (hardcover).

Konradt provides a stimulating reconsideration of the gospel of Matthew in order to determine the correct motive for the transition from Jesus’ exclusive ministry to Israel in 10:5-6 to the nations in 28:19. He challenges the traditional “rejection in Israel—turn to the nations” schema in favor of a more positive theological conception that is founded on Matthew’s gradually unfolding narratival Christology. The shift, he argues, is not a hard “break” from Israel to the nations as a consequence of Israel’s rejection, but an organic and “integral aspect of the narrative concept in which Matthew unfolds his Christology” (14). It is not a matter of replacement or supersession, but supplementation and expansion (86-87).

In fact, the very opening statement of the gospel—prior to the rejection of the Christ by some within Israel—already has the nations as its ultimate goal and aim, linking the gospel with the universal promises still unfulfilled in redemptive-history. Thus, the opening up of salvation to the nations was not because of a failure on the part of Israel, for they had not yet failed within the story, but because of the nature and identity of Jesus Christ as the son of David, the son of Abraham (1:1). Konradt will specifically uncover the Christological foundation of this transition to be Matthew’s integration of Jesus’ identity as the Davidic-Messianic shepherd of Israel and the Son of God.

Yet, the rejection of Jesus is not negligible, but significant to the narrative. In order to integrate both the positive Christological construction of the transition and the negative rejection of the Christ by the religious authorities and Jerusalem, Konradt makes a couple of helpful distinctions that seem to be inherent to the gospel itself. First, he distinguishes between the “nations” and the “church”—two separate entities that are often conflated or thought of as interchangeable. By distinguishing them it becomes apparent that the relationship between Israel and the nations is not the same as the relationship between Israel and the church.

Second, he differentiates within Israel between the Jewish crowds, who respond positively to Jesus’ ministry as the one sent to the lost sheep of Israel, and the religious leaders who outright reject and oppose him at every point, even persuading Jerusalem (itself a character in the story distinguished from the crowds of Galilee and not to be confused with Israel as a whole) to have him crucified in the end. This guards against a collective view of Israel’s rejection of the Christ and helps to show how the church was initially formed within Israel by the replacement of the religious authorities with Jesus’ own disciples, which organically leads to salvation extending to the nations.

Konradt develops his thesis in three steps: “Jesus mission to Israel, Israel’s reaction, and the possible consequence of a negative reaction” (14). The first step is taken in chapter 2, in which he argues that Matthew “systematically sculpted the orientation toward Israel, formulated programmatically in the mission logion in 15.24, as an essential feature of Jesus’ earthly ministry” (85). This is evident in the “altering of geographical details (4.23-25; 15.29-31)” and the editing of texts in which Jesus’ ministry towards various Gentiles (8:5-13, 28-34; 15:21-28) is presented as “exceptions” to the pre-Easter situation (74, 85), for the καιρός when salvation would extend to the nations had not yet come and would only come post-Easter. The central reason, however, for Jesus’ Israel-oriented ministry was Christological, that is, it was founded upon his identity as the Davidic-Messianic shepherd of Israel. This title integrates both the healing and teaching aspects of his ministry, and its positive connotation reveals that he carried it out not for the sake of justifying his denunciation and rejection of Israel, but positively to fulfill Israel’s promises of salvation (86).

In chapter 3, Konradt highlights the differentiated reaction to Jesus in Israel, which he believes Matthew intentionally draws out by distinguishing the authorities and the crowds from one another (135). Maintaining his Christological focus, he notes that the conflict revolved around his authority as the Davidic Messiah, which the crowds recognized in his healings, but the religious leaders directly opposed. Likewise his teaching on the proper understanding of God’s will, i.e., the Law and the Prophets, also proved a dividing line. “To speak of healing and teaching is to speak summarily of the central aspects of Jesus’ ministry (cf. 4.23; 9.35; and 21.14 + 21.32a), and so the opposition against Jesus directed itself against his ministry as a whole” (136). In short, the division between the crowds and authorities was Christological. And this division remained a reality throughout Jesus’ passion, including 27:25. So, argues Konradt, Matthew does not have in view a collective rejection of Jesus in Israel; instead, Jerusalem is now included in the battle lines, which was anticipated in 2:3 and in Jesus foretelling his death (16:21; 17:22-23; 20:17-19). It was not Israel as a whole, but the authorities and the people of Jerusalem who decided against their Messiah (27:25).

In chapter 4, Konradt looks at the same issue of differentiation now with regard to Jesus’ pronouncements against Israel—are they also to be distinguished? Konradt argues against the popular notion that Jesus rejected Israel wholesale and defends this against interpretations of various passages that have been used to support “the thesis that Israel as a collective entity will be punished or has forfeited her position” (263). When Jesus climactically declares that the kingdom will be taken from them and given to a people producing its fruit (21:43), Konradt sees this as fulfilled in the replacement of the current religious authorities with his disciples, not the replacement of Israel with the Gentile nations (352). The pronouncements against this generation (11:16-19; 12:38-45; 23:34-36), the destruction of Jerusalem (22:7; 23:37-39), and the parable trilogy all confirm a differentiation that takes place within Israel. This is in keeping with Konradt’s thesis that the transition is founded on positive Christological grounds. While the religious authorities are rejected, those within Israel replace them and are enabled for the task by the authoritative and true teaching of Jesus.

Chapter 5 unfolds how the above conclusions relate to “the inclusion of the nations in salvation and the formation of the ecclesia” (264). The turn towards the nations cannot be owing to “the (collective) rejection of Jesus in Israel, the failure of his mission to Israel, or Israel’s guilt and condemnation” (265). The universal intention of salvation is evident from the beginning of the gospel and is founded upon a Christological foundation, anticipated in 1:1 and made a reality following the endowment of the resurrected Christ with universal authority. “In this the ministry of salvation to the nations presumes the ministry to Israel. It is the salvation made known to Israel in which the nations participate” (324). According to Konradt, this corresponds with Matthew’s integration of Jesus’ dual identity as the Davidic Messiah (Israel-specific) and the Son of God(universal).

Having confirmed the organic and supplemental nature of the transition from 10:5-6 to 28:19, Konradt takes up the relationship between Israel and the church in chapter 6. Since there is a positive Christological conception that motivates the transition, it is incorrect to associate the church with the nations as if it replaced Israel. The church is not conceived by Matthew to be “the new or true people of God, as opposed to Israel” (352). Rather, the church is first formed within Israel as Jesus replaces the religious authorities with his disciples, who have been entrusted by him with the true teaching of Israel. The church, then, is the “community of salvation that has emerged (and is still emerging) from Israel and the (other) nations” (353). This community is commissioned to incorporate the nations, of which Israel is now a part.

In chapter 7, Konradt concludes by noting that past socio-historical approaches have been essentially guesswork and have been unable to integrate all of the elements and motifs present in Matthew’s gospel. This approach, therefore, should be considered subordinate to the theological approach that Konradt has undertaken, which, in turn, may provide constructive lines for the socio-historical approach to follow.

Konradt’s work exhibits numerous strengths that make his basic thesis of grounding the transition from 10:5-6 to 28:19 upon a positive Christological foundation compelling. First, his historical-critical exegesis allows for a truly constructive interpretation that builds on the text, rather than a source-critical or socio-historical methodology that aims at mere reconstructive purposes that only (subjectively) arrive at the text (see esp. 10n35). While some of Konradt’s conclusions are based on the assumption of Matthew editing or redacting Mark and Q, his methodology leads him to integrate major elements and motifs in the gospel, to see the uniqueness of Matthew’s gospel, and to engage in careful and critical exegesis.

Second, he makes a compelling case for a positive Christological foundation which corresponds with other Matthean studies that have focused on the narratival unfolding of Jesus’ identity as a central goal of the gospel. He consistently and clearly relates each chapter to this basic point of his thesis.

Third, he reads the events of the gospel not as abstract soteriological datums or general moralistic axioms, but redemptive-historically. This enables him to see the universality of God’s intentions in Christ as inherent from the beginning since he comes to fulfill promises that have already been given to Abraham and to David. “Matthew anchors the extension of the ministry of salvation to the nations in Israel’s history of salvation by indicating that God’s history with Israel was aimed toward this goal from the very beginning” (307). He is also able to make historical distinctions within the gospel itself between pre- and post-Easter, which illumines the eschatological significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Fourth, he makes a host of helpful distinctions where the tendency in the past has been to conflate or confuse. This is especially the case with his distinction between the nations and the church, which seems obvious, but is often not made. This allows for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between Israel and the church and Israel and the nations.

This work can also be critiqued or improved upon in a few places. First, while Konradt tries to integrate Jesus’ son of David and son of God titles in a way that provides a Christological foundation for an organic transition from Israel to the nations, he seems to maintain too strong a distinction between them prior to this integration. For example, he writes, “While the focus on Israel in Jesus’ earthly ministry correlates with the emphasis on his Davidic messiahship, the extension of salvation to the nations is connected with the salvific death, resurrection, and exaltation of the Son of God” (310; also 324). This is problematic because universal, eschatological dimensions are inherent to the Davidic title (2 Sam. 7) as well as to Jesus’ title as the son of Abraham (Matt. 1:1; Gen. 17:4-6; Rom. 4:13). In addition, the son of God title has Davidic Messianic connotations (e.g., Ps. 2). It seems it would be better to formulate Jesus’ identity as the Eternal Son and as the Messianic Son in an archetype-ectype schema in which the ontological is the ground and source of the redemptive-historical. It may, however, be countered that this would be more of a theological rather than narratival construction.

Second, in arguing for a positive Christological motivation for the transition, Konradt downplays the significance of Israel’s ignorance of Jesus’ true identity. This takes away from Matthew’s concern to show that Israel must be reconstituted in Christ (e.g., Matt. 2:15). The continuity between Israel and the nations is not found in some of Israel not rejecting him, but in Christ alone as he gathers a people around himself. The children of Abraham have always been those of faith.

Finally, it would have be interesting if Konradt had interacted directly with dispensational formulations of the Israel-nations relation. This, however, is not a fault of the book since it was not necessarily the focus of the study.

Overall, I would recommend this book to pastors and scholars who plan on preaching or teaching through the gospel of Matthew. Whether you agree with all of Konradt’s conclusions or not (I, for one, did not), he forces you to wrestle with what exactly is the unifying theme and purpose of Matthew’s gospel as well as its driving theological motivation. This will prevent piecemeal interpretations that analyze only the trees, but miss the forest of the gospel.

The proper goal of every apologist is not to win arguments or build a reputation, but to glorify God through the faithful defense (ἀπολογία) of Christ. Our Lord doesn’t need anyone to defend him, but he gives us that privilege (1 Pet. 3:15). Apologists must seize that great privilege in a manner that glorifies the one whom they defend.

Christian apologists share the truth of Jesus Christ with an unbelieving world in the hope that they will call upon the name of the Lord and be saved. This is how apologetics and evangelism are linked, and neither the apologist nor the evangelist should misunderstand their duty. Not every person will be saved. Faith is a gift of God and rests in the sovereign will of the Lord. It’s liberating to know this, because it means that neither the apologist nor the evangelist have the power to regenerate. Their burden is to be faithful.

This is why apologetic method matters. Christians may sometimes become preoccupied with the content of the message and not consider how it is delivered or the foundation upon which it is laid. Both matter significantly. Not only does it matter what you say but also how you say it.

It undercuts the apologists defense if she speaks out of anger. No matter how cogent the defense, it will be rejected. Christians are called to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). Van Til was fond of saying that we should be suaviter in modo, fortiter in re—roughly translated, “smooth in method, strong in the thing.” Don’t compromise the truth for the sake of palatability. But also don’t beat people over the head in order to “win” an argument. Love them with the truth.

Sacrificing love will kill an apologetic but so will basing the “content” of the defense upon a poor foundation. This error is much more subtle. Many apologists appeal to the so-called neutral facts of science and history, presenting the truth of the resurrection to ostensibly neutral judges. They may also enlist the help of credentialed historians or scientists to add esteem to their case. But Christ not only lays claim to the facts of Jesus’s resurrection, for example, but also to the idea of a fact itself. Christians are to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5), and therefore, the faithful apologist cannot deliver Christian building blocks hoping his conversation partner will build with them properly. He must give the building blocks and show how and where to build according to God’s blueprint.

The world does not define the rules of engagement; Christ does. Don’t fall prey to its terms. If the world gives you faulty categories, reject them in favor of Christ and his kingdom. The wise man built his house on the rock (Matt. 7:24–27). Let us make sure that we’re building upon the only true foundation that has been laid, which is Christ himself (1 Cor. 3:10ff).

“Yet the Aristotelianism of Rome, with its idea of potentiality, offers, we are bound to think, a point of contact with the underlying philosophy of Dialecticism. Rome occupies an intermediary position.”[1]

What has Basel to do with Rome? In the above quotation Van Til is making a startling point. On the one hand earlier on in the paragraph he acknowledges that Rome has way too much orthodoxy in it for there to be an easy alignment with “the theology of Crisis.” Nevertheless, Rome’s theology and the theology of Basel are not devoid of all commonalities.

So, when he speaks of “the Aristotelianism of Rome” he has in mind, of course, the theology of Thomas Aquinas. Van Til, rightly or wrongly, always associates Roman Catholicism with Thomism. But what is most important here for our purposes is to identify what he means by Rome’s “idea of potentiality.”

We need to be brief here (a fuller scholarly treatment of this subject is beyond our purview). But the idea of “potentiality” entails what some call a chain, or scale, of being. Potency is understood opposite of actuality. And every thing has potency, which means it has potential toward actualization. Only God is pure actuality, having no potency in himself. Everything else is on its way toward actualization. This idea is often connected with the idea of the analogia entis – or analogy of being. Things on the scale of being – God who is the greatest being, man as an actualizing agent – relate to one another analogically. While there is much dissimilarity between God and man – God is fully actualized, we are not – there is also a commonality as well: God and man are both beings. So, it is an analogy based on the fact of what God and man have in common: being. And while God and man differ quantitatively in their being they are not qualitatively different.

So, what has this to do with Barth (here Van Til uses the broader term “Dialecticism,” but he has primarily Barth in mind)? After all, does Van Til not know that Barth absolutely rejected the analogia entis (goes so far as associating it with the anti-Christ)? Does Van Til not know that Barth speaks about the “qualitative difference between eternity and time?” Where in the world could Van Til find common cause between Aquinas and Barth?

While it is true that Barth begins with the “qualitative difference between time and eternity” he does not stay there. Especially as his theology develops from the time of his Romans commentary, he recognizes that he cannot stop with the qualitative difference if God and man are ever to be reconciled. Somehow God and man, time and eternity, the Creator and creature must be brought together. At the same time his actualistic doctrine of God does not allow him to have a God who is eternal or timeless in the absolute sense. So he speaks about “God’s time.” For Barth God’s time is his time of grace in the eternal decree who is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is himself both the electing God and the elect man. With that, then, Jesus Christ is both the eternal God and the temporal man. And he is such in his eternal nature. There is for Barth no logos asarkos, that is a Christ who is ever understood as being without flesh and therefore without time. Jesus Christ is himself “God’s time for us.” That means that God and man, eternity and time, are co-terminus realities. The relationship between God and man is relative and not absolute. For God is forever and from all eternity this God who has time for us in Jesus Christ.

To be sure, this is not the same thing exactly as Thomas’ analogy of being. It is more like an analogy of God’s time. And while the construction differs, what remains as a common ground between Thomas and Barth are their commitment to placing God and man in a relative relationship rather than an absolute one.

Both Thomas and Barth then stand over against the Reformed understanding of how God and man relate. For the Reformed God and man relate covenantally. They both have a relationship in absolute distinction from the beginning. The way in which they relate, then, is not through some kind of ontological bond. Rather, the bond is covenantal. It is a relation established by God and guaranteed and sealed by divine fiat – not through bringing God and man in under a common ontological reality (being for Thomas, time for Barth).

But there is one last commonality between Thomas and Barth, and it is based on the commitment to their respective views of analogy. And that is they both stand in antithesis to the Reformed Faith. Reformed theology will not allow this common sharing or an ontological bond between God and man. For the problem between God and man is not ontology. The problem is a matter of hamartiology. And the solution is soteriological and covenantal. And therein lies the difference between the Reformed Faith on the one hand and Thomas and Barth on the other.

[1] Van Til, C. (1947). The new modernism: an appraisal of the theology of Barth and Brunner. The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Philadelphia. P. 8.

Snow is the humblest weather.

I have the quiet joy of watching it right now, during my favorite time of the day: dawn. The latest nor’easter has shouldered its way onto the east coast, throwing its heavy belly over New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and—where I am now—the suburbs of Pennsylvania. In the soft, blue-grey light of the morning, the snow is falling.

Snow is humble, to me, because of how it comes to us and what it does to the world around us. It does not come with the drum beat or splattering voice of rain; it does not come with a whistle as the wind. It just … falls, pirouetting and turning in the atmosphere before laying itself down on the earth, covering what is already here, conforming to the shapes it settles on.

As I stare at it outside the window, my mouth sits open in wonder. I can hear the thud of my heartbeat at the back of my throat, marking the constancy of my own life and mirroring the stability of the world outside. That stability, of course, has an origin and anchor: the speech of God.

I have written numerous times about the governance of God’s speech, following the well-trodden path of my friend and teacher, Vern Poythress. I do not think I will every stop writing about it. It is too rich, too mysterious, too marvelous to go unnoticed. I find myself returning to the truth of God’s governing speech almost every day, as a child returns to the top of a snow-covered hill with his sled, never tiring of the ride.

You see, the most gripping thing to me about living in a world of God’s speech—a world that was created, sustained, and finds its telos in that speech—is very simple: what we see around us is what is said. The world is what God spoke, speaks, and will speak. It is not the cold and impersonal gathering of elements, not the mere existence of matter in motion. The world, at base, is not elements; it is syllables—a rhythm of God’s uttered work, with a mysterious meter in which we are all caught up, forgetting that everything we do, think, and say happens in the context of someone else’s dialogue: God’s dialogue—or perhaps better, God’s trialogue. We live and move and have our being in divine speech.

Looking at the snow this morning is a wonderful reminder of that. In a few hours, I will pick up my shovel, zip up my jacket, and head out into a quiet, whitening world. Standing in the midst of the cascading snow will help me see that I am surrounded by what God is saying, by what he has spoken. I am not just an observer of God’s world; I am part of the discourse.

Perhaps this sounds hopelessly abstract to you—the prattle of a poet’s heart. But remember this: the world is God’s and the fullness thereof (Ps. 24:1; 1 Cor. 10:26). The snow comes from his storehouses (Job 38:22) and falls at his bidding (Job 37:6). The world in which we live is not an abstract thing; it is the spoken and verbally sustained environment for the display of God’s character. Our world is ever a word about God himself.

Maybe that’s why I am mesmerized by the snow. The sense of metaphorical humility that I find here is a reflection of the greatest humility: the humility of God in creating, sustaining, and redeeming the world; the humility of the Son of God, who took on flesh all while remaining immutably divine and absolute, bending down to peer into the hearts of men and perform his silent spiritual surgery, giving us new hearts, so that we could look at the snow, and see not just the weather, but the measure of God’s greatness and love.

Snow may be the humblest weather. But it is so only because of the great humility of God. If nothing else, that should give us pause as we stare out the window. Here we are in a world of God’s speech, and we hardly hear it, just as we can hardly hear the falling snow.

The Hebrew-English Old Testament: BHS/ESV. Stuttgart, Germany/Wheaton, IL: German Bible Society/Crossway Books, 2012. pp. 3148.

The Greek-English New Testament: N-A28/ESV. Stuttgart, Germany/Wheaton, IL: German Bible Society/Crossway Books, 2012. pp. 1674.

The Systematic Theology Study Bible. ESV. Christopher W. Morgan, Stephan J. Wellum, and Robert A. Peterson, Eds. Graham A. Cole, contributing ed., Wheaton, IL. Crossway Books, 2017. pp. 1883.

While I am generally critical of the glut of various kinds of Bibles which one can find on the shelf at your local bookstore, I must confess that the Bibles I am considering in this brief notice are a happy exception. All three Bibles enhance the regular study of the Scriptures and therefore contribute to our growth in grace and increase in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The Hebrew-English OT and the Greek-English NT provide a large measure of convenience. While it is great to have these texts in electronic format, I am old enough to still appreciate and benefit from the tactile reality of the printed volume. These beautifully bound volumes, which resemble but are not identical with their Hebrew and Greek text counterparts, set the Hebrew and Greek texts side by side (on separate pages) with their English Standard Version translations. This is most beneficial for those who have either not kept up with their facility in the original languages or who have grown a little rusty in their use of Hebrew and Greek. They are useful, among other things, in helping to jumpstart a recovery of the use of the ancient text. These volumes also may prove useful in a group Bible study setting in which you can show folk the original text behind the English translation in an easy to use format. Finally, these two volumes may serve to get a young man who is considering whether God is calling him into the ministry and therefore going to seminary in getting used to looking at the original languages. These are all commendable uses.

The Systematic Theology Study Bible demonstrates that Systematic Theology (ST) is or ought to be directly tied to the text of Scripture. While any study Bible worth its salt will be in fact a ST study Bible of sorts, this one has the merit of being up front about its goal of grounding the traditional loci of ST (God, man, sin, revelation, etc) in the biblical text. The multitude of contributors represent a broadly Reformed perspective (with one recognizable exception) as that is reflected in such parachurch organizations as the Gospel Coalition. There are useful book introductions and the topical notes are placed in locations where the topic arises from the text. I note that the reader can read for pages without the interruption of study notes so these are not overwhelming. The Bible contains the standard ESV cross references and concludes with ST topical appendices and indices.

These volumes are tremendously useful and the pastor can use all three in the pulpit and laypeople could benefit from using the Systematic Theology Study Bible in the pew during public worship and in weekday personal and family worship as well. The use of these Bibles would go far in fulfilling the Westminster divines reminder that the Scriptures are known through the diligent and due use of all outward and ordinary means of grace (WCF 1.7).

The eschatological life of the believer requires the legal restitution of sin’s guilt by means of an imputed righteousness for justification—a kingdom benefit received only in union with Christ by his Spirit through faith. While Paul spoke of the death of Christ in Romans 1:3-4 and its application for salvation to all who believe in 1:16-17, now in 5:1-11 he expounds its substitutionary nature, having just declared Abraham justified before God on account of the righteousness he received not by works of the law, but through faith. Christ did not die for his own sin, but for us while we were helpless (v. 6), sinners (v. 8), and enemies (v. 10). The death of Christ established peace with God (5:1) for by it we were reconciled to God (5:10)—both forensic terms in keeping with justification.

Vos, commenting on Romans 5:9-11, states, “The objective reconciliation took place in the death of Christ; its subjective result is justification. … The two are entirely equivalent. … [Reconciliation] consisted in the removal of objective legal obstacles…. According to Romans … the two transactions of reconciliation and justification are in substance identical. They both rest on the death, or the blood, of Christ.”[1]

Ridderbos gets at the eschatological thrust of reconciliation by defining it as “the work of redemption going out from God in Christ to the world, for the removal of ‘enmity,’ for the restoration of ‘peace.’ … [I]t is primarily a matter of removing that which stands in the way of the right relationship between God and (in the most comprehensive sense of the word) the world; in other words, of the eschatological restoration of all things.”[2]

Of particular interest for understanding the eschatological aspect of Paul’s conception of life is his statement in 5:10, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by [ἐν] his life.”[3] The reference to the “life” of the Son[4] comes after mention of his “death,” which leads us to understand it not as his earthly life, but specifically as his resurrection life in the power of the Spirit (1:4). John Murray observes,

It is not simply the resurrection as an event that is in view, however. Paul does not say, we shall be saved by his resurrection, but ‘by his life,’ and therefore it is the exalted life of the Redeemer that is intended. The resurrection is in the background as conditioning the exaltation life.[5]

In what sense, then, are we saved by the resurrection life of the Son? To answer that we need to first point out that the salvation envisioned here appears to be eschatological, which is evident from the reference to the wrath of God in v. 9. Therefore, it seems Paul has in mind the firstfruits or firstborn concept, which he develops elsewhere (see Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 15:20-24). The preposition ἐν could be translated as “in” instead of “by”—we are saved in his life. The resurrection life of Christ is the guarantee of the resurrection life of all united to him in the same way the full harvest is united to the firstfruits. The life of Christ consisting in his royal eschatological enthronement beyond the reach of the grave in the incorruptibility of the Spirit guarantees the kingdom life of all believers who will share in his reign (5:17) and inheritance (8:17). Murray drives the point home well:

The a fortiori argument of the apostle is thus apparent. It is to the effect that if, when we were in a state of alienation from God, God showed his love to such an extent that he reconciled us to himself and instated us in his favour through the death of his own Son, how much more, when this alienation is removed and we are instated in his favour, shall the exaltation life of Christ insure our being saved to the uttermost. … This argument also shows the indissoluble connection that there is between the death and resurrection of Christ and that since these may never be disassociated so the benefits accruing from the one may never be severed from those accruing from the other. … Hence those who are the beneficiaries of Jesus’ death must also be the beneficiaries of all that is entailed in his resurrection life.[6]

The eschatological life of the believer can never be separated from the resurrection life of Christ. This royal life of the Son in the incorruptible power and glory of the Spirit is the guarantee of the full possession of life for all who believe. Furthermore, as Paul will go on to demonstrate, the only other alternative to life in Christ is death in Adam (5:12-20)—in these two public persons is the whole of humanity subsumed. The path of life from the mode of the flesh, which is subject to death, to the mode of the Spirit, which is characterized by power, glory, and life, is exclusively found in the resurrection life of Jesus Christ our Lord. The gospel, of which the death and resurrection of the Son is the central subject matter (1:3), is the power of the risen Lord to bring all who receive it by faith into this kingdom life.

