Camden Bucey and Ryan Noha cover a wide range of topics important to our community, including an in-depth review of the Reformed Academy’s progress, what we’ve accomplished, the lessons we’ve learned, and what we have planned for the upcoming year, including new ideas and a proposed schedule.

We also dive into our recent and upcoming events and meetups, sharing highlights from our trip to California, details about our visit to Arizona, thoughts about our upcoming symposia, our big pre-conference in Greenville, and our participation in the PCA and OPC General Assemblies.

Additionally, we discuss potential future cities for our meetups and events, ensuring our community remains vibrant and connected. Furthermore, we provide an update on the Reformed Forum Magazine, sharing exciting developments and what readers can look forward to.

Most importantly, this town hall was an opportunity for us to engage directly with you. We took questions from our livestream listeners, addressing your curiosities, concerns, and suggestions. Whether you’re deeply invested in the Reformed community or simply curious about what we do, this town hall was a meaningful dialogue about our collective journey and future aspirations.

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Introduction
• 00:02:55 Financial Update
• 00:22:33 Reformed Academy
• 00:30:13 Past and Upcoming Events
• 00:48:55 A New Book on Van Til
• 00:51:36 General Assemblies, Synods, and Meetups
• 00:56:01 Reformed Forum Magazine
• 00:59:17 Random Topics
• 01:01:02 Alabama and Michigan Football Predictions
• 01:03:37 Forthcoming Books
• 01:07:57 Episodes on Southern Presbyterianism
• 01:10:54 Reformed Forum 2024 Annual Conference
• 01:11:52 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Ryan Noha

Chicken wings, hot sauces and… Reformed theology? Yes, please.

In homage to the wonderfully quirky YouTube show, First We Feast’s Hot Ones, we toe the line to march through a flaming gauntlet of ten chicken wings doused in delicious (and one particularly notorious) hot sauces of increasing intensity. I had the privilege of asking Lane Tipton questions from the personal to the absurd and perplexing. Join us for an entertaining yet informative recasting of Reformed Forum into the form of the world’s spiciest talk show.

Whether you are a scholar, pastor, theological student, Bible study teacher, or someone engaged in serious personal study, it is critical to document your sources. Regrettably, most people don’t do this well.

Along with many best practices, there are tested tools used by many scholars in a wide range of disciplines. One of these is Zotero. At root, Zotero is a citation manager. But it does much more than that. It is a tool that helps you collect, organize, cite, and share research.

Links

• Zotero
• Zotero connector for Google Chrome
• ZotFile: advanced PDF management
• WorldCat library catalog
• Reformed Media Review, episode 126: How to Take Smart Notes

A Book on Notetaking? It’s Not What You Might Expect

Amazon showed me Sönke Ahrens’s How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers about twenty times in sponsored posts before I finally broke down to see what it was all about. I decided to retrieve a sample chapter on my Kindle. I couldn’t put the book down and read it well into the night. My wife even asked me what in the world I was reading, to which I sheepishly confessed it was a book on taking notes.

This book is not about Reformed theology, church history, or even philosophy, but I’m confident many of you nevertheless will be intrigued. I loved this book so much that I ordered several copies to give as gifts to friends. I should say that two of the first five paperbacks I ordered were very poorly bound. These appear to be self-published through Amazon’s CreateSpace. The glue on the bindings did not hold well, and pages were falling out of the defective copies. I asked for replacement copies, and Amazon promptly sent them—even before receiving the bad copies in return. The new copies were fine. Whether or not they will hold up in the long run is an open question. To appropriate the profundity of Samuel Roy Hagar, “only time will tell if [they] stand the test of time.”

This book isn’t what you might expect. It’s not a self-help book with tips for becoming a better student, a better listener, or to improve your ability to capture thoughts for future contemplation and recall. I believe that following the model suggested in this book may in fact make you a better student and researcher. It will certainly help you to process your thoughts. But this book goes much deeper than a series of tips and tricks. It’s a proposal for a more disciplined—yet much more liberating—process of contemplation and writing.

I need to warn you now, that for some of you, what you’re going to hear next is going to send you down a deep, deep rabbit hole on the Internet, and what you find will affect many aspects of your life. Consider yourself warned.

The Heart of the Book

At the heart of Ahren’s How to Take Smart Notes is a somewhat idiosyncratic notetaking system developed by German sociologist Niklaus Luhmann. He used a system that is known as a Zettelkasten, or notes box. If you’re old enough to remember physical card catalogues, Luhmann used two of these. Ahrens proposes dividing your note-taking into three types.

• Ephemeral notes (these eventually get thrown out)
• Literature notes (write these as you read a book, but keep them separate from the next type)
• Zettel (process your literature notes and write permanent notes—one note per idea)

Once written, you must then link a note to the other notes in your existing network of note-ideas.

In my conceptualization, Luhmann’s method is a form of atomic writing. You must force yourself to formulate your thoughts and write them as if writing them for someone else. This can be difficult, and you may find much personal inertia to this approach. That’s because you think you know the subject matter better than you do. Writing is the thinking process.

By using this method, Luhmann was able to write more than 70 books and 400 scholarly articles before he died at the age of 70. That is impressive. But perhaps even more impressive than his scholarly output is the nature of his scholarship. He was able to approach subjects in fresh ways, finding surprising connections among disparate disciplines. This was due in part to the unexpected connections made within his Zettelkasten.

Digital Approaches and Applications for Pastors and Biblical Scholars

Luhmann wrote his notes on cards and filed them in a physical catalogue. There is much to be said about the benefits of handwriting and the tactile qualities of this form of note-taking, yet there are also many limitations—particularly with linking and searchability. For those who are interested in a digital approach to creating a Zettelkasten, an entire ecosystem is developing around what generally is called Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). People not only use the Zettelkasten method and its variants for academic research and writing, but also for all types of creative work, personal journaling, and even for CRM (customer/constituent relationship management).

I am currently exploring how to link my thoughts as I read and contemplate Scripture. Intelligently linking all the Scripture references in my notes and sermons may prove to be immensely useful when approaching related texts in the future.

For Further Consideration

• Sönke Ahrens’s website
• Andy Matuschak’s Evergreen Notes
• Obsidian
• Zettlr
• Roam
• Notion
• Nick Milo, Linking Your Thinking
• Bryan Jenks, Personal Knowledge Management and Zettelkasten playlist on YouTube

Participants: Camden Bucey

It is a great strength of our Presbyterian and Reformed ethos that we are historically conscious. We enjoy history and pride ourselves on being self-consciously rooted in the past. Confessional and conservative Presbyterians very much have their identity wrapped up in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. And a central figure in that controversy is our hero of pride, J. Gresham Machen. Machen showed us how to stand for the truth of God’s Word and the Reformed faith even upon pain of humiliation and marginalization.

The way the history is told includes how Machen (and others, of course) opposed liberalism. Machen gave special attention to modernism’s rejection of the supernaturalism of historic Christianity, particularly as that supernaturalism comes to expression in doctrines like the virgin birth and miracles of Jesus.

For generations, this history has aided conservative Presbyterians in defining liberalism. In the main, we have defined a “liberal” as someone who denies a high doctrine of Scripture or Christology. The label “liberal” is (rightly) applied to those who deny the virgin birth, Christ’s resurrection, or the Bible’s inerrancy. Conversely, if a minister in our denomination affirms those things they get a pass (sometimes irrespective of his other theological positions).

That is all well and good. But that way of approaching the evaluation of a man’s theology has its significant liabilities. Those liabilities arise when we realize that the denial of miracles or inerrancy is not the problem, at root. Liberalism, at heart, was a failed apologetic attempt to defend the Christian faith in the face of growing skepticism. And people like Schleiermacher, the father of theological liberalism, was attempting to save Christianity, not destroy it.

Identifying the Source of Liberalism

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768–1834) was the son of a pastor, and pietism was the air he breathed growing up. He struggled with doubts about his faith, doubts his father simply blew off. When he matriculated at the University of Halle, he read deeply in Plato and Kant and found an intellectual home in the Romanticism of the day. He would eventually become a pastor in the state church and a professor at the University of Berlin.

Upon looking for answers to his doubts he found answers in grounding true religion in intuition rather than knowledge. This differed greatly from the older orthodox Protestantism which began with the knowledge of God in revelation. In his great systematic theology, The Christian Faith, he proposed that the basis of all theology is man’s feeling of absolute dependence on God.

Schleiermacher saw increasing skepticism toward the faith among his fellow Bohemians, especially those involved in the arts and literature. He wanted to provide a way for them to believe, despite their allegiance to enlightenment ideas. This was the occasion for his On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers. These speeches were an apologetic effort to convince modern people of the value of religion.

In this book, Schleiermacher says that religion is the sense and taste for the infinite. If one lives his or her life without religion, it is quite incomplete sans the transcendent. To put it roughly, he argues that religion is good for you. In his introduction to the book, Rudolf Otto explains that Schleiermacher attempted to “lead an age weary with and alien to religion back to its very mainsprings; and to reweave religion, threatened with oblivion, into the incomparably rich fabric of the burgeoning intellectual life of modern times.”

That is a big statement. And it is for several reasons.

First, Schleiermacher offered a defense of religion at a time when it was decreasing in popularity and on the cusp of “oblivion.” Secularism was knocking, and Schleiermacher wanted to turn it away. Second, Schleiermacher attempted a “reweave” of religion, giving it a make-over to present it more palatable to a modern age. Third, the “reweave” would include fabric from “the burgeoning intellectual life of modern times.” To put it simply, Schleiermacher sought to show how religion and modernism could sweetly comply.

To summarize in a very pedestrian way, we might say that Schleiermacher felt a need to help religion survive by recasting it in a way that a modern people would be cool with.

The Spirit of Schleiermacher Today

If liberalism is a disease, the denial of the supernatural is only the symptom. The disease can manifest itself in other symptoms. I worry that conservative Presbyterians are unaware of those symptoms when they arise. That is because we have a kind of confession within our confessionalism. For some, we only fight over “gospel issues” (whatever those are). For others the battleground is only over inerrancy or the five points of Calvinism (include justification by faith in that). And while those are important—even central—issues to fight over, there is surely more.

I would contend that any time we find an attempt to recast our doctrine or practice in order to make us more attractive to the culture, it may be the spirit of Schleiermacher haunting us. In the early twentieth century that came in the form of anti-supernaturalism. But the spirit of Schleiermacher can haunt the halls and pulpits of churches and seminaries that are committed to supernaturalism as well.

For example, if we alter our doctrine of sin so as to not turn off those who identify as “sexual minorities,” we may be exhibiting symptoms of Schleiermacher. If we alter our worship to make it more entertaining to millennials, we may be haunted by the ghost of Schleiermacher. Or, if we seek to placate Arminian or open theist critics of the Reformed doctrine of God by compromising it in a way that they can endorse, Schleiermacher may be in our midst.

The examples can be multiplied, but it can all be boiled down to this: Are we tempted at any point to back off our doctrine or practice for fear of turning off someone on the outside? Are we tempted to recast and restate the faith in order not to offend them? If so, we might just be seeing an apparition of the Berliner apologist among us. Beware of compromised apologetics. 

In episode 81, Joel Fick leads us in a study of the birth of Moses. He demonstrates a model of preaching Christ not based upon merely noting a few parallels between an Old Testament character and the life of Christ, but based upon deep theological themes and direct scriptural references.

Participants: Jim Cassidy, Joel Fick, Mark A. Winder

At the end of the year, I find it rewarding to reflect upon the books I read that year. Whether they be old favorites or new titles, the record of my reading serves as something of a playlist tracking the events of my life. I can remember what happened while I was working through many of the books. Some may be pleasant memories—others not so much. At the end of 2019, we bring you several suggestions that we hope will bring a little joy to you in 2020. While not all of these books have been published in 2019, the following contributors read them this year and continue to recommend them, which may demonstrate each book’s value all the more.

Tom Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind

—Charles Williams, pastor, Bethel OPC in Wheaton, Illinois

It is a rare feat for a work of history to be both compelling and substantive, and Holland is here a hidden gem. I enjoyed Holland’s translation of Herodotus, and was familiar with some of his other historical books, and had thus been eagerly awaiting the release of this book for months. It just so happened that while on a trip to London, I stumbled across Dominion in a gift shop at the British Museum, and picked it up immediately. (Of interest, the cover to the UK edition is much more second-commandment friendly than its US counterpart.)

In short, Dominion is not so much a history of Christianity in the West as it is a history of Christianity’s impact on the West. Be it abolitionism, the rights of the unborn, the Civil Rights movement, or even (as he contends) woke culture, Holland demonstrates that these concerns for the worth of every individual are not found in classical Greece or Rome, but Judeo-Christian values. Worth noting is that Holland writes as a sympathetic unbeliever—not unlike Douglas Murray, Camille Paglia, or Jordan Peterson. Though himself agnostic, Holland comes to Christianity’s defense with the wit of Chesterton and the charm of Lewis.

The book, of course, is not without its shortcomings. For a work discussing the benefits Christianity affords, no space is given to the actual benefits of redemption: the pardon of sin, reconciliation with God, adoption into his family, or the cleansing work of the Spirit in the heart of the sinner. That said, Holland has a different focus in his purview, on what we might call the ‘collateral benefits’ of Christianity on the wider culture. How refreshing it is, however, to read an Oxford historian attest to the truth that the enemies of the cross are themselves operating from borrowed capital. As Holland asserts, not even the so-called “new atheism” can critique Christianity without resting on Judeo-Christian presuppositions. 
And though there is plenty here for the reader to digest and learn, at the end of the day, Dominion is simply a lot of fun to read. 

J. W. Burrow, The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848–1914

—Carl Trueman, professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania

The book I have read recently that I would recommend to others is a few years old but wide-ranging in its scope, profound in its analysis, and often witty in its manner of expression: The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848–1914 (Yale University Press, 2002) by J. W. Burrow which was brought to my attention by Mike Allen at RTS. Burrow offers a brilliant account of the emergence of Western modernity. He strives to avoid anachronism by not simply focusing on thinkers and ideas in this period which persisted but also on those which enjoyed great vogue in their time but were quickly consigned to the trash can of history. In doing so, Burrow implicitly relativizes the trendy orthodoxies of our own day while also giving us a much broader context for understanding the emergence and significance of modernity. If we Christians tend too often to have our minds mesmerized by the immediate and to treat cultural symptoms as if they were causes, then this book provides a great antidote. And surely it is worth reading anyone who can pen the following sentence: “It is hard not to feel that someone with the nervous system of Kaiser Wilhelm II should ideally never be allowed anywhere near a phrase like ‘the struggle for existence.'” Highly recommended.

Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of the Book of Leviticus

—Glen Clary, pastor of Providence OPC in Pflugerville, Texas

For many Christians, Leviticus is a difficult book to understand. The redemptive-historical significance of the regulations for sacrificial worship, the dietary laws, the rituals for purification, etc. is not always easy to discern. Morales has produced a fascinating study of Leviticus that uncovers its literary setting as the centerpiece of the Pentateuch and traces its redemptive-historical message to its climactic fulfillment in Christ. Morales is especially sensitive to the cosmological typology of the tabernacle and its regulations for worship. His thesis could have been strengthened and advanced had he interacted with the insights of M. G. Kline. Aside from that unfortunate omission, Morales’s book is a strong contribution to the burgeoning discipline of biblical theology. I highly commend it to anyone wishing to understand the purpose of the tabernacle, the priesthood, and its sacrificial cultus.

Jason Hunt, Cornelius Van Til’s Doctrine of God and its Relevance for Contemporary Hermeneutics

—Jim Cassidy, pastor of South Austin OPC in South Austin, Texas

Cornelius Van Til’s Doctrine of God and its Relevance for Contemporary Hermeneutics by Jason Hunt is a 2019 Wipf and Stock publication. It joins the growing library of academic research works originating from outside the Westminster Seminary orbit on the thought of Van Til. Other studies that come to mind are Ralph Smith’s 2003 monograph Paradox and Truth: Rethinking Van Til on the Trinity and B.A. Bosserman’s 2014 published dissertation (Bangor University) The Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox: An Interpretation and Refinement of the Theological Apologetic of Cornelius Van Til. Rushdoony’s more popular treatment By What Standard (1983) deserves honorable mention. Even though “Rush” served in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church for a time his education was entirely outside of the Westminster sphere. Other academic works were written by those coming under Westminster’s direct tutelage (think Bahnsen, Frame, Gaffin and Tipton).

Hunt shows how Van Til’s doctrine of God, particularly the Creator-creature distinction and the self-contained nature of the Trinity, may be leveraged for the purposes of refining our hermeneutic method. “Method and doctrine,” after all, belong together (p. 211). While Van Til did not write extensively on hermeneutics as such, Hunt makes explicit how a Reformed doctrine of God provides guidance on human interpretation. Specifically, he brings Van Til’s doctrine of God into direct conversation with “post-conservative evangelical” theologians like Pete Enns (among others). What is especially interesting is how Hunt brings Van Til’s theological insights to bear upon the issue of how to understand the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament (which has been a point of no little contention among evangelical exegetes over the last decade or so).

Camden Bucey introduced Lamentations, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah to the women’s bible study at Bethel OPC in Wheaton, Illinois. In that lesson, he detailed the basic covenantal structure of the Bible in order to provide a paradigm and context for understanding the minor prophets, particularly the people’s experience after the nation had been exiled.

This is a supplemental lesson designed to explain the national aspects of God’s covenant with Israel and the way those relate to individuals within the covenant community who look to Christ in faith even after exile.

Camden’s 12-week study on Lamentations, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah was published in Crossway’s Knowing the Bible Series.

On this episode of Theology Simply Profound, Rob talks with the Zecharias Weldeyesus and Christopher Cashen, ministers in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church serving in the Atlanta area, about suffering and persecution for the sake of Christ and ministry to refugees.

Participants: Christopher Cashen, Rob McKenzie, Zecharias Weldeyesus

This week on Theology Simply Profound, Rob sits down with Dr. Stephen J. Nichols to discuss Reformation Bible College, some recent writing projects including a recent book for children, Reformation ABCs: The People, Places, and Things of the Reformation—from A to Z, books he’s reading, as well as the Young, Restless, and Reformed. After the conversation, Rob and Bob discuss Dr. Nichols thoughts on the YRR.

Dr. Stephen J. Nichols is President and Professor of Apologetics at Reformation Bible College, chief academic officer for Ligonier Ministries, and a Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow. He has authored or edited over twenty books, and hosts the podcasts 5 Minutes in Church History and Open Book.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo, Stephen J. Nichols

Glen Clary examines the matter and manner of Paul’s preaching. There is a crucifixion proclaimed by Paul, but there is also a cruciformity in how he proclaimed it, and to his whole life and ministry.

Participants: Glen Clary, Jim Cassidy, Mark A. Winder

Adam York show us how God is presenting in the life of Isaac a type of the work of the future Messiah, who would come, be offered as a substitute for his people and be raised for them as well. What Abraham receives in type, the believer today has received in substance.

Participants: Adam York, Glen Clary, Mark A. Winder

Abraham’s willingness to offer up his son Isaac at God’s command is a remarkable demonstration of obedience. He demonstrates not that he was justified by works, but that the hope of the resurrection fueled his obedience.

Participants: Adam York, Joel Fick, Mark A. Winder

For the 3rd Annual Christmas Special of Theology Simply Profound, Rob and Bob talk all things Santa. It’s a bit of a stretch I know, but Rob and Bob for yet another year talk silliness about Santa movies, Christmas music, singing and songs, some serious, but mostly not.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

One of our readers recently posted a comment. I thought it better to write a full post than tuck my response away in a thread. Steve Prost writes,

Curious as to why the debate is kind of left just hanging there on Aquinas/Dolezal/Muller (e.g. Reformation21 blog) v. Frame/Oliphint as promoted at Reformed Forum esp. in the past year. Your policy not to comment on ongoing prominent Reformed debates? Awaiting a known imminent rejoinder by Frame/Oliphint, just not wanting to wade in?… The lack of response seems a bit odd.

In general, we have chosen not to make Reformed Forum into a venue for hot takes and zingers. Careful theological discourse takes time, and the blog and podcast formats don’t always accommodate that well—at least with some of these topics. I am looking forward to longer, written responses from some of the people involved before we complicate the public debate while the people involved have not had an opportunity to formulate a proper response. Nevertheless, it may be wise to say a few words now. I was looking forward to interviewing my friend, James Dolezal, regarding his book, All That Is in God. We scheduled him, but he had to cancel. Together, we made several attempts to reschedule but it hasn’t worked out thus far. I hope we can still speak in the future. I greatly enjoyed reading Dr. Dolezal’s book as an extension of the many long nights we shared speaking about these issues as students at Westminster. There is much I agree with in his book, and I’m glad he is calling contemporary theologians to greater fidelity to confessional orthodoxy, though there are some things I’d like to follow up with. To be brief, I’d like to have further discourse on the doctrine of the Trinity and the equal ultimacy of the one and the three, the essence and three hypostases. I also appreciate that Dr. Muller took the time to write a three-part review of Dr. Oliphint’s book on Thomas Aquinas. I hold Dr. Muller in high esteem, and while he offers several important criticisms, I am not yet persuaded he has correctly identified Van Til’s assessment of Thomas and his theological methodology. Dr. Oliphint builds his own criticism upon this assessment, so I believe it’s important to get that right in order to understand what Dr. Oliphint is doing. Granted, Van Til didn’t necessarily do himself any favors in the way he presents his case. He often draws out implications and necessary entailments of a person’s theology or philosophy that his interlocutor does not himself recognize. That can give the appearance that Van Til is criticizing features of a person’s theology that person doesn’t affirm, which would be terribly uncharitable. But Van Til is often writing against where he sees a theology or philosophy ending up. Determining whether or not that is the case with the areas Dr. Muller identifies requires much more consideration than I have given to the matter thus far. I would like to see further discussion on that issue from all involved. We of course love Dr. Oliphint. He has been our teacher and advisor for many years. He has spoken twice at our annual conference and joined us perhaps dozens of times on the podcast. And so it may seem strangest that we haven’t spoken much about the public criticisms he has received. That could use an explanation. Dr. Oliphint has been revising his book, God With Us, to address some of the criticisms of the first edition. This is admirable, and I pray it does much to clarify the issues and move the theological discourse forward. This is largely the reason we haven’t discussed the issues explicitly on Reformed Forum. I would prefer to see the second edition released so that we can speak about something objective, public, and current. Still, some people may feel that we’ve left them hanging, and I’ve been conflicted about that. Reformed Forum are not the theological gatekeepers. We shouldn’t be puffed up about our usefulness or role within the Reformed community, but I do feel some measure of fiduciary responsibility to our regular listeners. For that reason, I will speak for myself in sharing a few comments. My primary criticisms of Dr. Oliphint’s first edition pertain to the application of incarnational categories to theology proper. In my judgment it is neither theologically appropriate nor tenable to speak of God assuming properties unless we’re speaking about the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures in the person of the Son. In my view, such would lead to a two-nature theology proper or some form of dialecticism. I think it’s better to speak of divine simplicity, immutability, and the older terminology of relative attributes or perhaps even new modes of relation that God sustains by virtue of his free will. In short, covenantal condescension is relational/covenantal, not ontological. I think we’re forced to make unnecessary theological formulations if we affirm the latter. I’m looking forward to Dr. Oliphint’s revisions and hope we may all gain greater clarity on these deep and glorious issues.