Lastly, Paul’s connection between reconciliation and life in this passage highlights the God-centered nature of this life, which has been evident since the beginning. There is no life post-fall apart from reconciliation between God and the sinner. This life in Christ can only be considered true life if it is enjoyed in the presence of the living God with all elements of enmity and separation caused by sin blotted out, removed as far as the east is from the west, cast forevermore into the depths of the sea—here legally, as to justification, and later as to sin’s power in sanctification (Rom. 6).[7]

[1] Geerhardus Vos, “The Pauline Conception of Reconciliation,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, 363-64

[2] Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, 183.

[3] This is the same sequence as 1:3-4. In other words, the life-experience of Christ is repeated in those united to him by the Spirit through faith.

[4] This is the first time the title “Son” has been used since the prologue.

[5] John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 1:174.

[6] Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 1:175.

[7] Both justification and sanctification are kingdom benefits with neither being the source of the other, but both being conferred in union with Christ (which is to be transferred into his kingdom) by the Spirit through faith.

Paul was a redemptive-historical preacher of the highest order. His theology was founded not on timeless or idealistic truths, but concrete historical events in accordance with their order, progression, and organic character. This is demonstrated, for one, in Romans 4.

In order to support his previous argument about the righteousness of God being manifest in the cross of Christ apart from the Law (3:21ff.), Paul makes a redemptive-historical downshift behind Moses to the time of Abraham in order to demonstrate that Abraham was counted righteous historically prior to his law-obedience of circumcision; therefore, his later circumcision did not obtain for him righteousness, but sacramentally sealed the righteousness he already possessed by faith (4:9-11a). The purpose of this was to make him the father of all who believe, whether circumcised or uncircumcised (4:11b-12). In other words, the historical timing of Abraham being first justified and then circumcised had a vital and determining effect on the nature of the community of faith, making room from its conception for all people who believe, whether Jew or Gentile.

This also determined the way in which the promise to Abraham and his offspring—that he would be heir of the world (κοσμος, v. 13), ultimately an eschatological kingdom reality (cf. 8:17)—would be fulfilled. The promise was given to Abraham when he possessed righteousness through faith and not through the law. This is significant because the promise was not given to Abraham in the abstract, but within a redemptive-historical context in which death had already entered the κοσμος Abraham was to inherit and was reigning over it (5:12-14).[1]

Here is the major point: the Law could not effect that which only God himself could effect. The Law was powerless to bring life from the dead, to effect resurrection—whether typologically or eschatologically. The promise, therefore, would have to rest entirely on grace, not meticulous law-keeping (4:16). It is not the adherents of the Law who are the heirs, but those who share in the faith of Abraham, a faith that believes in the God “who gives life to the dead” (v. 17), a faith that hopes against hope (v. 18).

The redemptive-historical situation Abraham found himself in when he was given the promise of inheriting the κοσμος ruled by death means that the fulfillment of this promise will require the overthrowing of death’s reign by resurrection. This draws us back to the prologue (1:3-4) in which the pattern of death to life (i.e., resurrection) was typologically seen in King David and eschatologically fulfilled in Jesus Christ our Lord. Paul now sees another earlier typological fulfillment of the promise in Abraham when the Lord brings life from his body, “which was as good as dead,” and “the deadness of Sarah’s womb” (4:19). It was not Abraham’s doing that would bring forth life—such would be impossible for him as one residing under death’s influence—but believing in God alone who could do it. This episode in Abraham’s life demonstrates typologically that the promise rests on grace, that is, God doing what he had promised apart from the contributive works of those for whom he is doing it. Notice what Paul writes with his emphasis on faith and God bringing forth life from the dead:

… in the presence of the God in whom [Abraham] believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead [νεκρόω] (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the deadness [νέκρωσις] of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness (4:17-22)

The problem is that Abraham eventually closed his eyes and entered the grave, as did his child of promise, Isaac, and all of his descendants after him, including all the Levitical priests and Davidic kings.[2] Therefore, the bringing forth of life from the as-good-as-dead body of Abraham typified what God would accomplish in his greater offspring in whom the promise would be fulfilled on an eschatological level, namely, Jesus Christ.

It is important to recognize also that the kingly elements we noted of Adam as the vice-gerent of the Lord in Genesis 1-3 and of Christ as David’s greater Son in Romans 1:3-4 are not absent from Abraham and his offspring. Abraham himself is promised in connection with inheriting the nations that kings will come from him (Gen. 17:6, 16). This promise is repeated to Jacob (Gen. 35:11) and Israel as a nation is designated a kingdom of priests (Exod. 19:6). On this basis, we can say that the resurrection life of Abraham was one of reigning over the κοσμος—the κοσμος God created (1:20) and judges (3:6) and which is accountable to him (3:19). In other words, Abraham was not to inherit the κοσμος in isolation from God, but so as to share in God’s rule over it. God does not relinquish possession of the κοσμος, nor transfer it from himself to Abraham, but brings Abraham to share in his rule over it by grace. The eschatological king that would come from the loins of Abraham would go beyond returning to the protological situation of Adam sharing in God’s reign; he would propel it to the eschatological heights of an everlasting inheritance beyond the possibility of Sin and Death ever again entering. In short, the inheritance obtained in the resurrection of Christ is not to be thought of apart from God who both promises it, accomplishes it, and consummates it in communion with his people by grace alone.

Romans 1:3-4 proclaims that the king who was to come from Abraham has indeed come in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord. Having been enthroned over the eschatological kingdom, he administers his kingdom along with his inheritance (8:12-17) by means of his Gospel Word and Spirit. This gospel is his kingdom power in which the righteousness of God is manifest apart from the Law. And as was the case with Abraham, so it is to be received by faith as the power of God for salvation, so that “the righteous shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:17). The declaration in Scripture of Abraham’s possession of righteousness through faith, therefore, was “not written for his sake alone, but for ours also” (4:24). Paul continues, “It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (4:25). In this way, the kingdom life of those united to Christ by the Spirit through faith rests entirely on grace alone, on God doing what he promised he would do in bringing life from the dead.

[1] This is significantly different from Adam’s pre-redemptive historical context when the promise of life had been originally given in the covenant of works. It would be through Adam’s disobedience that death would begin to reign over the world.

[2] The same problem of death is true of the Davidic kings who are promised an everlasting throne and eternal kingdom (2 Sam. 7:16) and the Levitical priesthood as the book of Hebrews makes apparent (Heb. 7:23). This is because they all existed in the mode of the flesh, which was subject to death. Eschatological fulfillment required the attainment of incorruptible life in the power of the Spirit, as “Jesus Christ our Lord” obtained (Rom. 1:3-4).

The garden was a kingdom that the Lord fashioned by divine fiat in which he would reign in life with his holy people. Within the garden-kingdom of God, Adam, the image bearer of God, was appointed to be the Lord’s royal representative or vice-gerent.[1] Therefore, protological life of covenantal communion with God can be understood more precisely as a kind of royal living or kingdom life. It was Adam sharing in the reign of God as an expression of his solidarity with God and the face-to-face fellowship he enjoyed with him in the reciprocal giving of one’s self to the other.

Van Groningen speaks of this as God bringing humanity into “his royal family.”[2] He continues, “[God endowed] them with the privilege and responsibility to be co-workers with Him in the regal tasks to be carried out in creation.”[3] God does not bestow life by bringing people into his presence to be peasants or slaves, but to sit with him on his throne to share in the glory of his kingdom. This point will prove significant when Paul speaks of believers who will “reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17).

Adam was a public figure, that is, the royal mediator of the covenant of works and as such through his obedience or disobedience would lead all of humanity in him either to reign in life or to be put in bondage to death. Through his disobedience sin entered into the world and its dominion of death spread over all humanity. The restoration and consummation of life, then, would take place in a second and last Adam, a new royal mediator who would triumph over sin and pass beyond the possibility of death, and in doing so bring his people to reign with him in life over the consummated kingdom of glory forever (Rom. 5:17).

The Heidelberg Catechism expounds the significance of Jesus being called the “Christ,” meaning “Anointed,” in terms of his threefold office of prophet, priest, and king:

We are called “Christians” because we are members of Christ by faith and so share in his threefold anointing, filled with his Spirit of royal glory.

I am anointed [as a prophet] to confess his name, [as a priest] to present myself to him as a living sacrifice of thanks, and [as a king] to strive with a good conscience against sin and the devil in this life, and afterward to reign with Christ over all creation for all eternity (Q. 32).

Or in the words of Paul,

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him (Rom. 8:16-17).

All who believe in the risen Lord Jesus Christ have the shackles of the first Adam broken and the royal promise that God himself will place upon their head the crown of life (James 1:12; Rev. 2:10).

[1] Adam was not only king, but also prophet and priest in the garden-kingdom.

[2] Van Groningen, From Creation to Consummation, 1:64.

[3] Van Groningen, From Creation to Consummation, 1:64; see also T. Desmond Alexander, From Paradise to the Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch (3^rd ed.; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012), 119-33; idem., From Eden to the New Jerusalem: An Introduction to Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2008), 76-79: “to be made in the ‘image of God’ is to be given regal status” (77).

True life is the enjoyment of the covenant communion bond in face-to-face fellowship with God in his holy kingdom. This is no invention on man’s part, but the God-given reality from the very beginning (Gen. 1-3). In a previous post we drew this out by considering the garden of God. From this bird’s-eye view we now zoom in to the central feature in the midst of the garden: the tree of life (Gen. 2:9).

We’ll first consider the eschatological import of the tree (as it pointed to an escalated future reality) and then demonstrate how it reveals true life to consist in having God himself as your eschatological reward and kingdom inheritance (Rom. 8:17).

While man possessed life since the beginning when God breathed the breath of life into him and placed him in his garden-kingdom for life-giving fellowship, the tree of life was a symbol or token of a higher form of life that was offered to him.[1] As we noted in our previous post, life was not a fixed or static concept for Adam, but a redemptive-historical one that was to organically progress from its protological beginnings to an eschatological consummation of union and communion with God in perfect fullness and permanency. As Vos puts it, “The universe, as created, was only a beginning, the meaning of which was not perpetuation, but attainment.”[2]

In order to attain this eschatological blessing of escalated life and glory Adam was required to render unto the Lord perfect and personal obedience to his command, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17; WCF 7.2). The protological life of original communion with God in the garden-kingdom was not incorruptible, but corruptible; it was not irrevocable, but susceptible to removal in death. Herman Bavinck captures well the character of this probationary stage that Adam found himself tested in:

Adam … stood at the beginning of his ‘career,’ not at the end. His condition was provisional and temporary and could not remain as it was. It either had to pass on to higher glory or to sin and death. The penalty of transgressing the command was death; the reward for keeping it, by contrast, was life, eternal life. Our common conscience already testifies that in keeping God’s commands there is great reward, and that the violation of these commands brings punishment, and Holy Scripture also expresses this truth over and over. It sums up all the blessedness associated with the doing of God’s commandments in the word “life,” eternal life. Both in the covenant of works and that of grace, Scripture knows but one ideal for a human being, and that is eternal life (Lev. 18:5; Ezek. 20:11; Ps. 9:13; Matt. 19:17; Luke 10:28; Gal. 3:12). Hence, Adam still stood at the beginning. As yet he did not have this reward of eternal life but still had to acquire it; he could still err, sin, fall, and die. His relation to God was such that he could gradually increase in fellowship with God but could also still fall from it.[3]

The possibility of eschatological life (the consummation of the covenant communion bond with God) and death (separation from God) was symbolized in the two trees: (1) the tree of life and (2) the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to which certain death was appended (Gen. 2:17). Here we are first introduced to the polar forces of life and death as the two possible destinies of humanity. This life-death antithesis from here onward will run throughout redemptive-history and the apostle Paul will pick it up with full eschatological might (see Rom. 4:1-25; Rom. 5:1-11).

Life, as the enjoyment of the covenant communion bond, was not to continue in perpetuation, but would either be corrupted in death on account of disobedience or advance to a higher state of life beyond probation on account of obedience.[4] Vos affirms the “disclosure of the principles of a process of probation by which man was to be raised to a state of religion and goodness, higher, by reason of its unchangeableness, than what he already possessed.”[5] The higher state of life consisted of an unchangeable rectitude, being confirmed in holiness forever, and rising beyond the possibility of death in eternal life—all of this was to serve the communion bond with God.

As we have been saying, the tree of life was a sacrament through which God would convey eschatological life that was permanent and forever (Gen. 3:22). It is absolutely crucial to recognize that this promised reward of eternal life is not to be understood at any point apart from God himself, who is the comprehensive source of all life. The tree symbolized his life-giving presence.[6] More pointedly, the reward offered in the tree of life was nothing less than God conferring himself in a consummated communion bond in face-to-face fellowship with a holy people in his holy kingdom. True life, therefore, does not only have its source in God, but also its goal. As Vos puts it, “As it is strongly bound to God in its production, so it has a telic character directing it to God as its solitary goal.”[7] God himself is the eschatological reward of his people (see Gen. 15:1; Ps. 16:5; 119:57; 142:5; Rom. 8:17).

Our analysis thus far confirms the above point. Creaturely life has its archetype, source, and goal in the absolutely personal life of God, so that life can never be conceived of apart from him.[8] It is further confirmed when through a wider canonical lens the location of the tree of life is considered. The Genesis account informs us that it took root “in the midst of the Garden” (Gen. 2:9). In Revelation 2:7, the original tree reemerges in the paradise of God, that is, the restored and consummated kingdom of glory.[9] Then in Revelation 22:1-2 the tree of life is brought into the closest proximity with the throne of God and of the Lamb. It is from the throne that eschatological life is decreed in its consummate fullness, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (21:3).

In the same way the tree of life stood in close relationship to God, so the river that flowed out of Eden and divided into four rivers to water the garden (Gen. 2:10-14) will come to be referred to as the streams or waters of life. The waters are said to flow from God’s mountain dwelling place and also from the throne of God in the New Jerusalem with the tree of life on both sides (Rev. 22:1-2). In light of this, Vos’s comment is apt:

It will be observed that here the two symbolisms of the tree of life and the waters of life are interwoven. … The truth is thus clearly set forth that life comes from God, that for man it consists in nearness to God, that is the central concern of God’s fellowship with man to impart this.[10]

Both the tree of life and the waters of life point to the One who is the source and goal of life. The eschatological reward of life promised to Adam was nothing less than God promising to confer himself in a consummate communion bond of face-to-face fellowship to his holy people in his glorious kingdom. This conception of life is inherent to the Genesis account itself and enhanced with the clarifying light of later biblical revelation. So Vos can rightly state about the apostle Paul,

The tree of life and the other tree and the primeval paradise and the fall and death and the expulsion from the garden on account of the sin committed, all these are present in the scriptural narrative, and a single glance at Rom. v is sufficient to convince of the fact, that in the most fundamental manner they support (qua history) the entire eschatology of Paul. And the Apostles’ eyes were centrally focused on life and death in their forever interacting force.[11]

[1] On the nature of symbols and tokens see Vos, Biblical Theology, 27: “It is largely symbolical, that is, not expressed in words so much as in tokens; and these tokens partake of the general character of Biblical symbolism in that, besides being means of instruction, they are also typical, that is, sacramental, prefigurations conveying assurance concerning the future realization of the things symbolized. The symbolism, however, does not lie in the account as a literary form, which would involve denial of the historical reality of the transactions. It is a real symbolism embodied in the actual things.” On the tree of life as a sacrament see Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992), 1:580-82; Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, vol. 1: God, Man, and Christ, trans. Bartel Elshout, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011), 1:259, 362-63.

[2] Geerhardus Vos, The Eschatology of the Old Testament, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2001), 73.

[3] Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:564-65.

[4] Meredith Kline speaks of the tree of life as a symbolic “reproduction of the theophanic Glory-Spirit” and the “sacramental seal of man’s participation in the glory of immortality” (Kingdom Prologue, 93).

[5] Vos, Biblical Theology, 27. See Vos, Eschatology of the Old Testament, 73; Collins, Genesis 1-4, 115.

[6] This point is especially clear with the reemergence of the tree of life in Rev. 2:9 and 22:1-4. See G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation, NIGTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 235.

[7] Vos, Pauline Eschatology, 309. Vos notes an organic consistency in biblical revelation on the concept of life: “What lends confirmation to thus joining the earlier and later is the emphasis placed upon the divine favor as an indispensable concomitant of the eschatological life. The concept of life would never have obtained in the Old Testament its comprehensive and pregnant significance, had it not from the outset been wedded to the profoundly-religious thought of prospering in the favor of God” (307).

[8] Death also can never be conceived of apart from God as it is nothing less than separation from God.

[9] See Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 94.

[10] Vos, Biblical Theology, 28.

[11] Vos, Pauline Eschatology, 304.

Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus (2 Tim 2:3).

Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Tim 3:12).

The identity of the Christian, which is found in Jesus Christ, includes with it the sufferings of Christ. In other words, to be united to and thus identified with the once crucified Savior means that the Christian’s life in this present mode of existence will necessarily entail suffering. What is in view from the perspective of these verses is not suffering as such, but suffering as a Christian. Furthermore, it is not suffering that a Christian may endure because of his indwelling sin, corruption, or foolish actions that is in view (though that may be in view in other passages). Rather, it is suffering that arises precisely because of one’s identity with Christ who suffered for us.

In the first verse take note of Paul’s metaphor of a soldier. Timothy, in his particular capacity as a minister of the New Covenant, is likened to a soldier. Surely, however, the analogy of a soldier is proper not just to ministers of the Gospel, but to each individual Christian. And not just to Christians as individuals, but to the church corporately in its present mode of existence living in the midst of this present wicked and perverse generation (Phil 2:15). So, the church corporately, as well as each individual Christian, is called to be a soldier. Specifically, Christians are called to be soldiers of Jesus Christ. Christ is himself the captain of the army of the Lord (cf. Josh 5), and believers are his soldiers. Further, the Christian is called to be a “good” soldier of Jesus Christ. But what does it mean to be a “good soldier?” It is, in fact, to “share in suffering.” The goodness of the soldier is qualified in terms of suffering. And specifically suffering that comes in warfare. And the warfare in view is that which comes by enemy opposition.

What it means to be a good soldier who suffers in the midst of warfare is given further expression by Paul in 3:12, the second verse above. And once again, the suffering that is assumed by Paul here is not mere human suffering which is common to all – inclusive of believer and unbeliever. But the suffering that is in view is the suffering that comes to those who “will be persecuted.” Further, the persecution that arises is not opposition from unbelievers as such. Unbelievers may in fact oppose a person – whether a believer or fellow unbeliever – for good reasons (such as lawful cases of legal prosecution, or self-defense, etc). But what is in view here is opposition, persecution (i.e., suffering) that arises in opposition to those who “live a godly life.” In a different context Jesus speaks about those who are “persecuted for righteousness sake” (Matt 5:10; cf. 1 Peter 3:14). But, one more important idea needs to be underscored. Note that for Paul it is those who “desire” to live a godly life who will be persecuted. There is something, according to Paul, about the godly desires and affections of the believer which elicits a counter-response of opposition by unbelievers.

One contextual observation is necessary here. The persecution here may in fact be state-sponsored opposition to the righteous living of Christians. In context, Paul mentions his own persecution in v. 11, in the cities of Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra (cf. Acts 13 and 14). It is interesting to note that the persecution that arose there always came by “the Jews.” In some instances, like in Iconium, “the rulers” are mentioned as complicit in the plot to stone Paul and Barnabas (14:5). Women “of high standing” and “leading men” are mentioned in Antioch (13:50). However, leaders or city officials are not mentioned at all in Lystra. But what is striking for our purposes is that while officials may or may not be involved in the persecution of Paul and Barnabas, it is the general population of the cities, specifically unbelieving Jews, who lead the opposition. In other words, it does not appear to be the state who is the primary antagonist to the Gospel and the “good soldier of Jesus Christ.” In short, the “persecution” here does not seem to come only, or even primarily, from the state. It comes from all manner of unbelievers.

In summary, Paul seems to give here principles of how the Christian is to identify with Christ – principles which are also given by our Lord himself in the Gospels as well as Peter (we could also include the other authors of the NT as well). In other words, part and parcel of the Christian’s identity is that he will be opposed and be persecuted when he acts as a good soldier with a desire to live a godly life (Jesus said, “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you,” John 15:20). Now, that does not necessarily mean the persecution will be as intense as it was in Paul and Barnabas’ instances. It may come in greater or lesser intensity. But it will come – always.

These exegetical observations seem to leave very little room for a triumphalist view of the Gospel and the church vis-a-vis the culture. While certainly God may in fact ordain times and seasons and places where the church is persecuted and opposed less intensely than in others, the lack of evidence of any promise of God that this will happen (either on a local or global scale) is remarkable. Therefore, the church should expect that the default mode of her existence, until the vindicating return of her Savior, will be that of constant warfare. She is always the church militant and never the church triumphant this side of Glory. The church’s present mode of existence is rightly described by the Westminster Standards as the Kingdom of Grace, and not yet the Kingdom of Glory (cf. Westminster Shorter Catechism 102). Now she lives by grace in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9), and only after the parousia will she live free of militancy and in a state of triumphal rest.

In the meanwhile, the more we desire to live godly lives the more we should expect persecution. Living a godly life in the midst of this crooked generation is not an option. But rather than think our godliness will transform the world and tame it now, we should expect that it will only all the more exasperate the opposition of the world. Will sinners be converted under our faithful witness? Yes, we should expect they will. Will many be converted under our faithful witness to Christ? Only God knows, but we should pray to that end. But even here we should expect, as happened in Paul’s ministry, the more sinners that are converted to Christ the more opposition the church will face. Conversions, even mass conversions, do not subdue the world’s hatred for Christ, but rather incite it.

Can we hope and pray for a day and an age when the church will live globally in peace, with unbelief and evil generally marginalized? Sure! What a great prayer that is! But if that happens it will happen not because the Bible promises it. It does not. In fact, the promise the Bible gives us is that if we are faithful Christians that means persecution for us. But despite being opposed at every turn, if we are faithful soldiers God will give us the victory. Not a victory of this-worldly triumph (too many Christians hope for too little!). But a greater victory than that. The victory of eternal life in Immanuel’s land where righteousness will dwell forever.

I always remember Leviticus 17:11, probably for personal reasons. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.”

When I was a boy, as my father was building our house, I tried to hand him a hard-wire brush while he was climbing down a ladder. He didn’t see me coming. When he turned his face towards me, the brush bumped into his nose, and one of the fine silver quills stuck into his skin. When he pulled it out, there was a drop of blood the size of a pinhead, a tiny dark purple dome that entered the open air and almost whispered, “No . . . no.” Blood is not meant to go on the outside. It maintains its vitality by being concealed. Blood is meant to be covered.

It is also meant to move. Years later, I stood with my brothers and mother in our living room, watching my father die. The tumor had grown, had taken too much, as cancer always does, and now his respiratory system, the last remaining function of his body, was shutting down. I will never forget the moment when the hospice nurse told us the number of breaths he had left at the end: three. I have never counted down from three that way before, silently, surrounded by those who shared my own blood. After the last air left his lungs, his flesh grew paler. It was the blood stilled, the heart no longer thudding that took the color from his skin. That, I believe, is when his soul made an exit. When blood settles and ceases to flow, the soul must go, for our souls, like tired dogs, seek out the ancient scent of life that resides in the Spirit of God.

Blood, in a sense, carries a burden. It carries life—a divine gift as mysterious as it is requisite. In God’s great providence, it is the only thing that can atone for sin, that can cover a transgression, that can restore the divine-human relationship. For years, this has puzzled me to the core. How can red liquid have the potency to prevail over darkness and death by the burden it bears? Why does blood atone for sin?

I cannot help ruminating. I think the atoning power of blood has something to do with giving up the burden of life, effected by ending the two qualities of blood: its internality and movement. When blood is shed, the inside comes outside, and the movement ceases. Sanctity is uncovered and stilled. The blood can thus no longer bear its burden, the burden of sacred life, which has its ultimate origin in God (cf. John 14:6). So, that life is set free to do the impossible, to do spiritually what God has done physically from the beginning: separate light from darkness (Gen 1:4), separate image-bearing sinners from the evil they have done.

In the mysterious, God-governed process of atonement, we can easily forget that it is not blood in itself that atones, for blood only “makes atonement by the life” (Lev 17:11). It is life that rights a wrong and restores the morally destitute. It is life that breaks the power of sin and death (Rom 6:9–10). That is why we look with hope toward the day when all that is scarred by sin is “swallowed up by life” (2 Cor 5:4). Even more mysterious and glorious is the truth that this life is tri-personal: the Father of the living (Mark 12:27), who gave the Son of life (John 1:4; 14:6), by the life-giving Spirit (John 6:63; Rom 8:10; 1 Cor 15:45)!

In this light, the beauty of Christ’s blood takes on a new aura. Every drop of blood from Christ’s body, every red-lined laceration, every tear in his skin was an instance of holy blood giving up its burden, the burden of life. It is only by that burden that we are re-born. It is only by life that we inherit life. That is why we can say, “Soul works covering for soul.”[1] The life of one soul can vicariously atone for the life of another precisely because blood gives up its burden.