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).

Ken Jones, pastor of Glendale Missionary Baptist Church in Miami, Florida, as well as a former regular on The White Horse Inn, joins Rob and Bob on this week’s episode of Theology Simply Profound. Rob and Bob talk with Ken about evangelicalism and the contemporary church as The Rafiki Foundation. The mission of The Rafiki Foundation is to help Africans know God and raise their standard of living with excellence and integrity. One way it accomplishes this task is through the establishment of Classical Christian Schools.

Participants: Ken Jones, Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

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.

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.

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.

Ryan Noha speaks about many excellent used books we have recently added to our online store. Among them are first editions of Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism and The Virgin Birth of Christ.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Ryan Noha

In celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, we’re running a store-wide sale. Our special 1517 Wittenberg stickers are 50% off, while you will save 15.17% on everything else. This includes our merchandise, new books, and used books—even our first editions and signed copies! Visit the store today while the sale is active.

Acts 4:13-20 “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition. But when they had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred with one another, saying, “What shall we do with these men? For that a notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name.” So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” The Apostles were teaching contrary to the law, at least the law as having been interpreted by the Sanhedrin. The religious leaders of the time of the Apostles saw most of them as uneducated fishermen who were starting to teach that Jesus who had been killed not only had been raised from the dead but was also the Messiah and therefore outranked the religious leaders. How should the apostles have treated the religious leaders? Should they have been obedient to their rule over them or should they have disobeyed their command in order to get their message out? Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

Last week I was in my hotel room and as I sat there semi-conscious watching a documentary on Beowulf a commercial came on that offered something that seemed too good to be true. Miracle water. All you had to do was to send in for this free water that would be sent to you for free and after drinking it you would be healed of any disease; you would come into great wealth and you would find true happiness. All of this because Jesus wanted you to have a wonderful fulfilled life. There were even testimonials from people whom after drinking the water had been healed of cancer or come into tens of thousands of dollars. Sound too good to be true? But is this more astounding than a man who is paralyzed in his legs instantaneously being brought to full health. All he needed was faith. So why do we make fun of people like Benny Hinn? What do we learn about Jesus from healings in the book of Acts and what do we learn about Bible prophecy? Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

This is a continuation of our discussion on Possessions, reflecting on Acts 2, 4, and 5. Acts 2:42-47 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. This is the beginning of the New Covenant Church. The people of God, the true Israel, were made up mostly of travelers who had come for a feast as Old Covenant Israelites and had found the Messiah and the Kingdom of God. Are the examples we are given of church life? are these examples that we should be emulating today? Should the church be structured to resemble a commune? Should Christians today be pushing for socialism? Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

Acts 2:42-47 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. This is the beginning of the New Covenant Church. The people of God, the true Israel, were made up mostly of travelers who had come for a feast as Old Covenant Israelites and had found the Messiah and the Kingdom of God. Are the examples we are given of church life? are these examples that we should be emulating today? Should the church be structured to resemble a commune? Should Christians today be pushing for socialism? Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

The Heidelberg Catechism asks in question 69: How does holy baptism signify and seal to you that the one sacrifice of Christ on the cross benefits you? Answer: In this way: Christ instituted this outward washing[1] and with it gave the promise that, as surely as water washes away the dirt from the body, so certainly His blood and Spirit wash away the impurity of my soul, that is, all my sins.[2] [1] Matt. 28:19. [2] Matt. 3:11; Mark 16:16; John 1:33; Acts 2:38; Rom. 6:3, 4; I Pet. 3:21. The significance of this sign is the assuredly that the promises made by Christ in salvation will be assured to be accomplished in the life of the believer. But what does that mean? Can a baby understand that, and how does that help the believer later in life? Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

When I was born my mom who was not attending church and had me baptized…Anglican. My grandmother volunteered, (and I am using air quotes here) to babysit me. Her real goal was to have me baptized again…as a Catholic. When I was 10 I made a public witness in my church by being baptized…well as a Baptist. So whoever is correct about this I’m covered. But what is baptism anyway? Why do we do it and just who should receive it? Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

In Hebrews 8 we hear the words of the writer examining the prophecy made by Jeremiah. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. 7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. 8 For he finds fault with them when he says: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 11 And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. 12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” 13 In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” So how does this affect us today? Does this mean that everyone in the Church is saved? Is there still a future time for the fulfillment of this Covenant or has it all come already? Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

Can you imagine having been one of the people who took off their coat to lay it in front of the colt just so the King’s horse would not have to touch the ground. To have shouted Hosanna, a word that means Save now! To watch as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords came into Jerusalem to consummate the Kingdom. If we were one of these people a week later we would have been standing in front of Pilot in the dark of night yelling; “Crucify Him Crucify Him.” What tales we would have had to tell when we returned home. Several weeks later when we returned to Jerusalem for another Feast it would have only been natural to have those memories fresh in our mind and to have spoken about it with others who had been there as well. Would we have felt guilt or wonder? Would we have pondered the meaning of these events? Would we have thought back to who we had once believed Jesus had been? Would we have thought the disciples were drunk? Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

How does a person determine the will of God? This question was the subject in one form or another in many of the sermons that I had growing up, especially when I was a teen. We all knew that God had a special plan for our lives and that He wanted us to have a specific job, marry a certain spouse and go to a certain college, although perhaps not in that order. So we prayed for guidance from the Holy Spirit to determine the answer to these questions. Unfortunately sometimes we ended up treating the Holy Spirit as a magic eight ball. But isn’t that what the disciples did in the opening chapters of Acts. They cast lots to determine who would replace Judas. Shouldn’t we be doing that today? Why did Judas have to be replaced and do we have a different relationship with the Holy Spirit than Moses and David did? Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

Calvin said regarding this passage that it was good for the disciples to ask about Christ’s Kingdom because we should always seek to know more about Christ, although when He is silent we should be content. After three years of training after an emotional roller-coaster of having Christ die only to rise from the dead, these students were ready for what they thought was the end. But their ministry was only beginning. But why did Christ leave? Couldn’t the Holy Spirit have come with Christ still there and how can we consider the Kingdom here now if it was still future at the time of the ascension?

Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

We are embarrassed by a wealth of riches in this age in which we live. Books are not only available in print but in electronic form as well. We can build whole libraries of the best in Reformed and broader Christian theological literature in a compact digital form easily and quickly accessible at the fingertip. We can call up classics like John Calvin’s Institutes on our desktops, notebooks, tablets, and phones. But some of us want to move beyond the reading of the Scriptural text to analyze it. Enter the BibleWorks program. BibleWorks is an exceptional software package that puts at your fingertips a plethora of biblical studies tools. Its capabilities far outstrip the abilities of the average pastor-theologian. That is, if you are like me, you will be constantly amazed at the new and varied tasks you can perform in your effort to come to a better understanding of Scripture. BibleWorks does not replace firsthand knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. But it makes analysis of and meditation on the Scriptures in the original languages much easier and therefore it will be much more likely that the busy pastor-theologian will retain his familiarity with the Hebrew and Greek he sweated over so much in seminary. BibleWorks contains multiple original language texts, numerous modern language versions of the Bible, lexicons, grammars, high resolution photos of original OT and NT manuscripts, Hebrew and Greek review tools, satellite maps (Bible atlases), a word processing editor which allows seamless typing in English, Hebrew, and Greek. You will also find audio forms of the complete Greek NT and various English versions. In addition, included are the early church fathers, the Apocrypha, the Aramaic Targums, the Pseudepigrapha, and other reference works. Additional reference works are available for purchase. Up till now I have given a sample list of the resources available. The breadth of tools is astounding. But the heart of BibleWorks is what it can do. You can do simple and complex searches of the resources. You can do instant analysis simply by pointing and clicking. You can search for various constructions in the original languages. You can diagram your Greek pericopes (who doesn’t remember enjoying diagramming your Greek sentences in seminary?!). While I am tempted to treat BibleWorks as itself infinite, since only God is infinite, I recognize that there really is an end to what this software package can do. I just don’t know where it is! You may already have an earlier version of BibleWorks and are wondering whether obtaining the new edition would be worth the money. Just to whet your appetite, consider these additions to previous editions: (1) You can control the number of viewing panes open in the program and can select from a palette of different color schemes. (2) There is now greater compatibility with Mac. The installer for Mac comes with the program so there is no need for an additional purchase. (3) You can scale the size of your viewing panes. (4) The program now has morphology coloring for nearly instant form recognition. (5) You can now examine the whole of the Leningradensis Codex of the OT. (6) BibleWorks now contains an EPUB ebook reader and organizer. These and many more additions make this a useful resource for sermon and Sunday school lesson preparation, for article and book research, and for just good old Scripture meditation. A program of this sophistication may frighten some of you. Fear not. The manual is available in electronic format and there are a whole host of training videos that will walk you through almost every conceivable function of the software. Of course there is also the ever ready support. BibleWorks 10 is a powerful tool which will assist you in your study of God’s Word. Rather than surround yourself with a pile of original language texts, lexicons, and grammars, you can now have these same reference works at your fingertips with a much smaller footprint. This raises another point: BibleWorks 10 would make a wonderful resource for the missionary who is not able to transport his library half way around the world. Whether you serve at home or abroad BibleWorks 10 will be a toolbox you will turn to over and over again.

“There can be no Christian truth which does not, from the very first, contain within itself as its basis the fact that from and to all eternity God is the electing God. There can be no tenet of Christian doctrine which, if it is to be a Christian tenet, does not reflect both in form and content this divine electing. … There is no height or depth in which God can be God in any other way” (CD II/2, p. 77).   Karl Barth’s theology defies glib appropriations. One could say, Dr. Shao Kai Tseng’s book, Karl Barth’s Infralapsarian Theology,^[1] highlights how complex and layered Barth’s lapsarian theology really is. Does Tseng really intend on overturning what has been generally accepted as a truism in Barth studies,^[2] namely, that Karl Barth was a Supralapsarian? Dr. Tseng marshals an impressive amount of evidence for this claim (evidence spanning from Romerbrief II through CD IV/1), and even offers a painstaking survey of the Reformed lapsarian debates as he argues that Barth inadvertently went astray at a few key points. In the following review article I will trace out Tseng’s central argument (that Karl Barth holds to an essentially Infralapsarian view of the object of predestination with Supralapsarian elements) and, in my conclusion, offer an appraisal of the tenability of Tseng’s conclusion. Overall Tseng’s work deserves to be commended. His contribution to the Trinity debate, in Barth scholarship, is interesting to say the least. And while I disagree with some of his moves, I doubt many will find fault with the breadth of Tseng’s research. It is for that reason alone that I believe George Hunsinger may be right that Tseng’s contribution in the present volume will prove to be a lasting one. Because Tseng’s work is so comprehensive, an adequate summary of the contents of this book would prove to be taxing on the patience of any reader. For that reason I will only offer a detailed summary of few sections, offering a cursory summary of others. I will be looking at chapters 1-2 because they contain the definitions and history necessary to understand the complex discussions that take place in chapters 3-8. I will then conclude with some critical remarks.

Chapter 1: Definitions

This section of the book came as an unexpected treat. Tseng carefully and clearly delineates the differences between the Infralapsarian and Supralapsarian camps in a way that prepares the reader to properly assess Barth’s own read on the tradition. The historiographical work in this chapter will no doubt draw many disparate readers. The Lapsarian debates of the Reformation and Post-Reformation periods are not always easy to follow. Tseng comments, “The lapsarian controversy was essentially a theodicy inquiry” (Tseng, 47). The question being, how are we to understand God’s relationship to the “eternal decrees of double predestination, creation and permission of the fall” (Ibid.), in light of a commitment to His sovereignty and holiness? The search for an answer among the Reformed and Post-Reformed theologians is exacerbated by the variety of positions held. To begin with, both Infra and Supralapsarian schools agree “that all humankind’s actual fall in history was eternally decreed by God, thus Adam’s sin was part of God’s eternal plan rather than a surprise to God” (Tseng, 48). The difference between the two positions lay in their placement of the Fall with regards to the decree of election. In other words, for the Supralapsarian “humankind’s fall presupposes election and reprobation” whereas for the Infralapsarian “election and reprobation presuppose the divine decree of the Fall” (Ibid.). So the truly distinguishing aspect of the two camps is their conception how they answer the question, “who is the object of [God’s] predestination [obiectum praedestinationis]?” (Ibid.) For the Infralapsarian, the obiectum is fallen humanity, while for the Supralapsarian the obiectum is unfallen humanity. Tseng helpfully notes that these definitions (man as obiectum praedestinationis) do not refer to “humans in created actuality” but to “God’s eternal conception of the object of predestination” (Tseng, 53). Therefore, the decree does not come as a response to human sin on the Infralapsarian account. Tseng explains, “God’s foresight, Quodam-modo [in a certain respect], is strictly within God’s eternal predestination. … [Man as fallen] is strictly God’s eternal conception of the object of election-reprobation in God’s mind” (Tseng, 54). Predictably, the differing conceptions of the object of predestination leads to a different “ordo decretorum” (order of decrees). For the Infralapsarian, the decree to create precedes the decree of the Fall of mankind. For the Supralapsarian, the decrees of election and reprobation precede even the decree to create. These basic categories are employed throughout the book as Tseng, in meticulous detail, charts Barth’s theological development. Barth’s appropriation of elements from both Infra- and Supralapsarianism is complex and at times difficult to follow, but Tseng serves as a reliable guide, having himself trod the well worn paths of Barth’s major theological works. But he doesn’t stick merely to the old paths—he does seek to make a significant (though not earth shattering) adjustment, arguing that Barth is basically an Infralapsarian. He then attempts to bring this insight to bear in the current debate (which has cooled significantly) over the relationship between Trinity and election in Barth’s theology.

Chapter 2: Barth’s Lapsarian Position Reassessed

Barth’s extended footnote in CD II/2 §33 contains a lengthy engagement with the Reformed lapsarian debates. Tseng summarizes Barth’s position as Supralapsarian with regard to the ordo decretorum, but not with regard to the obiectum, which he conceives to be unfallen (Tseng, 63). He even candidly remarks, “as far as the object of election is concerned, it would be fair to say that he [Barth] is basically though not simply infralapsarian” (Tseng, 62). While the Supra/infralapsarian controversy may retain some room for conversation within Barth studies, one thing is undisputed: Barth had no place for a decretum absolutum or any decree that is located outside of the decree of God to be for humanity in Christ. But, as is well known, Barth is unwilling to totally jettison the idea of double predestination. The problem with both lapsarian camps, for Barth, was their inchoate natural theology. Barth’s solution is to absorb supralapsarianism and recalibrate it along Christological lines. “In a nutshell, Barth’s mature understanding of double-predestination is that election is in Christ—it is by him and with him” (Tseng, 64). This leads Barth to adopt a (basically) supralapsarian position (with regards to the ordo), due to the “teleological priority of election-reprobation over all other divine decrees,” that exists at the very center of supralapsarianism (Tseng, 65). In other words, Barth adopts Supralapsarianism (with the intent to recalibrate/purify it) because “[e]lection is the sum of the Gospel” (CD II/2, 3). Throughout this chapter, Tseng identifies several weak points and inaccuracies in Barth’s understanding of the Reformed lapsarian positions. But most interesting is his handling of John Owen’s own flavor of infralapsarianism. Briefly, Owen holds to a sort of Christological infralapsarianism whereby, “all the decrees are centered on God’s works in Christ [so] that predestination is designed to manifest God’s self-giving glory in the incarnate Son” (Tseng, 73). One of Tseng’s most interesting contributions is his bringing Barth and the English Puritans into conversation with one another. Tseng also engages contemporary interpretations of Barth, particularly that of Edwin Van Driel who argues that “since election on Barth’s view is God’s decision to become incarnate, Barth’s doctrine of election is also supralapsarian” (Tseng, 75). Van Driel suggests a sort of Christological supralapsarianism in which “God had motives to become incarnate that were not contingent upon sin” (Tseng, 74-75). The problem with this view, according to Tseng, is it fails to yield sufficient attention to the infralapsarian elements of Barth’s theology. In other words, Van Driel’s interpretation is not sufficiently dialectical in that it does not recognize that election in Christ presupposes sin, but sin could not exist apart from God’s decision to elect in Christ (Tseng, 76). While Tseng wishes to argue vigorously for the basically infralapsarian character of Barth’s doctrine of election, he carefully sets up a couple of provisos: First, Barth’s infralapsarianism is closer to supralapsarianism to the extent that it places an “emphasis on the teleological priority of election-in-Christ is closer to supralapsarianism” (Tseng, 79), and second, “[w]ith regard to the obiectum praedestinationis, Barth is also not simply infralapsarian, because he identifies Christ, who is without sin in himself, as the proper object of election; sinful humanity becomes the object of election only by partaking of Christ” (Tseng, 79). What Tseng is trying to avoid is any undialectical, straightforward assertion that fails to do justice to the complexity of Barth’s dialectical theology.

Chapter 3: Römerbrief II

“This possibility, described with the most paradoxical expression ‘impossible-possibility,’ is conceived as something foreign to the reality of the world, an alien power whose potency can in no way derive from the energy (as the Greeks called reality) of the world; it is indeed impossible within the context of the world” (Jungel, Karl Barth: A Theological Legacy, 66). The second edition of Barth’s Romans commentary was the “clearing away of debris (aufraumungsarbeit)” (McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936, 245) created by the publication of the first edition in 1918. And as anyone who’s ever made an attempt on the Römerbrief knows, Barth’s writing style can be frustrating to follow. Barth’s form was “expressionistic” and “Kierkegaardian,” often “indirect,” not intending “to convince the reader of an argument as it does to clear away obstacles to the Spirit’s work of making her to be a witness to the truth” (McCormack, Critically Realistic, 243). In this chapter Tseng argues that this stage of Barth’s theological development bears evidence of a lean towards infralapsarianism. While Barth’s doctrine of election could still be described as basically Supralapsarian, the infralapsarian elements are undeniably present. This infralapsarian trajectory is made possible by the “impossible-possiblity” dialectic that holds together the theology of Romans II (Tseng, 86). To guide the reader, Tsung notes “[s]even impossible possibilities,” human impossibilities which are overcome by the gracious act of God in the “process of Aufhebung^[3]” (Tseng, 87). These impossibilities do not correspond to man’s sin, but to “God and God’s act” (Tseng, 88). It is revelation rendered subjectively impossible by the Fall that must be overcome. Tseng explains, “Given that God has revealed Godself to enable human knowledge of God, what is it that made this impossibility possible?”^[4] (Tseng, 88). That is to say, man as sinner cannot know God. Sin has destroyed the immediacy with God enjoyed by our prelapsarian parents. Sin brought death and death brought time. We have passed from Creation^[5] (unfallen) to world (fallen), and the result was a profound noetic rupture (Tseng, 90).^[6] But Barth, as we noted earlier, presupposes the possibility of revelation. Or more precisely, he understands revelation not as “an uncritical, straightforward possibility,” but as an “impossible made possible and yet remaining impossible in this world” (Tseng, 89).^[7] Mankind in its unfallen state had no need of revelation because “human knowledge of God was immediate because God was directly intuitable to humanity [emphasis mine]” (Tseng, 90). This state is designated by Barth as “Creation,” which as such is “beyond our observation” (Ibid.). Therefore, revelation, “the event central to which is God’s act of election” necessitates an understanding of mankind as Fallen (Tseng, 89). Now the infralapsarian elements become a bit clearer. The “impossible-possible” dialectic presupposes a fallen world and humanity (Tseng, 91). If revelation presupposes a fallen humanity, and election is at the center of revelation, election for Barth must presuppose (at this phase of his development) a fallen humanity. Given the thesis of this book, the 7th “impossible-possibility,” namely election, is of particular interest. The decree of election (not a hidden “decretum absolutum”) originates in the freedom of God, so that “an individuals faith or unbelief depends entirely on God’s sovereign decision” (Tseng, 103). But for Barth, election is the overcoming of temporality, not for some, but for all. Double predestination therefore refers to humanity en toto. This means, election is predicated upon the rejection (reprobation) of mankind. Tseng notes, the reprobation/election dialectic corresponds to the faith/unbelief of all mankind. He explains, “[Barth’s] predestinarian thinking on this level is clearly supralapsarian: ‘election in Christ’ precedes ‘the divine predestination of men to destruction,’ and it is for the purpose of election that God predestined the fall” (Tseng, 106). Humanity is, in pre-temporal eternity, rejected (reprobated) for the sake of election. But as Tseng again notes, “Barth’s formulation of double predestination on the present-actualistic level does not fit neatly into any lapsarian theory of Reformed theology, even in the minimalist sense” (Tseng, 107). With this in mind Tseng argues that Barth still had infralapsarian “patterns of thought” (Ibid.) present during this phase of his theological development. These patterns are most clearly manifested in the “impossible-possibility” dialectic, which in and of itself is not enough to overcome the supralapsarian elements.^[8]