Blood is no little thing. It carries, in the end, the weight of the world, and salvation of every sinner.

[1] Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (1948; repr., Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2014), 165.

Mary was not so green when she mistook Jesus for a gardener (John 20:15). God is a gardener: he sows; he waters; he grows (Gen. 1:11; 2:6; Ps. 104:14; 1 Cor. 3:6). To him belongs horticulture and humanity.

Yet, in another sense, God is a garden in himself. He is our environment, the one in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). The Word of the Father, who stood before Mary at the empty tomb, is the life-giving person in whom, to whom, and through whom are all things (1 Cor. 8:6), and that Word is ever spoken in the potent breath of the Holy Spirit. It is in the Trinity—more specifically, God’s verbally manifested and linguistically mediated reality—that we dwell and thrive.

All of this, no doubt, is quotidian for today’s theologian. Especially in Protestant circles in the last twenty years or so, the Trinity has taken a place of prominence. Everywhere one looks, new books and journal articles are finding their way onto the shelves—person and relation; ontology ad intra and ad extra; immanent and economic; vestigia trinitatis; the list goes on. The surge of interest in Trinitarian paradigms and doctrinal minutiae, for some, is little more than a fleeting fancy, the latest love affair for Protestants, and old news to Catholics and Greek Orthodox. Perhaps the latter parties are wondering where Protestants have been for the last few hundred years. The questions we must ask ourselves, on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, are the following. First, why has the Trinity come roaring back into our dogmatic discussions and, second, how can we ensure that this indispensable truth of Christendom remains the main hall in which we gather for global theological discourse rather than serving as a vestibule to other dogmatic concerns?

Perhaps the answer to both questions lies in a metaphor. Trinitarian theology, like ivy, has always wound its way up a trellis. By “trellis,” I mean a historical and theological dilemma of the day that serves as latticework upon which the deep and eternal things of God can stretch out and climb in human history. Knowing what one such trellis is in our own day provides an important clue as to why Trinitarian studies have been so popular of late for Protestants, and how we can ensure that this turns into a tradition rather than a trend.

Before introducing what I believe is a trellis for Trinitarian theology in the twenty-first century, it would help to review some of the church’s history in light of this metaphor. And to find a trellis or two from a bygone era, all one needs to do is pick up a decent volume on Christian history and start turning the pages. Jonathan Hill’s The History of Christian Thought (2003) is a fine place to start.

In the early church, the trellis for Trinitarian theology was the burning question of what it meant to proclaim Jesus as Lord in the context of a rigid monotheism, and, of course, what it meant to say that the Spirit was God as well. Justin Martyr, attempting to wrest the early church from Platonic errors while still drawing on terms familiar to Platonists, brought attention to Christ as the Logos of God, the Father’s thought communicated to men. Irenaeus followed suit with a striking, albeit problematic analogy, of the Son and Spirit as the “hands” of the Father, bringing the third person of the Godhead more into purview. But it was Tertullian who broke new ground by coining the term Trinity and developing the “substance” and “persons” language we still find in today’s creeds and confessions. Athanasius continued this tradition by stomping out the weeds of Arianism, drawing on Origen’s exposition of the eternal generation of the Son.

Then, from the heart of Turkey, came the Cappadocians, led by Gregory of Nyssa, his brother, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Basil the Great. The Cappadocians laid the groundwork for the persons of the Trinity to be differentiated by their mutual relations—a concept carried through the middle ages and well into the twenty-first century.

But we could not in good conscience proceed any further without mentioning Augustine, who rightly rebuffed the residual semi-Arianism of his predecessors, opposing any claim that the Father was the source of divinity. He thus brought out the consubstantiality and distinctness of the persons simultaneously, especially when he emphasized the famous (or, for some, infamous) filioque clause: the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. In doing so, as Hill puts it, he “purged the doctrine of every trace of subordinationism” (87). This was a fitting contribution to the continuing development of what came to be called perichoresis, the teaching that the persons of the Godhead mutually interpenetrate, indwell, or are “in,” to use Augustine’s language, each of the others (De Trinitate 6.10). This is one of the Trintiarian teachings that is so prominent today, and we owe this, in many ways, to the Cappadocians and to Augustine, among others (Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus, who came later).

Cyril of Alexandria followed Augustine by addressing the issue that had led to the building of the trellis centuries earlier: Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity: the Son come into flesh. In all of this, then, Christology was in large part the trellis that gave Trinitarian dogma room to stretch and climb. But that trellis would be exchanged for another in Byzantium and the medieval era.

A fixation on Christology eventually lead to mystical speculation on how one comes close to a three-personed God (a second trellis for Trinitarian theology). How can man have communion with the transcendent, triune Lord? That was a question that burned in the hearts of Psuedo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, and Symeon, to varying degrees. The resulting mysticism and negative theology came to an end with Gregory Palamas, whose discourse on the “energies” of God sought to explain how, exactly, we could experience the Trinity: we do so only by God’s acts upon us—the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit. This was to have echoes in the twentieth century with Karl Barth and Emil Brunner.

In the medieval and scholastic era, we still find remnants of mysticism, especially with Erigena, which is to be expected—history is a stream, not a string of puddles. But the trellis of experiential communion with God, by and large, traded for the trellis of rational exposition. It can be difficult to see how the latter might be a trellis for Trinitarian theology, which is inherently mysterious. But while it is easy to categorize Anselm’s arguments for the existence of God as “Unitarian” (pointing to Aquinas’ de Deo uno), there were clear Trinitarian threads in his thought, such as his work on the necessity of God’s becoming man in the person of Christ. Peter Abelard’s work, Theologia, is perhaps a better example. Abelard follows the path of rational exposition, but seems to have gone too far in trying to erase all mystery from the Trinity. Thomas Aquinas, though he sought to preserve mystery in Trinitarian dogma, fell into a similar trap with his unbound reliance on Aristotelian philosophy. In attempting to articulate the relation of the persons to the essence, he let mystery become more nominal than normative for Trinitarian theology. Much of Aquinas’ work, along with that of Anselm and Abelard, built Trinitarian theology on the trellis of rational exposition. And though this was countered by later medieval mystics (Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart), it seems to have nevertheless held sway until the early Reformers set their hands to building a third trellis: the trellis of soteriology.

For many of the mainstay Reformers, discussions of Trinitarian dogma were set on the trellis of salvation and sin. Luther, for example, focused much of his theology on personal, faith-wrought union with Christ, who was given by the Father, and whose work of redemption and sanctification, applied internally by the Spirit, always led grace to triumph over law. Calvin, as well, though markedly different from Luther in his thought and mannerism, focused much of his attention on depravity and salvation in Christ. And this was set within its Trinitarian context. Calvin even went so far as to say that if we do not grasp that we serve and are saved by one God in three persons, then “only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God” (Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.13.2). Salvation, as many in our day have reminded us, is Trinitarian.

The trellis of salvation and sin that was so prominent in the Reformation would wane with the waxing of a new trellis in the modern era: a return to rational exposition, but of a different sort, fueled, in large part, by the Enlightenment. This trellis, admittedly, would keep the ivy of Trinitarian theology all but out of sight. With attacks on the logical coherence of Trinitarian dogma by figures such as Voltaire, Locke, Hume, and Rousseau, and with the unparalleled rise of deism, Christian philosophers and theologians felt compelled to rearticulate Christian dogma in a manner that at least acknowledged the so-called “Age of Reason.” Sadly, oftentimes they sold their heritage of belief for day’s wage in the empirical market. As Lessing and Reimarus excised the miraculous from Scripture, one could see it was only a matter of time before something as complex and mysterious as Trinitarian dogma would become suspect. It was Immanuel Kant who questioned the practicality of belief in the Trinity, and his phenomenal/noumenal distinction may not have helped matters here. By relegating God to the realm of noumena, he could effectively turn Christianity into a kind of pragmatic moralism. Such a context was not conducive to the growth or maturation of Trinitarian thought, which is perhaps why we see so little Trinitarian work emerging from that era. The work of the Puritans—masterpieces from the pen of Francis Cheynell, Thomas Goodwin, John Owen, and the like—would carry the church until the Protestant Trinitarian revival in the twentieth century.

And by that time, the Protestant church was in need of a return to its Trinitarian roots, crippled as it was by rampant moralism, still evident in the thought of Schleiermacher and Ritschl. It needed a new trellis on which Trinitarian truth could bud and blossom, and Karl Barth’s “theology of revelation” seemed to fit the bill (Hill, 269). Thus, the doctrine of revelation became the new trellis: enveloping general revelation, Scripture, and proclamation, according to Barth (Church Dogmatics, 1.4.4). The wholly other God of Barth’s theology was proclaimed to be wholly “for us” in his triune self-revelation, namely in the “event” of Christ, which transcended time. But Barth’s understanding of revelation in the context of the Trinity, while refreshing, was riddled with fissures that would only widen with time. Part of this was due to the debris of existentialism: the shift in thinking of truth as experiential and subjective rather than external and objective. Certainly, Barth opposed all of this, but his focus on an encounter with the “event” of Christ left the door open for those who sympathized with the existentialist movement.

Following the footpath of twentieth century theology at the time, Rudolph Bultmann attempted to “demythologize” the revelation of the New Testament, extracting moralistic kernels from mythological husks. From there, it is not too difficult to see how and why Reinhold Niebuhr would ignite the twentieth century with a call to ethics and morality, nor how Paul Tillich would call on Christians to engage their culture with an apologetic existentialism. In fact, we can even see how Karl Rahner would end up arguing for the concept of “anonymous Christians.” Those who have experientially witnessed the truth of God need not cling to the Christian Bible, or even the name of Christ, for, in Justin Martyr’s terminology, all people have within them the “seed of the Logos” anyway. Such a conclusion cannot be divorced from Rahner’s view of the Trinity. In claiming that the economic Trinity (what God does) is identical with the immanent Trinity (who God is), Rahner was working out one of the implications of an existentialist view of revelation. If the truth of the triune God’s revelation can only be subjectively experienced, then what sense would it make to ponder God as he exists “in himself,” apart from his creation? That logic is directly linked to Barth’s prior claim that God is only ever “for us” in Christ. In other words, there is no Trinity “behind” or “prior to” Christ’s work for us.

This set the stage for Jürgen Moltmann to emphasize the centrality of the cross, claiming that God is a “suffering God.” While this had the benefit of drawing people’s attention to the unfathomable empathy God has for us in our own suffering, it posed a plethora of problems for orthodox Christianity by binding God to his creation and practically effacing the Trinity of independence.

Wolfhart Pannenberg’s contention that all of history is, in fact, revelation in which we choose to believe enabled him, like Barth and Bultmann, to embrace critical scholarship and symbolic interpretations of revelation because what really mattered was the subjective commitment of the individual to the truth of a particular event. The influence of existentialism here is still evident.

In sum, the trellis of revelation, leading from Barth to Pannenberg, did indeed give the dogma of the Trinity room to climb, but it also did no small amount of damage to the orthodox understanding of God’s ontology, not to mention the existential blight it spread to other doctrines.

All of this brings us to the Trinitarian trellis of our day: language. This is not too far afield from the trellis of revelation, since all revelation, in many ways, can be considered profoundly linguistic. As Jonathan Edwards pointed out centuries ago, not only is the truth of Scripture linguistically delivered to humanity, but also the entire cosmos, which was uttered into being and is upheld by the God who speaks. Scripture is God’s word, but the rest of creation is a “word” from God in another sense.

A scad of material has been emerging in the last decade or so on God as a communicative being, and on human language as a derivative and analogical behavior. This, it seems to me, is quite fitting, since the Trinity is the hearth of communion and has eternally communicated with himself in the “speech” of love and glory (Frame 2013, 480–81). Of course, we still have our issues to work out—issues that have long been part and parcel of every theologian’s curiosity: in what sense is the Son the “Word” of the Father? Should we adopt a consciousness model of the Trinity—in which the Father speaks the Son in the power of the Spirit—or an interpersonal model—in which the persons of the Godhead are understood as mutually engaging communicative agents? Or are both models valid? In answer to the former question, there is room for Trinitarian dogma to grow as we work out how the Son is both the thought of the Father, which stretches all the way back to Justin Martyr, and how he is the communication of the Father, which can be traced back to Augustine. And more work needs to be done to explore precisely in what sense the Spirit is involved in this communication. As for the latter question, we seem hard pressed to resolve the age old quandary between the east and west. The stale rumor that the Latin west defaults to a consciousness model while the Greek east upholds an interpersonal model has been dispelled. And thank God it has, for the church is now in an age of unprecedented global awareness and intercontinental communication. That is why linguistics (semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, hermeneutics) is such a fitting trellis for Trinitarian theology: global communication is no longer burgeoning; it has blossomed. In such a setting, the nature and function of language is replete with implications not only for our understanding and development of Trinitarian dogma, but for our practical engagement with one another in the gloriously diverse, communicative body of Christ.

We have, no doubt, just rushed through a cornucopia of theological discourse spanning two thousand years, and scarcely done it justice. But the point in considering what the trellis was for Trinitarian dogma in each era is to notice that we are at an opportune place for global discussion in the church, and we would be remiss if we wrote off the current surge of interest in linguistics and the Trinity as a passing trend. In my opinion, we are in the midst of one of the most appropriate Trinitarian discussions in the history of the church: a discussion of the nature and work of a communicative God for, in, and through his communicative creatures.

At the outset, I proposed two questions on which Protestants, in particular, need to meditate, both of which are related to the twenty-first century’s trellis for Trinitarian dogma. Why has the Trinity come roaring back into our theological discussions? In brief, I would say that this can be attributed, in part, to the rise of interest in linguistics, for language and the Trinity are inextricably intertwined: the triune God is a communicative being, and humans are image-bearing communicators. It would be strange indeed to witness a rising interest in linguistics without seeing any corresponding interest in the God of language. The late twentieth and early twenty-first century interest in linguistics has thus built a worthy trellis on which Trinitarian dogma can grow, but we need to continue exploring the relationship between divine and human communication, and use the results of such study to enhance and support the communion of the global church.

The second question, however, is perhaps more critical: how can Protestants ensure that Trinitarian dogma retains a prominent place in theological discourse? The answer here seems tied to what we have already said: language must, as it has, stay in the limelight of our theological discussions. We must vigilantly guard the trellis of language from those who would, with Derrida, derogate language as a labyrinth of différence. We must dwell on the divine roots of human discourse, ever remembering the ancient truth that language is not simply something we do but is a vital part of who we are. We are creatures of communion. And the communion we long for is structured on the Trinity itself, both the consciousness and interpersonal models. We are speakers with thoughts and breath, persons who thrive in a web of relationships.

In light of what has been said, there seems to be no better place for our discussions of the Trinity than in the context of language, for our speech reflects the Speaker, our words the Word, and our breath the Spirit of the speaking God. At this moment in history, we have become deeply aware of ourselves as communing persons bound to the self-communing, tripersonal God. What better time for the global church to unite against a world hell-bent on disrupting and destroying the communion of the body of Christ? Language, I say, is at the roots of the Trinity, the roots of humanity, the roots of the church. Let us tend to this trellis together.

In The New Modernism Van Til identifies the Theology of Crisis with “dialectical theology.” But what is dialectical theology? Van Til explains that dialectical theology is “at bottom activistic and positivistic.” But what in the world does that mean? He explains: “God’s being and God’s work are said to be one and the same” (p. 3). In other words, Barth’s theology is actualistic. “Actualism” is a distinctly modern approach to metaphysics, or the study of the nature of reality. It is the question of being qua being. Metaphysics seeks to discover what the essence of something or someone is.

Standing over against dialectical theology – which Van Til equates with “modern theology” as a whole – is the Reformed Faith which is “non-activistic theology” (ibid). Continuing his thesis, dialectical theology (or, Crisis Theology) and Reformed Theology are opposed to one another. But how are they opposed?

In order to answer that question we have to explain why it is that Van Til associates dialectical theology with modern theology. Modern thought, going back at least to Kant, rejects the older metaphysical tradition. That tradition is characterized by the influence of Greek metaphysical thought, especially as it influenced Western theology through Thomas Aquinas. This mode of metaphysics adheres to the idea that everything has its own particular static nature (i.e., a nature that does not change). In this mode of thinking God was understood, according to modern thinkers, as a static and abstract nature, essence, or substance. An example of this would be in the traditional doctrine of God’s immutability. Modern thinking said that this makes God out to be aloof, cold, unfeeling and abstract. He cannot change or adjust to situations. In short, he has nothing to do with us here and now. Modern thought with its rejection of medieval metaphysics proposed instead for us to think about being or ontology in dynamic terms. In this way we understand God not in terms of an abstract substance, but rather as a concrete, dynamic and living act. This is the actualism (or, more commonly used is the term “activism”) of which Van Til speaks. God’s identity, his being, is understood only in terms of his acts relative to us his creatures.

Now, Van Til sees this approach to metaphysics, or ontology, as opposed to the older traditional approach. He says only in the Reformed Faith is God “wholly self-contained.”[1] What does that mean? It means, in short, that God is in no way identified or understood as existing in a way that is dependent upon the creature or his acts relative to it. This is in keeping with the older theology proper which understood God as being a se. God in himself does not progress or become. He is himself perfect in his being, pure act with no potentiality. That means his interaction with the creature is completely unnecessary to who he is.

But standing over against this traditional view is Barth’s commitment to the terms for ontology set by modernity. Liberalism did not like the cold, aloof God of traditional theology. So they made God to draw near to man in an immanent relationship to the creature. Liberalism was committed to actualistic ontology, identifying God with his acts toward creature. Barth opposed liberalism and emphasized God’s transcendence. But – and this is Van Til’s great observation – while emphasizing God’s transcendence Barth at the same time refused to surrender the modern and liberal commitment to actualistic ontology. However, rather than God being identified with the creature in an immanent act, for Barth God is identified with his transcendent act of electing grace. For Barth God is necessarily gracious because in a transcendent act of his own freedom he chooses to always and everywhere be the God who forgives in Jesus Christ. Therefore, as I try to show in my book, God’s eternity is not a purely eternal attribute.[2] But his eternity is simultaneously his time for us in Jesus Christ. In other words, God from all of eternity is not “self-contained” but has his being identified with his act of grace for us in Christ. And so here – no less than in liberalism – God is dependent on the creature for his being. Creation and redemption (not to mention revelation) for Barth are not contingent acts of God, but necessary acts which give identity to the question of who he is.

Actuality dictates ontology.

And for the older orthodox Reformed view that is a completely contrary starting point for understanding God. For the older view, God’s being (ontology) dictates the activity of God in time. God’s acts are consistent with and flow from who he is in and of himself. Only this way can we say in any true and meaningful way that God acts in perfect freedom. As the answer to the children’s catechism goes:

Can God do all things? Yes, God can do all his holy will.

In these simple – yet profound – words we discover the reason why Van Til is so clear: Dialectical Theology and Reformed Theology are – and must be – sworn enemies. There is no common ground between them.

[1] When Van Til speaks about “the Reformed Faith” that is representative shorthand for Reformed orthodoxy. Particularly as it comes to expression in great Reformed church creeds and confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries. It is certainly a legitimate criticism here that Van Til uses a term that is both too imprecise and narrow. To be sure, there is enough variety in the history of Reformed theology and Reformed confessions to say that “the Reformed faith” is not as monolithic as Van Til seems here to assume. While we may grant that point it is important to note that Van Til’s work is not so much concerned with historical theology and the nuances found in the Reformed tradition, rather his work is “frankly polemical” (p. 3). But the granted point need not detract us because despite all the variety that there is in the Reformed confessional tradition, one thing most certainly is not: actualistic ontology.

[2] See God’s Time For Us: Barth’s Reconciliation of Eternity and Time in Jesus Christ (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2016).

Moving on from Van Til’s first published criticism of Barth (see the previous six posts entitled In The Beginning) we now consider his first published monograph dedicated entirely to a criticism of “the Theology of Crisis” in The New Modernism (1946).[1] The overall contention of the book is that the Reformed Faith is no friend of “the Theology of Crisis,” but rather its mortal enemy (p. ix; p. 3). Everything he says about Crisis Theology will seek to substantiate that basic contention. Also it is worth our noting how The New Modernism differs from his second monograph on Barth in 1962, Christianity and Barthianism. There, taking his lead from J. Gresham Machen’s well-known Christianity and Liberalism, Van Til argues that Barthianism is not a legitimate expression of Christianity but another religion altogether. Whereas in his earlier volume he sets the Theology of Crisis over against the Reformed Faith, in the latter he sets Barthianism over against Christianity as such.

But for now, let’s stick with The New Modernism. In particular, I would like to highlight how Van Til opens the book. Whatever you think of his thesis that the Theology of Crisis and the Reformed Faith are enemies, careful attention must be given to how Van Til understands Barth and Brunner’s theology. It is assumed today by many that Van Til “got Barth wrong.” That seems to me an unhelpful sweeping claim. Did he get anything right about Barth?  If so, which parts did he get right and which ones wrong? Furthermore, it strikes me as an easy way to dismiss Van Til’s critique. What is needed, however, is a thoughtful and close read of Van Til’s critique.

So, in the spirit of trying to set the record straight I believe it is helpful to distinguish between Van Til’s thesis about Barth on the one hand and his understanding of Barth on the other. We’ve already said what his thesis is: the Reformed Faith is the enemy of the Theology of Crisis. Now, that is a big claim. But a claim that cannot be agreed with or disagreed with until one first grapples with Van Til’s understanding of Barth. Until one evaluates his understanding of Barth one cannot evaluate if his thesis is correct.

So, what I would like to do here is highlight how Van Til understood Barth (and Brunner). We will unpack the details in a future post as we work our way through The New Modernism. But for now Van Til gives us a summary of how he understands Crisis Theology right at the beginning of the book:

For purposes of orientation, we might first consider certain constantly recurring emphases of the Crisis theologians. There are three such emphases. First, both Barth and Brunner have rebelled against Schleiermacher, the “father of modern theology.” Their hostility to what they call “modern Protestantism” is very bitter. Second, both are severe critics of the analogia entis theology of Rome. Third, both are set against what they call the historicism and psychologism of post-Reformation orthodoxy. What is it that the Crisis theologians withstand in modern Protestantism, in Romanism, and in traditional orthodoxy? Significantly enough, it is the same thing in each instance. It is the theology of the beati possidentes that they attack in Schleiermacher, in Thomas Aquinas and in Herman Bavinck. All theologians who claim in any sense to possess the truth are thrown on the theological scrap heap. The dialectical blowtorch is applied to them all.[2]

Notice Van Til describes the whole Crisis program as one of protest. They have protested against liberalism, catholicism, and Reformed orthodoxy. But, according to Van Til, there is one thing that holds these three targets of protest together: the beati possidentes.[3]

But what is the beati possidentes? It means literally “the blessed possessors.”[4] It refers to those systems of theology which believe that man has the capacity for receiving God’s revelation. So, for instance, for liberalism God reveals himself in man’s feelings of absolute dependence. In Reformed orthodoxy God can be known by man in and through his revelation in both creation and Scripture. But Barth rejects these systems because they all believe man has the capacity for receiving directly from God his own self-disclosure. For Van Til, the denial of direct revelation is what lies at the heart of the Crisis Theology. This denial will have a rippling effect throughout Barth’s theology. And that is what Van Til will unpack in the rest of the book.

Now, immediately we need to ask: is Van Til wrong here? Is he wrong that Barth targets those three theological systems for their commitment to the beati possidentes? If he is wrong about that, then the rest of his critique should be called into question. But if Van Til is correct about this, then it seems to me he should at least get a further hearing. Certainly if Van Til got this right he cannot legitimately (with any level of intellectual honesty) be dismissed out of hand.

Now, let’s wrap up with this. That Van Til got at least this one thing right should be easy enough to substantiate. It really is a non-controversial point, even among current Barth interpreters.[5] The idea that man has no capacity for revelation is a frequent claim in Barth’s famous Nein! to Brunner. Furthermore, take for instance Trevor Hart’s excellent way of describing Barth’s rejection of direct revelation in saying that revelation is not a “commodity” that can be “handed over” to man to make his own possession.[6] This is what Van Til means when he says that God’s revelation is always and only indirect in Barth’s theology. And that seems to be a fairly uncontroversial claim. And if we can agree that Van Til got that right, then we need to move on to further consider how Van Til understands Barth.

[1] It should be noted that Van Til takes aim at both Barth and Brunner in this volume.  

[2] Van Til, The New Modernism: An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner, 2.

[3] This is language Van Til uses also in The New Synthesis (1975, pp. 8 and 11), which I document and briefly unpack in another Essential Van Til.

[4] Van Til notes this in a footnote on this page.

[5] I am familiar with Bruce McCormack’s “Afterword: Reflections on Van Til’s Critique of Barth” in Karl Barth and American Evangelicalism. However, I will reserve engaging with that piece for another time.

[6]Trevor Hart, “Revelation,” in John Webster, ed.  The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 45.

Currently, amidst the Reformed discussion concerning God’s simplicity and immutability, there has been repeated references to the anthropomorphic language of Scripture. It is commonly understood that language attributing human emotions or physical features to God is not meant to be understood “literally.” A typical example is Deuteronomy 26:8, “And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders.” God does not have physical body parts, so such language is immediately classified as anthropomorphic and seldom given a second thought. The same goes for a passage that attributes emotion to God, such as Genesis 6:6, “And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” Certain theologians claim that God cannot experience emotion in any way, because that would suggest that he undergoes change or is affected by creation. This, it is claimed, would compromise the Creator-creature distinction by making God somehow dependent on the world he has made. In such cases, the anthropomorphic language of Scripture has become a sort of throwaway, a means of dismissing semantic possibilities that do not accord with particular historical or confessional understandings of God. My aim here is not to address the concerns of the current debate directly, but to raise a question that may reorient us to God’s divine purposes in using human language.