Chapter 4: The Göttingen-Münster Period

After the publication of the Römerbrief Barth was called to Göttingen to serve as the professor of Reformed theology, but it is at Göttingen that Barth encountered Reformed orthodoxy and discovered the “pneumatological ordo salutis” as well as the “anhypostatic–enhypostatic” distinctions (Tseng, 114-115). These two breakthroughs had a significant impact on Barth’s doctrine of revelation. The pneumatological insights culled were used to formulate a doctrine of revelation that simultaneously affirms its (revelation’s) possibility with God and impossibility with man. It is a “pneumatologically charged” doctrine of revelation (Tseng, 116.) These Christological and pneumatological discoveries will shape Barth’s understanding of the objective and subjective possibilities of revelation. During this period, Barth produced a significant work entitled the Göttingen Dogmatics [GD], and while there is sharp discontinuity between the GD and the Römerbrief, there is some continuity as well. This continuity is particularly noticeable, according to Tseng, in the assumption of the givenness of revelation, that is, as an “a posteriori given” (Tseng, 122). In other words, the consideration of the possibility of revelation presupposes the reality of revelation (Ibid.). Tseng explains, “For Barth the central significance of the enhypostatic–anhypostatic union is again epistemological: it is the only way in which revelation is possible” (Tseng, 126). The impossible-possibility dialectic is replaced with the question, how do we encounter God without ceasing to be human (temporal) and how does God reveal Himself without ceasing to be who He is (eternal)? The answer is found in the union of eternity and temporality in the Incarnation. This means, Barth’s Christology at this stage is not “primarily soteriological” (Tseng, 127), but is intended to bridge the “epistemological gap” caused by sin, that exists between God and humankind (Ibid.). This implies that the Incarnation was a response to the Fall. Tseng explains, “God’s decision to become incarnate logically follows God’s decision to reverse the fall, thus his Christology during this period leans very clearly toward infralapsarianism, even more so than in his mature Christocentric doctrine of election, in which he claims that Christ eternally incarnandus is the beginning of all God’s ways and works” (Tseng, 128). In addition to the retrieval of a two nature Christology, Barth acquired (from Calvin and the Reformed orthodox) the “notion of faith as the Holy Spirit’s work to effect the subjective possibility [of revelation]” (Tseng, 130). This entails an understanding of humanity as fallen and thus incapable of discerning or responding to the Gospel. The inward work (call) of the Holy Spirit, however, makes the saving response of faith and obedience possible. For Barth, this means, the Holy Spirit ensures that revelation is not only objectively possible but subjectively possible as well (Tseng, 131). “A sinner has no choice between faith and unbelief apart from God since unbelief is inherent to fallen humanity” (Tseng, 134). This means, both belief and unbelief are grounded in God’s veiling and unveiling (McCormack, Critically Realistic, 250) and so are only conceivable with reference to God’s free decision to conceal and reveal (Tseng, 135). This move by Barth involves a shift towards an actualistic doctrine of predestination, whereby, God’s decree of election is understood to occur in eternity, with eternity understood as “eternity in actuality” (Tseng, 136). Now this has some import for Tseng’s thesis, in that, Barth’s infralapsarian argument only applies to God’s eternal decretive will insofar as it is “manifested in present actualities” (Tseng, 141); it does not speak to a static (as Barth would understand it) conception of election and reprobation before the foundation of the world” (Ibid.). In other words, God’s will to overcome sin is the sole foundation for the Incarnation, which clearly leans in the direction of infralapsarianism.

Chapter 5: The Bonn Years

In chapter 5 Tseng examines Barth’s Christology and doctrine of predestination in light of Bruce McCormack’s magisterial work, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936. The first half of the chapter includes a brief summary and exposition of McCormack’s thesis^[9] and exposition of Barth’s work, Anselm: Fides Querns Intellectum. The second half of the chapter is dedicated to CD I/1-2. In the first half Tseng argues that Barth’s work on Anselm is “generally unconcerned with the lapsarian question” (Tseng, 149). The second half argues that Barth’s doctrine of election in CDI/1 continues to move in an infralapsarian direction (Tseng, 163). According to Tseng, CD I/1 “is the opus that best represents Barth’s theology in 1930-1935” for it is during this period that he hones in on “the Word of God itself (rather than the subjective-objective distinction),” which causes Barth’s doctrines of “Christology and predestination” to “become much more closely interwoven” (Tseng, 160). Furthermore, it is in the context of CD I/1 that we see a shift in emphasis for Barth. Now the emphasis lay in answering the question, “How can theology as human talk be truly talk about God?” (Tseng, 163). Barth answers, it is only possible “on the basis of divine election” (Tseng, 164). Election makes this speech possible insofar as “God Himself acts towards men” (Tseng, 165) and so gathers men and women into the Church. The act of election is accomplished by the Holy Spirit when God creates what is lacking in man (a relationship with his creator) via “His own presence in that creature” so that God in man establishes the divine relationship. God is therefore “the life of the creature” (CD I/1, 450; Tseng, 165). This is the work of election. God makes man capable and willing to receive revelation by creating faith in man, closing any gap between revelation and reconciliation (Tseng, 167). Tseng argues that this indicates an infralapsarian leaning in that the word of God itself (revelation/reconciliation) assumes the supposition of man’s sinfulness (Ibid.). Tseng also appeals to Barth’s famous threefold distinction of the Word of God,^[10] in particular the word as “proclaimed” (Tseng, 167), as additional evidence of a basically infralapsarian orientation. “Proclamation and the church are earthly media that are inherently secular because believers are sinners” (Ibid.). Scripture is indirect and secular, only becoming revelation through God’s gracious act. Revelation is the logos ensarkos (Tseng, 169). Revelation is incarnation for it bridges the gap between God and man, restoring a once-lost immediacy (Ibid.). And so, according to Tseng, Barth’s basically infralapsarian bent surfaces in the form of the “infralapsarian orientation of Barth’s Christology.” He explains, “God’s will to become incarnate presupposes God’s intention to confront humanity’s sin, without which God’s speech to humanity would have been direct, and the Word incarnate would not have been necessary for human knowledge of God” (Tseng, 171).

Chapter 6: Gottes Gnadenwahl

“Gottes Gnadenwahl” (God’s gracious election) was understood by Bruce McCormack to signal the decisive shift^[11] in Barth’s doctrine of election, but as Tseng points out, McCormack adjusts his thesis a bit, indicating the change “was not immediate but gradual” (Tseng, 177). Tseng’s own contribution includes an examination of “the marriage of Christology and predestination in Gottes Gnadenwahl – the decisively new idea – in relation to Barth’s lapsarian treatment of the two doctrines” (Tseng, 179). Basically, Tseng sets forth a very in depth read of Gottes Gnadenwahl in which he argues that reprobation and election must be understood as mutually interdependent ideas, “in election the purpose and rationality of reprobation are fulfilled and preserved” (Tseng, 202). In short, in this chapter Tseng demonstrates how Barth’s “Christology and doctrine of election converge throughout his treatment of the reprobation and election of all humankind in Christ as a process of Aufhebung” (Tseng, 210). In other words, in the event of the Incarnation, God becomes human without ceasing to be God and endures reprobation vicariously for all humanity so that all may be elect in Christ (Tseng, 211). This is God’s “act of election.” Obviously, this “act of election” presupposes a fallen humanity. Tseng explains, in “speaking of God as being-in-act, [Barth] begins not with the immanent Trinity, but with the particular person and work of Christ as God’s act of election, which mediates and reveals God to sinners, and since this act of election is to take care of the problem of sin, it carries a deeply infralapsarian aspect” (Tseng, 211).

Chapter 7: CD II/2

What becomes increasingly apparent in this important chapter of Tseng’s work, is a motivation of Barth’s that drove his revision of the classical Reformed categories of “infra” and “supralapsarianism.” By applying a radically actualistic Christocentrism to his doctrine of election, Barth is seeking to jettison any vestige of (what he considers) caprice in the counsel of God (Tseng, 234). This is, in part what led Barth to abolish the decretum absolutum^[12] of Reformed orthodoxy in favor of a doctrine of the Incarnation in which God is wholly revealed as being eternally Deus pro nobis, “the One who loves in freedom” (CD II/2, 3). It is in the second half volume of the Church Dogmatics that Barth finally puts to paper his famous statement that Jesus Christ “is both the electing God and the elected man in One” (CD II/2, 3). Tseng explains, “Since the incarnate one, who is the electing decree of God, is himself the electing God, to know Jesus is to know the God who elects” (Tseng, 215). Not only do we know the electing God solely through Christ, “human beings are united to Christ on the basis of their consubstantiality with Christ” (Ibid.).^[13] But even in His act of election, according to Tseng, God remains in Himself immutably and eternally what He “is in [His] eternal trinitarian act ad intra” (Tseng, 216). From the outset Tseng has rightly argued that Barth sought to free the love of God from an “arbitrary” hidden decree. Tseng argues that for Barth, God’s love is founded upon His eternal Triunity and aseity. “God’s covenantal love [with mankind] perfectly corresponds to the intratrinitarian love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and this love draws the creature into union with God in Christ” (Tseng, 219). In other words, according to Tseng, God’s ability to love the creature in freedom is a possibility only because of His aseity (Tseng, 217), though we have no access to this idea of God in Himself abstracted from His sovereign decision to be for mankind (Tseng, 218). Tseng notes, this understanding of God’s freedom implies a freedom even from aseity (Tseng, 219). This lack of constraint is what allows God to be for mankind. Additionally, it means that even in God’s decision to take the form of a servant, He still remains “utterly free” (Ibid.). So on this understanding, Deus pro nobis is understood as an act of “self-determination” not “self-constitution” (Tseng, 220). All of these considerations touch upon Barth’s lapsarian thinking to the extent that Barth understood Incarnation to serve “the purpose of God’s will to seek and create fellowship with the creature” (Tseng, 224). At face-value this would seem to be supralapsarian (unfallen humanity as the object of predestination), but there is more: “this seeking and creating of fellowship already began with creation, and the incarnation, which is for the ‘reconciliation of fallen man,’ is not a continuation but a supersession of the work of creation” (Ibid.). The humanity sought by God is fallen, which indicates a lean towards infralapsarianism. If we’re to follow Barth as he seeks to purge his doctrine of election of any vestige of arbitrariness or abstract speculation, we are to, according to Tseng, understand Christ Himself to be the “loving covenant with humankind” (Tseng, 225). The concrete expression of God’s love for us, and the “immutable decree” that so determines His being that “He could not be God without it” (Tseng, 226). To say it another way, God could not act “apart from Christ the God man-proleptically present in pretemporal eternity by virtue of divine election to be the beginning of all God’s ways and works” (Ibid.). So Christ is the decree of election, but He is also the electing God (Subject) and elected humanity (Object). But the truly revolutionary nature of this formulation is in, according to Tseng, “Barth’s identification of Jesus Christ as electing God” as it applies not only to the Logos asarkos, but to the “Incarnate God-man” (Logos incarnatus) who is “the beginning of all God’s ways and works from and to all eternity” (Tseng, 227). By using the concept of prolepsis, Tseng (following Hunsinger) argues for an “abiding distinction between Christ’s two natures and thus the subject and object of election in the Person of Christ” (Tseng, 228). And just as Jesus as electing God signaled a significant re-calibration of Reformed Christianity, so does the formulation of Christ as “object of election” represent a dramatic shift as this entails “that the Son of God, and not merely the human Jesus, is the object of election” (Ibid.). Returning again to the matter of Barth’s lapsarian thinking, Tseng notes that Barth’s Christological formulation reflects a pull towards infralapsarianism with regards to “the logical relations between election and creation” (Ibid.). For election, in this instance, involves the union of humanity with Christ with reference to creation, contra to the supralapsarian position “that election does not presuppose God’s decree of creation” (Tseng, 229). Tseng goes on to argue, along these lines that, “election-in-Christ includes within itself reprobation and judgement” (Tseng, 230). In one sense, Christ is the only reprobate man, but in another sense by way of humanity’s participation in Christ, “the reprobation that Christ alone suffered also applies to all humankind that is in Him” (Tseng, 231). So election was for the purpose of “negating humanity’s sin that negates God” (Tseng, 232). This process of Aufhebung is basically infralapsarian in structure as it envisages humanity’s sin as that which is to be overcome via election. (Ibid.) That said, there is also a supralapsarian aspect present in that “reprobation serves the purpose of election” (Ibid.). To say it another way, “God’s Yes-because it is Aufhebung – presupposes God’s No” (Tseng, 234). Given this inner tension in Barth’s lapsarian theology, Tseng turns to answer the question: What is meant by “purified” supralapsarianism? (Tseng, 234-235). In short, Barth’s fear is that an “order of decrees” that is composed based on the economy of salvation will leave room for natural theology (Tseng, 235). Tseng contends that Barth mistakenly identified this incipient natural theology in infralapsarianism but not in supralapsarianism which he believed would “[allow] him to seek to know all God’s ways and works as finding their beginning in the election of Jesus Christ” (Ibid.). To say it another way, Barth “purifies” supralapsarianism by re-calibrating it along actualistic Christological lines: “Barth’s solution is that instead of considering election and its object in abstracto as he thinks Reformed orthodoxy does, he insists on treating them in concreto, which for him means in Christo” (Tseng, 237). Tseng concludes this chapter with an important guiding observation, “Even with regard to the obiectum, however, Barth’s basic lapsarian thesis does not resonate with infralapsarianism in any simple way [emphasis mine]: for him the object of election is first and finally Jesus Christ, who is in himself without sin and became sin for us only by imputation and participation. Sinful humanity is the object of election only by participation in Christ” (Tseng, 240). This sentence is important for a few reasons, but most notably, for its implied hermeneutic. Barth defies formalism. By this I simply mean, Barth defies straightforward categorizations. This is made abundantly clear by Tseng throughout the entirety of his book, and it is in my opinion, one of the great strengths of the work. It presents a forthright argument that seeks to do justice to the complexity and dialectical nature and development of Barth’s theology.

Chapter 8: CD IV/1

“[T]he Trinity-election debate in recent Barth scholarship reflects at least a certain tension in Barth’s own theology.” (Tseng, 280) For many, chapter 8 will prove to be the most engaging (and frankly enjoyable) section of this book as Tseng has reserved most of his critical remarks of the McCormack proposal for this chapter. Tseng’s approach differs slightly, however, from much of the contemporary secondary literature. Tseng explains, “While much secondary literature has been written on the Christology of §59 [“The Obedience of the Son of God”] in recent years, this chapter focuses instead on §60 in order to gain an understanding of the Christological doctrine of election underlying Barth’s development of the notion of human sin and fallenness” (Tseng, 242-43). Working from Barth’s Christocentric doctrine of sin, Tseng argues that God’s response to sin “presupposes a basically infralapsarian Christology” (Tseng, 243), but equally as important, Tseng lays out Barth’s understanding of “sin” and “fallen humanity” and why it bears out his claim that Barth leans in a basically infralapsarian direction. He explains, for Barth, knowledge of Christ presupposes knowledge of sin (Ibid.), and our sin can only be understood in light of Christ’s obedience. Quoting R. Scott Rodin, “God did not positively will the fall…, but in His eternal election of Jesus Christ…the Fall is fully assumed as the state of humanity” (Tseng, 244). The infralapsarian contours are obvious. To borrow Barth’s own words, “Access to the knowledge that [man] is a sinner is lacking to man because he is a sinner” (CD IV/1, 360-361). Therefore, knowledge of sin and all that it implies is inextricably Christological (Tseng, 245), if it is to be possible at all. But even more fundamental, with regards to sin itself (according to Barth), is God’s lordship over sin in Christ, whereby God “impressed” sin into His service (while simultaneously rejecting it as an instrument), “contrary to its own nature” so that it “became necessarily an instrument of the divine triumph” (Tseng, 246). Tseng goes on to explain, “Nothingness ‘is not’- it negates God and creation – because God has negated it. Nothingness exists precisely because of God’s absolute rejection and could not have existed apart from God’s ‘nonwilling.’Paradoxically this divine nonwilling becomes the ground whereupon nothingness exists … God rejects nothingness absolutely, and only in rejecting it does God permit it” (Tseng, 246-47; emphasis mine) This understanding of sin as paradoxical and absurd (CD IV/1, 410) undergirds the rest of Barth’s harmartiology. (Tseng, 247) But the question remains, from whence came sin? Barth’s answer, according to Tseng, “It has no basis” or to marshal an earlier concept, it is an “impossible possibility” (Ibid.).^[14] Returning again to the question of Barth’s lapsarian orientation, it is worth noting that for Barth God is fulfilled in the incarnation, that is, “in His act of choosing to be God with us … in the act of election God has eternally negated humankind’s sin by the incarnation” (Tseng, 248). Tseng explains, “The incarnation fulfills the concept of God because by the incarnation God rejects that which negates God and God’s covenant partner, and remains true to God’s absolute perfection.” (Ibid.) The incarnation, for Barth, was for the purpose of overcoming sin, as the “Aufhebung of reprobation presupposes the sin of all humankind communicated to Christ” (Tsung, 249).^[15] By the end of the first half of the chapter, Tseng argues that the “Christ-Adam relation is basically infralapsarian in both the Christological and predestinarian senses” (Tseng, 269). That is, election in Christ and the Incarnation as “drawing Adam’s fallen race into participatio Christi” (Ibid.), each point to a basically infralapsarian priority in Barth’s theology. Tseng asks the question, “How much and which aspects, if any, of traditional substantialist ontology” does Barth retain in his “historicized Christology”? (Tseng, 270). His primary conversation partners in this second half of chapter 8 are Bruce McCormack, George Hunsinger, Paul Nimmo, and Paul Dafyyd Jones. His interactions in this chapter track fairly closely with what has been called the “traditionalist”^[16] camp in Barth studies as he argues that Barth’s “antimetaphysical impulse” did not necessarily lead to the wholesale rejection of the substantialistic metaphysics found in the Chalcedonian Creed (Tseng, 270). He argues instead, with Hunsinger, that Chalcedon served as a regulative framework for Barth as he worked out his Christocentric actualism (Tseng, 271). Tseng argues that Barth’s continued use of the term “nature”, even as late as CD IV/1, is evidence that he preserved at least certain aspects of substance metaphysics, which in turn even preserves such critical points as the Creator-creature distinction (Tseng, 271-72). Tseng comments, “It would be erroneous to think that Barth would simply reject or redefine everything in substantialist ontology and classical theism in constructing some modern sort of ‘ontology’” (Tseng, 273).^[17] Tseng turns his attention specifically to McCormack’s proposal that “election-Incarnation constitutes God’s triune being: The Trinity is a function of and logically follows God’s decision to be incarnate” (Tseng, 274). This proposal, according to Tseng, “raises some difficult questions when we take into account what Barth has said about history” (Ibid.). But even more interesting, the difficulties notwithstanding, McCormack’s historicized Christology does seem to lean in an infralapsarian direction as “the incarnation is necessarily bound up with fallen history” (Tseng, 275). So that, “God’s electing grace could not have been apart from or without regard to the Fallen Adamic history that has been taken up into Christ and in which Christ participates” (Tseng, 276). Tseng admits that those who hold to the “traditionalist” position in the Trinity-election debate may feel the pull of Christological Supralapsarianism (Tseng, 276-77) The problem is, as Tseng again recognizes, “if the covenant partner to whom God has pledged faithfulness, the obiectum praedestinationis, is sinful humankind – homo lapsus – would this not imply that by incarnation God actually took sin into God’s very own being-in-act? Does the incarnation not make the Son of God a sinner and a reprobate?” (Tseng, 277). Tseng finds the solution to this problem in positing a fully self-existent Trinity prior to the act of election, making election a free act (Ibid.). Furthermore, given the amount of evidence amassed in favor of his central thesis, Tseng concludes that election and incarnation must “presuppose the fallenness of humanity” (Tseng, 278). In the final subsection of this chapter, Tseng offers a response to Paul Dafydd Jones’ work, The Humanity of Christ: Christology in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. While Tseng finds much to praise in Jones’ work, he does take issue with Jones’ dismissal of the term “nature” in Barth’s mature Christology (Tseng, 282). Tseng agrees with Hunsinger, that the central problem with Jones’ thesis is a historicization of God’s being that leads to the “contingent” properties of God modifying the “non-contingent” along with a historicization of “Christ’s human nature in much the same way as to render the notion of nature completely meaningless on its own apart from the notions of history and act” (Tseng, 283). He then goes on to criticize Jones for not interacting with §60 of the CD “The Pride and Fall of man” (CD IV/1, 358-478) and for failing to strike out a via media between a radically anti-metaphysical Barth and a qualified substantialist Barth (Tseng, 285), but positively, he recognizes that on Jones’ read of Barth, humanity’s sinfulness is presupposed in the act of election (Tseng, 286). Again, the infralapsarian orientation is obvious.

Conclusion

In his conclusion to this fine work, Tseng comments that the lapsarian problem is not some relic of arid scholasticism,^[18] but has profound implications for the life of Christ’s Church as “it struggles with the perplexing reality of humankind’s fallenness in light of God’s universal sovereignty and immutable holiness” (Tseng, 295). This sentiment will likely deeply resonate with many who’re not content with the current state of much of evangelical theology. As a non-Barthian myself, I appreciated this book and the questions it raised. Not simply for the challenges it raises to my reading of Karl Barth, but for the challenges it raises to my understanding of what it means that “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:4-5). This is a densely argued and extremely detailed book. If you’re looking for a guide to help you work through some of Barth’s major works, this book may prove helpful. Tseng’s central thesis is also very interesting and provocative to say the least. And though Tseng does soften it a bit at the outset (Barth’s theology is only basically infralapsarian) the careful distinctions he introduces along the way are helpful in parsing out the trajectory of Barth’s theological development. Additionally this book will be of interest not only to those already invested in the study of Barth’s theology, but also for those who’re interested in the history of the lapidarian debates—they will find much to chew on in the first part of Tseng’s work. But most interesting, to me at least, is the polemical edge this work has as it is an important foray into the Trinity-election debate in Barth circles. And while I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, particularly as he brings them to bear on the present discussion, he does make some interesting arguments that need to be engaged. While this book may not change the landscape of Barth studies, it will no doubt be a lasting contribution for the simple fact that Tseng is so comprehensive in his exposition of Barth’s theology, and detailed in his outlining of one of the “chief factors” driving Barth’s theological development.