Is the way in which many theologians treat anthropomorphic language, as a tool that God uses to convey something that cannot be taken “literally” (whatever that means), a helpful way of processing this language? To me, the approach seems to assume a fairly shallow view of the nature of language and God’s purposes for it. More specifically, it misses the worship we should give to God in response to reading it. Let me explain this after examining the concept of anthropomorphic language itself.

Anthropomorphic language is often treated as a unique instance in which God speaks to us in covenantal condescension. He comes down to our level and communicates something in terms that we can readily understand. This seems relatively simple, but there is a lot of mystery and complexity here that goes overlooked.

First, consider the fact that all language is anthropomorphic. All human language with reference to God is an occasion wherein the infinite is related to the finite. In revealing himself to us, God always speaks anthropomorphically. Human language is just as much a part of being human as is having body parts or emotions. There is a profound sense in which, from the very outset of Scripture, God speaks anthropomorphically. He uses human language to express something of his infinite love, wisdom, and divine intentionality.

Second, labeling language as anthropomorphic does nothing to explain such language. It appears to explain it, but the question that I do not see being asked is this, “Why did God choose to use this language?” Surely, if God wanted to speak to us in a more literal manner, he could have done so. God is the author of Scripture, and it is he who chose to reveal himself in this way. Why? Why use poetic and metaphorical language—of arms and hands and emotions—rather than language that is plainer? In other words, what is God’s intention for using this language?

Some, no doubt, would say that his intention is to communicate on our level. But that answer needs to be more developed. If by “communicate on our level,” we mean, “say something that is not really true about God,” then that should give us pause. Is that God’s intention—to dish up dialogue that, in the end, is semantically vapid? Does God present his children with linguistic ornaments just so they can dismember them and see what lies behind? I think that is a shallow way to read Scripture. It leaves out the richness of divine-human communication.

Third, is “anthropomorphic” even a valid category for language? This is related to the first point, but introduces a distinct problem: we assume that human language is merely human. And so we must move, as it were, from the merely human language to what it might say about God. But God himself is the giver of language and is everywhere reflected in it. What’s more, Jesus used language in conversing with the Father (John 17). If Jesus is one person with both a human and divine nature, must we not also say that his divine nature was engaged in speaking with the heavenly Father? And if so, does that not mean that language cannot be merely human? God is profoundly involved with human language. And because everything that God has created reflects him, we simply cannot say that language is merely human. Language has divine origins. In that sense, all language is really theomorphic. Our use of language reflects the God who communicates with himself in three persons and who has blessed his creatures with an ability that analogously reflects what he, as the original communicative being, does. So, using the phrase “anthropomorphic” actually gets the whole thing backwards: it assumes that our language is the original and that God has fit himself to it, when in reality God’s communication is the original, and he has endowed us with the ability to communicate as a gift that is derived from and reflective of his loving communion.

It seems that I am raising a lot of questions without offering many answers. So, let me get to the real point. This “anthropomorphic” language in Scripture seems to be expressing something very different about God’s intention for human language. To me, it seems to express the awe-inspiring truth that the creator of heaven and earth has condescended, has come down, and has spoken to us. In so doing, God brings us to marvel. He is not afraid to condescend in human language, to take on syllables and syntax, to enter the world of words, for that world is ultimately a reflection of his own communicative nature. Nor is God, in an even more profound sense, afraid to take on flesh. The Incarnation is the climax of God’s revelation, of God’s speech to us, for there he not only utters words to us; he utters the Word, his eternal Son, in the power of the eternal Spirit. How could God do such a thing?

It is here that God draws our attention to the response we should have to his revelation, be it literal, metaphorical, anthropomorphic, or incarnational: worship. We worship God for the greatness of his mysterious grace in speaking to us—not because he condescended in human language and life, but because language and life themselves have divine roots. They are gifts. Why would God give such gifts to us? I do not know. I cannot know. But I can worship him for such gifts because they reveal the inexhaustible truth of salvation, of what God has come down to do for sinners.

I believe that the whole debate over anthropomorphic language is missing something quite basic to the nature of God, something that goes well beyond our ability to articulate his nature and essence: God speaks. Creation, redemption, salvation—he speaks all of it. I hear it, and I want to worship because God has come so far, to a creature who is so low, to do something so incomprehensible.

At long last we have come to the end of the beginning (see parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). We have reviewed Van Til’s opening salvo against Barth’s theology as it appeared in the form of a book review. This last part of Van Til’s critique is a kind of parting shot, and prognostication concerning the future of Barthianism. He takes his lead from another American reader of Barth:

Professor McGiffert of Chicago predicted last summer that Barthianism would not last because it was really a recrudescence of Calvinism. If we might venture a prediction it would be that Barthianism may last a long time because it is really Modernism, but that neither Barthianism nor Modernism will last in the end because they are not Calvinism, that is, consistent Christianity.

Van Til here predicts the “success” of Barthianism. However, Barthianism will last long not because it is good but precisely because it is not Calvinism. Barthianism is not a real break from Modernism. And while Van Til does not explicitly say why he believes that Modernism has “legs” to last a long time, we can venture a guess here.

First, Modernism is a synonym for theological liberalism (we understand that Modernism has a much broader meaning outside of the field of theology). And Van Til understood the draw of liberalism. He understood why it gained such wide allegiance. It did so because it imbibed the zeitgeist of the 19th and early 20th century.

A brief on liberalism is in order here. Liberalism was not at its heart a denial of orthodox doctrine – though it did do that. But liberalism, at its heart, was unbelief driven by fear. The fear was that Christianity would lose its place in the world, its hegemony over Western culture. How could Christianity withstand the tide of the waxing influence of modern philosophy, science and the cultured intelligentsia? It either had to make adjustments or die and lose its grip on the world which it enjoyed for over a millennium. Christian doctrine had to be adjusted to adhere to the standards and demands of modernity. In other words, it had to make itself acceptable to the times.

Second, according to Van Til Barth did not break with this tradition. Rather, he channeled the spirit of Schleiermacher. He disagreed with his liberal forefathers in many respects. But he did not disagree with them that Christian doctrine had to be non-offensive to the age. He only disagreed with them on how to make Christian doctrine accede to the terms of modernity (particularly as modernity was changing in his day). He could not, for example, go back to liberalism’s commitment to the rejection of scholastic metaphysics. Kant has taught us too well. We cannot go back to the deus absconditus or the logos asarkos because that would mean resorting back to the metaphysics which funded those doctrines. No, in keeping with the times, we must focus not on static being but on dynamic notions like time and act. These sentiments are already in the air in neo-Kantianism, Hegel and Heidegger. Granted, while Barth did confess to doing some “Hegeling,” he is no Hegelian nor is he an existentialist (at least not his Church Dogmatics). But he strikes chords which resonate with his generation of youthful intellectuals who would never have supported the Kaiser.

And it is for these reasons that Van Til predicted the “success” and long lasting influence of Barthianism. It too is making adjustments to Christianity to make it “fit in” and non-offensive to a modern (and then post-modern) people. It purports to solve the problems in the older liberal theology which could support a tyrannical war effort while at the same time refusing to return to the older orthodoxy. Barth gave a fresh voice to a new generation. Once again, and in a different way, he made Christianity palatable to the cultured despisers. But biblical Christianity, for Van Til, is not acceptable to the “natural man.” The natural man and the modern person seek a faith that won’t be mocked and that is “reasonable” (to our natural mind). True Christianity, as it comes to its most mature expression in the Reformed faith, is offensive to the natural and (post?) modern mind. But, it will at long last prevail because it is true and consistent Christianity.

But until then the Reformed faith will be the Christianity of the despised and marginalized. Concurrently, all the new theologies that play to the whims of the times will preserve the shell of Christianity. But like Schleiermacher’s innovations the new will be shown to be inconsistent folly and at long last go the way of all flesh. And remaining will be God’s people who faithfully cling to his promises, not being overcome by the spirit of the ages which, like Ishmael toward Isaac, mock them. By grace they will not be overcome, for they will not fear Ishmael. Rather, they will fix their eyes on the self-attesting Christ of Scripture. And they will bear witness to him in love to their neighbors believing that this old story of Jesus and his love is sufficient to save today no less than in generations past.

“We are living in a time when being ordinary is the worst thing that can happen to a person, and nothing screams ordinary like at-home work.” (p.41)

Thus says Courtney Reissig in her new book, Glory in the Ordinary: Why Your Work in the Home Matters to God. Targeting women, especially mothers, but also applying more broadly to anyone who contributes to the work of the home, Reissig’s work is an engaging and helpful read meant to help us recalibrate our unhealthy understandings about the mundane yet glorious work of the home. I believe it succeeds in this effort and is a delightful companion to the weary laborer.

Reissig addresses this topic in a variety of ways, introducing the reader to several families in different stages of life and with varying work/life roles. She also provides a brief historical context of our bias. Reissig writes: “The ancient Greeks placed great value on the mind, while the body and material world were for people of lesser value.” (p.37) She then poses a series of questions many of us ask ourselves often: “What am I doing with my life? Does this matter? Can I have purpose if I’m not doing something great for God? Can I find meaning in the most mundane tasks? Can my work really be good if I don’t always see it as good work?” If you are asking these questions, you are in good company; unbiblical views of mundane yet necessary work have been something Christians have been wrestling with for centuries. “While it might seem that we are in a new frontier regarding how we value (and devalue) work, we are simply continuing the cycle that has been spinning for centuries. It just has new packaging.” (p.37)

Several more modern ideas that Reissig addresses are the emphasis on at-home work being about the children over and above the physical work of the home, our culture’s emphasis on “knowledge” jobs, and our bringing a business mindset into the work of the home. Her discussion of the impact of each of these is very insightful and hits close to home. Here are a few quotes to ponder:

(Jennifer) Senior says that the worst thing a mom can be defined as today is not a bad housewife, but a bad mom. You and I aren’t housewives anymore; instead we are stay-at-home moms. (p.65)

While being called a housewife might not be popular now (unless you are part of a reality television show), our culture doesn’t view housekeeping as a valuable profession either. You don’t go to school to learn how to clean the house. You don’t take classes in ironing or folding clothes. Cooking classes are designed for those who want to start a restaurant, not those who want to feed a family. (p.49)

…there is a temptation to correlate the monetary compensation of a job to the dignity or worth of the job…at the end of the day, the prominence of such services in our culture has shaped the way we think about at-home work and made it less valuable in our eyes. (p.35)

Depressed yet? Sadly, these quotes reflect the American mindset of today and, even worse, these lies easily sink into our hearts and minds without constant discernment and reflection. With all of these worldly pressures in mind, Reissig’s insights stand out as especially counter-cultural, and her goal is to help us see how God is glorified in the mundane moments as much as the magnificent. We need Jesus to see the truth: “…in our sin we don’t always have eyes to see how our work is doing God’s work of bringing order out of chaos or caring for his creation. Frankly, it just feels too mundane most days to be that grandiose. In a lot of ways these feelings of insignificance over the ordinary chores is the most devastating effect of sin on our work.” (p.53)

Working for God’s glory, both in and out of the home, is a topic that Martin Luther has addressed extensively. His words are some of the most penetrating of the book. He writes:

If you find yourself in a work by which you accomplish something good for God, or the holy, or yourself, but not for your neighbor alone, then you should know that that work is not a good work. For each one ought to live, speak, act, hear, suffer, and die in love and service for one another, even for one’s enemies, a husband for his wife and children, a wife for her husband, children for their parents, servants for their masters, masters for their servants, rulers for their subjects and subjects for their rulers, so that one’s hand, mouth, eye, foot, heart and desire is for others; these are Christian works, good in nature. (p.68)

Reissig echoes Luther when she directs our gaze outward: “Work is not for us. It is not for our own fulfillment. It is not for our own glorification or status in the world. It is for our neighbor.” (p.69) Work done for others, giving glory to God, is a true act of love. Some quotes from Michael Horton are especially thoughtful, looking at the unique challenges and blessings that spring from the sacrifice of mothers. Finally, Reissig highlights the beautiful witness a “vibrant, village-like community” of believers is to the watching world, a community where women are not only able to give help, but ask for and receive it as well. Working in isolation does not need to be the case for the family of God!

One chapter to note was on the topic of the Sabbath. Reissig includes a disclaimer paragraph on her view:

Before I move on, I want to acknowledge that there is disagreement among Christians over what observing the Sabbath means for us in the new covenant. I take the position that the Sabbath requirements of the Old Testament were fulfilled in Christ, which means that we are not bound to observe the actual Sabbath day in the way Old Testament Israel did. However, many Christians believe the Bible teaches otherwise. But when I speak of the Sabbath, I speak from my own position on it—that the Sabbath requirement was fulfilled in Christ, and he is now our true rest. As human beings we still have a need for rest, but we are no longer morally obligated to observe the Sabbath in the same way. (p.100)

I don’t fully understand what she means by these statements, so I found them somewhat distracting because of her lack of clarification. She seems to be selling the commandment short, but since she doesn’t explain herself, I was left wondering what she really means by her words.

That said, her candidness on the difficulty of resting on the Sabbath was refreshing. Reissig confesses her struggles in this area:

When my to-do list is left undone at the end of another day, I take it out on everyone in my home. This hit me square in the face when I began noticing that I would not take a Sabbath rest on Sunday. Because my husband was home from work, I took that as more time for me to work on things I wanted to work on. He could help with the kids and I could check more things off my to-do list. One morning while listening to a message by D. A. Carson on the book of Nehemiah, I was humbled by my idolatry over my work. He said: ‘If you can make a little extra money on the Sabbath then why rest on the Sabbath?’ I can rephrase that as, If you can knock a few things off the to-do list, then why rest on the Sabbath? I was directly ignoring God’s faithful provision for me as a finite being because I valued my to-do list over his Word. (p.103)

She notes that Kevin DeYoung calls this “working hard at rest.” Her reflections on how our Sabbath rest points to Christ were insightful: “The prevailing theme regarding rest in Scripture is that rest is a creation ordinance. Because God rested, so should we. But like I already said, God rested as a sign of completion. We don’t get that luxury. We still are required to rest even when the work is not all done. This is where understanding the rest that Jesus provides us is so helpful. It carries life-giving hope for the parent who is prone to idleness in work and the one prone to idolatry. For the couch potato and the supermom.” (p.112)

Ending with a look at the redemptive nature of our work, readers will be reoriented and energized. I love her focus on God’s glory and her recognition of our humble servant state:

We know that we aren’t the ones redeeming the culture through our work. Only God can do that. But we are given the privilege to work alongside of him. We are part of his cosmic plan to save a people for himself and make all things new. Our mundane, self-sacrificing work is part of that effort. It’s about people. It’s about seeing beyond the walls of our homes and seeing how what we do on any given day is not just blessing the people in the home, but also blessing the world that he has made. And it’s all bringing him glory. (p.141)

We’re freed to love God through the life and death of Christ, and we’re freed to work for His glory and our neighbor’s good through the same. Glory in the Ordinary is a great primer on these glorious truths, and her inclusion of other wonderful theologians makes this work a delight to read. Read it to be encouraged, for as Reissig reminds us, “…faithfulness in the ordinary, even when it is hard, is true greatness.” (p.130)

The Lord does not breathe into man the breath of life for him to exist in the abstract, nor for him to struggle to find purpose through some existential crisis; rather, the life that God imparts to man is to be understood concretely within the covenantal realm of the garden-kingdom where personal fellowship with God was to be experienced.[1] The Lord put the man he formed in the garden he planted, so that man’s life with God—a covenant communion bond exercised in the reciprocal giving of one’s whole self to the other—would be concretized in a holy realm. Immediately following God’s conferral of life upon man, he puts him in his personally cultivated garden-kingdom:

[T]hen the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed (Gen. 2:7-8).

Life cannot be possessed in the abstract, but only in relation to the source of life himself. As Kline writes,

Eternal life properly so called, the life signified by the tree of life, is life as confirmed and ultimately perfected in man’s glory-likeness to God, life in the fellowship of God’s Presence. Access to the tree of life and its fruit is only in the holy place where the Glory-Spirit dwells; to be driven from there is to be placed under judgment of death.[2]

This is the consistent testimony of Scripture.

Life is invigorated within a holy kingdom filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14).

The true path of life leads into a realm maximally charged with the presence of God where there is fullness of joy (Ps. 16:11).

Life is found there, where God receives unto himself a people to be his special possession and he gives himself to them as their God (Exod. 6:7; Lev. 26:12).

True life is nothing less than to possess God himself as one’s inheritance (Ps. 73:26; Rom. 8:17).

This concrete conception of life as a covenantal communion bond with God is evident from at least two elements contained in Genesis 1-3: (1) the garden of God and (2) the tree of life. We’ll consider the first in this article.

That the garden-kingdom was a theocentric realm where God placed man in personal relationship with himself is seen in that it was a garden he personally planted and was called the garden of God (Gen. 2:8; Ezek. 28:13; 31:8, 9). The garden, according to Vos, was “not in the first instance an abode for man as such, but specifically a place of reception of man into fellowship with God in God’s own dwelling-place.”[3] The garden was a created holy realm or kingdom that facilitated life, that is, union and communion with God.[4] It was the place where God walked with man in life-giving fellowship (Gen. 3:8).

The same point can also be argued by way of contrast. Death, as the opposite of life, is banishment from the kingdom where God’s presence abides and so to have the communion bond with the source of life severed.

In the Bible, death is the reverse of life—it is not the reverse of existence. To die does not mean to cease to be, but in biblical terms it means ‘cut off from the land of the living,; henceforth unable to act, and to enter another condition.[5]

Collins notes that מות can refer to a kind of “spiritual death,” that is “estrangement from a life-giving relationship with God.”[6] This sense is found in Prov. 12:28, “In the path of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death” (see also Prov. 23:13-14). More pointedly, Vos writes,

It was intimated that death carried with it separation from God, since sin issued both in death and in the exclusion from the garden. If life consisted in communion with God, then, on the principle of opposites, death may have been interpretable as separation from God.[7]

So in carrying out the judgment of death in response to Adam’s disobedience, God drove man out of the garden of God, that is, out of his kingdom and so away from his life-giving presence (Gen. 3:24).[8] For this reason, the later exile of Israel from the promised land, in which the typological kingdom of God was established, was understood as a kind of death from which the nation would need to be resurrected like dry bones to new life (Ezek. 37:1-14).

[1] For an extensive argument for the garden as God’s covenant-kingdom see Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview, 22-61. See also G. K. Beale, New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New, 617-22.

[2] Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 94-95.

[3] Vos, Biblical Theology, 27.

[4] See Van Groningen, From Creation to Consummation, 1:71-72: “Eden … was the place of life.”

[5] Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis, 171.

[6] Collins, Genesis 1-4, 117.

[7] Vos, Biblical Theology, 40.

[8] Those who are sentenced to eschatological death in Revelation are found outside the gates of the city (Rev. 22:15), having no right of access to the tree of life (22:14).

Van Til now turns to Barth’s doctrine of creation.

Barth denies that creation as it came forth from the hand of God was good, and was to have a genuine significance. Instead, Barth’s doctrine resembles that of paganism which held that the spatial-temporal world was somehow existing independently of God and was evil in itself. Accordingly Barth has a very low conception of sin. Man is not really responsible for sin and is not really guilty inasmuch as sin or evil was already in the world. Hence Barth has a very low view of redemption. The whole of objective redemption is reduced to the prosaic level of setting the ideal of the eternal before man.

Van Til believes that Barth has a low view of both sin and redemption. Why is that? It flows from his view of creation. Reformed theology has held to the inherent goodness of creation. Creation is, according to the Reformed, made “from the hand of God” as unfallen and very good. This view stands over against the Roman view of Thomas who asserted that creation was made with an inherent defect called concupiscence. This is a natural drag inherent in creation in general, and humanity in particular, that pulls it “downward” toward non-being. God then gave the “super-added gift,” the donum superadditum, in order to keep humanity from “sliding” into sin and non-being.  Concupiscence is not sin itself, to be sure. But it is an undesirable tendency in creation, and as such negates the biblical witness that creation was made “very good.” The Reformed rejected this medieval move and affirmed the goodness and non-deficiency of the original creation.

For Barth, however, creation is in itself fallen by virtue of that fact that it is not-God. Creation is deficient. What is more, it is against God. Van Til says that this resembles paganism. Perhaps what he has in mind is gnostic conceptions that regarded the physical world as being inherently deficient and even evil. Perhaps Van Til sees this as being part and parcel of the Aristotelian system picked up by medieval metaphysicians. Be that as it may, Barth denies that creation was made sinless and without corruption. He further denies that creation only subsequent to the act of creation fell in real-time history through an act of one man, Adam. To use the language of later criticisms of Barth, there is no transition from a state of grace to a state of sin (just as there is no transition from wrath to grace in Barth’s doctrine of redemption).

If creation – inclusive of humanity – is inherently fallen, then we cannot be blamed for our sin and rebellion. This produces a low view of sin. Certainly it mitigates the culpability of sin to some extent (and to a full extent if carried to its logical conclusion). This, therefore, produces a low view of redemption. Redemption is not so much ethical as it is ontological. That is because sin is not so much ethical as it is ontological. Sin is me not being eternal. It is a condition in which I find myself, not one brought about by my own culpable rebellion. My rebellion flows from my fallen ontological condition, and not vice versa. Redemption then is me becoming eternalized in Jesus Christ who is the eternalized man in union with the eternal God. It is not a moment when I am transitioned from an estate of sin into a new estate of grace and glory. This mitigates the fully ethical and covenantal nature of the atonement, and that is what Van Til means when he says that Barth has a low view of redemption.

Life—understood biblically as the enjoyment of the covenant communion bond with God in a holy kingdom—is brought into close association with God’s word from the beginning. It was Adam’s response to the word of God (in either obedience or disobedience) that characterized his probation: obedience to it would entail eschatological life as symbolized in the tree of life, while disobedience would incur death away from the life-giving presence of God. Even in the pre-redemptive state, God’s word was to regulate the communion bond of life into which Adam was brought. The covenant relationship was not a joint-venture between God and Adam, but the sovereign imposition of God by which he brought man into personal fellowship with himself to be graciously and lovingly ruled by his word and so with him find fullness of life. Adam was to live in accordance with God’s interpretation of himself and his surroundings, not his own autonomous interpretation. Adam, for one, could not have intuited from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that it was forbidden and would lead to death without a special word revelation from God. Vern Poythress writes,

Verbal communication was one aspect of personal communion between God and man. Through his Words God also gave guidance and direction in both general [Gen. 1:28] and specific [Gen. 2:17] ways. … When he created man, God never intended that man should find his way in the world just by using his mind and observing the trees and the soil around him. God spoke. God instructed. And because it was God who spoke, he spoke with absolute authority, the authority of the Creator. This speech was designed to govern everything else in human life.[1]

From the beginning man was not to live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (see Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4; Jn. 4:34). This principle will run throughout redemptive-history as the communion bond between God and his people is established, maintained, and consummated by the power of his revealed word, which is to be life (even resurrection life) for them.[2]

[Y]ou have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for: “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you. (1 Peter 1:23-25).

In contrast to the life-giving word of God, the twisted words of the serpent stood in opposition as death stood in opposition to life. The words of the serpent sought to compromise and ultimately destroy the very communion bond that was Adam’s life by injecting into it suspicion and doubt as to the good and gracious character and purpose of God. Sinclair Ferguson captures this well,

In Eden the Serpent persuaded Eve and Adam that God was possessed of a narrow and restrictive spirit bordering on the malign. … [The serpent’s temptation] was intended to dislodge Eve from the clarity of God’s word. … But it was more. It was an attack on God’s character. … The Serpent’s tactic was to lead her into seeing and interpreting the world through her eyes (what she saw when she looked at the tree) rather than through her ears (what God had said about it). … In both mind and affections God’s law was now divorced from God’s gracious person. Now she thought God wanted nothing for her. Everything was myopic, distorted ‘now.’ … [W]hat the Serpent accomplished in Eve’s mind, affections, and will was a divorce between God’s revealed will and his gracious, generous character. Trust in him was transformed into suspicion of him by looking at ‘naked law’ rather than hearing ‘law from the gracious lips of the heavenly Father.’ God thus became to her “He-whose-favor-has-to-be-earned.”[3]

The Serpent’s words were a targeted attack aimed at severing the wholesome life-giving fellowship of union and communion that Adam enjoyed with God. For Adam to submit to the word of God meant life, but for him to submit to the word of the serpent meant death. So because of his silence before the forbidden tree, Adam failed to counter the serpent’s venomous lies with the truth of God and so incurred death away from the life-giving presence of God. Rather than experiencing joy in the presence of God, a lethal fear entered his heart, a fear of the source of life, God himself (3:10).

Into this situation the grace and mercy of God resounds in the words of curse pronounced upon the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” The dark communion bond between the woman and the serpent is severed by the interjection of enmity and ultimate triumph over the serpent is promised. The communion bond of life with God is restored and consummated in the resurrection of Jesus Christ whose Gospel Word and Spirit are now the power of life for all who are united to him by faith.

[1] From the forward to John Frame, Apologetics: A Justification of Christian Belief, ed. Joseph E. Torres (2^nd ed.; Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2015), xix. For more on this see Vern S. Poythress, In the Beginning Was the Word: Language: A God-Centered Approach (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009). See also Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology: Prolegomena and the Doctrines of Revelation, Scripture, and God, ed. William Edgar (2^nd ed.; Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2007), 125-26.

[2] For a concise biblical theology of the centrality of the word of God in human living, see Vern S. Poythress’s forward to John Frame, Apologetics: A Justification of Christian Belief, xviii-xxii.

[3] Sinclair Ferguson, The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, & Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (Wheaten, IL: Crossway, 2016), 80, 81, 82.

As we continue to unpack Van Til’s review of Zerbe’s book we come to the second part of the review, which concerns Barth’s epistemology. Van Til opens with an absurd claim, and then unpacks what he means:

[Barth] has no room for revelation. At first blush it would seem as though the very opposite were the case. He says that only in the eternal is true knowledge. He says that all knowledge comes by revelation. …. Karl Barth says that all knowledge for man as well as for God is based upon analysis of the eternal truths that exist apart from time. The ideal of knowledge for man as well as for God is complete comprehension. Knowledge is no knowledge unless it is completely comprehensive. … God and man are engaged in a common analysis of principles that exist independently of both.

It is statements like “Barth has no room for revelation” that tend to get Van Til into trouble! The statement, on the surface anyhow, seems ridiculous. But Van Til is quick to acknowledge that his statement can seem absurd. He notes that a surface read (“at first blush”) of Barth would prove the absurdity. After all Barth says that “all knowledge comes by revelation.” Now, there are two points that need to be made here. One of the points Van Til says here, the other he does not.

First, Van Til understands that for Barth for a person to know something that person must know it comprehensively. I think Van Til is on solid ground here. Barth will often indicate that man cannot know God because man as limited and the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. God is eternal, we are temporal and therefore we cannot know the eternal. This is what Van Til means by “eternal truths.” Truth is eternal, and therefore in order for there to be true knowledge of those truths one must likewise be eternal. And here only God qualifies because only he is eternal.

The trouble here is that truth, eternal truth, is an abstraction. It is a kind of tertium quid which is neither God nor man. Truth is independent of both. It is an object, quite distinct from both God and man. It is only potentially known by either God and man (i.e., “all knowledge for man as well as for God is based upon analysis of the eternal truths that exist apart from time”). And only God has the kind of mind that qualifies for knowing eternal truths comprehensively. Therefore, only God can know, man cannot. The upshot to all this is that if there is going to be revelation at all it must be something that takes place in eternity (i.e., transcendentally). It must be an act that takes place quite apart from and above us. This means, for Van Til, Barth has no room for revelation as it has been traditionally conceived. Barth has a doctrine of revelation to be sure, but according to Van Til it is not a biblical doctrine of revelation.

Second, the way in which Barth solves this problem is through Jesus Christ. Van Til does not say this here, though he will articulate it in his later writings. Jesus Christ alone is revelation. Revelation is not, therefore, a thing that can be grasped. It is not words captured on a page nor man’s experience of absolute dependence. It is God making himself known in a divine act of grace in Jesus Christ. Christ is himself both sides – the divine and human – of revelation. This is an eternal act that takes place quite transcendently relative to us living in the hear and now. Only in Jesus Christ is God made known, to himself in Jesus Christ, comprehensively.

The problem with this view, according to Van Til, is twofold. First, God and man are in similar epistemological positions. Both are subject to eternal truths. However, God has an advantage; a qualitatively greater advantage. He can know those truths because he is himself eternal. Man cannot, because he is not eternal. But still, God and man both have the same object of their knowledge – eternal truths. Nevertheless, God is relativized by these eternal truths which he himself must know. In this way, as Van Til will later note, the universe is therefore superior to God. Because eternal truths and God are co-existent the creator-creature distinction is eliminated. To be sure, Barth would never say that. But that is what Van Til believes it amounts to.

Coordinated with this problem is the fact that man cannot know God (nor can he know eternal truths). If man cannot know comprehensively then he cannot know truly. And he cannot know eternal truths comprehensively, and therefore not truly. He also cannot know God truly because he cannot know God comprehensively. At the end of the day man must be skeptical about God, and with his skepticism about God he must be skeptical about all things.

At the end of the day Barth is both a a rationalist (because God and man have the same source and object of knowledge – eternal truths) and an irrationalist (because man cannot know God, or anything eternal for that matter). And because of this, Barth has no room for revelation as revelation has been historically and biblically understood in Reformed theology.

As a pastor of a church that confesses a Reformed and Presbyterian view of the fourth commandment, I often encounter questions as to how to observe it. The fourth commandment—to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy—is particularly challenging for people coming from evangelical backgrounds. Our contemporary culture is anti-Sabbath-keeping. Its socio-economic structures and “conveniences” make it increasingly difficult to observe the day. And while people generally maintain that the other nine commandments are morally binding upon Christians under the New Covenant, the fourth commandment is practically cast off.

With this view so pervasive within the church, those worshiping in confessionally Reformed churches frequently struggle with how to observe the day. What do we do when my evangelical friend down the street invites me to a party to watch the game Sunday afternoon? What if my children’s sports team schedules a practice or a game on the Lord’s Day? Am I permitted to catch up on emails and reports before I head into the office on Monday? Is Sunday evening my opportunity to get my affairs in order for the coming week? In his wonderful new book, Devoted to God: Blueprints for Sanctification, Sinclair Ferguson provides an exceedingly helpful approach to such questions—in a footnote in the fourth appendix, no less!

When Christians ask: ‘Is it ok for me to do X on Sundays?’ the first response should normally be not ‘yes’ or ‘no’ but ‘Why would you be doing it?’ The most common answer to that question is probably ‘Because I don’t have time for it in the rest of the week.’ This highlights the importance of understanding the whole of the fourth commandment. The problem here is not how we spend Sunday; it is how we are using Monday to Saturday. We are living the week the wrong way round, as if there had been no resurrection! Use Sunday as a day of rest, worship, fellowship first and we will almost inevitably begin to discipline our use of time in the other six days of the week. Grasp this and the Sabbath principle becomes one of the simplest and most helpful of all God’s gifts. The burden-free day at the beginning of the week both regulates the days that follow and refreshes us for them. (Ferguson, 266n1)

When I first heard about Barth’s concept of the “wholly other” God, it sounded perfectly orthodox. Barth’s emphasis on the qualitative difference between God and man struck me as nothing but good Reformed theology. In addition, I had heard that Barth protested against the Liberal idea of identifying God’s being with man’s subjective experience. Surely Barth is a friend of Reformed theology! And that would be the case if that was all Barth said about the relation between God and man.

However, it was not.

Barth understood that he couldn’t stop there. He had the Christian sense to know that one cannot stop with the absolute qualitative difference between God and man. Had he stopped there there would be no hope in his theology. There would only be separation between God and man. He knew somehow that he had to bring God and man together, even if but dialectically. Liberalism did that through identifying God with man in man’s experience. Barth, however, would take the opposite position. He would reconcile God and man in God’s experience.

We continue to unpack Van Til’s initial salvo against Barth, which is a 1931 Christianity Today book review. Van Til also was grateful for Barth’s “wholly other” God. However, he was not so sanguine about how Barth brings God and man together:

Barth has made God to be highly exalted above time. For this we would be sincerely grateful. Only thus is God seen to be qualitatively distinct from man. Only thus can we stand strong against Modernism. But Barth has also made man to be highly exalted above time. For this we are sincerely sorry. By doing this Barth has completely neutralized the exaltation of God. By doing this God is no longer qualitatively distinct from man. Modern theology holds that both God and man are temporal. Barth holds that both God and man are eternal. The results are identical.[1]

For Barth the fundamental problem and presupposition of all theology is ontological: God and man are qualitatively different and therefore separate. Reconciliation is therefore also ontological. God and man are reconciled only in the God-man. And the God-man is an eternal act of grace by which God and man are made one. There never was a time when the God-man was not. The God-man, Jesus Christ, is the resolution of the ontological problem by virtue of the gracious decree of God who wills our salvation in absolute freedom.

This means that man, the man Jesus, is just as much a necessary aspect of the being of God as is his divine nature. Both the human and the divine share in the same transcendent time-event of God’s grace for us. So, as in liberalism God and man were identified in man’s feeling of absolute dependence, in Barth God and man are identified in the transcendent event of God’s grace in Jesus Christ.

This eternal act of grace is what Barth calls “God’s time for us.” In this way, time (“eternal time”) and act replace “being” in the older Thomistic theology. In Thomas “being” was a kind of independent entity in which both the Creator and creature participate. God has being and man has being. But God’s being is infinite while man’s is finite. But in Barth “act” and “time” become the transcendent reality in which both God and man relate in the God-man, Jesus Christ. This means that God and man share in a common quality or entity, as in liberalism. The difference is that in liberalism the mutual participation is immanent whereas in Barth it is transcendent. But, according to Van Til, the same theological problems persist.

[1] Van Til, C., & Sigward, E. H. (1997). Reviews by Cornelius Van Til (Electronic ed.). Labels Army Company: New York.

In the last post we began to consider Van Til’s first published criticism of Barth. It was set in the context of a book review.[1] There we underscored Van Til’s criticism that Barth’s “theology is based upon an antitheistic theory of reality.” We noted that it was “antitheistic” because it was a “correlative theory of reality.” We said, in short, this means that God and man exist on the same, eternal, “plane” with one other in Jesus Christ. God’s identity, in some sense, depends on the creature.

Van Til goes on in the review to unpack the implications of Barth’s “theory of reality:”

[Barth] even denies the real significance of the temporal world. The whole of history is to be condemned as worthless. The eternal is said to be everything and the temporal is said to be nothing. Does not this seem as though Barth holds to a genuine transcendence of God? Does it not seem as though transcendence means everything for Barth? It does seem so—but it is not truly so. Barth holds that “the only real history takes place in eternity.” If then man and the temporal universe in general are to have any significance at all they must be an aspect of God and as such be really as eternal as God. Anything to be real, says Barth, must transcend time. Man is real only in so far as he transcends time. We are true personalities only in so far as we are experiences of God. We are not to say with Descartes, I think therefore I am, or even with Hocking, I think God therefore I am, but we are to say, I am thought by God therefore I am. Abraham’s faith takes place in eternity. Resurrection means eternity. The entire epistle of Paul to the Romans is said to bring this one message that we must be eternalized. To be saved means to be conscious of one’s eternity.

Before unpacking this criticism, a few words of observation about it are in order:

1. Zerbe’s book and Van Til’s article are very early. Zerbe interacts with the German works of Barth, but his research only goes up to 1929 (co-authored volume Zur Lehre vom Heiligen Geist).
2. We know Van Til read Barth’s Church Dogmatics in German before it was translated into English. But it is impossible to tell from this review if Van Til is criticizing Barth in accordance with his own reading of Barth’s corpus up to 1931 or if his criticism is entirely or in part mediated by Zerbe’s reading. Given that the themes we see in Van Til here persist throughout his critical writings on Barth points us in the direction that Van Til was already conversant with the same early German writings Zerbe was working from.
3. This is not Van Til at his most nuanced. At first blush we may think that he is charging Barth with denying the reality of the temporal world. That is an understandable reaction, but on a more careful read Van Til is not leveling such a charge. We’ll discuss this more below, but when reading Van Til here we have to understand that he is speaking in generalities and is not as precise in his wording as he could have been (English being his second language and all).

OK, those qualifications having been stated, let’s unpack Van Til’s claims. That first sentence needs careful exegesis. What Van Til is critical of here is Barth’s denial of the “real” meaning of reality. He is not saying that Barth is denying reality, as if the world and the things around us do not actually exist. Here the word “significance” is important to get Van Til’s meaning. “Significance” for Van Til means “meaning” or “interpretation.” What he is saying, in short, is that Barth denies the real (read: divine) interpretation of reality.

Yet more needs to be said. Whatever we want to say concerning Barth’s later theology, his earlier theology is most certainly characterized by the “crisis” that exists between eternity and time, or between God and man. Given this great divide our reality, history and present experience are cut off from God and his revelation. God and his revelation are of eternity, we are of time (and the twain shall not meet!). But, for Van Til, God only by his revelation can give to us the true (i.e., real) meaning (i.e., significance) of reality. And since God/eternity and man/time are qualitatively different without overlap or contact, there is no way for man to know the true interpretation of his experience.

As Van Til goes on to note, the only way man/time can have any real God-given significance (i.e., meaning/interpretation) is for God to lift man/time up into his eternity, destroy its old fallen meaning and make it new (this process is called Aufhebung in German). And that God does in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is an eternal event of grace in which man/time is lifted up, destroyed and united to God.

That does mean, as Van Til rightly notes (even if in a somewhat un-nuanced way), that time (and everything which is of the warp and woof of this present age) is but fallen, sinful and nothing. The only place where reality is something is in the real man, Jesus Christ who alone is the transcendent act of God’s grace for us. Everything else is fallen nothingness.

Now, this is the position which I believe Barth holds for the rest of his life, whatever we may think of the qualifications he brings to it via a modern version of the analogia. Barth’s later theology would become much more orderly and systematic. But his early work forms a foundation which he will not reform in any significant way.

So much more can and should be said about that. But for now, I hope I have brought a small measure of clarity to Van Til’s critique. My experience is that for those who actually have read Van Til on Barth have exercised very little patience in accurately and charitably understanding his main point. Granted, to get there one must wade through what is often time clunky English prose. The interpretation of Barth given by Van Til above, while coming with an admittedly negative tone, is far from being idiosyncratic or even particularly controversial (even among some of Barth’s most ardent supporters today).[2] I wonder if now isn’t a good time for both friends and critics of Barth to set aside personal emotions and take up Van Til afresh and give him another chance to help us reappraise the theology of Karl Barth.

[1] Review of The Karl Barth Theology: The New Transcendentalism, by Alvin S. Zerbe. Christianity Today 1/10 (Feb 1931): 13–14. The book reviewed is Alvin S. Zerbe, The Karl Barth Theology: The New Transcendentalism (Cleveland: Central Publishing House, 1930).

[2] I recognize fully the need to unpack this claim and substantiate it more comprehensively. I aim to do just that in future posts.

The word “life” (ζωή) or “eternal life” (ζωή αἰώνιος) is no general term for Paul to describe all people with beating hearts on earth, but the “most frequent mould into which the content of the coming age is cast” (Vos, The Pauline Eschatology, 303). Eschatology leavens Paul’s conception of “life,” so that the eternal state is a comprehensive realm of life, a realm reigned over in life (Rom. 5:17).

So what led Paul to this eschatological conception of “life”?

According to Vos, Paul drew from “the ancient antithesis in which life stands opposite to death since the very beginnings of the race” (The Pauline Eschatology, 304). In Genesis 2 we are introduced to two trees of destiny in which the polar forces of life and death clash: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:9). The consequence for eating of the second tree was certain death (Gen. 2:17).

When the Lord formed man he breathed the breath of life [נִשְׁמַ֣ת חַיִּ֑ים] into him, yet a higher state of life was offered to him sacramentally in the tree of life. This sacrament is properly understood within the context of the covenant of works “wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity upon condition of perfect and personal obedience” (WCF 7.2). This future blessedness held out to Adam “emerges as ‘the life’ par excellence” (The Pauline Eschatology, 305).

Adam, however, fails to render unto the Lord perfect and personal obedience and so becomes “incapable of life by that covenant.” Nevertheless, the Lord was pleased to make a second covenant, the covenant of grace “wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ” (WCF 7.3). Notice it is the same eschatological promise of “life” offered in the second covenant as was offered in the first, but now it is offered unto “sinners.” The eschatological aspect of life has always been present from the beginning, but now a new soteriological aspect is required. Because eschatology precedes soteriology

the original goal remains regulative for the redemptive development of eschatology by aiming to rectify the results of sin (remedial) and uphold, in connection with this, the realization of the original goal as that which transcends the state of rectitude (i.e., rising beyond the possibility of death in life eternal) (Vos, The Eschatology of the Old Testament, 74).

The eschatological and the soteriological aspects are both fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and enjoyed by all who are united to him by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit.

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:4),

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 6:22-23).

The Pauline conception of life does not belong to those whose existence is wholly caught up in the present age, over which death reigns, but to those who have been raised with Christ and seated with him in the heavenly places. The believer in union with Christ is today in possession of eschatological life. According to the Heidelberg Catechism, one of the benefits of Christ’s resurrection is that “by his power we too are already now resurrected to a new life” (HC 45).

This life is presently hidden with Christ in God, but will one day be manifested in glory when Christ comes again (Col. 3:1-4). “What life is for the hidden side of the eschatological subject, that [glory] is for the outward side in which the higher life comes to revelation” (Vos, The Pauline Eschatology, 314).

So today, as we hold fast to the word of life, we can be sure that not even death can separate us from the love God in Christ Jesus our Lord. “Our death does not pay the debt of our sins. Rather, it puts an end to our sinning and is our entrance into eternal life” (HC 42).

God’s sovereignty and man’s freedom are often thought to be in competition with one another in a sort of zero-sum game: either God is sovereign or I am free. This has led to thinking that there are only two basic options on the table from which to choose:

Option #1: God’s sovereignty is limited by man’s freedom. Man’s moral and rational capacities are withdrawn from the eternal decree of God and given an independent and autonomous significance and existence.

Option #2: Man’s freedom is eliminated by God’s sovereignty. Man’s moral and rational capacities are wholly determined by the eternal decree of God and cease to have any real significance or existence at all.

The first option is correctly labeled “Arminianism.” The second option is often thought to be the teaching of “Calvinism,” but is actually in fundamental disagreement with Calvinism. It is a kind of fatalism or determinism, which Calvinism has properly rejected full force. Both options fail to maintain the basic Creator-creature distinction, which has led to the assumption that God’s freedom and man’s freedom are qualitatively the same. Hence, the zero-sum game. Accordingly, where one is free the other is not. So while options 1 and 2 seem to affirm totally opposite positions, they are actually both situated on the same rationalistic spectrum, just at opposite ends.

Calvinism rejects this rationalistic spectrum entirely and provides us with a third option that is most consistent and faithful to God’s revelation in Scripture.

Option #3: Man’s freedom is established by God’s sovereignty. Man’s moral and rational capacities are created and maintained within the eternal decree of God and therefore have real existence and significance.

Whereas options 1 and 2 begin with man’s reasoning, Calvinism begins with God’s Word. It does not claim to solve the mystery, but properly relates God’s sovereignty and human freedom as friends, not enemies. God’s sovereignty does not eliminate man’s freedom, nor does man’s freedom limit God’s sovereignty, instead God’s sovereignty establishes man’s freedom.

This is encapsulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith:

God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established (3.1).

Herman Bavinck also avoids the rationalism that would set God’s freedom and man’s freedom in opposition to one another, rather than understanding the former to “create” and “maintain” the latter.

“If God and his human creatures can only be conceived as competitors, and if the one can only retain his freedom and independence at the expense of the other, then God has to be increasingly restricted both in knowedge and in will. Pelagianism, accordingly, banishes God from his world. It leads both to Deism and atheism and enthrones human arbitrariness and folly. Therefore, the solution of the problem must be sought in another direction. It must be sought in the fact that God—because he is God and the universe is his creation—by the infinitely majestic activity of his knowing and willing, does not destroy but instead creates and maintains the freedom and independence of his creatures” (Reformed Dogmatics, 2:376-77, emphasis mine).

“The fact that things and events, including the sinful thoughts and deeds of men, have been eternally known and fixed in that counsel of God does not rob them of their own character but rather establishes and guarantees them all, each in its own kind and nature and in its own context and circumstances. Included in that counsel of God are sin and punishment, but also freedom and responsibility, sense of duty and conscience, and law and justice” (The Wonderful Works of God, 145).

Geerhardus Vos likewise understands God’s sovereign decree not to destroy or limit but to establish and ground man’s freedom.

“God’s decree grounds the certainty of His free knowledge and likewise the occurring of free actions. Not foreknowledge as such but the decree on which it rests makes free actions certain” (Reformed Dogmatics, 1:20).

“…God can realize His decrees with reference to His creatures without needing to limit their freedom in a deterministic manner. Their free acts are not uncertain and the certainty to which these acts are connected is not brought about by God in a materialistic, pantheistic, or rationalistic manner. As the omnipresent and omnipotent One, the personal One, He can so govern man that man can do nothing without His will and permission and still do everything of himself in full freedom. When God sanctifies someone, He is at work in the depths of his being where the issues of life are, and then the sanctified will acts of itself and unconstrained outwardly no less freely than if it never had been under the working of God. The work of God does not destroy the freedom of the creature but is precisely its foundation” (Reformed Dogmatics, 1:90-91, emphasis mine).

Cornelius Van Til employs the archetype-ectype distinction and the Reformed covenantal structure to uphold both God’s freedom and man’s freedom in their proper relation.

“Our view of man as the spiritual production of God points to God as the archetype of all human freedom. Human freedom must be like God’s freedom, since man resembles God, and it must be different from God’s freedom since man is a finite creature. In God, then, lies the archetype of human freedom. … We are fashioned after God and our freedom after God’s freedom. But never ought we to lose sight of the fact that our freedom is distinguished from God’s freedom by reason of our finitude” (“Freedom,” 4).

“We found … that the Reformed covenant theology remained nearest to this Biblical position. Other theories of the will go off on either of two byways, namely, that of seeking an unwarranted independence for man, or otherwise of subjecting man to philosophical necessitarianism. Reformed theology attempts to steer clear of both these dangers; avoiding all forms of Pelagianizing and of Pantheizing thought. It thinks to have found in the covenant relation of God with creation the true presentation of the Biblical concept of the relation of God to man. Man is totally dependent upon God and exists with all creation for God. Yet his freedom is not therewith abridged but realized” (“The Will in Its Theological Relations,” 77, emphasis mine).

For more on this listen to this episode of Christ the Center in which we dive deeper into this topic with a consideration of Van Til’s representational principle.

It is often assumed that The New Modernism (1946) is Van Til’s first published writing in which he evaluates Barth’s thought. Actually Van Til first published about Barth in a Christianity Today book review in 1931.[1] That was just two years after the opening of Westminster Seminary, and five years before the founding of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. It is also the year before Barth published the first part of his Kirchliche Dogmatik. As such it is a very early insight into how Van Til was evaluating Barth’s theology, albeit through the eyes of the author of the book he was reviewing.

Van Til does not delay in delivering punches. After one sentence commending the book he is reviewing he says, “Karl Barth’s theology is based upon an antitheistic theory of reality.” That is a position he will hold for the rest of his career as a critic of Barth’s theology.

Now, to be sure, that does not sound very charitable. In fact, it sounds kind of harsh, even brash. But what drives Van Til to this conclusion? Is he just an ill-tempered man? Does he revel in criticism? Or, does he have a legitimate point in view?

Let’s begin with taking a deep breath, and looking carefully at what Van Til is saying. First, notice that Van Til is not attacking the man here. He does not say Barth, himself, is antitheistic. Nor, interestingly enough, does he say that Barth’s theology, itself, is antitheistic (though he will come to that conclusion elsewhere). What he is saying is that Barth’s theology rests upon a foundational “theory of reality” that is itself antitheistic. But what is that “theory of reality?”

Van Til’s next two sentences are: “Barth has made God and man to be correlatives of one another. Barth has no genuine transcendence theory.” What does it mean to say that God and man are “correlatives” of one another? It means what James Dolezal, for example, calls “theistic mutualism.”[2] In other words, for Barth God has no being or identity apart from the man Jesus Christ. This, in effect, eternalizes man. It makes humanity – in the man Jesus – of equal and ultimate origin with God (i.e., eternal). But if God and man are both eternal, there is an ontological interdependence between. This is what Van Til means by “correlatives.”

It is this “correlative theory of reality” which stands at the basis of Barth’s theology, and which Van Til finds to be antitheistic. And it is antitheistic precisely here: a correlative relationship between God and man relativizes God, rendering God somehow dependent upon the creature. Such a god cannot, in any meaningful way, be said to be absolute sovereign Lord over the creature. Despite everything that Barth says about God’s lordship elsewhere, this view makes God and humanity (in the humanity of Christ) co-equal. Such a god cannot be omnipotent and self-sufficient, but must take his place in and among the creation. That makes such a god no different than the gods of mythology. And such a god is antithetical to true Christian theism.

Now, more can be said about this article, and we’ll say more in the weeks to come. But it is important for us to at least get this down pat before moving on and trying to understand the rest of Van Til’s critique.

[1] Christianity Today 1/10 (Feb 1931): 13–14. The book reviewed is Alvin S. Zerbe, The Karl Barth Theology: The New Transcendentalism (Cleveland: Central Publishing House, 1930).

[2] See his volume, All That is God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017).

This year marks the 500^th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. On Oct 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. We typically point to that event as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

It’s remarkable to think that such an insignificant event as nailing a document containing a list of propositions for an academic disputation would be remembered and celebrated five-hundred years later, but millions of Protestants around the world are commemorating the Reformation this year. Even non-religious organizations are taking an interest in the commemoration.

You may have seen the film that PBS released earlier this month (September) entitled “Martin Luther: The Idea that Changed the World.” PBS observed that the Reformation was “one of the most important events in Western civilization,” one that gave birth to “an idea that continues to shape the life of every American today.”

According to PBS, “the Protestant Reformation changed Western culture at its core, sparking the drive toward individualism, freedom of religion, women’s rights, separation of church and state, and even free public education. Without the Reformation, there would have been no pilgrims, no Puritans, and no America in the way we know it.”

One wonders how the religious concerns of a single monk could start a movement that would eventually bring about such radical changes in Western civilization. One might wonder whether PBS has overstated the significance of the Reformation. Are they sensationalizing the Reformation in order to stimulate public interest and excitement simply to increase their viewership?

To claim that the Reformation “changed Western culture at its core” and that without the Reformation there would be “no America in the way we know it” might sound a bit overhyped to some people. But in my opinion, it’s not overhyped at all. In fact, I think in some ways it trivializes the Reformation.

If the greatest achievement of the Reformation was that it radically changed Western civilization and culture, then of course, it would be worth remembering for its historical relevance, but it would ultimately have no relevance for the kingdom of God. Like the American Revolution, the Civil War, or Apollo 11 landing on the moon, it would be worthy of study for its historical value but not because it concerned something of eternal significance.

Whatever effect it may or may not have had on Western culture, the Reformation deserves our attention because it concerns something of infinite value and eternal significance. The Reformation deserves our attention—not because it enables us to understand the course of Western civilization and, therefore, helps us to make sense of the world in which we live—but because it points us beyond this world to the world to come. In other words, we are celebrating the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation not because of its earthly significance but because of its heavenly significance.

The Reformation was not ultimately about an “idea that changed the world” but about a rediscovery of the One who Redeemed the world, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is revealed in the gospel. The Protestant Reformation was not ultimately a sociological or cultural phenomenon but a theological one. To be sure, the Reformation of the Church was intertwined with political, social, and cultural concerns, but the Reformation was inherently a theological matter. And therefore, it should not be interpreted as a merely human event.

The Protestant Reformation was a purification of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the church is not an institution of man; it’s a creation of God through the gospel. And the preservation of the church—its continued existence and its faithfulness to the Holy Scriptures—is not a work of man but of God. To be sure, it’s a work of God in which people like Martin Luther and John Calvin participated, but it’s a work of God nonetheless.

So to understand the Reformation, we must begin with what God has accomplished in the Person and work of Jesus Christ in redemptive history and consider the application of that redemptive work by the agency of the Holy Spirit who uses the ordinances of the church to form us into a heavenly kingdom and bring us into a state of glory in which we will enjoy for all eternity unceasing, consummative communion and fellowship with the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Reformation was a rediscovery of the good news of our salvation in Jesus Christ. And that’s why the Reformation deserves our attention.

Irrationalism is modern critical thinking in the tradition of Kant. Irrationalism rejects any form of ultimate authority and therefore must have chance as its ultimate basis. If there is no God back of time and history whose plan is absolutely necessary then chance must rule. This is the logical descendant of the pre-Kantian (rationalistic) philosophy. Van Til explains:

It is this conception of the ultimacy of time and of pure factuality on which modern philosophy, particularly since the days of Kant, has laid such great stress. And it is because of the general recognition of the ultimacy of chance that rationalism of the sort that Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz represented, is out of date. It has become customary to speak of post-Kantian philosophy as irrationalistic. It has been said that Kant limited reason so as to make room for faith. … In the first place the irrationalism of our day is the direct lineal descendent of the rationalism of previous days. The idea of pure chance has been inherent in every form of non-Christian thought in the past. It is the only logical alternative to the position of Christianity according to which the plan of God is back of all. (Christian Apologetics, 163-64).

It is often assumed that Kant provides a kind of Copernican revolution in the history of philosophy, overturning every Scholastic table that came before him. But Van Til does not see it that way. Kantian irrationalism is just another form of rationalism. Kant and Descartes are not enemies, but rather twins struggling in the womb of mother rationalism.

So, how then is irrationalism actually rationalism? Before we answer that, we first need to say more about what Van Til means by irrationalism understood in the tradition of Kant.[1] Another phrase we can use for this tradition is “critical thought” (hereafter CT). CT begins with a basic dualism between the noumenal and phenomenal realms. The phenomenal realm is everything we can perceive with the senses. We can only know this realm through the categories of the mind. Therefore, there is a “contribution” that man makes to knowing objective reality. What he can know is only that which is phenomenal. The noumenal realm is, however, directly unknowable by man. It contains things which cannot be perceived – the things of faith (God, being, etc.). In his critique of pure reason Kant, as Van Til says above, limited reason to make room for faith. Man can reason only according to what he can know in the phenomenal realm. Faith then is for those things in the noumenal realm which cannot be known.

It is with regard to the noumenal realm that Van Til speaks about irrationalism. Irrationalism does not mean that man does not use reason. Rather, irrationalism is the idea that there is a place (the noumenal realm) that reason cannot go. It is the realm of ineffable mystery. It is the realm of the unknown. The noumenal realm cannot be known, at least not directly.[2] This means that no source of ultimate authority can be accessed by us living in the here and now. The final arbiter of all truth is inaccessible to us.

Now we can begin to see how irrationalism is really just rationalism. If there is no access to the transcendent realm, then there is no direct knowledge of God or his revelation. That means that man along with his reason is completely on his own. He can speak about facts without any reference to an ultimate and final authority. In this way man is autonomous and is able to interpret reality quite apart from or without reference to God. Irrationalism “boxes out” the noumenal realm where transcendent truth is found. This allows fallen man to interpret reality according to his own sinful reason. Van Til gives a great illustration of this situation which is worth quoting at length here:

In the second place modern irrationalism has not in the least encroached upon the domain of the intellect as the natural man thinks of it. Irrationalism has merely taken possession of that which the intellect, by its own admission, cannot in any case control. Irrationalism has a secret treaty with rationalism by which the former cedes to the latter so much of its territory as the latter can at any given time find the forces to control. Kant’s realm of the noumenal has, as it were, agreed to yield so much of its area to the phenomenal, as the intellect by its newest weapons can manage to keep in control. Moreover, by the same treaty irrationalism has promised to keep out of its own territory any form of authority that might be objectionable to the autonomous intellect. The very idea of pure factuality or chance is the best guarantee that no true authority, such as that of God as the Creator and Judge of men, will ever confront man. If we compare the realm of the phenomenal as it has been ordered by the autonomous intellect to a clearing in a large forest we may compare the realm of the noumenal to that part of the same forest which has not yet been laid under contribution by the intellect. The realm of mystery is on this basis simply the realm of that which is not yet known. And the service of irrationalism to rationalism may be compared to that of some bold huntsman in the woods who keeps all lions and tigers away from the clearing. This bold huntsman covers the whole of the infinitely extended forest ever keeping away all danger from the clearing. This irrationalistic Robin Hood is so much of a rationalist that he virtually makes a universal negative statement about what can happen in all future time. In the secret treaty spoken of he has assured the intellect of the autonomous man that the God of Christianity cannot possibly exist and that no man therefore need to fear the coming of a judgment. If the whole course of history is, at least in part, controlled by chance, then there is no danger that the autonomous man will ever meet with the claims of authority as the Protestant believes in it. For the notion of authority is but the expression of the idea that God by his counsel controls all things that happen in the course of history. (Christian Apologetics, 164-65).

In short, irrationalism (or pushing all forms of ultimately authority, i.e., God, into an unknowable realm) serves rationalism by pleading ignorance (“makes a universal negative statement “) about time. It knows nothing about the meaning of history (because it does not know God whose plan stands back of history) nor does it know what the future holds (because it knows no God and his plan back of the future). The true meaning and significance of time (whether past or future) is inaccessible to man. Therefore time (whether past or future) only has the meaning that autonomous man would assign to it. That is to give to man’s mind a quasi-divine status, thus breaking down the distinction between the Creator and creature. And that is the heart and soul of rationalism.

[1] Before we get to that, it is necessary to briefly acknowledge that the interpretation of Kant is quite variegated. I am no Kant scholar, and neither was Van Til. So, here I recognize that what I am about to say can legitimately be quibbled with by Kant scholars who would argue on the lines of a different school of interpretation. Our purpose here, however, is not to enter those debates but simply to explain what Van Til understood by modern thought after Kant.

[2] The noumenal realm if it is to be known can be known only indirectly. That is, by way of deduction from what can be known.

Teaching on the eternal state of the world to come may sound from the outset to be speculative and useless for practical living in the present. How can heavenly contemplation help me raise my children or motivate me at work Monday morning or mend my broken relationship with my brother? Yet, Geerhardus Vos was convinced of the very opposite. In fact, he believed that “it becomes the profoundest and most practical of all thought complexes…” (The Pauline Eschatology, 294). He goes on to give a reason for this statement—which may seem at the moment to be an overstatement, but in reality is actually an understatement—but I think before getting there we need to think over a few things he gleaned from the apostle Paul on the eternal state.

Formal Aspects of the Eternal State: Unending and Imperishable

In the final chapter of The Pauline Eschatology, Vos begins his discussion on the eternal state by discussing its two formal aspects: unendingness and imperishableness (pp. 287-92).

First, Paul characterizes the eternal state, on the one hand, as precluding any time limitation so that it does not consist of a relative duration as is true of the present age. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the coming eternal age are not deified so that they cease to exist in a mode of duration and time ceases to be divided for them into units of past, present, and future. There continues in the supernal sphere the movement of time and duration. We might then speak of the formal aspect of the eternal state as absolute duration. This stands opposed to the relative duration of the present age, which consummates in what Paul terms the “fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4). Vos understands this phrase not to signify “ripeness,” but “the completion of what was ‘time’ and the succession of it by what is different from time through the mission of the Messiah into the world” (289n3). The eternal state will never arrive at a “fullness of time” as it is perpetual and unending duration. Eternity is not pregnant with other eternities.

The second formal aspect pertains to the imperishable nature of the things belonging to the eternal state. “The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:17). While the things of the present age are transitory and corruptible, the things of the eternal state are permanent and incorruptible. Hellenistic thought understood imperishability to be inherent to whatever was invisible. But Paul essentially distinguished himself from this teaching by way of his two-age scheme. For him, imperishability does not pertain to the invisible as such, but to the world to come that is unseen at the present. In Vos’ words, “[H]e has learned to recognize in the things unseen to the present [age] the enduring things of the world to come, a world already in principle present, the contemplation of which can consequently render solace and support in the affliction of the moment” (292). The world to come will not remain unseen forever. Its present invisibility is a matter of the present redemptive-historical situation of God’s people, for today “we pilgrimage through a land of faith, not of sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). So while today the things of the world to come are both invisible and imperishable, when in Christ we enter the eternal state the same things of the world to come will cease to be invisible, but will continue to be imperishable. Paul does not see imperishability and invisibility as requiring each other as was true in Hellenestic thought; the one can cease (invisibility), while the other remains (imperishability).

Substantial Content of the Eternal State: God Himself

We would be deeply mistaken if we thought that it was merely these formal aspects of the eternal state that excited Paul. If this was the case, Paul’s eschatology would be useless, abstract speculation and provide no vital power for the present life. But what stirred Paul’s eschatological longings at their very core and what gave meaning and value to the unendingness and imperishability of the eternal state was nothing less than its central object and substantial content: the Eternal One, God himself (pp. 292-94). The formal aspects of the eternal state were not ultimate in Paul’s thinking; God was. Unendingness and imperishability serve to express the absoluteness of the acme of religion, communion with him.

The present redemptive-historical state does not furnish the believer with a sense of fullness or satisfaction, but with intense longing for God. Our souls long, yes, faint for the courts of the Lord (Ps. 84:2). Because God is eternal

there can be no thorough, no adequate reception of Him into our finite consciousness, unless there by some assurance of the unceasingness of our communion with Him. He is not a God of the dead but of the living. All temporal, partial experience of God inevitably leaves a sense of dissatisfaction behind (293).

The Spirit of Christ bearing witness in our hearts moves us to say, Amen.

But God has been and will forever remain the Eternal One, while we remain finite creatures of temporal duration. We long for the One, and only one, who is eternal, while ourselves existing as the very opposite. How can this problem be met? According to Vos, it is met by

God’s imparting a reflection of his unique eternal existence to our life as creatures, through admitting us into the realm of the aionion [eternal]. In this He not merely confers a boon [something beneficial] upon man, but at the same time provides a true satisfaction for Himself. Although in the abstract being self-sufficient as God, He has freely chosen to carry his concern with us to the extreme of eternal mutually appurtenance of which the creature is capable (293).

Although Vos does not use the term here, he has in mind the covenant relationship that God has freely and voluntarily entered into with his people (see WCF 7.1). At the heart of this covenant is the promise of shared life: I will be your God and you will be my people. So not only are we supremely satisfied in having God as our God, but (and this is an amazing thought!) God is truly satisfied in having us as his people. This mutual satisfaction is realized in a heightened, eschatological sense in the eternal state.

Paul affirms both of these ideas. On the one hand, God is the only immortal Being (1 Tim. 6:16) and, on the other hand, “He has appointed as the eschatological goal of religious fellowship with Himself, among other things, the prize of an incorruption [Rom 2:7], such as is equivalent to eternal life” (293).

Vos, however, does not blur the Creator-creature distinction here as if just as God is eternal, so we become eternal in the exact same way. Note in the above quote that it is an “eternal mutually appurtenance of which the creature is capable.” He goes on to utilize the common theological distinction of an archetype and ectype. He affirms that this attribute of eternality exists in God alone in its archetypical form, but exists in the creature “in an ectypical form.”

For both God and for man more than mere endless existence is meant. It also includes a content commensurable with its eternity. Again, the formal aspects of eternity, unendingness and imperishableness, are not abstractly considered as empty concepts, but serve the concrete objects indwelling eternity. For this reason Paul does not use the empty term “immortality,” but “chooses as a larger, deeper receptacle the term ‘life’” (293). (While Paul says mortality puts on immortality in 1 Cor. 15:53-54, Vos notes “the very form in which this is expressed is such that it could never have been applied to God, who is the Only One who has immortality [1 Tim. 6:16].”)

“Life” is a concrete term that encapsulates the dynamic relationship between the formal aspects (unendingness and imperishableness) and substantial content (God himself) of the eternal state.

The Practicality of the Eternal State

We began with Vos’ statement that teaching on the eternal state is “the profoundest and most practical of all thought complexes.” We can now appreciate the whole sentence:

We find that the [eternity-concept], thus understood, belongs to the acme of religion, serving to express its absoluteness. Eschatology ceases for those who have learned, and in principle experienced this, to be an abstract speculation: it becomes the profoundest and most practical of all thought-complexes because they, like Paul, live and move and have their redemptively-religious treasures in God (294).

For more check out this article on the book of Hebrew’s teaching on the vital connection the believer already has today with the world to come.

Last week we talked about Barth’s “absolutely other” god. There we noted how Barth begins with an unknown and unknowable god. In other words, he begins with the god of modernism. But, as we also noted, he does not stop there. For Barth God makes himself known, and he does so through revelation. Revelation is found neither in “the things that have been made” nor in Scripture. Rather, revelation is act of God in Jesus Christ alone. Jesus Christ is himself the only revelation of God. And in Jesus Christ God is wholly revealed. Herein lies Barth’s dialectical method. God is at once both absolutely other and wholly revealed. Van Til notes:

On the other hand when the god of Barth does reveal himself he reveals himself wholly. For Barth God is exhaustively known if he is known at all. That is to say to the extent that this god is known he is nothing distinct from the principles that are operative in the universe. He is then wholly identical with man and his world. It appears then that when the god of Barth is wholly mysterious and as such should manifest himself by revelation only, he remains wholly mysterious and does not reveal himself. On the other hand when this god does reveal himself his revelation is identical with what man can know apart from such a revelation. (Christian Apologetics, 171)

In short, if God reveals himself wholly, then what man knows is not God but only “man and his world.” A God who is wholly given over and identified with creation cannot be known. He is as much hidden in his revelation as he is as “absolutely other.”

Some more clarification is in order. Van Til here leaves some important things unsaid which would illuminate his point had he included them here (he does, however, makes these points elsewhere).

First, for Barth God’s revelation only takes place in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is not a medium of revelation – he is revelation. In Christ God is at the same time wholly revealed and wholly concealed. Jesus Christ is the dialectical relation between God’s act of veiling and unveiling. He is both simultaneously.

Second, Barth is known for having said “God is Jesus Christ.” That is quite different, note, then saying “Jesus Christ is God.” In the former expression Barth is identifying God with Jesus Christ such that the incarnation becomes a dialectical relation between God and man – which is quite different than traditional Chalcedonian Christology. In Barth’s theology God then is wholly identified with Jesus Christ. In orthodox Christianity we would say the finite (humanity of Christ) cannot contain the infinite (divine nature). But for Barth God exhaustively reveals himself – in fact, gives himself over – in and by the God-man Jesus Christ.

Third, if God’s revelation of himself is found only in Jesus Christ and not in nature and not in Scripture, that leaves man with a knowledge that is disconnected from revelation. And knowledge which is disconnected from revelation is, according to Van Til, autonomous and therefore rebellious knowledge – and thus no true knowledge at all. At the end of the day we are left with pure skepticism.

It is often said that Barth believed in a god who was “wholly other.” It’s an oft repeated phrase, but rarely understood. Van Til would say “absolutely other.” By that Van Til understood a modern conception of God. It was a modern assumption that if God exists he must exist quite separate and distinct from us. Van Til observes:

Sad to say, however, the “absolutely other” God of Barth is absolutely other only in the way that a sky-rocket is “absolutely other” to the mind of the child. Barth’s god has first been cast up into the heights by the projective activity of the would-be autonomous man. In all his thinking Barth is, in spite of his efforts to escape it, still controlled by some form of modern critical philosophy. And this means that the mind of man is always thought of as contributing something ultimate to all the information it has and receives. Accordingly the “absolutely other” god of Barth remains absolute just so long as he is absolutely unknown. In that case he is identical with the realm of mystery which the autonomous man admits of as existing beyond the reach of its thought. It then has no more content and significance than the vaguest conception of something indeterminate. There is no more meaning in the idea of God as Barth holds it than there was in the idea of the apeiron, the indefinite, of Anaximander the Greek philosopher. (Christian Apologetics, 170).

At first blush this may just look like Van Til’s own creator-creature distinction. But it is not. Why not? Simply put, while Barth begins with the qualitative difference between man and God, Van Til begins with the self-contained ontological Trinity. Barth begins with an unknown deity, Van Til begins with and presupposes the Triune God of Scripture. In other words, for Van Til there is never any place or any time that God is unknown. The Triune God of Scripture always and everywhere makes himself known in the things that have been made (Psalm 19; Romans 1).

In summary, Barth begins with a god that is the product of the would-be autonomous modern man. To be sure Barth will speak about God making himself known in revelation. We will discuss that next week as we look at the paragraph following the one cited above. But suffice it to say for now, having begun with modern/critical assumptions about the unknowability of God is there any hope that Barth can produce anything other than a modern/critical understanding of the knowability of God in revelation? Barth will try to give a Christian answer on the basis of dialectical reasoning. But, as Van Til will go on to show, Barth fails to escape the web of modern criticism, which is a web of his own making.

In chapter 3 of Christian Apologetics Van Til addresses the issue of the “point of contact” (Anknüpfungspunkt). That is to say, the point at which the believer may make contact with the unbeliever in the task of defending the faith. Is there a place of agreement between believer and unbeliever from which the apologetic endeavor may begin?

In this chapter Van Til offers an acute criticism of Old Princeton on this issue. He likens the Old Princeton understanding of reason, and the mode of apologetics that flows from it, to Rome and Arminianism. He makes this connection under the sub-heading “Less Consistent Calvinism” (pp. 101ff).

It may help here to underscore what Van Til is not saying in this section. He is not attacking Hodge’s or Warfield’s (hereafter: H&W) theology or their epistemology, as such. This is evident in part by a section (pp. 94–97) in which he offers quote after quote from Hodge on his doctrine of the incapacity of the natural man to know God. He also offers a quote from Warfield to the same effect (pp. 101-102). To be clear, Van Til is not saying that H&W hold to an Arminian theology. Rather, what he is doing is pointing up an inconsistency between the Old Princeton theology (which he praises) and the Old Princeton apologetic (which he criticizes as being Arminian). In short, the criticism concerns what he perceives to be an inconsistency and incongruity between their theology and apologetic.

To narrow the focus of the criticism, the reason why Van Til charges H&W’s apologetic with Arminianism is because of how they relate reason to revelation. After a section where he praises H&W for their very Calvinian doctrine of man’s knowledge of God, Van Til turns to critique: “It would seem that we have dropped from this high plane to the level of evangelicalism when Hodge speaks of the office of reason in matters of religion” (p. 102). In other words, Hodge presents us with a way of relating reason to revelation that is more consistent with an Arminian view than a Calvinistic one. He goes on to explain:

First [Hodge] shows that reason is necessary as a tool for the reception of revelation. About this point there can be little cause for dispute. “Revelations cannot be made to brutes or to idiots.” Second, Hodge argues that “Reason must judge of the credibility of a revelation.” . . . Third, Hodge continues, “Reason must judge of the evidences of a revelation.” As “faith involves assent, and assent is conviction produced by evidence, it follows that faith without evidence is either irrational or impossible.” (pp. 102-103)

Van Til does not disagree with all that Hodge says here (evidenced in his comment in the first point). But Van Til does take exception to the idea of reason being a judge of revelation’s credibility and evidences. Therefore, the believer may not assume reason’s competency to judge revelation:

But the unbeliever does not accept the doctrine of his creation in the image of God. It is therefore impossible to appeal to the intellectual and moral nature of men, as men themselves interpret this nature, and say that it must judge of the credibility and evidence of revelation. For if this is done, we are virtually telling the natural man to accept just so much and no more of Christianity as, with his perverted concept of human nature, he cares to accept. (pp. 103-104)

Van Til’s point is simple: because the unbeliever does not accept the fact that he is created in the image of God, he is in no position to rightly interpret the evidence of revelation. What is worse, we are allowing the unbeliever to be the final judge over revelation, which means he will accept only what he wants to accept – and nothing more. If we allow him to use his own fallen reason the unbeliever “will certainly assume the position of judge with respect to the credibility and evidence of revelation, but he will also certainly find the Christian religion incredible because impossible and the evidence for it always inadequate” (p. 104).

Now, this is where it gets interesting. Van Til actually concedes that H&W believe this:

Hodge’s own teaching on the blindness and hardness of the natural man corroborates this fact. To attribute to the natural man the right to judge by means of his reason of what is possible or impossible, or to judge by means of his moral nature of what is good or evil, is virtually to deny the “particularism” which, as Hodge no less than Warfield, believes to be the very hall-mark of a truly biblical theology. (ibid.)

So, where is the rub? It is precisely here:

The main difficulty with the position of Hodge on this matter of the point of contact, then, is that it does not clearly distinguish between the original and the fallen nature of man. Basically, of course, it is Hodge’s intention to appeal to the original nature of man as it came forth from the hands of its creator. But he frequently argues as though that original nature can still be found as active in the “common consciousness” of men. (p. 105)

And then finally:

Now it is quite in accord with the genius of Hodge’s theology to appeal to the “old man” in the sinner and altogether out of accord with his theology to appeal to the “new man” in the sinner as though he would form a basically proper judgment on any question. Yet Hodge has failed to distinguish clearly between these two. Accordingly he does not clearly distinguish the Reformed from the evangelical and Roman Catholic views of the point of contact. (pp. 105-106)

In summary, Van Til is not lambasting the Old Princeton theology here. He is not even lambasting the Old Princeton epistemology. What he is critical of, however, is how H&W’s inconsistency in their apologetic approach and the question of a point of contact. On the theoretical level H&W are spot on about man’s fallen nature and the need for regeneration and special revelation to properly interpret all things. But, they fall to inconsistency in that they fail to apply their doctrine of man and sin appropriately to the post-fall use of reason. In short, the apologete cannot assume a “common consciousness” between believer and unbeliever.

H&W’s theology was so faithfully Calvinistic that we should be baffled over why they switch to an Arminian apologetic. At the same time, however, we should not think that Van Til is calling H&W Arminian. He is not. He is not even saying that they contained within their thinking a mixture of Calvinism and Arminianism. Van Til’s critique is not of their theology, nor of their epistemology (see my past post “No Critic of Old Princeton?”). The criticism is exclusively on the level of application; that is, the failure to consistently apply their (good) theology to their (inconsistent) apologetic.

The Reformation restored the holistic nature of faith to include both knowledge and trust in keeping with the organic unity of the whole person and our union with the whole Christ as taught in Scripture. These two elements, however, were again pulled apart more and more under the stress of Enlightenment thinking and criticisms. Faith was positioned on the chopping block of human autonomy which rushed down upon it like a guillotine. Despite attempts to save it, its lifeblood was emptied. True restoration would again be found only in reformation, in renouncing the absolute freedom of man and returning to God’s revelation in Scripture.

A New Dualism: Cold Orthodoxy and Pietism

Herman Bavinck provides a helpful summary of the dichotomy that resulted,

On the one hand, a cold orthodoxy emerged that interpreted faith only in terms of doctrine, and on the other hand, a Pietism that valued devoutness above truth. This dualism in religion, church, and theology was strengthened by a twofold orientation of the newer philosophy, that, after Descartes and Bacon, eventually ended up in dogmatism and empiricism (“Philosophy of Religion (Faith),” 26).

This new dualism sat uncomfortably with many—but was a new reconciliation even possible within the system of Enlightenment thinking? The attempted solution by Immanuel Kant would argue, No.

Kant’s epistemology was especially influenced by the criticism of David Hume, so that “he turned his back on dogmatism and became convinced that rationalism in theology and metaphysics was untenable” (27). In turn, he divided reality into two worlds, the noumena and the phenomena. The noumena consisted of things as they are in themselves, while the phenomena, in distinction, included things as they are knowable by the senses. Kant argued that genuine scholarship and science was only possible in the world of the phenomena since it alone is accessible to the human mind. The transcendental and supernatural world of the noumena was inaccessible and all proofs adduced for it end up in an antinomy.

Kant’s (Unsuccessful) Attempt to Save Faith

But Kant did not want to surrender the supernatural, nor the concept of faith, yet he knew neither could rest on cogent reasons and proofs of rationalism. He needed another, firmer foundation, which he discovered in the writings of Rousseau, the father of Romanticism. Rousseau, conscious of the sharp contrast between nature and culture of his time, “became the enthusiastic preacher of the gospel of nature.” Bavinck goes on,

In [Rousseau’s] teaching about society and state, education and religion, he turned from the corrupt culture of his time to the truth and simplicity of nature. In all areas, the historical had to make room for what was originally given, [abandoning] society for innocent nature, positive Christianity for natural religion, the false reasons of the mind for the impulse of feeling. Certainty about the truths of religion was also to be found in feeling. … For him the final certainty of these truths of the faith [including the existence of God] are not to be found in the theoretical but in the practical sphere, in the original and immediate witness of feeling that is deeper and much more reliable than the reasoning mind. Each person is assured in his heart about a supersensory world (27).

This idea would have a tremendous influence on the philosophy of Kant (and the theology of feeling of Schleiermacher among others). Specifically what Kant learned from Rousseau was that “religious truths possess a different certainty for people than truths of the mind or reason, of science or philosophy.” Religion and morality contain their own kind of certainty, that is, a certainty that is distinct from the certainty of natural phenomena. With this being the case, “metaphysics does not need to provide all kinds of proofs for God’s existence, the freedom of the will, and the immortality of the soul. Moreover, science could then freely go its own way and be bound only by its own character and laws” (28). In short, the certainty of the noumena (religion) rests on a different foundation than the certainty of the phenomena (science). Herein is the dualism of Kant’s philosophy: there are two, separate foundations of a two-story reality constructed of the noumena and the phenomena.

Kant, however, does not adopt Rousseau’s idea that the foundation of the noumena is feeling; instead, he posits the foundation as “practical reason, the moral nature of man. In his conscience, man feels himself bound to a categorical, unconditional, absolute imperative” (28). The certainty of the world of the noumena rests on the foundation of man’s morality as he finds in himself the “thou shalt” of the moral law, which transcends all other powers in nature. From here, Kant argues, man can find certainty of other noumena realities: the freedom of his will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God.

If this moral world order is to be true reality and not an illusion, and if it is to triumph one day over all that is great and strong and mighty in this world, then man must be free in his actions and his soul must be immortal to receive his reward in the hereafter, and God must exist in order to reconcile in eternal harmony the terrible opposites between virtue and luck that exist on earth. These are not conclusions legitimately deduced from preceding scientific premises, but they are postulates put forth by man according to his moral nature. He cannot prove, he cannot demonstrate, that it is all true, but he is subjectively certain of it; he believes and acts as if it were true; he does not know, but he believes, and he has moral grounds for his belief” (28).

The Destruction of Faith in Kant, Schleiermacher and Hegel

At this point, we have come far afield from the Reformation and biblical view of faith as including both knowledge and trust in an organic unity. Kant sought a safer place for faith by relinquishing all elements of knowledge about divine truth and relocating it solely to a supernatural order, but, ironically, in so doing he destroyed it.

Schleiermacher will move in a similar direction in theology, having basically the same epistemological commitments as Kant, but instead of a moral/ethical direction, he will move toward the mystical sense of absolute feeling. In distinction from Kant, Schleiermacher “held that willing and acting and knowing do not disclose the supersensible world, because this willing also moves in opposites and never reaches unity. This unity, enjoyed only in feeling, which precedes thinking and willing and is completely independent of absolute power” (29).

In the opposite direction of both Kant (ethical) and Schleiermacher (mystical) was the German Idealist, Hegel (speculative/rationalism). He elevated reason to a cosmic principle with the progress of history being the absolute Spirit or Mind realizing itself. Religion, then, is merely a developmental stage in the movement of absolute thought in history.

Van Til’s Critique of Kant

Cornelius Van Til wrote, “If Kant’s position were to be retained, both knowledge and faith would be destroyed.” That is, not only does Kant fail to arrive at any true knowledge in the realm of the noumena by way of practical reason and faith, but equally so he fails to arrive at any true knowledge in the realm of the phenomena by way of theoretical reason. Despite his desire to salvage God, morality, and all else that belongs to the noumena, he makes wreckage of the noumena along with the phenomena. After totaling both realms on the speedway of human autonomy, Kant is left with an irreparable theory of knowledge.

The reason for this totalizing failure is his starting point in man, rather than in God’s revelation. Kant imprisoned God to the noumena and made the link between the noumena and phenomena not God’s self-revelation but man’s sense of morality. Accordingly, God is ignorant of the phenomena and man is enthroned over the natural world as an autonomous interpreter of the facts of the phenomena. Both God and the world are man-contained, dependent on him and relative to him. Man does not think God’s thoughts after him, that is, in accordance with and submission to the comprehensive knowledge of God, but comes to the natural world as if it was comprised of uninterpreted, brute facts. Man has therefore replaced God in Kant’s theory as the world’s primary interpreter and definer. Van Til writes,

Knowledge and faith are not contradictories but complementaries. Kant did not make room for faith, because he destroyed the God on whom alone faith is to be fixed. It is true of course, that Kant spoke of a God as possibly existing. This God, however, could not be more than a finite God, since he at least did not have, or did not need to have, original knowledge of the phenomenal world. Kant thought that man could get along without God in the matter of scientific knowledge. It is thus that the representational principle which we saw to be the heart of the Christian theistic theory of knowledge is set aside. If man knows certain facts whether or not God knows these facts, as would be the case if the Kantian position were true, man’s knowledge would be done away with. Whatever sort of God may remain, on Kant’s view, he is not the supreme interpretive category of human experience (A Survey of Christian Epistemology, 109; see esp. pp. 106-13 for his full critique).

No One Can Serve Two Masters

On the basis of God’s self-revelation in Scripture, Bavinck counters the dualism of Kantian philosophy by returning to the central unity in man. He argues that Kant’s ethicisim, Schleiermacher’s mysticism and Hegel’s rationalism suffer from “a significant one-sidedness” and “diminish man’s universal character.” These anti-theistic systems divide man in two and separate what belongs together. The result is that true religion is lost since it is reduced to either moral duty or aesthetic emotion or a philosophic view. “But according to the Christian, confession [sic] religion is other than and higher than all those views; religion must not just be something in one’s life, but everything. Jesus demands that we love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength. In our thinking and living, there can be no division between God and the world, between religion and culture; no one can serve two masters” (29).

Both Van Til and Barth rejected all forms of bare theism. That is, they denied a generic view of God. Both believed this “god” was an idol. This is the god of human autonomy and philosophy. It comes from an apologetic approach which seeks to first prove or show that there is “a god” before it seeks to prove that this god is in fact the Triune God of Christianity. The blame for this approach may, arguably, be placed at the feet of Thomas Aquinas who first seeks to prove “an unmoved mover” on the ground of reason before he moves to talk about the Trinity from divine revelation. The impression left is that there is validity to speaking about God in any other way than the Triune God of Scripture.

Van Til says this about that idea:

It is accordingly no easier for sinners to accept God’s revelation in nature than to accept God’s revelation in Scripture. They are no more ready of themselves to do the one than to do the other. From the point of view of the sinner, theism is as objectionable as is Christianity. Theism that is worthy of the name is Christian theism. Christ said that no man can come to the Father but by him. No one can become a theist unless he becomes a Christian. Any god that is not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is not God but an idol. (Christian Apologetics, 79)

For Van Til the God of creation is the Triune God. The God of the Old Testament is also the Triune God. That unbelievers or the saints of the Old Testament do not articulate a Nicean doctrine of the Trinity does not mean that God is anything else or anything other than Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the one God who is at the same time three persons. The God who reveals himself in both nature and Scripture is the one Triune God.

Van Til and Barth share a common anti-Scholasticism at this point.

But, unfortunately, here the commonality ends. As we mentioned in an earlier post, Barth’s ontological starting part is actualism. That is, things are understand properly only by way of their acts and relations. So, for instance, there is no eternal Logos (i.e., the Word of John 1:1) who stands behind or apart from Jesus Christ as the Logos come in human flesh. So when he says the only God who is is the Christian God he is not affirming what Van Til is affirming. For Van Til the Triune God has always existed, even quite prior to and independent of the incarnation. What is more, the Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – existed eternally and happily even prior to and independent of his decision to create and redeem by becoming the God-man in Jesus Christ. But for Barth the Triune God is who he is precisely because and only insomuch as he is the God who from all eternity has acted by way of a sovereign and free decision to become Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in and by Jesus Christ.

To put it in very simple terms, for Barth God is dependent on creation (even the humanity of the incarnate Logos) to be (more accurately: to eternally become) a Trinity.[1] However, for Van Til the God of the Scriptures is “the self-contained ontological Trinity.” (see, for example, Christian Apologetics, p. 97). In other words, for Barth God’s act of grace toward his creatures in Christ becomes the constituting event which renders God as Trinity. For Van Til God does not need to be constituted as Trinity, for he is always and everywhere Trinity, and as Trinity the sovereign Lord over creation.

Unfortunately, the logical conclusion to Barth’s approach is that creation is sovereign over his god.

And that god is no Christian God. But for Van Til the Triune God is the Christian God—and the only God—precisely because he is not dependent on creation for his being or identity. If there never was a fall, there would be no incarnation. And still God would be Trinity. Perhaps the irony is that, according to Van Til, the Triune God does not need the incarnate Christ in order to be the Christian God. To say otherwise is to make God dependent on the creature. And a dependent God can in no way be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[1] I understand that whether or not, or to what extent, God’s act of electing grace in Christ constitutes his being as Triune is hotly debated among Barth scholars. I do not intend to engage that discussion here. I make this statement without prejudice to the current debate. I am simply speaking from within the context of how Van Til himself reads Barth.

The Westminster Larger Catechism defines justifying faith as

a saving grace, wrought in the heart of a sinner by the Spirit and Word of God, whereby he, being convinced of his sin and misery, and of the disability in himself and all other creatures to recover him out of his lost condition, not only assenteth to the truth of the promise of the gospel, but receiveth and resteth upon Christ and his righteousness, therein held forth, for pardon of sin, and for the accepting and accounting of his person righteous in the sight of God for salvation (72).

Faith is not merely the intellectual assent of the mind to the redemptive revelation of God, it is also a receiving and resting upon the person of Christ. By this definition the Reformed go beyond Rome’s demand for nothing more than an historical assent to the truth by including a heartfelt trust of the whole person. This personal and active dimension of faith is evident in the words used throughout the Old Testament to express the concept of believing. We’ll turn to Geerhardus Vos’ survey of these words in the fourth volume of his Reformed Dogmatics on soteriology (the doctrine of salvation) to see this.

אמן (“To Believe”)

The first and most often used word is אמן. Vos notes that in the hiphil form the word is best rendered as “demonstrating faithfulness,” “generating faithfulness,” or “establishing oneself.” It has to do with “an active disposition of the soul, an action that produces change” (72).

The word also takes on certain nuances depending on the preposition connected with it. With the preposition לְ (“to”) it generally has to do with holding something to be true. This is seen in Deuteronomy 9:23, which speaks of Israel’s failure to actively believe: “you rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God and did not believe him…”

With the preposition בְּ (“by,” “in”) it usually denotes a trustful resting in a person or in a truth. This is used of Abraham in Genesis 15:6, “And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” Now Abraham’s faith was more than just his holding the promise of God to be true. “As this promise was a matter of life for Abraham, so this promise was also a living testimony for him, and his faith was not merely concerned with the truth in the abstract but with the God of the truth. A personal relationship came about between the consciousness of Abraham and God. Thus we may already say in general that [Abraham’s believing here] is the trustful acceptance of the testimony of a person that becomes a basis for certainty for us through the conscious conception of that person” (73).

בטח (“To Trust”)

A second word that is used in the Old Testament is בטח which means “to be sure,” and so with the preposition בְּ (“in”) it means to trust in someone. So Psalm 28:7, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped.” Vos comments, “Here, too, the personal relationship comes out. Depending on the testimony is accompanied by and derives its strength from this personal relationship” (74). The imagery of the Lord being the psalmist’s personal shield is a helpful picture of what it means to trust in him.

חסה (“To Take Refuge”)

We find a third word used in Psalm 57:1, “Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by.” The Hebrew word here is חסה, which means “to hide” or “to take refuge in.” This trust of the psalmist’s soul is not a mere intellectual assent to the truth, but an active trusting in God. The intense imagery of taking refuge in the midst of a destructive storm would be incongruous with a mere acceptance of the truth with the mind. The whole trusts in the Lord and so seeks refuge in him.

קוה (“To Wait”)

A fourth, and final, word used is קוה—an intense, active word that can mean “focusing the mind on something.” At times it might carry the sense of “hoping” in the biblical sense that carries certainty and conviction or “an intensive focusing of the intellect that definitely expects the realization of what is desired” (74). It is usually translated as “wait”: “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (Ps. 27:14). “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength” (Isa. 40:31). “This waiting … is not a passive state, depleted of all expression of life. Rather, it is an extending and securing of the heart, a reckoning on Jehovah connected with the inner strength of the soul” (74).

Summary and Conclusion

Vos summarizes the various elements that belong to the concept of believing in the Old Testament (pp. 74-75):

1. Faith is an activity of the intellect as it accepts the testimony of another.
2. Faith can be much more than an activity of the intellect. As trust it is that deeply moral action by which, in order to have stability, man, as it were, puts himself into another.
3. As such, faith does not have a passive but an active, dynamic form.
4. As trust, faith is accompanied to a greater or lesser degree by a sense of security. Faith not only seeks certainty but finds it and also produces certainty. It knows itself to be certain and safe and lives in a reality with its conceptions that is not yet present.

Faith is a free gift from God that is kindled in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. All of the benefits we have spoken of are not true of faith in the abstract—our faith is not in faith itself—but because of the concrete object of our faith, namely, Jesus Christ. By faith we are united to him (you might say with Paul we are put in him) as our living and personal Savior, in whom we have died and in whom we have also been raised to new life. Today he not only supplies us with a place of security and rest as we navigate the tempestuous waters of this present age, but also works in us faith by his Spirit so that we do not fail to arrive on the shores of the crystal waters flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Rev. 22:1).

Saving faith is the instrument by which the whole person is united to the whole Christ in the unbreakable bond of the Holy Spirit. I am not my own, confesses the believer, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. Faith is not merely an activity of the mind assenting to the truth, nor merely an activity of the heart being assured of God and salvation, but an activity of the whole person. This faith, which the Holy Spirit kindles in our hearts, “embraces Jesus Christ with all His merits, appropriates Him, and seeks nothing more besides Him” (Belgic Confession art. 22). In the same way faith does not embrace half a Savior, as the Belgic Confession goes on to say, so also it is not an activity of half a person. Saving faith is nothing less than the whole self embracing a whole Savior. It is a matter of the heart, in the biblical sense, as that from which proceed all expressions of life in mind, feeling, and will.

This is consistent with the way Paul speaks of our union with Christ, which is by faith. He writes to the Colossians, “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). Similarly to the Romans, he writes, “We were buried … with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). And to the Corinthians, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17). Paul does not qualify as if only part of you died with Christ; he has in mind a total death. And the same is true of the new life in Christ. By faith our whole self is brought into union with the whole Christ in his death and resurrection.

This holistic view of faith is at the basis of true religion, as the means of fellowship with the living God. In creation we learn that man, as the image of God, was to serve and enjoy him with his whole self in true knowledge, righteousness and holiness, that is, as his prophet, priest and king. Likewise, in God’s work of redemption, regeneration is in principle a renewal of the whole person to this once forfeited, but now regained service in Christ. True religion, then, is not something that can be relocated to certain areas of a person’s life, but is the animating principle of all of life. Our view of faith must coincide with this.

The Roman Catholic Captivity of Faith and True Religion

This view of faith was something that was thankfully recovered by the Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church had reduced the full-orbed nature of faith to a mere activity of the mind assenting to revealed divine truth, and in doing so corrupted the true religion. Herman Bavinck, in his excellent essay, “Philosophy of Religion (Faith),” accurately summarizes the Roman Catholic view of faith:

It generally is the acceptance of a witness on the basis of the trustworthiness of the spokesman, and it retains this meaning also in the religious arena. It is true that an operation of the Spirit is necessary to illumine the mind and to bend the will. Still, faith is and remains an activity of the mind. It exists in the acceptance of and agreement with God’s truth as contained in Scripture and tradition, on the basis of the inerrant authority of the church (25-26).

While Roman Catholic theology is far from unified, this summary of Bavinck is consistent, for example, with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. First, for Rome faith is merely the assent of the mind. While they may speak of personal adherence and insert such language as “his whole being,” they never go beyond mere assent. For example, “By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God. With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer.'” (143). While the language, “whole being” is used, the action attributed to the “whole being” is only that of assenting. So either the whole being of man is reduced entirely to his mind or his whole being is brought in subordination to his mind. Even when speaking of Mary—in whom Rome venerates “the purest realization of faith”—the catechism only states that she “welcomes the tidings and promise brought by the angel Gabriel, believing that ‘with God nothing will be impossible’ and so giving her assent.” Aquinas is also cited as saying, “Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace.”

Second, Rome supplants the Holy Spirit with the Church as the source of faith. It is the Church, according to Rome, who teaches the believer to say both “I believe” and “We believe” (167). Furthermore, “It is the Church that believes first, and so bears, nourishes and sustains my faith…” (168). And the Church is considered the believer’s mother because through her “we receive the life of faith” and so “she is also our teacher in the faith” (169).

This view of faith severs the unity of the person, embraces rationalism, and injects a heavy dosage of impersonalism, imposing an institutional mediator between the believer and Christ, thus corrupting the true religion of fulsome fellowship with the living triune God.

The Reformation Rescue of Faith and True Religion

In response, “the Reformation,” writes Bavinck, “presented a completely different view of faith. Even though faith could properly be called knowledge, it was, as Calvin said, still more a matter of the heart than of the mind” (26).

This is embodied in the great document of the Reformation, the Heidelberg Catechism. After stating in Q/A 20 that salvation is only for those who by true faith are grafted into Christ and accept all his blessings, it expectantly asks, “What is true faith?” The answer encompasses the whole person, mind and heart, intellect and soul, knowledge and assurance. It reads, “True faith is not only a knowledge and conviction that everything God reveals in his Word is true; it is also a deep-rooted assurance, created in me by the Holy Spirit through the gospel, that, out of sheer grace earned for us by Christ, not only others, but I too, have had my sins forgiven, have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation” (Q/A 21).

In contrast to Roman Catholic theology, “faith thus received from the Reformers a unique, independent, religious meaning. It was distinguished essentially from the faith of which we speak in daily life, and also from historical and temporal faith, or faith in miracles. It was not just an acceptance of divine truth, but it also became the bond of the soul with Christ, the means of fellowship with the living God” (26). In this we have the restoration of true religion.

Following the Reformation we find unfortunate attempts to again sever the unity of the person with either rationalism and cold orthodoxy (reducing faith to the intellect) or pietism, mysticism and ethicism (reducing faith to feelings and morality), along with Immanuel Kant’s failed attempt to unite them once again. We will explore this, along with some of the manifold implications of the Reformation’s proper and wholesome view of faith for Christian living, preaching, evangelism, etc. in future articles. We will also look at some of the insights from Geerhardus Vos on the various words used throughout the Old and New Testaments for “faith,” so as to find biblical confirmation of the Reformed view.

Now we begin to make a definite turn toward Barth in Van Til’s writing. Thus far this blog series has been a smattering of topics arising from my rereading of Van Til. But the purpose of my research is to get to the heart of Van Til’s critique of Karl Barth. Did Van Til have a legitimate beef with the Swiss theologian, or was it all much ado about nothing?

Before we get into some detail about Van Til’s critique of Barth it may be helpful to spend a blog post here talking about his method. How does Van Til approach Barth as he seeks to understand, analyze and criticize his thought?

Van Til’s critique is unique among all critics of Barth’s theology. Most critics take issue with this doctrine or that doctrine. Evangelicals debated whether or not Barth affirms a historical resurrection. Others draw the line at his denial of inerrancy. Berkouwer was critical of the fact that Barth’s soteriology functionally denies a real transition of sinners from wrath to grace.

Whatever you may think of these criticism, and Van Til was in agreement with them, they were only surface attacks. For Van Til his deepest concerns about Barth were not over this doctrine or that doctrine, but over his system as a whole. To attack Barth at the level of specific doctrinal formulations is to go after the symptoms, not the disease itself. Van Til wanted to go after the disease and get to its source.

This is not only how Van Til approached Barth, but all forms of unbelief. He asked the question: what are the fundamental preconditions standing behind a system of thought which lead to its conclusions? Such a method seeks to also show that, given those pre-conditions, the system under review leads to irreconcilable contradictions which eventually destroy the system as a whole. The identity of those preconditions and drawing them out “by good and necessary consequence” to their logical conclusion is what we mean when by “transcendental critique.” Because of its Kantian baggage the term has its limitations. But those limitations can be easily lifted if we gut the lingo of its Kantian background and instill it with biblical and Reformed content.

We will look at examples of how Van Til applies his transcendental critique to Barth in future posts. But for now I would like to briefly address a common critique of Van Til’s reading and analysis of Barth’s theology. It is often said that Van Til draws conclusions about Barth’s theology which Barth himself expressly denies. A quick example, an example we will be unable to unpack here, is the idea of God’s antecedent being. In short, antecedence means God’s self-contained being which stands back of his actions in creation and time. Van Til said that Barth’s system denies an antecedent God who stands back of creation and his acts in it. Barth, however, speaks very clearly about God’s antecedence. So, is Van Til being uncharitable toward Barth, imposing a belief on him that he did not hold to? Another example would be the charge of universalism. Barth expressly denies that he affirms universalism. Van Til, nevertheless, charges him with it. Is this an unfair critique?

Van Til’s transcendental method helps to explain why he persists in pressing his charges even though he knows full well Barth’s denials. For Van Til, despite Barth’s affirmations to the contrary, he cannot possibly hold to that affirmation given his ontological presuppositions. Barth believes in the qualitative difference between God and the creature, very much in a modern kind of way. That means that the only way one can speak about God’s interface with creation is through act. Therefore, God is known to be who he is only in and by his act of grace in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ himself, for Barth, gives God the “form” he has. There is, therefore, no God back of Jesus Christ who is not himself identified with Jesus Christ. It is a clear and easy process of reasoning to conclude that there is no antecedent being of God in any commonly understood sense of the word.

Van Til’s method points up something very important for us to understand about reading theologians. We must not read them in a strict, literalistic way. We know how dangerous that approach to reading the Bible can be. The Westminster divines were wise when they spoke about things expressly stated in the Scripture and that which can be deduced “by good and necessary consequence” (WCF 1.6). That’s a great principle of interpretation, not just for the Bible but also for reading theologians. Van Til refused to read Barth simplistically. He dug down deep into his system, to the roots of his thought. And he was able to consistently trace out the threads of Barth’s thinking to their logical conclusions. Barth doesn’t get to just deny those conclusions and walk away. He is obligated to either admit there is an inconsistency in his system, or go back and revise his pre-theoretical commitments. Barth did neither, and that is why Van Til’s critique must still be pressed today.

Van Til used the word “scholasticism” (or its other variations) as shorthand for Thomistic dualism (and with it the medieval synthesis of Christian and pagan thought). In short Thomistic dualism is the idea that there are two sources of knowledge: reason and revelation. Knowledge that comes from reason can be gained by man on reason’s own terms, quite independent of revelation. I am aware that this understanding of Thomas is disputed. But that dispute need not distract us here. However, for our purposes, when Van Til criticizes “scholasticism” he is attacking Thomistic epistemology, as he understands it. So, for example:

But the essentially scholastic or Romanist procedure on the matter of the application of some abstract system of logic to the facts of experience is followed even by some Reformed theologians. This is done particularly in the field of apologetics. We therefore touch on the matter very briefly here. (Introduction to Systematic Theology, 301)

Perhaps we can clarify this whole matter by contrasting the scholastic procedure, with respect to finding knowledge of God, to that which we have here advocated as being the consistently Christian procedure. To do this, we may conveniently turn to the work of a modern Catholic philosopher. We take the work of P. Coffey on Ontology, in order to see what he says with respect to the being-of God. We quote a portion of his chapter, “Being and Its Primary Determinations.” (ibid, 328)

Scholastic theology indulged its speculative tendency when it spoke of a lumen gloriae by which man is supposed to be lifted out of his creatural limitations in the life hereafter in order that he may have a large measure of insight into the very being of God. (ibid, 370)

These are just three examples from one text of Van Til’s writings, but they are fairly representative. This means that Van Til was not against or critical of “scholasticism” as such. Scholasticism, rightly demonstrated by the Muller school, is primarily a method of organizing and presenting content. It need not necessarily carry with it particular content. So for example Thomas was a scholastic in that he organized his material in a systematic way and in a way that was intended to instruct and convince. Francis Turretin was a scholastic in this same way. Yet no one in their right mind would ever confuse Turretin for Thomas in terms of context. Turretin and Thomas both used a scholastic method, but their theology couldn’t be more different.

What Van Til goes after are medieval theological systems which compromise Christianity with pagan thought. He does not go after “scholasticism” as such, much less Reformed scholasticism. For him to have done so would have been to bite the hand that feeds him. After all, no one influenced Van Til’s theology more than Vos and Bavinck. And Vos and Bavinck were very dependent upon Reformed scholasticism for their theological insights. They generally do not adopt the scholastic method, but they do adopt Reformed scholastic theological content. We may speak similarly about Old Princeton. Old Princeton feasted upon the meat of Francis Turretin’s great systematic theology Institutes of Elenctic Theology. Van Til received that theology from his professors at Princeton. As we have noted in a previous post Van Til disagreed with his professors’ apologetic, but not their theology. He believed that their apologetic was too influenced by a synthesis with modern thought which was reminiscent of Thomas’s synthesis with Aristotle. It is that synthesis which he often dubs “scholastic.”

But it must be made clear that Van Til in no way rejected, but rather upheld, Reformed scholasticism (also called Reformed orthodoxy). Van Til often criticized other systems of thought over against Reformed scholasticism/Reformed orthodoxy. Reformed orthodoxy stood with Calvin’s thought over against Rome and Barthianism, so he can say: “There is less appreciation for Barth’s Christ as act in Calvin and in Reformed orthodoxy than there is in Romanism” (Christianity & Barthianism, 89).

This is just one example among others. But the idea is finally and ultimately established by how Van Til uses the expression “Reformed orthodoxy” in his criticisms of Karl Barth. Where he quotes Barth and polemicizes against him (see for example footnote 25 in A Christian Theory of Knowledge, pp. 363-365) Barth uses the language of Reformed orthodoxy and Reformed scholasticism interchangeably to describe the same theological phenomenon, namely Reformed theology in the 17th century. It is the Reformed scholasticism of the 17th century that Barth attacks and which Van Til defends. Again, Van Til is not concerned to defend Reformed scholasticism’s method (Van Til himself did not use this method), but rather Reformed scholasticism’s theological content.

What is the upshot of all this? Van Til should not be used by us today to reject “scholasticism” as such and with a sweeping wave of the hand. Nor should we blame Van Til for today’s depreciation of scholasticism. And what is more, perhaps, we should not think that “Calvin and the Calvinists” appropriated pagan sources the same way medieval scholastics did. Van Til was very critical of how the medievals synthesized Christianity and pagan thought, but did not see the same kind (or the same level) of synthesis among Calvin and Reformed orthodoxy. Van Til, after all, is dependent (albeit mediated by others) upon the theology of Reformed scholasticism, even as he is critical of medieval forms of scholasticism.

The doctrine of the covenant, in the words of Anthony Hoekema, is “the vertebrate structure which holds all the doctrines of Reformed theology together.”[1] The structural importance of the covenant for Reformed theology has given rise to areas of dispute and controversy. From one viewpoint this is healthy as it reflects the present desire for the refinement and advancement of such a vital doctrine. Some of the most heated questions of our day are case in point: Was Adam in a covenant relationship with God before the fall? Is the Mosaic Law in some sense a republication of the covenant of works? What is the relationship between election and the covenant of grace? How should the recent teachings of Federal Vision on justification and covenant membership be evaluated?

These questions have flowed like magma, but Cornelis Venema, with Bavinck-like fairness and sagacity, handles them like cooled off igneous rock in his recent publication, Christ and Covenant Theology: Essays on Election, Republication, and the Covenants (amazon; wtsbooks). Venema is president of Mid-America Reformed Seminary, where he is also professor of doctrinal studies. In this volume he brings his last two decades of study and writing to bear on these crucial issues, demonstrating himself to be a Reformed theologian of the highest order. In fact, Richard B. Gaffin Jr., endorsed the book, saying, “No one today is better qualified to address the perennially important issues of covenant theology than Cornel Venema.”

Christ: The Center of Covenant Theology

Following a helpful forward by Sinclair Ferguson, there is a concise introduction in which the importance of the doctrine of the covenant and its central relationship to Christ is elucidated. “The burden of my argument throughout,” writes Venema, “is that Christ, and Christ alone, is always the One through whom God’s gracious intention to enjoy fellowship with his people finds its beginning and end” (xxiv). This is a consistent note that Venema strikes often and strikes well throughout this work. The covenant is not an abstraction, nor is it an impersonal contract or merely an impetus for divisiveness; rather, it furnishes the possibility of true religion for it has as its substance the personal and real fellowship of man and the triune God. The central, driving promise of the biblical drama, “I will be your God and you will be my people,” is consummated and enjoyed in Christ alone. In him all the promises of God find their Yes and Amen (2 Cor. 1:20). In him we have the sure hope of a new creation in which the eternal dwelling place of God is with man (Rev. 21:3).

Following the introduction, the book is divided into three major parts: (1) The Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace; (2) Covenant and Election; and (3) Covenant Theology in Recent Discussion. I’ll simply summarize some of Venema’s conclusions with the hope that you will read the book for yourself to get his careful argumentation and exegesis.

Part 1: The Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace

Part 1 consists of three essays honing in on the bi-covenantalism codified in the Westminster Confession of Faith. By this time in the historical development of covenant theology, a distinction was formed between a prefall covenant of works and a postfall covenant of grace. Venema then goes on to argue at length that the view that the Mosaic administration of the covenant of grace included a republication of the covenant of works in some sense was a minority position in the orthodox period. He primarily engages the essays found in The Law is Not of Faith, being critical of their conclusions, while also recognizing the diversity and difficulty of the topic (see esp. pp. 139-44). His discussion of the typology in the Mosaic covenant was especially informative as he expounds various insights from Geerhardus Vos, Meredith Kline and O. Palmer Robertson. He writes regarding the obedience required of Israel,

“Consistent with the pattern of biblical typology, the promises and demands of the Mosaic economy are ‘typical’ of the promises and demands of the new covenant economy. The redemption promised in the covenant of grace always requires the response of faith and sincere, albeit imperfect, obedience on the part of the people of the covenant. As it was in the covenant administration of Moses, so it is in the covenant administration of Christ” (129).

Part 2: Covenant and Election

In Part 2 Venema takes up the relationship between covenant and election. It was previously understood that election supplied Reformed theology in the orthodox period with a kind of organizing principle. As such it injected both abstraction and austerity into the entire Reformed system of doctrine. Accordingly, a unilateral (or monopleuric) formulation of the covenant based on election arose, which diminished its mutuality and conditionality. However, another formulation arose which gave greater emphasis to the history and mutuality of the covenant relationship between God and his people. After expounding the covenant theology of Herman Bavinck, Venema concludes, relating the covenant of redemption and the historical covenant of grace,

“Since the covenant of redemption is a pretemporal compact in which the triune God arranges the covenantal means to secure the salvation of the elect, there is an intimate and necessary connection between these doctrines. In broad terms, the covenant is the divinely-appointed instrument whereby the triune God achieves his saving purposes in time and history. If election is the doctrine that describes God’s sovereign and gracious purpose to redeem his people in Christ, then covenant is the doctrine that describes God’s chosen means to accomplish this purpose in time. Just as God displays his mercy and justice in his eternal decree to save the elect in Christ and to leave others in their sins, so God displays his steadfast faithfulness and intra-Trinitarian communion in his covenantal administration of the history of redemption” (182-83).

Venema also considers in Part 2 the pastoral implications of the relationship between covenant and election for parents who lose their child in infancy as it is stated in the Canons of Dort 1.17,

“Since we are to judge of the will of God from His Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature, but in virtue of the covenant of grace, in which they together with the parents are comprehended, godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom it pleases God to call out of this life in their infancy (Gen. 17:7; Acts 2:39; 1 Cor. 7:14).”

For more on the Canons of Dort, see Venema’s book But For the Grace of God: An Exposition of the Canons of Dort.

Part 3: Covenant Theology in Recent Discussion

In the final part, Venema summarizes and assesses what has come to be termed “Federal Vision.” His assessment focuses on whether or not the views purported by the Federal Vision camp agree with the Three Forms of Unity (i.e., Heidelberg Catechism, Belgic Confession and Canons of Dort). He concludes that Federal Vision is as much at odds with the Three Forms as it is with the Westminster Standards. He also draws out the ways in which this new teaching compromises the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Christ’s work alone, with a particular engagement with N. T. Wright and Romans 5:12-21.

Recommendation

I would especially recommend this book to pastors, scholars, and interested church members because of its relevance for many contemporary issues. However, anyone willing to follow Venema in his deft articulation of the covenant will be the better for it. With clarity and exactness, Venema leads you into the swirling waters of these covenant debates and proves a helpful and trustworthy guide. And while we can get so fixated on the swirls, Venema brings us beyond to enjoy the everlasting ocean of covenantal fellowship in Christ with the triune God in whose presence there is fullness of joy and at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore.

You can purchase the book here.

[1] Anthony Hoekema, Herman Bavinck’s Doctrine of the Covenant, 360.

This post is a kind of follow-on from a previous post about “as-suchness.” In The New Synthesis Van Til writes:

Paul does not discuss questions of “fact” and views of “logic” as such. For Paul, there are no facts as such and there is no logic as such. Paul does not ask the Greeks to consider whether the facts might not be considered as probably or even possibly pointing toward the teleology of Scripture rather than to a teleology such as Plato and Aristotle offer. In effect, Paul asserts on the authority of Christ that no facts of the space-time world can exist and no logic can function except on the presupposition that whatever things the triune God of Scripture says are true.

Classical modes of defending the faith, in general, seek to prove the faith on the basis of some (as it is supposed) given standard of truth which is agreeable to both believer and unbeliever. Classical Apologists (hereafter, CA) say, “what does the unbeliever demand in order to believe? Whatever it is, I will give it to him.” So, some unbelievers demand “evidence” for the belief in God’s existence. They want “just facts” and no spin.

CA are happy to oblige. Now, before we are critical of the CA, we have to acknowledge the good in their thinking. They believe that Christianity should be able to be defended by logic, facts, evidence, or history because the Christian’s God is the God of logic, history, evidence, and history. Christianity is a historical faith. It is based on facts. So, what is wrong with making a logical, historical, or evidential argument for the faith?

Van Til is not opposed to logic, evidence or history. Nor is he opposed to using such in the service of defending the faith. What he opposes, however, is thinking that facts, logic, etc. are things which exist “out there,” brute facts that both believer and unbeliever can use together to evaluate truth claims about Christianity.

But, for Van Til, to do that is to surrender the debate to the unbeliever at the outset.

This mode of thinking makes facts, logic, etc. into abstractions. And Paul, says Van Til, does not argue from abstractions. The Bible knows nothing of “facts” which are independent of God and the meaning he gives them in his Word.

But for CA abstractions become something akin to Platonic ideals which rule all of reality – from God to rocks. Furthermore, abstractions presuppose that both believer and unbeliever interpret them the same way. But they don’t. The unbeliever presupposes the Lordship of logic, facts, etc. over even God himself. The Christian, however, presupposes that God is the Lord over all things.

And so the failure of the classical mode is at once apparent. CA adopt the presuppositions of the unbeliever – i.e., that logic, facts, etc. are interpreted the same way between believer and unbeliever. CA start with an unbelieving philosophy of fact, which allows the unbeliever to place God in the dock, imposing abstract notions of facts, logic, etc. upon God. But God is not the kind of person that can be placed in the dock. God is judge and jury. He is the arbiter. Therefore, we must begin with the triune God. Without the self-attesting Christ of Scripture there is no logic, fact, etc. The Christian must challenge the unbeliever’s philosophy of fact, not grant it to him. And it is precisely here – at this compromise – that CA find their failure.

There is still a great deal of confusion out there concerning the difference between orthodox Reformed theology and the theology of Karl Barth. Are they not the same? Is Barth not just advancing the ground work established by the Reformed branch of the Reformation? For Van Til the answer is a clear and resounding “no.” In fact, far from advancing the cause of the Reformed faith Karl Barth militates against it at every turn.

The history of Barth critics among evangelicals and Reformed has shown that there is still very little clarity on why Reformed Theology and Barthian Theology are contrary to one another. It is an oft repeated opinion that Barth is not orthodox. But when asked “why not?” very few have a good answer. I hope to give a good answer here, with the help of Van Til.

Allow me to quote two passages from The New Synthesis.  I will simply cite them here, and then unpack them on the other side:

However, Barth did all this not because he had any intention of restoring orthodoxy to the theology of the “blessed possessors” (beati possidentes). On the contrary, his “nein” to Brunner came about because, together with Romanists and Protestant consciousness theologians, Brunner had not completely cleansed his thinking of the left-overs of orthodoxy. Orthodoxy, and not merely that of the period’s Protestantism, but orthodoxy so far as it holds to the direct revelation of God in nature and in history, has been from beginning to end, Barth’s bete noir. He even observed remnants of a theology of possession in his own earliest major work, Romans, as also in the second one, Dogmatik 1(1927). Thus, when he opposed Brunner he was also, in effect, opposing his earlier works, in attempting to be self-critical in his criticism of others.

Finally, Barth found himself in his book on Anselm and then, in 1932, commenced writing his Kirchliche Dogmatik on the principle of the Christ-Event alone. You have, he argued therein, a lie instead of the truth if you say as much as a single word about a God in himself. We know nothing about God unless this God be wholly revealed in and therefore wholly identical with Christ. And you also have a lie, instead of the truth, if you say as much as a single word about a man in himself. Historic as well as liberal Protestantism were thus guilty of speaking such lies. There is, to be sure, an absolute identification of God and man in Christ, but it is indirect. Jesus is God and the Bible is the Word of God but the “is” is, in both cases one of act not substance.

The first expression which helps us to understand Barth is “a theology of possession.” He rejects this kind of theology. For Barth, all classical modes of theology – including that found within liberalism – have the idea that the creature can possess or contain the Creator. In Thomas God was contained in the creation, whether in “being” or in the Mass. In Schleiermacher God was found in man’s feeling of absolute dependence. These are “theologies of possession” – theologies in which God reveals himself in, with, by and through the created order.

Second, note the last sentence in the second quote, “one of act not substance.” In short, Barth’s theology is “actualistic.” God relates to the world only indirectly. He relates to the world only in and by a divine act. This act takes place not in, by, with or through the created order. Otherwise we would then have a “theology of possession.” Rather, God acts in, with, by and through God himself. God’s free act of grace is a transcendent event. It does not touch our world, but ever remains wholly other relative to it.

So much more can and needs to be said about Barth’s theology. But this is it at its heart. Barth has an actualistic understanding of ontology. In theology we can only speak of God’s transcendent acts, but never his real entering into the created order.

Contrary to this Reformed theology says that God – without losing any of his attributes, or without divinizing any part of the created order – condescends to his creation so that he is truly present in, with, by and through his ordained means. In this way, orthodox Reformed theology can truly say, without blushing, that the Bible is the Word of God. It is the Word of God come in a servant form. For Barth, revelation only takes place in a transcendent act of revelation in Jesus Christ. Therefore, the Bible cannot be said to be the revelation, even though it can be said to be the Word of God. But, as Van Til points out, it is the Word of God only in an actualistic sense. God reveals himself, but only indirectly (i.e., to and by himself, never to or by his creature).

While Reformed ontology differs greatly from that of Thomas and Schleiermacher, it also differs greatly from Barth. Like the former, Reformed theology begins with a “substance” ontology – albeit it of a very different sort. And that is precisely where Reformed theology and Barth part ways, and it is at the very foundation of theology. Reformed theology cannot be maintained on the basis of an actualistic ontology. Therefore, Barth’s “Reformedness” can only be nominal.

In summary, what is the difference between Barth’s theology and Reformed Theology? It is the difference between actualistic ontology and Reformed substance ontology. From Barth’s ontology comes the idea that God’s revelation is only and always indirect, and never given directly to us in nature or the Bible. Everything else gets unpacked from there.

The more I read orthodox theology, the more apparent it becomes that a fundamental tenet of Christian belief is either embraced or ignored (to various degrees) by any given author. For me, this choice or tendency on the part of the author has dramatic implications for the truth of what he or she says. That tenet is this: Scripture is the very speech of God.

Most conservative Christians are quick to grant the validity of this tenet and would even affirm its centrality to our thinking about God. But I find in some orthodox theology an inconsistent working out of this tenet in the areas of metaphysics, epistemology, and language. This is not the place to pose and proliferate on theoretical questions concerning how Scripture as the speech of God influences our understanding of the nature of reality, or human thought, or language—those are oceans that even the best theologians that I have read have trouble navigating. I myself have only just begun exploring these issues and hope, by God’s grace, to write about them in the future. But I would at least suggest that confessional, orthodox theologians ask themselves a simple question when they begin thinking about a particular doctrine or body of thought in the above areas: What does God himself say about X in Scripture? Put differently, what does God’s speech tell us about his own nature and the nature of reality (metaphysics), how we acquire knowledge of him and the world that he has made (epistemology), and how our communicative behavior (language) functions to reveal both our epistemology and metaphysic? I believe that meditating on Scripture as the speech of God is absolutely critical in answering these questions. In the paragraphs that follow, I hope to explain why.

To begin with, if the Bible is the speech of God, it is the highest, most trustworthy, and most illuminating authority we have—on everything. In my understanding, that is why the Reformers were so adamant about the maxim sola Scriptura. Scripture alone is sufficient for us because Scripture alone is the speech of God—the verbal revelation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the medium of human language. Given this fundamental belief of Reformed theology, I cannot help but be puzzled as to why some theologians would first turn to a “respectable” figure in the history of human thought when they begin thinking about metaphysics, epistemology, or language—especially a figure outside the Christian tradition. Plato is not God, and neither is Aristotle, or Locke, or Wittgenstein. And yet the inanity of the previous sentence does not keep some theologians from turning to such figures first (sometimes through an intermediary such as Aquinas) when questions of metaphysics arise, for instance.

Now, let me be careful. I do not want to downplay the value of these thinkers and others when it comes to “big questions” of philosophy and theology. I did my undergraduate work at a liberal arts institution. I have benefited greatly from reading as widely as I can. To reaffirm the words Carl Trueman once uttered, echoing many before him, we learn a great deal not from reading only those who agree with us, but from reading those who disagree with us, those who differ from us. So, this is not a question of whether great figures in the history of human thought should be mined for their insight. It is a question of where Christian theologians are to begin. What will be their foundation for inquiry? When the question is put that way, I cannot help wondering, why do we not always begin by asking what God himself has to say about metaphysics, about the nature of human knowledge, and about language? Why not always begin with the speech of God in Scripture?

The inspiring thing about these questions is that when we do begin with the speech of God, I find that the whole world—our perception of God and reality, as well as human knowledge—takes on a linguistic dimension. In other words, the very fact that the triune God speaks, as revealed in Scripture means that he has created, sustains, and governs everything by word. Should this not profoundly shape the areas of human thought mentioned above? Should we not have a metaphysic, epistemology, and view of language grounded in and shaped by God’s speech?

A Linguistic Metaphysic

Take metaphysics, for instance. Some might argue that Scripture does not have a metaphysic (at least, not a developed one as can be found in Aristotle’s Metaphysics). But I would contest this. I believe that Scripture has a metaphysic yet to be fully developed in the church, though some have certainly begun to explore this. Perhaps what people mean when they say that Scripture does not have a metaphysic is, “Scripture does not have a metaphysic that looks like other metaphysical theories in human history.” But should it? Would we not expect the speech of God to be clearly distinct—even relatively radical—as compared to merely human speech? Or perhaps people mean, “The purpose of Scripture is not to give us a view of metaphysics, but a clear exposition of what God has done in history to redeem his people.” I understand the sentiment behind that statement, but what about the words of 2 Timothy 3:16–17? “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” We would be hard pressed to teach anything—much less be “complete”—if God did not reveal the nature of reality to us. In other words, if the purpose of Scripture is to reveal what God has done in history for our salvation so that we may use this to teach others, how can we do so without having a basic view of reality that is itself dictated by God?

This has led me to believe that Scripture does (in fact, must) have a metaphysic. In fact, Scripture begins to lay this out for us in the first chapter of Genesis. The very first page of Scripture tells us that all of reality came into existence by God’s speech (Gen 1), and Scripture elsewhere reminds us that all things are held together by the eternal Word of the Father (John 1:1; Col 1:17; Heb 1:3), who stood behind God’s speech at creation. Scripture’s metaphysic is thus linguistic. All things exist and draw their nature from the language, the speech, of the triune God, which governs the world and guides it to the ends that he has set for it. It is the divine voice—the Father uttering the person of his Son in the power of his Spirit—that has created, sustains, and governs all things. God’s voice has the power to bring the world into being, to sustain it, and to melt it away. As the psalmist wrote, “The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts” (Ps 46:6).

This linguistic metaphysic, I believe, should be where theologians begin when they ask what something is, when they ask about the nature of reality. To ask what something is, biblically speaking, is to ask what purpose that thing serves in the spoken plan of God, as revealed in Scripture (God’s written speech). It is to ask what God’s speech has done to create it, sustain it, and direct it to his revealed ends. An apple, for instance, is not merely a piece of produce from the malus pumila tree. That might be true in the context of botanical science, but in the context of redemptive history, an apple is a life-sustaining gift from a garden-speaking God (Gen 1:12). It exists as a revelation of God’s gracious providence, as a means of sustaining God’s image-bearers as they work to steward the world (Gen 1:29). That understanding might not appear in the Latin, and it certainly will not appear in Aristotle, but that does not make it any less true—at least, not for the biblically minded theologian. To discern what something truly is, to understand the nature of the world in which we live, we must turn first to God’s speech in Scripture, not to the thought of a philosopher or even to that of another godly theologian. When we turn to God’s speech, we find a metaphysics of word. That metaphysic certainly does not resemble the neat categories of form and matter, substance and accidents, or potentiality and actuality. But, again, I ask, should it?

An Epistemology of Word

Epistemology has a similar foundation when we examine the speech of God in Scripture. Scripture reveals two things very plainly: (1) God has spoken into existence a world that everywhere “speaks” about him, i.e., offers revelation of God (Ps 19:1–3); and (2) God speaks directly with his people to guide them in paths of wisdom. The bedrock question of epistemology—what is truth and how do we know that something is true—is again based on the speech of God. God tells us what is true in his revelation. This is what Reformed theologians have come to call a revelational epistemology. It is an epistemology that stands firmly on the grounds that God speaks to reveal himself and to reveal what we can faithfully know about his world. So, when we turn to God’s speech, we find an epistemology of word.

Again, let me re-emphasize my point here. I am not saying that examining the thought of philosophers is a fruitless endeavor. Despite our fundamental disagreements with them, we can learn much from reading Plato’s Gorgias, or considering satirists such as Voltaire, or rationalists such as Leibniz, or empiricists such as Locke and Hume. But biblical theologians should never begin there. That is not their foundation. Their foundation is God’s speech in Scripture.

A Christian Philosophy of Language

Lastly, language likewise must be understood according to God’s speech. This is perhaps the most profound truth I have ever encountered and something I plan on studying for the rest of my life, and well into eternity. Language—what I have in another article (“Words for Communion”) defined as communion behavior—is not a human faculty; it is a divine disposition that has been gifted, with creaturely restraints, to God’s image bearers. Language is a behavior that allows for interpersonal communion. It is a behavior that God sees fit to use in infallibly revealing himself to us throughout history. It is a behavior that God calls us to take up in prayer. It is a behavior that God calls us to take up in worship. It is, in essence, a behavior that is at the heart of God’s very being and at the heart of our being as image bearers. A Christian philosophy of language begins with the Trinity—the speaking God we encounter on every page of Scripture—and moves from there to humanity.

Once more, it is not that we cannot learn something from Aristotle’s view of language (though his etymological discussions are humorous at times), or Wittgenstein’s notion of “language games,” or Austin’s speech-act theory, or Saussure’s structuralism, or Chomsky’s generative grammar, or Derrida’s deconstructionism. We can learn something from all of them even when we have deep disagreements. (I would argue here that Kenneth L. Pike’s language theory is a far more biblical and Trinitarian approach to language than most others, and is often left unconsidered in many discussions of language.) But the point is that we should not begin there. We begin with the speech of God. When we do, we find a view of language that is deeply personal and purposive according to the ends that God has declared for his creation in Scripture.

Conclusion

Now, I’m sure that to some academics what I’ve just said is a blend of naivety and fideism. Some might read this article and conclude that I am merely a biblicist who attempts to elevate himself over all other “thoughtful” human beings. I cannot control what others might think of my motives. But I know my own history. I know what is on my bookshelf and how I have been blessed by great thinkers of the past and present.

I also know that my God is a God who speaks. And that truth—the tenet that Scripture is the very speech of God—takes precedence over any thought that mankind could develop. We can interact with the thoughts of men, but we should not begin there. Once we do, we are in danger of pandering to something less than divine revelation. What we end up saying will be attractive to the world, and even to much of Christian academia these days, but will it be pure? Will it be something that aligns with the speech of God? Titus 1:15 says, “Everything is pure to those whose hearts are pure.” Theological “purity,” if we might call it that, is found only in adherence to the speech of God, a speech that has made our hearts pure, and a speech that should purify our thinking as well.