^[1] Shao Kai Tseng, Karl Barth’s Infralapsarian Theology: Origins and Development 1920-1953 (Downer’s Grove: IVP Academic, 2016). ^[2] It is clear from his own historical work in the Church Dogmatics (particularly in CD II/2, 127-145) that Barth had no intention of merely receiving the title “Supralapsarian.” ^[3] The matter of how one ought to translate “Aufhebung” is notoriously difficult. Garrett Green has argued that Aufhebung be rendered as “sublimation” though even that translation brings with it certain difficulties (see Karl Barth, On Religion: The Revelation of God as the Sublimation of Religion, trans. Garret Green [New York: Continuum, 2006] vii-xi, 1-29). ^[4] McCormack in his Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936 is particularly helpful. He remarks, “But for God to be known, in the sense that He’s possessable by His revelation, is impossible. For in that moment He would cease to be Lord over His revelation, He would cease to be God. In other words, “Revelation must remain distinct from its medium” (McCormack, 249). Therefore, God can only be known only indirectly (Ibid.). “He hides Himself and remains hidden in the medium of revelation” (Ibid.). The act by which the veil of revelation is lifted is the “impossible possibility.” It is the event of revelation. It is an impossible possibility that the veil (means of concealing) becomes the medium (means of revelation). McCormack explains, “Revelation thus has the character of an event. That the veil is made transparent for faith, that it truly becomes a medium, requires an act of God. God is the Subject of revelation and must always remain so” (Ibid. 250). ^[5] “‘Creation’ denotes this prelapsarian state of humanity, which is its ‘Origin’ (Ursprung) that even today still ‘evokes in us a memory of our habitation with the Lord of heaven and earth’” (Tseng, 90). ^[6] Note the basically Kantian dualism between Creation and World, eternal and temporal. ^[7]The act by which the veil of revelation is lifted is the “impossible possibility.” In other words, the means of concealing (veil) becomes the means of revealing (the medium). The Impossible-possible dialectic is itself “deeply eschatological” (Tseng, 101) due in part to the idea that the eternal (revelation for example) cannot be directly identified with the temporal. Therefore, “revelation is in history, but it is not of history.” See McCormack, Critically Realistic, pp. 241-88. ^[8] Tseng notes that at this phase of Barth’s development, it is impossible to clearly identify his lapsarian position in a straightforward manner given his lack of explicit dogmatic reflection on the Incarnation (Tseng, 110). ^[9] Tseng sums up the basic thrust of McCormack’s thesis nicely: “Part of McCormack’s paradigm is the thesis that Barth’s theology has always remained dialectical even after the so-called turn to analogy, and that the Anselm book with its emphasis on the analogia entis did not give rise to any essentially new methodology or theological material in Barth’s thinking” (Tseng, 150). But as Tseng goes on to argue, “To treat Anselm as a key to understanding the shifts in the methods and contents of Barth’s theology is thus to miss out a crucial aspect of his theological development” (Tseng, 159). ^[10] Preached, written, and revealed (CD I/1, 98-140). ^[11] The shift is Barth’s indentification of Jesus as “electing God” and the “correlation of election and reprobation with the crucifixion of Jesus” (Tseng, 178). ^[12] A decretum absolutum would entail a non-Christological (i.e. natural theological) revelation of God. That is a problem for Barth. Just as understanding humanity as the “obiectum praedestinationis” is to understand humanity in abstracto, and thus non-Christologically (Tseng, 236). ^[13] Tseng is here in agreement with George Hunsinger’s thesis that Barth’s Christology was “basically Chalcedonian.” While he does footnote Bruce McCormack’s essay, “Karl Barth’s Historicized Christology: Just how ‘Chalcedonian’ is it?” See Bruce McCormack, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 201-35. He does not spend much time interacting with its central claim that CD II/2 saw Barth discard the Greek metaphysical categories of “person,” “nature” in favor of his actualism and its decidedly anti-metaphysical bent (McCormack, Orthodox and Modern, 201-202). Tseng’s detailed critique of McCormack’s proposal appears in chapter 8. ^[14] Though by CD II/1 Barth’s doctrine of sin undergoes a significant revision and is understood as the “paradox of sin” (Tseng, 248). ^[15] The shape of the Incarnation, or the way in which if fulfills the “concept of God” is humility (Tseng, 250). And just as God is fulfilled through the humiliation of Christ, so the very “concept of man” (CD IV/1, 419; Tseng, 248) is contradicted by the pride of sin. There is an absurdity to the “human act of sin” (Tseng, 250). And so we know human pride only in light of Christ’s humility, this is how Barth conceives of the epistemic ground of our knowledge of sin. If Christ negates sin through His humble suffering, it was man’s pride (sin) which made the cross necessary in the first place. ^[16] Briefly, “traditionalist” and “revisionist” are terms coined by George Hunsinger to denote the two main approaches to Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity and election. This distinction has precedence primarily in T.F. Torrance’s differentiation of “evangelical” and “rationalistic” Calvinism with the “traditionalists” falling under the “evangelical calvinist” and the “revisionists” lumped in with the “rationalistic Calvinists.” For Hunsinger, the “traditionalist” approach is more faithful to the “actual textual Barth” while the “revisionist” relies upon deductive reasoning to arrive at conclusions alien to Barth’s dogmatic intent. For a critical review of Hunsinger’s proposal see Matthias Gockel, How to Read Karl Barth with Charity: A Critical Reply to George Hunsinger (Modern Theology 32:2 April 2016, 259–67). ^[17] Whether or not Barth did, in CD IV/1, historicize (or actualize) the category of “nature” is up for debate. But briefly consider the perspective of one of Tseng’s conversation partners, “The ‘essence’ of God therefore is not something that can be spoken of rightly without reference to the divine humiliation which takes place in the history of Jesus Christ. And the “essence” of the human is not something that can be spoken of rightly without reference to the exaltation that takes place in the history of Jesus Christ….God is what God does-and humanity is what Jesus does….And it can be this [the exaltation of humanity in the exaltation of Christ] because what it means to be human has been decided in eternity by means of our election in Jesus Christ [emphasis mine]. We are ‘chosen in Him’ – this is a statement pregnant with ontological significance” (McCormack, Orthodox and Modern, 239-40). ^[18] To borrow a term of recent vintage.

History of Knox Liturgy[1]

By Bard Thompson[2]

Edited by Glen Clary

Upon the death of Edward VI in 1553, Mary Tudor brought back the Roman religion to England; and a number of influential Protestants found it expedient to flee the realm. Two hundred of those exiles took refuge in the German city of Frankfort-on-the-Main in June of 1554. They were a divided company. Some were “prayer book men” or “Anglicans”, who, while thoroughly evangelical in their sympathies, were deeply attached to the English Prayer Book of 1552. If a further revision of worship had to be made, they wanted it to be along Anglican lines, and no mere translation of Calvin. Opposed to them were the “Calvinists”, who were intent upon following the Reformer of Geneva in worship as in doctrine. John Knox was called to minister unto this divided congregation in September, 1554; but only “at the commandment of Mr. Calvin” did he venture to accept that difficult assignment. Although he had spoken favorably of the English Prayer Book aforetimes, Knox was now convinced that it contained many “things superstitious, impure, unclean and unperfect.”[3] At first the Frankfort congregation used an “interim” service which was Calvinistic. Soon the proposal was made that William Huycke’s English translation of Calvin’s Genevan liturgy should be introduced for permanent use, since it was “moste godly and fardeste off from superstition.”[4] When that suggestion did not meet with swift approval, still another was proposed: that both the English Prayer Book and the Genevan order should be set aside, and an entirely new liturgy devised. Thus, in January of 1555, Knox and four associates—all of whom were of the “Calvinist” persuasion—commenced to work, using Huycke’s translation and, we may be sure, the sober Genevan edition of Calvin’s own liturgy. Out of the labors of these men came the first version of the service being used in this celebration. But inasmuch as it savored of Geneva and therefore displeased the “Anglicans”, the manuscript was not well received; indeed it was left quite unused. The troubles at Frankfort grew daily more vexing. Finally, Knox and Whittingham (“Calvinists”) and Parry and Lever (“Anglicans”) succeeded in bringing out a “Liturgy of Compromise” which was modeled after the English Prayer Book and accepted by the whole congregation in February of 1555. Peace endured for a short season. But in March a fresh contingent of Anglicans arrived from England; and in no time they accomplished the downfall of John Knox. Knox repaired to Geneva. In October, he was joined there by certain of his collaborators from Frankfort. That little group, augmented by some twenty of their countrymen already in the city, proceeded to organize an English congregation at the Church of Marie la Nove. They drew their liturgy almost entirely from the unused manuscript which the committee of “Calvinists” had prepared at Frankfort, adding a collection of fifty metrical psalms and a translation of Calvin’s catechism. On February 10, 1556, The Forme of Prayers appeared from John Crespin’s press.[5] The English congregation at Geneva, which was the inspiration of the Scottish reform after 1560, existed four years, enrolled 180 souls, and provided Knox the happiest days of his ministry. But Mary Tudor succumbed, and as early as 1559 the exiles at Geneva began to return to Elizabethan England; they carried along their liturgy which was soon taken up by Englishmen of “puritan” leanings. Knox alone was unwelcome there, on account of his ill-timed tract, First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, which was aimed, of course, against Catholic Mary, but landed instead upon Elizabeth.[6] So he returned to Scotland, full of zeal to reform the Kirk according to the measure of Geneva, which he pronounced “the maist perfyt schoole of Chryst that ever was in the erth since the dayis of the Apostillis.”[7] Among his first accomplishments was the introduction of Genevan worship in place of the English Prayer Book, which the Protestants of Scotland had been accustomed to use. Thus, The Forme of Prayers (or The Book of Common Order, as it came to be called) was required for the administration of the sacraments in 1562, and for all other liturgical purposes in 1564. It served the Scottish Kirk for some eighty years, till the appearance of the Westminster Directory in 1645. The spirit of the liturgy was wholly Reformed. The Scottish minister enjoyed a large measure of freedom, that “as Gods holy spirite moveth his harte,” he might now and then frame his own prayers. Nevertheless he was expected to honor the liturgy, which belonged, after all, to the whole people and was specifically called the “common order”. Schools were founded for literacy, that the Bible might be opened to everyman and the liturgy enjoyed by all. Moreover, every means was taken to make worship itself a corporate action. The vernacular was used and loudly spoken, so that everyone could participate by the direct medium of speech. And inasmuch as the people were no longer dependent upon the ceremonial to follow the service, only the simplest and most useful forms were retained. Even those symbols which had been hallowed by time and usage were cast out of the churches if they were apt to mislead the people. It was wrong to preach one thing and symbolize another; it was right to say plainly what one meant. The ministers diminished the distinction between clergy and laity by discarding the priestly vestments and wearing none but the preaching habit. The Scriptures were also translated; and every church was admonished to “have a Bibill in Inglische,” which was expounded daily in the large towns, that even those who did not read could benefit.[8] Psalms were cast into metrical forms and set to common tunes in order to give the people themselves a voice in worship. A complete Scottish Psalter appeared in The Book of Common Order of 1564. Calvin conducted the Sunday service from the Communion table, entering the pulpit only to preach the sermon. He followed that procedure because of his staunch belief that the proclamation of God’s Word ought normally to be followed by the administration of the Lord’s Supper.[9] In Scotland, however, the Sunday service seems to have been read from the pulpit, perhaps for acoustical reasons. Nevertheless, the pulpit and “the holy table”—together—were the most prominent furnishings in the Scottish churches.[10] What did they mean? They were the instruments of the gracious heavenly Father who speaks and gives to His people, and invites them, before all else, to hear His Word of judgment and reconciliation, and to receive His gifts of forgiveness and sonship. In that, chiefly, lies the meaning of worship according to the Reformed tradition. That principle also governed the manner in which the minister used the Scriptures in preaching. Knox doubted that anything was less appropriate of a Christian minister than he presume to control God’s way among men by parceling out the Scriptures in bits and snatches, or by preaching a sermon in which God’s own Word was buried beneath a heap of human commentary. He insisted therefore that, in preaching, the Scriptures should be expounded book by book, chapter by chapter, in a continuous and orderly fashion. And all of this, in turn, rested finally upon Knox’s conception of preaching, which was rather unlike the one to which we have become accustomed. The sermon was not the preacher’s prerogative, to be used by him alone for winning souls or for promoting right-living through the oncoming week. It was most of all the Word of God, made real, alive and effective in the hearts of men through the presence and action of the Holy Spirit. It is this Word which awakens our faith. And when we give expression to our faith, true worship occurs. When we hear the message of God’s judgment and mercy, we are convicted on our sins and desire to make confession of the same. When, through the same Word, the forgiveness of God becomes real to us, we cannot but express our praise and thanks. And when the Word draws us into relationship with all sorts and conditions of men, we are bound to make prayers for our brethren in need. It is this continuous relationship between hearing and response which gives the Reformed liturgy its basic character. A rubric (direction) in Knox’s Genevan liturgy called for a monthly celebration of the Holy Communion. Although that rubric remained unchanged in the Scottish editions of the liturgy, it was soon overcome by the first Book of Discipline (1560) which declared that “four tymes in the year” was “sufficient” for the Lord’s Supper. And since care was to be taken to avoid “the superstition of tymes” (that is, the church year), the first Sundays in March, June, September and December were arbitrarily appointed.[11] This drift away from the teaching of Calvin, who heartily desired a weekly Communion, was caused by the shortage of ministers in Scotland and by the popular reluctance to receive the sacrament so often. At least it did not derive from a so-called “memorial” view of the Lord’s Supper. “We utterly damn,” stated the first Scots Confession, “the vanity of those who affirm the sacraments to be nothing else but naked and bare signs.”[12] The liturgy itself expressed rather clearly the Scottish view of Holy Communion: “We spiritually eate the fleshe of Christ, and drinke his bloude; then we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us; we are one with Christ, and Christ with us.” The first part of the Communion Exhortation was not taken from Calvin, but from Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, who prepared it for the English Prayer Book. Nevertheless, the distinctive features of Calvin’s practice prevailed even in this section of The Forme of Prayers. According to the warning of St. Paul, all who worshiped were exhorted to examine themselves before they presumed to approach the Lord’s table, and the unworthy were told to refrain entirely. The liturgy was built upon the promise that a true Christian congregation would be a disciplined congregation which lived in obedience to the will of God. Accordingly, the Holy Communion was reserved for those who were distinguished by sincerity of faith and holiness of life. The unfaithful, who were strangers to Christ, and the callous sinners, whose conduct made it plain that they did not belong to Him either, had no place at His Communion; they were to be excommunicated, “fenced from the table,” lest the sacrament be soiled and they be guilty of the Lord’s body and blood. The critical issue of the Christian life was precisely one’s fitness to receive the sacrament. Knox administered the Communion after a fashion which he deemed to be consonant with the New Testament. The table was never prepared before worship, apart from the Word, which (as Calvin said) “ought to resound in our ears as soon as the elements meet our eyes.”[13] Therefore the bread and wine were not brought to the table until the sermon had been preached and it came time for the Words of Institution to be read; for by these means the commands and promises, which our Lord made concerning His Supper, could be added to the elements, giving them, their proper meaning and their reality. It was the practice in some parts of Scotland to lock the church doors after the sermon, so that none might receive the sacrament apart from the Word. That custom underscores the point that we the people, rather than the elements, are thereby “consecrated”. The Word is not addressed to the bread and wine, as if to change them; it is addressed to us, that (as Knox put it) “Christe might witnes unto owr faithe … with His owne mowthe,” promising us the Communion of His body and blood.[14] The communicants came forward and sat down around the table, which was ample in size and usually arranged in a U or T shape in the chancel or on the floor of the nave. First the minister broke the bread—a symbolic action, called the Fraction, which the Scots deemed to be a quite distinct feature of the Lord’s Supper. Then he passed the bread and wine to the communicants on either side of him, and they in turn “divided” the elements among themselves. Thus, the holy table was appointed for the whole family of God. By sitting down together and by serving the elements to one another, the people were able to realize their fellowship and mutual priesthood in the Body of Christ. Pew Communion was the way of the English Nonconformists; and the Scots did not hesitate to brand it a “mangling of the sacrament”—until, alas, a Glasgow divine introduced it to the Scottish Kirk in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.[15]

[1] Editor: This short treatise on the liturgy of John Knox was published at the fourth centenary of the Church of Scotland celebrated at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee on October 27, 1960. For a detailed treatment of Knox’s liturgy, see Bard Thompson, Liturgies of the Western Church (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1980), pp. 285–307. [2] Editor: Bard Thompson received his Ph.D. in church history from Columbia University in 1953 and was ordained as a minister in the Evangelical Reformed Church, which later merged with the Congregational Christian Churches forming the United Church of Christ. At the time this article was written, Thompson was Professor of Church History at Vanderbilt University. He was also preparing a book on Reformed worship, which he published under the title Liturgies of the Western Church (1961). In 1965, he joined Drew University as professor of church history and served as dean of the graduate school from 1969–1986. Bard Thompson passed away in 1987 at 62 years of age. [3] For the source of this quote, see The Works of John Knox, 41. [4] See The Works of John Knox, 20. [5] See http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/GBO_ch04.htm [6] See http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/firblast.htm [7] See See British Reformers: Writings of John Knox, 454. [8] See British Reformers: Writings of John Knox, 454. [9] Editor: As far as I know, Calvin never states that this is the reason he led the service from the communion table. [10] Editor: Since the Scottish Presbyterians practiced table communion—in which the members of the church actually sat at a table to receive the elements—they did not ordinary have communion tables set up in the worship assembly except for those Sundays when they were observing communion. [11] See http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/bod_ch03.htm#SEC09 [12] See http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/ScotConf.htm#CH21 [13] Editor: I have not been able to find the source of this quote. Thompson also cites it here and in Liturgies of the Western Church (p. 192), but he does not provide the source. [14] See http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/GBO_ch04.htm#SEC11 [15] Editor: Thompson is referring to Thomas Chalmers. On the history of table communion versus pew communion, see Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield’s article “The Posture of the Recipients at the Lord’s Supper: A Footnote to the History of Reformed Usages” in Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society (1901-1930) Vol. 11, No. 6 (June, 1922), pp. 217–34.

With the conspicuous absence of Rob, from the Rob and Bob famed duo, Bob was relegated to offering up an old sermon for this episode of Theology Simply Profound. The sermon is on Matthew 17:1-8, entitled Immanuel and the Transfiguration. Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! from Rob and Bob. Join us for a casual conversation about “all things” Christmas. Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Also, check out the work of the OPC in Chicagoland at Chicago Reformed. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

In Episode 40 we discuss whether or not Christianity had a beginning. Your hosts, Rob and Bob, discuss Christianity and the those who think it had a beginning, had a start, and that Jesus did not exist. How will we handle certain questions about where Christianity came from and how we know this? We also consider a variety of different biblical figures within the context of wondering how these ancient people knew about God and to what extent they knew God. Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, Abraham, and what about Job and his friends? How did they know God so well and yet miss the point so much? We will discuss these and other questions today on Theology Simply Profound. Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

In Episode 39 we discuss Righteous Lot, the nephew of Abraham. Your hosts, Rob and Bob, consider another portion of Genesis. This one dealing with the biblical character of Lot. Is Lot meant to be used as an example of how not to live your life He lived in the wrong place, he didn’t raise his children right, and his wife leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. But, listening ears want to know, was Lot really such a bad guy? How many people today live like Lot? Can Lot in some way be used as an example to inspire us? We will discuss these and other questions today on Theology Simply Profound. Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Music credit: pamelayork.com. “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

Episode 38 deals with Jesus’ teachings to his disciples in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 commonly called the Olivet Discourse. Your hosts, Rob and Bob, following up on their series considering Dispensationalism and jump right into a familiar, but often times misunderstood portion of God’s word. Why is this passage so important to Dispensationalists? Why is their approach to it inadequate? What is Jesus talking about? Why is the Temple so central to Jesus teaching here? And why would the disciples be concerned about the Temple? Why would the destruction of the Temple be so devastating to the disciples? When would these things take place and how does this affect Christians today? How do Reformed folk understand this passage as a whole? We will discuss these and other questions today on Theology Simply Profound. Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

Reformed Forum has been blessed with many opportunities to serve Christ’s church. Since 2008, we have been producing and distributing Reformed theological content freely (both free and libre!) online. Over the years, we have developed tools and processes for making it easier to reach people with our resources in addition to the wealth of resources in the Reformed tradition. We have many more ideas and a bold vision for the future. At times, I am overwhelmed by the opportunities. And that is where you come in. We need help. We need people to join our team, offering expertise and encouragement. And so, as a way of gathering our technically-minded people together, we’ve created Reformed.tech. We’re in the early stages of cultivating this community. The possibilities are exciting, and we’d like you to connect with us to help shape our future. If you’d like to contact us privately, use the contact form. If an idea strikes your interest, comment on a blog post. Take a look at our projects on Github. One of our members just created a new repository this week! If you have a heart for the Church and a commitment to the Reformed tradition, we’d love for you to join us. [gdlr_button href=”http://reformed.tech/” target=”_self” size=”medium” background=”#990000″ color=”#ffffff”]Learn More[/gdlr_button]

In episode 30, your hosts Rob and Bob, along with Melodie McKenzie, discuss the Mosaic Covenant. Who is Moses? What was his relationship to God and his people? How did God use him?Why Moses? Or better, why the Law as the Mosaic Covenant? Why is he so important in the Bible, both in the Old and New Testament? How does the Mosaic Covenant function in God’s plan for his people? We’ll discuss these and other related questions in this episode of Theology Simply Profound. Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

In conjunction with their 50th anniversary celebration, Reformed Theological Seminary have released a new journal, titled Reformed Faith & Practice. Our friend, Mike Kruger, posted about the new release this morning. John Muether is the general editor of the new publication, and the inaugural issue includes contributions from Michael Allen, Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., Sean Michael Lucas, Gregory R. Lanier, Timothy J. Keller, Roger R. Nicole, and J. Todd Billings. And it’s free, as in beer.

In episode 28, your hosts Rob and Bob, along with special guest Melodie McKenzie, discuss the Abrahamic Covenant. Who is Abram? Or is it Abraham? Why is he so important in the Bible, both in the Old and New Testament? Why did God choose Abraham? What is the Abrahamic Covenant? And what is Genesis 15 all about? What’s a self-maledictory oath? And just what is the Christian Hokey-Pokey? You find out on this episode with a special song by Rob and Melodie! (wait for it…around the 40:20 mark) We’ll discuss these and other related questions in this episode of Theology Simply Profound. Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music  

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

In episode 23, your hosts Rob McKenzie, Bob Tarullo, and special guest host, Melodie McKenzie, discuss the account of the Tower of Babel described in Genesis 11. Along with questions like, “What is the Tower of Babel?” “Where was the Tower of Babel?” and “What does the Tower of Babel mean?” We’ll discuss these and other related (and sometimes unrelated) topics in this episode of Theology Simply Profound. Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.

Participants: Melodie McKenzie, Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo

In episode 21, your hosts Rob McKenzie and Bob Tarullo, with special guest, Melodie McKenzie, discuss reading biographies. What are the benefits of reading biographies? Which biographies would be helpful to read? What about Christian biographies? And, is reading a hobby? We’ll discuss these and other related topics in this episode of Theology Simply Profound. Theology Simply Profound is a podcast of Westminster Presbyterian Church, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, serving the western suburbs of Chicago, where God powerfully speaks through his means of grace. Music credit: pamelayork.com. Thank you, Pamela York, for the use of your beautiful jazzy rendition of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” We encourage our listeners to check out her website and consider purchasing some of her music.  

Participants: Melodie McKenzie, Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo