In this engaging episode, we explore the intricate and profound world of Trinitarian theology with theologian Adonis Vidu. Join us as we explore the key themes and arguments from his latest book, The Same God Who Works All Things: Inseparable Operations in Trinitarian Theology (Eerdmans). Vidu passionately defends the doctrine of inseparable operations, which asserts that all actions of the Trinity are unified and indivisible. Through this doctrine, we gain a deeper understanding of the unity and distinct roles of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Throughout our conversation, Vidu traces the development, challenges, and implications of inseparable operations from biblical foundations and patristic contributions to contemporary theological debates. We address various objections, particularly concerning the incarnation and atonement, and demonstrate how this doctrine can coherently explain complex theological concepts while preserving the unity and distinction within the Trinity.

Adonis Vidu serves as Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where his research and teaching focus on the intersections of historical and contemporary theological thought. Vidu holds a Ph.D. in Theology and Religious Studies from King’s College London, and he has authored several influential works, including Atonement, Law, and Justice: The Cross in Historical and Cultural Contexts and the subject of this conversation, The Same God Who Works All Things: Inseparable Operations in Trinitarian Theology.

Watch or listen to gain invaluable insights from one of today’s leading theological minds as we explore the profound depths of Trinitarian theology and its relevance for contemporary Christian life and thought. Whether you’re a seasoned theologian or simply curious about the intricacies of faith, this episode promises to be both enlightening and thought-provoking.

Chapters

• 00:00:07 Introduction
• 00:03:55 Introducing Inseparable Operations
• 00:08:40 Theological Grammar
• 00:14:10 Biblical Teaching on Inseparable Operations
• 00:18:41 The Patristic Tradition
• 00:22:19 The Rise and Decline of the Doctrine in History
• 00:32:49 Augustine and Aquinas
• 00:39:14 The Incarnation of the Son
• 00:43:14 The Person of the Son
• 00:50:46 The Atonement
• 00:56:41 The Holy Spirit
• 01:03:23 Our Experience of God in the Christian Life
• 01:12:23 Eastern Orthodoxy and Mysticism
• 01:18:00 Conclusion

Participants: Adonis Vidu, Camden Bucey

We welcome Dr. Lane Tipton back to the studio on the heels of teaching a new course on the theology of Thomas Aquinas. In this course, Dr. Tipton aims to provide an in-depth understanding of Thomas Aquinas’s trinitarian theology, emphasizing that his entire body of work is governed by the concept of exitus (departure) and reditus (return) in the context of divine and human processions. 

In the course, Dr. Tipton analyzes primary texts such as the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles, as well as works by notable Thomistic scholars such as Gilles Emery and Dominic Legge as he dives into the trinitarian structure of Aquinas’s theology, focusing on the eternal and temporal processions of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and their implications on topics like Christology and sacramentology. This trinitarian framework forms the backbone of Aquinas’s theological system, affecting every doctrinal topic it touches, from the nature of God to the ultimate end of human beings. Tipton contends that understanding Aquinas’s Trinitarian framework is key to grasping his theological system as a whole. The course aims not only to provide a nuanced understanding of Aquinas’s theology but also to offer a Reformed critique and alternative.

The Exitus-Reditus Structure

The exitus-reditus structure serves as the central framework for understanding the theology of Thomas Aquinas. In this structure, “exitus” refers to the process of departure or emanation, while “reditus” signifies return. This dyad is a governing principle not only in Aquinas’s understanding of the Trinity but also in his complete theological system.

In terms of the Trinity, the Son and the Holy Spirit emanate from the Father in “exitus,” and then return to the Father in “reditus.” This trinitarian procession is considered the foundational cause for the existence and return of all creatures. The divine persons’ internal processions serve as the model and cause for the external processions of rational creatures.

In relation to rational creatures, “exitus” refers to their creation and departure from God. God is seen as the efficient cause from whom all things emanate. “Reditus,” on the other hand, signifies the creatures’ return to God, drawn towards their ultimate end—participation in divine beatitude or happiness. This return can be understood at two levels: natural and supernatural. On the natural level, creatures return to God according to their inherent abilities. On the supernatural level, they are elevated through grace to participate in the divine essence itself, surpassing their natural capacities.

The exitus-reditus structure thus provides a coherent, systematic framework that integrates every aspect of Aquinas’s theology, from the doctrine of God to the doctrines of creation, grace, and eschatology.

Chapters

• 00:00:07 Introduction
• 00:01:40 General Thoughts about the Course
• 00:08:01 The Primacy of the Father in Thomas
• 00:14:57 Calvin on the Son at Autotheos
• 00:24:44 Modes of Subsistence and Absolute Personality
• 00:32:37 Rock, Paper, Scissors, and Absolute Personality
• 00:40:35 The Eucharist and the Beatific Vision
• 00:47:29 Contemporary Evangelical Retrievals of Thomas
• 01:02:08 Interpreters of Thomas
• 01:03:48 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Lane G. Tipton

Carlton Wynne and I were able to join Lane Tipton for a livestream as he fielded questions about his book, The Trinitarian Theology of Cornelius Van Til.

Westminster Confession 7.1 enshrines some of the most beautiful covenant theology in the history of the church. And that text teaches that God made Adam in a natural religious relation to himself, but Adam could not have God as his blessedness and reward on the basis of that natural relation alone. Why?

To expand, Adam owed God everything, and God owed Adam nothing in terms of that natural relation. The creature can lay no claim on the sovereign self-contained Creator. But God, by a special act of providence that is temporally simultaneous to that work of special creation, condescended in a covenant and promised Adam advancement of estate for perfect and personal obedience, and the fruition of his obedience—the substance of his inheritance—would be God himself.

The beauty of the Confession of Faith is that Adam’s inheritance is nothing creaturely, but it instead is God himself. This lays the groundwork for what the Psalmist says in Psalm 73:25, “Whom do I have in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire in heaven besides you” and Paul’s language in Romans 8:17, that in Christ, we are heirs of God— inheritors of the living and true, self-contained, triune God in union with Christ.

All of that is entailed by this wonderful presentation of Westminster Confession 7.1—that says, by a special providential act of covenantal condescension, temporally synchronous with Adam’s special creation, God offered himself to Adam as Adam’s fruition, blessedness, and reward, and by extension, to his natural posterity. In Jesus Christ, the second and last Adam, the church inherits this God as joint heirs of Christ, Romans 8:17.

Adapted from a transcription of the video.

Carlton Wynne, Lane Tipton, and Camden Bucey turn to pp. 48–54 of Cornelius Van Til’s The Defense of the Faith to discuss the Christian theory of knowledge. In this section, Van Til speaks of the relationship between a theory of reality and the theory of knowledge and how for orthodox Christians, the absolute God of Scripture is identical with his knowledge while finite creatures are fundamentally dependent upon him.

We also announce the arrival of Lane Tipton’s book, The Trinitarian Theology of Cornelius Van Til.

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Introduction
• 00:02:16 New Book: The Trinitarian Theology of Cornelius Van Til
• 00:12:28 Reviewing Chapters 1–2 of the Book
• 00:23:38 A Christian Theory of Being
• 00:35:30 The Bible and Christian Experience
• 00:37:50 Ontology and Epistemology from the Garden of Eden
• 00:42:59 Epistemological Authority
• 00:48:35 Satan’s Tactic in Temptation
• 00:55:16 God’s Knowledge and Being are Coterminous
• 01:00:52 Pantheism
• 01:06:04 Consequences of Saying that God’s Knowledge Changes
• 01:15:44 Biblical Examples of God’s Knowledge in Relation to Creation
• 01:21:00 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carlton Wynne, Lane G. Tipton

In the third volume of this new translation of Petrus Van Mastricht’s Theoretical-Practical Theology,

Mastricht begins with a discussion of the decrees of God and how they establish His eternal purpose for everything. He then shows how the decrees are carried out in creation and in God’s continual providence. The volume concludes with Mastricht’s treatment of the apostacy of Adam from his original estate and the devastating effects of sin that followed. This is an important volume for learning how God governs all things, even the rebellious actions of those good things He created.

Jeff Waddington, Dan Ragusa, and Camden Bucey speak about several of the unique positions Van Mastricht held, including his somewhat mediating view between infra- and supralapsarianism, his argument against Copernicanism, his view of the third heaven, and his view of angelic and demonic activity.

Chapters

• 0:00:00 Introduction
• 0:04:35 Van Mastricht’s Theoretical-Practical
• 0:17:14 Infra- and Supralapsarianism
• 0:26:45 Copernicanism
• 0:36:31 The Third Heaven
• 0:42:59 The Covenant of Nature
• 0:54:44 Right Reason
• 1:00:40 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Dan Ragusa, Jeff Waddington

Mutualism or correlativism are virtual synonyms. Cornelius Van Til, a prominent twentieth-century Reformed theologian, apologist, Orthodox Presbyterian, and founding member of Westminster Theological Seminary, taught that God and the creature at no point share in a common mode of development or becoming. He said that there is no point of correlativity—of mutual sharing and being or knowledge between the Creator and the creature. Even in the relation God remains unchanged and self-contained, and the creature remains the creature, dependent and derived. There is no correlativism or “mutualism,” is a more contemporary synonym.

To affirm mutualism is to say that in the Creator-creature relation, God and man are submerged in a common process of mutual development through time. “Correlativism” is Van Til’s older way of putting it while “mutualism” is a newer way of putting it. You could even add a third category of “personalism” in which some unorthodox theologians locate change in the Trinitarian persons. In other words, the persons would have un-actualized potential and change in their relation to creation.

Those views—whether relativism, mutualism, personalism, or any other view similar—erode and deny the integrity of the Creator-creature distinction by making God and man participants in a common thing. It’s a third thing that is neither fully God or fully man but something contingent like time, change, process, or history. Orthodox, biblical, creedal, and confessional theology is anti-correlativist, anti-mutualist, and anti-personalist, because it maintains the immutability of God in his freely determined relation to the mutable creature.

In biblical teaching summarized by Reformed theology, the creator-creature distinction brings into view the absolute ontological difference between the Triune God and the creature. The Triune God is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.

And the creature that comes into existence by an act of God’s sovereign will is not eternal, but temporal, not infinite, but finite, not immutable, but mutable. And the distinction between the two remains in the Creator-creature relation. While God is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable apart from His relation to the creature, He remains such in relation to the creature.

If you narrow it down to the doctrine of Adam’s special creation as the image of God, the Creator-creature distinction is summarized so beautifully Westminster Confession 7.1. Though God is infinitely transcendent over the creature, He nonetheless condescended to the image-bearing creature and offered Himself to the creature as the creature’s blessedness and reward. Adam’s reward in relation to God under covenant was God himself. God is his blessedness and reward.

The creator-creature distinction and relation drives you to remember that the final, eternal and unchangeable Triune God is not only the transcendent sovereign over the creature but the one who in creation and in the voluntary condescension of covenant offered Himself to Adam for His blessedness and reward. And after the fall, he comes to be the blessedness and reward of every creature who is redeemed by Jesus Christ as the Last Adam. So that in union with Jesus Christ as the Last Adam the Triune God is the blessedness and reward of the church.

Lane Tipton delivers a plenary address from the annual Reformed Forum Theology Conference, which was hosted October 8–9 at Providence OPC in Pflugerville, Texas. Dr. Tipton’s address is titled, “Perichoresis, Endoxation, and the Glory-Spirit: Foundations for Image-Endowment and Covenant Theology in the Work of Meredith G. Kline“

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Introduction
• 00:02:36 Perichoresis, Endoxation, and the Glory-Spirit
• 00:18:22 Endoxation and Incarnation
• 00:32:50 Endoxation as the Initial Creational Replication of Trinitarian Perichoresis
• 00:46:42 The Glory-Spirit and the Image of God
• 01:01:21 Special Revelation and Covenantal Advancement
• 01:09:16 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Lane G. Tipton

Carlton Wynne, Lane Tipton, and Camden Bucey open Cornelius Van Til’s book, The Defense of the Faith to pages 40–43, in which Van Til describes the Christian philosophy of reality. While to some degree it is necessary to use categories of God, man, and universe common to unbelievers in order to engage them apologetically and to evangelize, Christians must clearly set forth the distinctly Christian philosophy of reality. Van Til commences that work in chapter two and promptly addresses eternal unity and plurality with regard to the problem of the one and many.

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Introduction
• 00:03:39 The Christian Philosophy of Reality
• 00:09:36 The Infection and Rejection Theses
• 00:14:49 The Belief that God Is Identical with Reality
• 00:28:25 The Reality of God as Self-Sufficient
• 00:31:42 Applying the Philosophy
• 00:34:01 The Problem of the One and the Many
• 00:40:19 Practical Considerations of Particularity
• 00:45:15 The Self-Contained God and the One and Many Problem
• 00:52:32 Equal Ultimacy Precludes an Abstract Essence
• 00:59:41 Bavinck on Diversity and Unity
• 01:02:20 Perichoresis
• 01:05:50 Conclusion

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carlton Wynne, Lane G. Tipton

Ryan Noha poses several questions submitted by our listeners and views. Along with Jeff Waddington and Camden Bucey, the panel discusses Thomas and Van Til on the doctrine of God, how the eternal decree relates to the well-meant offer of eschatological life in the covenant of works, aspects of our union with Christ, and several matters of eschatology.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington, Ryan Noha

We turn to pages 255–256 of Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments to consider the ways in which the Old Testament prophets use anthropomorphism to describe God. The “emotional” or “affectional” dispositions of Jehovah’s nature is the next set of attributes. He says, as a guiding principle, “we are here in a sphere full of anthropomorphism” and says that “an anthropomorphism” is never without an “inner core of important truth” that “must be translated into more theological language” where we can “enrich our knowledge of God” (255).

Vos makes an absolutely critical observation here that needs sustained attention to the theological issues he raises here. They are as important in our day as in Vos’ if not more so. Anthropomorphic language ascribes the qualities of the creature to God’s acts in time. But such language is never intended by Reformed theologians to be taken in a univocal way, as though God literally possesses creaturely qualities.

1. God’s acts in time do not require him to be temporal.
2. God acts in the contingent historical order of creation do not require him to be contingent and historical.
3. God’s acts in relation to mutable and passible creatures do not require that he be mutable and passible like the creature.
4. There is no point of univocity between the Creator and the creature—no mutual sharing in mutability and temporality.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Lane G. Tipton

Jim Cassidy reviews Scott Swain, The Trinity: An Introduction (Crossway)

From the Publisher

The Trinity is one of the most essential doctrines of the Christian faith.

The eternal God existing as three distinct persons—Father, Son, and Spirit—can be difficult to comprehend. While Christians often struggle to find the right words to describe this union, the Bible gives clarity concerning the triune God’s being and activity in nature (creation), grace (redemption), and glory (reward). In this concise volume, theologian Scott Swain examines the doctrine of the Trinity, presenting its biblical foundations, systematic-theological structure, and practical relevance for the church today.

Scott R. Swain (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) serves as president and James Woodrow Hassell Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. He is the author or editor of several books, including The God of the Gospel and Retrieving Eternal Generation. Scott and his wife, Leigh, reside in Orlando, Florida, with their four children. Swain is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy

Jim Cassidy reviews Gerald Bray, The Attributes of God: An Introduction (Crossway)

From the Publisher

How can we (created beings) know God (the Creator)?

Throughout history, the church has recognized the importance of studying and understanding God’s attributes. As the Creator of all things, God is unique and cannot be compared to any of his creatures, so to know him, believers turn to the pages of Scripture. In The Attributes of God, renowned theologian Gerald Bray leads us on an exploration of God’s being, his essential attributes, his relational attributes, and the relevance of his attributes to our thinking, lives, and worship. As we better understand God’s attributes, we will learn to delight in who God is and how he has made himself known to us in Scripture.

Gerald Bray (DLitt, University of Paris-Sorbonne) is research professor at Beeson Divinity School and director of research for the Latimer Trust. He is a prolific writer and has authored or edited numerous books, including The Doctrine of God; Biblical Interpretation; God Is Love; and God Has Spoken.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy

The following books are on our radar for April 8, 2021.

• Barrett, Matthew. Simply Trinity: The Unmanipulated Father, Son, and Spirit (Baker, March 2021). 368 pages. $24.99. Paperback. 
• Van Dam, Cornelis. In the Beginning: Listening to Genesis 1 and 2 (Reformation Heritage Books, March 2021) 384 pages. $30.00. Hardcover.
• Gribben, Crawford. Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (Oxford University Press, March 2021). 224 pages. $29.95. Hardcover. 
• Kuhn, Chase R. and Grimmond, Paul. Theology is for Preaching: Biblical Foundations, Method and Practice (Lexham, March 2021). From the Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology series. 416 pages. $29.99. Paperback.
• Piper, John. Providence (Crossway, March 2021). 752 pages. $39.99. Hardcover. 
• Waltke, Bruce and Ivan D. De Silva. Proverbs: A Shorter Commentary (Eerdmans, March 2021). 500 pages. $38.00. Paperback. 

Participants: Camden Bucey, Ryan Noha

Lane Tipton discusses “Van Til’s Trinitarian Theology,” the latest on-demand video course released with Reformed Academy. Designed to equip the student to engage critically central issues in trinitarian theology, this course will focus on the architectonic significance of the Trinity both in Van Til’s theology and apologetics. Special attention will be given to Van Til’s historical and theological context, his theology of triune personhood, the structure and function of the representational principle, the distinctively trinitarian character of the transcendental method, and his rejection of all species of correlativism, ranging from Karl Barth to contemporary expressions of Evangelical mutualism.

Enroll for free at https://www.reformedforum.org/courses/van-tils-trinitarian-theology

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carlton Wynne, Lane G. Tipton

Lane Tipton, Carlton Wynne, and Camden Bucey discuss pages 25–29 of Cornelius Van Til’s book, The Defense of the Faith. In this section, Van Til details the doctrine of God that structures his apologetic thought. A Reformed apologetic seeks first to understand the nature of the God it seeks to set forth and defend. In Van Til’s estimate, we must ask “what kind” of a God we believe in before we can proceed in any meaningful way to set for the arguments for the existence and revelation of this God.

Links

• Lane Tipton lectures from Mid-America Reformed Seminary: “Van Til’s Trinitarian Theology: Reformed or Revisionist?“

Participants: Camden Bucey, Carlton Wynne, Lane G. Tipton

Editor, teacher, and translator, Ryan M. Hurd speaks about the theology of Gisbertus Voetius. Hurd has translated a significant disputation of Voetius’ published as “Gisbertus Voetius: God’s Single, Absolutely Simple Essence” in The Confessional Presbyterian Journal (Volume 15, 2019).

Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676) was a Dutch theologian born in Heusden, Netherlands, and educated at Leiden. He became a professor of theology at the University of Utrecht and wrote several significant works, including Politica ecclesiastica (3 volumes, published 1663–1676) and Selectae disputationes (theologicae) (5 volumes, published 1648–1669).

In his treatment, Voetius mediates between two of the major Medieval schools of thought—Thomistic and Scotistic. Hurd writes,

Yet the early modern period saw the rise of the Socinians and Vorstians, and this was to the dismay of all orthodox regardless of their communion. The emergence of this heterodox movement met with immediate response that would last until the eclipse of Reformed orthodoxy in the darkness of the modern age. In our own context today, we observe similarly that among the Reformed there are likewise those who uphold orthodoxy and affirm divine simplicity, and likewise those who have emerged and put themselves against it. As a historical testimony, Voetius’s disputation underlines several points to both sides.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington, Ryan Hurd

James Duguid speaks about the doctrine of divine simplicity and its roots in the Old Testament. While the pages of the Old Testament are not typically the first place one would go to build the case for this orthodox doctrine, Duguid demonstrates how the uniqueness of the biblical account establishes a foundation for understanding the Lord who reveals himself through it.

Duguid is the author of “Divine Simplicity, the Ancient Near East, and the Old Testament” in The Lord Is One: Reclaiming Divine Simplicity edited by Joseph Minisch and Onsi A. Kamel and published by The Davenant Press.

Participants: Camden Bucey, James Duguid, Jeff Waddington

James Dolezal discusses his book All That Is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism (Reformation Heritage Books, 2017). Dr. Dolezal serves as associate professor in the school of divinity at Cairn University in Langhorne, Pennsylvania.

In this conversation, and the book that guides it, Dolezal addresses the doctrines of classical theism as well as contemporary models of theology proper, which reject, compromise, or otherwise diminish the classical formulations. Interacting with primary sources from theologians such as Bruce Ware, John Frame, and K. Scott Oliphint, Dolezal charitably offers a critique while reaffirming that all that is in God is God.

Links

• James Dolezal, God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness
• Christ the Center, episode 185 — James Dolezal, God without Parts: The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity
• Christ the Center, episode 237 — James Dolezal, Divine Impassibility
• Christ the Center, episode 383 — Samuel Renihan, God without Passions
• Camden Bucey, “Addressing the Essential-Covenantal Model of Theology Proper“
• Camden Bucey, “Van Til and the Creator-Creature Relation“

Participants: Camden Bucey, James Dolezal, Lane G. Tipton

On February 7, 1951, Cornelius Van Til wrote an insightful letter to neo-evangelical theologian Carl F. H. Henry. While it was written sixty-nine years ago, the letter demonstrates Van Til’s awareness of contemporary issues in theology proper while also anticipating those in our present context. His criticism applies to doctrinal formulations arising within the Thomistic and Barthian traditions. Oddly enough, it also applies to formulations of theologians closely identified with his own legacy such as John Frame and K. Scott Oliphint, who qualify divine immutability and impassibility with respect to the Creator-creature relation in order to identify a principle of unity between the two.

The following excerpt is from Cornelius Van Til, letter to Carl F. H. Henry, February 7, 1951, archives of the Montgomery Library, Westminster Theological Seminary.

Modern philosophy, realizing that the staticism of the Greeks led into a blind alley has assumed that all reality is basically temporal (Realitat zeitigt sich). That is Kant’s great contribution. But the contrast between modern and ancient philosophy on this matter is not absolute. All non-Christian philosophy assumes that change or chance is ultimate. Not holding to the Creator-creature distinction all non-Christians are not only monists and staticists but also pluralists and temporalists. Chance has some spot in all non-Christian systems; it is given a larger place in modern than in ancient philosophy.

Accordingly, it is our business as Christians to begin our interpretation of reality upon the presupposition of the Creator-creature distinction as basic to everything else. We must refuse to say one single word about the nature of reality as a whole before we introduce the Creator-creature distinction. If with Aquinas we first start speaking about reality and say that it is analogical then we can never after that come to the Christian doctrine of God as Creator and controller of the world. We should argue that intelligent predication is impossible except one make the Creator-creature distinction basic to one’s thought. The fact that speculation is wholly self-frustrative on any but the Christian basis can be shown easily. On any non-Christian basis a man must either know everything so that he need not ask questions or he knows nothing so that he cannot ask questions (But I need not go into this).

Starting with the Creator-creature distinction as basic to one’s thought one need not and in fact cannot after that discuss such concepts as time and eternity by themselves. By themselves they are abstractions. True we can speak of them by themselves as we can speak of the justice of God by itself. But when we speak of the justice of God by itself we always insist that it is the justice of God, that it is an attribute of God. The justice of God is therefore interwoven with the other attributes of God and with the being of God. So also with eternity. It is the eternity of God. And God is man’s creator. And time is characteristic of the created world.

As then it is fatal to fail to introduce the Creator-creature distinction at the outset of one’s thought so it is also fatal to fail to think of eternity as exclusively a characteristic of God and of time as exclusively a characteristic of the created world. It would be to make God subject to the conditions of his creatures, subject to change, etc.

This is I think the only sound approach to the matter. But admittedly it is only an approach. We cannot ever conceptualize the relation between God’s eternity and man’s temporality for the reason that we cannot conceptualize the relation of God to his creature. The Greeks wanted to conceptualize the relation of god to man and they came to the conclusion that both are eternal. The modern man wants to conceptualize the relation between the two and comes to the conclusion that both are temporal. The Christian position stands squarely over against both by its starting point.

The Greek and the modern views both want to conceptualize the relation between God and man because they want a principle of unity that outreaches both. They think that on a Christian basis one is bound to dualism, authoritarianism, etc. As it turns out it is only on the frankly and most consistently Christian basis that ultimate dualism can be avoided. It cannot be avoided in the sense that man can ever expect to understand exhaustively but it can be avoided by presupposing God, who is not subject to the limits of man, as the positive presupposition of human predication.

It is therefore not so much a matter of detailed exegesis but of the consistent application of basically biblical concepts that is important in setting the Christian position over against both the ancient and the modern forms of paganism. The sad results of a failure to do so can best be seen in the latest works of Barth.

For historical context and biographical information, consult John R. Muether, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman (P&R Publishing, 2008), especially pp. 119–178. For my interaction with the thesis represented in K. Scott Oliphint, God with Us, read this post. For a helpful summary and treatment of what James Dolezal identifies as “theological mutualism,” I suggest reading his book, All That Is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism (Reformation Heritage Books, 2017). Readers would also benefit from a careful study of several Reformed dogmatics, especially Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:95–177 and Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:3–37, 177–182.

I recently watched The Two Popes, a film written by Anthony McCarten and directed by Fernando Meirelles available on Netflix. The movie recounts the relationship between Joseph Ratzinger and Jorge Bergoglio through the death of Pope John Paul II, Ratzinger’s election to become Pope Benedict XVI, and his subsequent resignation and the election of Bergoglio to become Pope Francis. Surely, the creators have taken a measure of creative license in portraying the dialogue between the two men, but it serves the film well as it should. Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins have each been nominated for Academy Awards, which would be reason enough for me to watch. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and found it moving and thought-provoking.

Prior to Benedict’s resignation, Cardinal Bergoglio had planned to retire. To do so, he wanted the approval of Benedict, who was more than a little reticent. Given many of Bergoglio’s simple lifestyle and public comments, Ratzinger felt Bergoglio’s retirement would be seen as a protest against Ratzinger and the conservative direction of the Catholic Church.

There is a powerful scene in which Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Bergoglio stroll through the garden of the Pope’s summer residence. They debate the status and direction of the church.

Ratzinger: “God does not change.”

Bergoglio: “Yes, he does. He moves toward us.”

Ratzinger: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. Where should we find him if he is always moving?”

Bergoglio: “On the journey?”

Ratzinger: “Oh. . . This is your ego talking. You think you know better.”

There is more here than merely a difference in personality or philosophy of life. These two figures express vastly different approaches to theology proper.

The “real” Bergoglio has perplexed many during his tenure as pope. Much of what he says and the way in which he operates is understandable if you have studied the theological threads in Vatican II and one of the most significant theologians coming out of the Council. Pope Francis, a Jesuit, espouses a similar theological construct to that of Karl Rahner.

Around the time of Vatican II (1962–1965), Ratzinger and Rahner were set apart as something akin to theological nemeses. Personally, I would love to see a Ratzinger and Rahner sequel. Netflix, hear me out Perhaps the most recognizable feature of Rahner’s theology is his Trinitarian axiom. The so-called “Rahner’s Rule” states, “the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity and vice versa” (Rahner, The Trinity [New York: Crossroad, 1997], 22). This is often misunderstood as modalism, but Rahner’s doctrine of the Trinity cannot be reduced to this. Rahner does not make the trinitarian persons change in relation to creation so much as he “eternalizes” them as modes of divine self-communication.

Son and Spirit are eternal, consubstantial persons of the Trinity. Yet, the Son as begotten and the Spirit as proceeding should be understood as self-communications of the “unoriginate” (think “unbegotten”) Father. Rahner leans heavily upon the Eastern tradition, which states that the Father communicates the divine essence to the Son and Spirit. Though falling with the ecumenical tradition, this is not Reformed [Update: see comments below]. Calvin, for example, affirmed that the Son is autotheos (God himself). He does not receive the divine essence from the Father. Rather, his begottenness refers specifically to his personality. What distinguishes the Son from the Father is not that the Son is derivatively divine, it is his incommunicable personal property of begottenness. The same could be said of the Holy Spirit, who is consubstantial and, according to the Western tradition, proceeds from both the Father and the Son.

How then do we understand these persons in their relation to one another and then their relation to the world? The fictional Bergoglio says God changes by “moving towards us,” and we come to find him “on the journey.” Where would a modern theologian locate such change without denouncing the ecumenical tradition?

Even while maintaining immutability in the essence of God, some theologians have recently sought to locate change in the divine persons. In such a formulation, God does not change according to his essence. Nevertheless, he changes personally (according to the divine hypostases as he relates to creation).

This view fails to grasp the doctrine of perichoresis (the mutual indwelling or co-inhabitation of the divine persons). What is the divine essence apart from the persons? And what are the persons without an essence? There is no “portion” of the divine essence that is not fully indwelt by each of the three persons under all possible circumstances. Likewise, there are no private portions of the trinitarian persons that are not fully dwelling in the divine essence, and therefore, in and through one another. Herman Bavinck is particularly instructive at this point:

The divine nature cannot be conceived as an abstract generic concept, nor does it exist as a substance outside of, above, and behind the divine persons. It exists in the divine persons and is totally and quantitatively the same in each person. The persons, though distinct, are not separate. They are the same in essence, one in essence, and the same being. They are not separated by time or space or anything else. They all share in the same divine nature and perfections. It is one and the same divine nature that exists in each person individually and in all of them collectively. Consequently, there is in God but one eternal, omnipotent, and omniscient being, having one mind, one will, and one power. . . . All created beings necessarily exist in space and time and therefore live side by side or sequentially. But the attributes of eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence, goodness, and so on, by their very nature exclude all separation and division. God is absolute unity and simplicity, without composition or division; and that unity itself is not ethical or contractual in nature, as it is among humans, but absolute; nor is it accidental, but it is essential to the divine being.

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:300.

The processions in his being simultaneously bring about in God his absolute personality, his trinitarian character, and his immanent relations. They are the absolute archetypes of all those processions by which human nature achieves its full development in the individual, in the family, and in humanity as a whole. For that reason the three persons, though distinct from each other, are not different. The “threeness” derives from, exists in, and serves the “oneness.” The unfolding of the divine being occurs within that being, thus leaving the oneness and simplicity of that being undiminished.

Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:306.

Bavinck advances a theology that is much sounder than locating real change in the divine persons. While not denying a genuine loving relationship between God and his people in history, Bavinck remains thoroughly faithful to the orthodox ecumenical tradition and, more importantly, to the testimony of Scripture, by affirming an absolute immutability and simplicity for God (essence and persons). In other words, he denies real change in God.

I am using the word “real” in the sense used by classical theism. It is not a synonym for “genuine” or “legitimate.” It refers to ontology, that is, the study of beings. God exists, yet he does not change. He is immutable in his essence as well as in each of the three persons. Certainly, creation changes in relation to God, and we may speak about that change in certain ways (e.g. we once were children of wrath but now are under grace), yet God remains unchanged. The Lord declared through the prophet Malachi, “For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed (Mal. 3:6).” Praise the Lord that we may seek him and find him. He will never change his mind and consume us in his wrath. Through Christ, we may have a genuine, personal, loving relationship with the triune God precisely because he does not change.

Let’s formulate a simple doctrine of simplicity. The doctrine of divine simplicity affirms that God is not made up of more basic parts (or any parts whatsoever). Perhaps two illustrations will help us understand this. First, consider a brick wall. A brick wall is a single thing, right? Yes and no. Yes, it is one thing. It is a wall. But it is made up of more basic or primitive parts, namely: bricks and mortar. Second, my wife makes a wonderful Johnny Cake (cornbread). It is one thing: it is Johnny Cake. But as I watch my wife make the Johnny Cake I see that she uses many ingredients. She uses corn meal, eggs, butter, salt, sugar, etc. We say that the ingredients that go into making the Johnny Cake are more basic than the Johnny Cake itself. In like manner, bricks and mortar are more basic than the brick wall.

The doctrine of divine simplicity is formulated from biblical texts and the implications we can draw from them that God is not made up of more basic ingredients (for instance, Deuteronomy 4:15-16; John 4:24; and Luke 24:39). We cannot even think of the three persons that way. God the Father is not one third of the Triune Godhead, the Son a third, or the Spirit another third. Each person of the Godhead is wholly God and the full God due to the mutual interpenetration of the persons in one another (called perichoresis in Greek or circumincessio in Latin).[ii]

You may be wondering what the big deal is. Perhaps this all strikes you as so much abstract philosophizing. But it isn’t. Let’s consider some implications of the doctrine of divine simplicity and connections it may have with other aspects of what we know about God as revealed in the pages of Scripture and developed in systematic theology (see the Westminster Confession of Faith chapters 2, 5, and 8; the Larger Catechism Q&A 7, 10, and 12; and the Shorter Catechism Q&A 4).

The doctrine of divine simplicity is inextricably tied up with God’s other attributes. This should not surprise us since God is simple. Properly understood, God is his attributes. Divine simplicity articulates the truth that God is not made up of ingredients that are more basic than he. As the WCF 2.1 has it, “God is without body, parts, or passions…” There is no before or after with God. This is divine simplicity seen in terms of time. There also is no here or there with God’s location since he fills all space. This is what divine immensity is about. It is divine simplicity with regard to space. Also related is the doctrine of divine aseity. God is a se, from himself. As Cornelius Van Til was fond of saying, God is the “self-contained ontological Trinity.”[iii] That is, God is absolutely independent. Whereas we as creatures are dependent on God, he is never dependent upon us. God is also pure act(ion). He has no unactualized potential. God is an utterly immutable, simple dynamic perichoretic Triune being.

This ties closely into God’s omnipotence and omniscience. God could not be all-powerful or all-knowing if he is not a se or simple. If God was not simple he could get stronger or weaker. If God was not simple he could discover new truth he did not know before or he could forget knowledge he had once possessed. To say that God is simple is to affirm divine immutability. God does not change. Even the incarnation does not change this. God the Son united himself to a true human nature, a “true body and a reasonable soul” as the Westminster Shorter Catechism Q&A 22 has it. The Son as to his divine nature did not change in the incarnation. Yes, a human nature was added to the divine nature. But the person of the divine Logos was the person of the God-man Jesus Christ. That is, the Son as to his divine nature did not undergo change in the incarnation even though his human nature most assuredly did.[iv]

One concern with the doctrine of divine simplicity is that it destroys God’s ability to relate to his creation. God cannot enter into real relations with his creatures if he is simple (and immutable and eternal and impassible ad infinitum). One problem with this criticism is that it confuses the Creator with the creature or puts God and his creation on the same level. If we humans only relate to one another through the experience of change and the addition and subtraction of characteristics (say we lose or gain weight, our hair turns gray or falls out, and we learn something new or forget what we once knew) then it must be true of God too. If God is a person, and he is, then he too must undergo this same kind of addition or subtraction. But this fails to reckon with the fact that God is, as we have already had occasion to note, pure act(ion) and is a dynamic Triune fellowship of Father, Son, and Spirit. The relation between a simple God and his creatures undergoes change, but he does not. This is ultimately beyond us mere creatures because God is God and we are not.

I do not pretend to have wrestled with all the various challenges brought against this doctrine. But the doctrine is sound nonetheless. Let me close with these brief observations. If the Triune God of Scripture is not simple, then it is possible for him to disintegrate into a heaping pile of nothingness. Further, if our God is not simple then it is possible for him to change his mind on the plan of redemption. Perhaps God will decide that those who believe on Christ will all go to perdition. Even further, if God is not simple then his Word is no longer the sure revelation of his will for us and for our salvation. If God is essentially complex, then God could be wrong about the final outcome of his unfolding plan of redemption. It is one thing to recognize that God’s plan of salvation is progressive throughout history culminating in the person and work of Jesus Christ, but it is another thing for this plan to unravel. Finally, if God is not simple, then perhaps he is an evolving God who grows through self-awareness and self-actualization and becomes what he once was not. So much for God engraving us on the palms of his hands (Isaiah 49:16). So much for his knowing the end from the beginning. He may be the best guesser. But that may not even be true. What’s worse, perhaps God has evolved from an undifferentiated monad into a Triune God. If that’s the case, just maybe God will evolve even further. Do not fret. God is simple and none of these potential problems really reflect his nature. This is such a straightforward doctrine delivered from various and sundry texts of Scripture and arising from their interplay with one another, it is a real shame that this even has to be said. But it does need saying. Over, and over, and over again. It’s that simple.

[i] Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature? Aquinas Lecture 44 (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1980).

[ii] See Dr. Richard A. Muller’s Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Being Drawn Principally From Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017).

[iii]See Cornelius Van Til’s Introduction to Systematic Theology and Defense of the Faith for this kind of language.

[iv] See the Chalcedonian Formula for an orthodox understanding of the hypostatic union of the two natures in one person of Jesus Christ. Each nature retains its proper characteristics while being joined together in one person, namely the eternal divine Logos.

[Update from the Editor: December 5, 2019] At the author’s request, we had temporarily removed this essay. Westminster Theological Seminary is reviewing the theology of Dr. Oliphint and have asked that faculty members (including adjunct faculty) refrain from blogging, podcasting, or writing about the thesis of Dr. Oliphint’s book, God With Us. At the time, the author was an adjunct faculty member and was made aware of this policy following the initial publication of this essay. The author has since resigned his position due to the handling of matters regarding Dr. Lane G. Tipton.

Following a previous essay, I continue a series of interactions with the first edition of Dr. K. Scott Oliphint’s God With Us.[1] I want to consider Dr. Oliphint’s treatment of the biblical, confessional, and sadly much misunderstood and maligned doctrine of divine simplicity. That this doctrine has been a bulwark of orthodoxy is something so simple and straightforward I should not even have to say anything, but alas, I must say something.

It seems clear to me that while Dr. Oliphint ostensibly affirms a kind of divine simplicity, his unique doctrine also presents something of a two-natured God, which undermines whatever affirmation of the doctrine he may offer. Let me be transparent. This is not now, nor has it ever been, a personal issue. It is all a matter of doctrinal fidelity and clarity. There would be nothing better than to see Dr. Oliphint issue a revised and improved edition of his God With Us.[2] That being said, let’s begin by formulating a simple doctrine of simplicity.

The Doctrine of Simplicity

The doctrine of divine simplicity affirms that God is not made up of more basic parts (or any parts whatsoever). Perhaps two illustrations will help us understand this. First, consider a brick wall. A brick wall is a single thing, right? Yes and no. Yes, it is one thing: a wall. But it is made up of more basic or primitive parts, namely: bricks and mortar. Second, my wife makes a wonderful Johnny Cake (cornbread). It is one thing: a Johnny Cake. But as I watch my wife make the Johnny Cake, I see that she uses many ingredients. She uses corn meal, eggs, butter, salt, sugar, etc. We say that the ingredients that go into making the Johnny Cake are more basic than the Johnny Cake itself. In like manner, bricks and mortar are more basic than the brick wall.

The doctrine of divine simplicity is formulated from biblical texts and the implications we can draw from them that God is not made up of more basic ingredients (e.g. Deut. 4:15–16; John 4:24; Luke 24:39). We cannot even think of the three persons that way. God the Father is not one-third of the Triune Godhead, the Son another third, and the Spirit yet another. Each person of the Godhead is wholly God and the full God due to the mutual interpenetration of the persons in one another (called perichoresis in Greek or circumincessio in Latin).[3]

You may be wondering what the big deal is. Perhaps this all strikes you as so much abstract philosophizing. But it isn’t. Before we turn to Dr. Oliphint’s formulation of the dual-layered nature of God, let’s consider some implications of the doctrine of divine simplicity and connections it may have with other aspects of what we know about God as revealed in the pages of Scripture and developed in systematic theology (see the Westminster Confession of Faith chapters 2, 5, and 8; the Larger Catechism Q&A 7, 10, and 12; and the Shorter Catechism Q&A 4).

The doctrine of divine simplicity is inextricably tied up with God’s other attributes. This should not surprise us since God is simple. Properly understood, God is his attributes. Divine simplicity articulates the truth that God is not made up of ingredients that are more basic than he. As the WCF 2.1 has it, “God is without body, parts, or passions. . .” There is no before or after with God. This is divine simplicity seen in terms of time. There also is no here or there with God’s location, since he fills all space. This is what divine immensity is about. It is divine simplicity with regard to space. Also related is the doctrine of divine aseity. God is a se, from himself. As Cornelius Van Til was fond of saying, God is the “self-contained ontological Trinity.”[4] That is, God is absolutely independent. Whereas we as creatures are dependent on God, he is never dependent upon us. God is also pure act(ion) meaning he has no unactualized potential. God is an utterly immutable, simple dynamic perichoretic Triune being.

This ties closely into God’s omnipotence and omniscience. God could not be all-powerful or all-knowing if he is not a se or simple. If God was not simple, he could get stronger or weaker. If God was not simple, he could discover new truth he did not know before or he could forget knowledge he had once possessed. To say that God is simple is to affirm divine immutability. God does not change. Even the incarnation does not change this. God the Son united himself to a true human nature, a “true body and a reasonable soul” as the Westminster Shorter Catechism Q&A 22 has it. The Son as to his divine nature did not change in the incarnation. Yes, a human nature was added to the divine nature. But the person of the divine logos was the person of the God-man Jesus Christ. That is, the Son as to his divine nature did not undergo change in the incarnation even though his human nature most assuredly did.[5]

God With Us and Simplicity

Now that we have given a brief definition of divine simplicity as God not having more basic or primitive parts (elements or ingredients) in terms of time or space that can be gained or lost, let us consider what Dr. Oliphint says in his book God With Us that might relate to this subject. I will not be citing or referencing every possible instance of relevant material but providing clear illustrations of statements that relate to divine simplicity followed by some interaction and analysis. Before we look at a few instances of Dr. Oliphint’s thinking, I will seek to provide a brief overview of his articulation of the God/world or Creator/creature distinction and relation.

Dr. Oliphint argues in God With Us that in order for God to relate to his creation he has to take on properties or attributes which he would otherwise not have. To accommodate this, Dr. Oliphint distinguishes between God’s essential nature and his covenantal nature. He also speaks of essential and covenantal attributes or properties. We need to realize that the term “covenant” has a unique or idiosyncratic working definition in God With Us. According to Dr. Oliphint, God’s essential nature is immutable, but his covenantal nature (comprised of created, covenantal, human properties) is changeable.[6]

Dr. Oliphint seems to believe he maintains biblical and Reformed orthodoxy by maintaining the mere existence of God’s essential nature. But in this schema, there are two senses in which divine simplicity is denied in fact even if not in intention. First, the very distinction between God’s essential nature and his covenantal nature, brought about by the assumption of covenantal properties or attributes is itself a contravention of the doctrine of divine simplicity. Second, the covenantal nature is itself changeable or mutable, not to say malleable. To sum up my concerns, Dr. Oliphint has ontologized in his theological formulation what has been understood by the vast majority of the Christian tradition as a relation between the absolutely immutable Creator and his changeable creatures.

The following are examples of Dr. Oliphint’s view that God had to assume covenantal properties in order to relate to his creation (bolded italics mine):

First, there can be no question that God appears to his people from the beginning. These appearances of God entail that he is making himself known by way of properties and qualities that would otherwise not belong to him.”[7]

God’s covenantal character includes, at least, the span of covenant history . . .”[8]

The Son of God had been appearing to the saints throughout redemptive history. He did that by temporarily taking on various qualities and characteristics in order to be with His people, to speak to Moses and the prophets, etc.[9]

The mediation of God (the Son) is, to use Turretin’s word, theandric [divine human union]; it includes, necessarily, both the divine and the human. In the same way, therefore, and proleptically, the mediation of God (the Son) prior to the incarnation is theandric as well. The point is not that it includes the permanent assumption of a human nature, as is the case in the incarnation, but that it includes the fact of God’s taking to himself created, covenantal, human properties, all the while maintaining, as he must, his essential divinity.[10]

Dr. Oliphint goes further and notes that these assumed covenantal attributes are not just “improper” or metaphorical ways of speaking. They really do exist:

. . . those covenantal attributes of God’s are no less ‘literal’ than are his essential attributes. God’s repentance, then, is not simply something that ‘seems to us’ like repentance. It is literal repentance, he is (covenantally) changing directions because of his faithfulness to his covenant. But it is repentance of a condescended, covenant God who has come down . . .[11]

On the contrary, as we have seen, we can truthfully predicate both aspects and properties of Christ; the communicatio [communication of sharing of attributes] means that both aspects of Christ’s character can (and must) be affirmed. So also with God. He both is immutable andin his condescension takes on covenantal properties in order really and truly to relate himself to us.[12]

Briefly put, explanations of God’s interaction with creation have tended in one of two directions. Either God gives up aspects of his essential character and is, thereby, essentially constrained by his creation, or those passages in Scripture that indicate constraint or limitation in God as he interacts with creation are metaphorical or somehow ‘improper.’ Neither of these tendencies allow the proper, gospel emphasis of Scripture to shine.[13]

Rather, the God who is immutable and whose plan and purpose for creation and his people will not fail nevertheless can and does relent.[14]

So why does God say of himself, “Now I know . . .”? He says this, in part, not because he wants us to map this expression of his knowledge onto his essential character. Rather, we have to take seriously God’s condescension. Once God condescends, we should recognize that, in taking to himself covenantal properties, he takes to himself as well the kind of knowledge (and will, to be discussed later) that accrues to those properties. Or, to put it another way, one of the covenantal properties that he takes to himself is the development of knowledge that is conducive to his interaction with his creation generally, and specifically with his people.[15]

These selections should clearly indicate that Dr. Oliphint has provided us with a new understanding of how God condescendingly relates to us creatures. Dr. Oliphint is forthright about this on page 43 of God With Us. If it was not new, it would altogether eliminate the raison d’etre for the book. With this formulation of the doctrine of God, how can one avoid seeing a schizophrenic God who has a dual-layered nature that is essentially immutable but covenantally open to the future free actions of his creatures? How can one avoid making God dependent upon his creatures? Do we have access to the essential God or only his mutable covenantal nature? Is God even capable of a relation according to his essential nature? This appears to me to be an unstable mixture of the classical theistic and the open theistic views of God. The orthodox tradition has rightly understood these to be incommensurable. And so it rests on the church to answer these questions in humble submission to her Lord as he has revealed himself in the Scriptures.

[1] K. Scott Oliphint, God With Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012). I have drawn from a few other sources for instances of Dr. Oliphint’s thinking.

[2] Dr. Oliphint has indicated that he is in the process of revising God With Us. We anticipate a greatly improved version of the book.

[3] See Dr. Richard A. Muller’s Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Being Drawn Principally From Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017).

[4] See Cornelius Van Til’s Introduction to Systematic Theology and Defense of the Faith for this kind of language.

[5] See the Chalcedonian Formula for an orthodox understanding of the hypostatic union of the two natures in one person of Jesus Christ. Each nature retains its proper characteristics while being joined together in one person, namely the eternal divine Logos.

[6] While Dr. Oliphint does note that the covenantal attributes are created, covenantal, and human, it is not clear that he maintains that clear distinction throughout his writings on covenantal attributes nor does it improve his doctrinal view one iota.

[7] Oliphint, God With Us, 182.

[8] K. Scott Oliphint, “Tolle Lege: A Brief Response to Paul Helm,” Reformation21, accessed February 16, 2019, http://www.reformation21.org/articles/tolle-lege-a-brief-response-to-paul-helm.php.

[9] K. Scott Oliphint, The Majesty of the Mystery: Celebrating the Incomprehensible God (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016), 74.

[10] Oliphint, God With Us, 198.

[11] Oliphint, God With Us, 219.

[12] Oliphint, God With Us, 191

[13] Oliphint, God With Us, 198.

[14] Oliphint, God With Us, 186.

[15] Oliphint, God With Us, 194.

Preface

Given several public announcements and reports, many people have become aware of recent events regarding the theology of Dr. K. Scott Oliphint. For those who are not, Dr. Oliphint was charged with four counts of doctrinal error. On May 3, 2019, the matter came before the Presbytery of the Southwest of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, where he is a ministerial member. As it has been communicated to me, the presbytery decided not to proceed to trial because the books, articles, and lectures in question were considered inadmissible (BD III.7.b.4). The OPC Book of Discipline III.2 states, “No charge shall be admitted by the judicatory if it is filed more than two years after the commission of the alleged offense, unless it appears that unavoidable impediments have prevented an earlier filing of the charge. A charge shall be considered filed when it has been delivered to the clerk or the moderator of the judicatory.” The items in question were published more than two years ago, and this appears to be one reason the matter did not proceed to trial. I was not present at the meeting, and while minutes were recorded, the presbytery will not approve them until their next scheduled meeting. I have based my remarks upon the testimony of several members of the presbytery. Nevertheless, I would be happy to be corrected.

I have not written any extensive public criticisms regarding these matters, because I did not want to speak while an ecclesiastical process was underway. Now that these charges have been dismissed, I feel at liberty to engage publicly with the views expressed in Dr. Oliphint’s books, articles, and lectures. Reformed Forum is supposed to be a forum after all. We desire to interact with all doctrinal matters relevant to confessional Reformed and Presbyterian churches and especially with Dr. Oliphint’s, since he has been a featured guest on Christ the Center and has spoken at two of our annual theology conferences in Grayslake, Illinois. I welcome Dr. Oliphint’s interaction privately and publicly. I sent this essay to him before it was published, and he has an open invitation to respond here. Through these means, I desire to extend our ministerial communion and fellowship in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Dr. Oliphint has implied that he no longer holds all the views expressed in his publications. Nonetheless, he has neither made it clear exactly which, if any, views he finds to be erroneous nor which positions he now believes to be correct. As I mentioned in a previous post, Dr. Oliphint plans to issue a revision of his key book, God with Us. I understand he notified his presbytery that he expects to submit the revision to his publisher by August. In the meantime, I would like to address what has already been published. I pray such interaction will be helpful to the Church and may be used in the service of theological precision and clarity. By God’s grace, may we pursue doctrinal fidelity together and speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15).

The Basic Essential-Covenantal Model

At the heart of Dr. Oliphint’s proposal is a distinction between God as he is essentially and God as he is in relation to creation. Oliphint frequently uses the term “covenantal” to describe this relationship. That in itself can be confusing to confessional Presbyterian ears. The Westminster Standards speak of God’s works of creation and providence (WCF 4, 5; Shorter Catechism 8). Moreover, they speak of God’s covenant with man as a special act of his providence (Shorter Catechism 12), not an act of creation. While God does truly relate to creation and, specifically, to his image bearers, the relation itself is not necessarily covenantal—at least in the way the confession speaks:

The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant. (Westminster Confession of Faith, 7.1)

There is a difference between knowing God and knowing God as your blessedness and reward. All humans know God by virtue of being made in his image (Rom. 1:18–20). All people have the works of his law written upon their hearts, and they all are without excuse (Rom. 2:15). Westminster Confession of Faith 7.2 says that the first covenant made with man was a covenant of works. At least in terms of the way the confession speaks, it is not precise to say that the covenant is the relation itself. God created man and then he entered into a covenant with him. I believe this conflation is at the root of Dr. Oliphint’s thesis and leads him to make several problematic theological statements down the line. In effect, he ontologizes the relationship between God and creation, making it more than a relationship and something that subsists itself.

The Addition of Christology

The second major issue with the thesis of God with Us is the application of Christology to this basic covenantal structure. According to Oliphint, God assumes new properties and changes in relating to creation: “Once he determines to relate to us, that relation entails that he take on properties that he otherwise would not have had. He limits himself while remaining the infinite God.”[1] In relating to creation, God “takes on” new properties. In effect, we can speak of a set of properties God has in himself (essential properties) and a set of properties God has by virtue of his relationship to creation (covenantal properties). These “sets” function very similarly to the natures of which we speak in classic Christology. Just as Jesus is divine and human, so also God is essential and covenantal—even as those two things seem to be at odds.[2] Oliphint holds them together by employing the communicatio idiomatum as a model for conceptualizing the relationship between God’s essential and covenantal properties/characteristics. He writes:

On the contrary, as we have seen, we can truthfully predicate both aspects and properties of Christ; the communicatio means that both aspects of Christ’s character can (and must) be affirmed. So also with God. He both is immutable and in his condescension takes on covenantal properties in order really and truly to relate himself to us.[3]

Here is but one example of how this model may be used:

Once God condescends, we should recognize that, in taking to himself covenantal properties, he takes to himself as well the kind of knowledge (and will, to be discussed later) that accrues to those properties. Or, to put it another way, one of the covenantal properties that he takes to himself is the development of knowledge that is conducive to his interaction with his creation generally, and specifically with his people.[4]

In other words, God’s knowledge can change. As he relates to creation, his knowledge undergoes development. There can be a real and contingent relationship between God and man just as we would expect among creatures yet without making God a creature per se. Certainly, Oliphint wants to protect the true relationship between God and man without transgressing the Creator-creature distinction. This is where the communicatio idiomatum fits in. By employing it, Oliphint attempts to retain the classical language about God while also speaking of a God who changes:

So, to repeat, we may properly speak of God as not knowing and knowing at the same time, of his being limited in space and infinitely omnipresent, of his lacking the power to do something and being omnipotent at the same time.[5]

While Dr. Oliphint uses the incarnation as a model, he is not speaking of the two natures of Christ united in the person of Christ. He is speaking of theology proper. Nonetheless, in Oliphint’s model, God has assumed something like a second nature. Just as the Son of God assumed a human nature, so also God assumes covenantal properties/characteristics and everything that may entail. Indeed, God may even possess a second mind:

For God to ‘change his mind’ in this context would entail that, included in his covenantal properties, is a covenantal ‘mind’ such that he condescends to us, even with respect to his knowledge and the actions that proceed from it.[6]

And according to this mind, God may legitimately learn:

He really does identify with us, and he moves with us in history, ‘learning’ and listening, in order to maintain and manage the covenant relationship that he has sovereignly and unilaterally established, the details of which he has eternally and immutably decreed.[7]

Oliphint then applies this theology to a concrete biblical example: “In condescending to relate to Adam and Eve, he is, like them, (not essentially, but covenantally) restricted in his knowledge of where they might be hiding in that garden.”[8] To put it another way, God legitimately does not know where Adam and Eve are when he searches for them in the garden (Gen. 3:9). Again, you can see how the communicatio idiomatum enables Oliphint to say that while essentially God is omniscient, there is another aspect—the covenantal aspect—of God that is not omniscient.

Preliminary Assessment

In my judgment, the communicatio idiomatum should not be applied to the doctrine of God. Any change that occurred in the son of God upon the incarnation may only be properly ascribed to his human nature. Change may neither be ascribed to his divine nature nor to his person, which is the hypostasis of the Son who subsists in the divine essence. This model cannot rightly be applied to God apart from a human, created nature. The whole Godhead exists as three persons subsisting in one essence. This is irreducible, for God is both simple and immutable. So where can the change be located? It cannot properly be predicated of God himself. To speak of God assuming covenantal properties, attributes, or characteristics is either to present a God who changes or worse: to present two gods who are quite different from one another.

I believe Oliphint’s basic intention is a good one. He desires to maintain a true and legitimate relationship between God and man. God does not merely appear to love us; he truly loves us. We do not appear to move from wrath to grace; there is a legitimate and historic transition as our relationship to God changes through the person and work of Christ by the power of his Spirit. Yes and amen. But there are orthodox ways to speak of this relationship that do not have the dangerous liabilities of this new model.

In future posts, I plan to work through many of the quotations in God with Us and other published material. Yet even now, I desire that this basic introduction would open dialogue within the Church on these important matters as we seek biblical truth together.

[1] K. Scott Oliphint, God with Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God (Wheaton Ill.: Crossway, 2012), 188.

[2] For example: “He both is immutable and in his condescension takes on covenantal properties in order really and truly to relate himself to us.” Oliphint, 191.

[3] Oliphint, 191.

[4] Oliphint, 194.

[5] Oliphint, 198.

[6] Oliphint, 219n74.

[7] Oliphint, 228.

[8] K. Scott Oliphint, Reasons for Faith: Philosophy in the Service of Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2006), 234.

Dominic Legge, O. P. speaks about the deep connection between Thomas’s Christology and his trinitarian theology. Dr. Legge is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology and Director of the Thomistic Institute Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies. He is the author of The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Participants: Camden Bucey, Dominic Legge, Glen Clary, Jim Cassidy

Jeff Waddington spoke at the fifth annual Reformed Forum Conference, which was held October 5–7, 2018 at Hope OPC in Grayslake, Illinois. The theme of the conference was “Seeing God: The Deeper Protestant Conception.” The speakers addressed important theological challenges and controversies facing the contemporary Reformed church by exploring the theologies of Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, and Geerhardus Vos on the beatific vision and glorification of man.

Participants: Jeff Waddington

We have compiled a list of suggested reading to help those coming to the 2018 Theology Conference. We realize people like have neither the time nor financial budget to work through each of these titles in advance of the conference. Nonetheless, even a first-level reading of a few of these resources will help attendees make the most out of the conference. One of the things we love most about our events is the personal interaction. Working through the issues together is what makes the Reformed Forum community so special. Study and contemplate the deep mysteries of the God-man relationship and the future consummation. In October, let’s take the discussion to the next level.

Primary Sources

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
• Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics
  • CD I/2, section 14.
  • CD II/1, section 31.3
  • CD I/1, section 6
  • CD III/1, section 41.2
  • CD III/1, section 45.1
• Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, Preface to the Second Edition
• Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 1: Theology Proper
• Logos Resources
  • Barth’s Church Dogmatics: https://www.logos.com/product/5758/barths-church-dogmatics.
  • Vos: https://www.logos.com/product/48797/reformed-dogmatics
  • Van Til: https://www.logos.com/product/3994/the-works-of-cornelius-van-til

General Reading on the Beatific Vision

• Hans Boersma, Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition

Thomas Aquinas

• Daria Spezzano, The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification According to St. Thomas Aquinas
• Dominic Legge, The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas
• Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters
• Levering and Dauphinais, eds., Rediscovering Aquinas and the Sacraments

Karl Barth

• Keith L. Johnson, Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis
• McCormack and White, eds., Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue
• James J. Cassidy, God’s Time For Us: Barth on the Reconciliation of Eternity and Time in Jesus Christ

Catholicism and Protestantism

• Cornelius Van Til, The Confession of 1967
• Cornelius Van Til, The New Synthesis Theology of the Netherlands
• Cornelius Van Til, The Great Debate Today
• John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II?
• William M. Shea, The Lion and the Lamb: Evangelicals and Catholics in America

* Check back for updates.

Jeff Waddington previews his address for the 2018 Theology Conference. He speaks about Pseudo-Dionysius, a key influence upon Thomas Aquinas. Dionysius attempted to integrate neoplatonism with Christianity. The result was a Christianization of the great chain of being. Register for the upcoming conference.

Reading List

• Daria Spezzano, The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification According to St. Thomas Aquinas
• Dominic Legge: The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas
• Lawrence Feingold: The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters
• Hans Boersma, Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington

Pierce Taylor Hibbs speaks about language and the Trinity. His book, The Trinity, Language, and Human Behavior: A Reformed Exposition of the Language Theory of Kenneth L. Pike is available in P&R Publishing’s Reformed Academic Dissertations series. Hibbs describes Kenneth Pike’s linguistic theory and compares it to the theology of Cornelius Van Til, demonstrating shared Trinitarian themes. Pierce Hibbs is the Assistant Director of the Theological English Department at Westminster Theological Seminary. He writes at piercetaylorhibbs.com.

Links

• Who is Kenneth Pike?

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington, Pierce Taylor Hibbs

In this episode, we speak about the free offer of the gospel. The real point in dispute in connection with the free offer of the gospel is whether it can properly be said that God desires the salvation of all men. This issue was related to several theological controversies of the 1940s and stemming back decades earlier. Much of this particular issue comes the split of 1924 within the Christian Reformed Church which led to the formation of the Protestant Reformed Church under the leadership of Herman Hoeksema. For some, the antithesis is so absolutized that there can be no real transition from wrath to grace and no free offer of the gospel. Cornelius Van Til spoke of the antithesis as an ethical rather than metaphysical antithesis. In a letter to Jesse de Boer, he indicated that it was merely another way to speak of total depravity. As we walk through a study committee report delivered to the 15th General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, we are confronted with the great mystery of God’s will and his infallible revelation to us in Scripture.

Links

• OPC Study Committee Report (15th General Assembly, 1948)
• Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace
• Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington, Jim Cassidy

Vos Group takes an excursus to discuss Vos’s Reformed Dogmatics. In this series, like all of his works, Vos presents the “deeper Protestant conception” of covenantal union and communion with the Triune God. We discuss how the immutable Creator does not change in the freely willed “new relation” to creation—only creation does, and that the Roman Catholic view of the image cannot deliver the “essence” of religion, which is communion with God.

Links

• Lane G. Tipton, “Vos’s Reformed Dogmatics” in New Horizons (April 2018).
• Heinrich Joseph Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum

Participants: Camden Bucey, Lane G. Tipton

Snow is the humblest weather. I have the quiet joy of watching it right now, during my favorite time of the day: dawn. The latest nor’easter has shouldered its way onto the east coast, throwing its heavy belly over New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and—where I am now—the suburbs of Pennsylvania. In the soft, blue-grey light of the morning, the snow is falling. Snow is humble, to me, because of how it comes to us and what it does to the world around us. It does not come with the drum beat or splattering voice of rain; it does not come with a whistle as the wind. It just … falls, pirouetting and turning in the atmosphere before laying itself down on the earth, covering what is already here, conforming to the shapes it settles on. As I stare at it outside the window, my mouth sits open in wonder. I can hear the thud of my heartbeat at the back of my throat, marking the constancy of my own life and mirroring the stability of the world outside. That stability, of course, has an origin and anchor: the speech of God. I have written numerous times about the governance of God’s speech, following the well-trodden path of my friend and teacher, Vern Poythress. I do not think I will every stop writing about it. It is too rich, too mysterious, too marvelous to go unnoticed. I find myself returning to the truth of God’s governing speech almost every day, as a child returns to the top of a snow-covered hill with his sled, never tiring of the ride. You see, the most gripping thing to me about living in a world of God’s speech—a world that was created, sustained, and finds its telos in that speech—is very simple: what we see around us is what is said. The world is what God spoke, speaks, and will speak. It is not the cold and impersonal gathering of elements, not the mere existence of matter in motion. The world, at base, is not elements; it is syllables—a rhythm of God’s uttered work, with a mysterious meter in which we are all caught up, forgetting that everything we do, think, and say happens in the context of someone else’s dialogue: God’s dialogue—or perhaps better, God’s trialogue. We live and move and have our being in divine speech. Looking at the snow this morning is a wonderful reminder of that. In a few hours, I will pick up my shovel, zip up my jacket, and head out into a quiet, whitening world. Standing in the midst of the cascading snow will help me see that I am surrounded by what God is saying, by what he has spoken. I am not just an observer of God’s world; I am part of the discourse. Perhaps this sounds hopelessly abstract to you—the prattle of a poet’s heart. But remember this: the world is God’s and the fullness thereof (Ps. 24:1; 1 Cor. 10:26). The snow comes from his storehouses (Job 38:22) and falls at his bidding (Job 37:6). The world in which we live is not an abstract thing; it is the spoken and verbally sustained environment for the display of God’s character. Our world is ever a word about God himself. Maybe that’s why I am mesmerized by the snow. The sense of metaphorical humility that I find here is a reflection of the greatest humility: the humility of God in creating, sustaining, and redeeming the world; the humility of the Son of God, who took on flesh all while remaining immutably divine and absolute, bending down to peer into the hearts of men and perform his silent spiritual surgery, giving us new hearts, so that we could look at the snow, and see not just the weather, but the measure of God’s greatness and love. Snow may be the humblest weather. But it is so only because of the great humility of God. If nothing else, that should give us pause as we stare out the window. Here we are in a world of God’s speech, and we hardly hear it, just as we can hardly hear the falling snow.

Mary was not so green when she mistook Jesus for a gardener (John 20:15). God is a gardener: he sows; he waters; he grows (Gen. 1:11; 2:6; Ps. 104:14; 1 Cor. 3:6). To him belongs horticulture and humanity. Yet, in another sense, God is a garden in himself. He is our environment, the one in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). The Word of the Father, who stood before Mary at the empty tomb, is the life-giving person in whom, to whom, and through whom are all things (1 Cor. 8:6), and that Word is ever spoken in the potent breath of the Holy Spirit. It is in the Trinity—more specifically, God’s verbally manifested and linguistically mediated reality—that we dwell and thrive. All of this, no doubt, is quotidian for today’s theologian. Especially in Protestant circles in the last twenty years or so, the Trinity has taken a place of prominence. Everywhere one looks, new books and journal articles are finding their way onto the shelves—person and relation; ontology ad intra and ad extra; immanent and economic; vestigia trinitatis; the list goes on. The surge of interest in Trinitarian paradigms and doctrinal minutiae, for some, is little more than a fleeting fancy, the latest love affair for Protestants, and old news to Catholics and Greek Orthodox. Perhaps the latter parties are wondering where Protestants have been for the last few hundred years. The questions we must ask ourselves, on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, are the following. First, why has the Trinity come roaring back into our dogmatic discussions and, second, how can we ensure that this indispensable truth of Christendom remains the main hall in which we gather for global theological discourse rather than serving as a vestibule to other dogmatic concerns? Perhaps the answer to both questions lies in a metaphor. Trinitarian theology, like ivy, has always wound its way up a trellis. By “trellis,” I mean a historical and theological dilemma of the day that serves as latticework upon which the deep and eternal things of God can stretch out and climb in human history. Knowing what one such trellis is in our own day provides an important clue as to why Trinitarian studies have been so popular of late for Protestants, and how we can ensure that this turns into a tradition rather than a trend. Before introducing what I believe is a trellis for Trinitarian theology in the twenty-first century, it would help to review some of the church’s history in light of this metaphor. And to find a trellis or two from a bygone era, all one needs to do is pick up a decent volume on Christian history and start turning the pages. Jonathan Hill’s The History of Christian Thought (2003) is a fine place to start. In the early church, the trellis for Trinitarian theology was the burning question of what it meant to proclaim Jesus as Lord in the context of a rigid monotheism, and, of course, what it meant to say that the Spirit was God as well. Justin Martyr, attempting to wrest the early church from Platonic errors while still drawing on terms familiar to Platonists, brought attention to Christ as the Logos of God, the Father’s thought communicated to men. Irenaeus followed suit with a striking, albeit problematic analogy, of the Son and Spirit as the “hands” of the Father, bringing the third person of the Godhead more into purview. But it was Tertullian who broke new ground by coining the term Trinity and developing the “substance” and “persons” language we still find in today’s creeds and confessions. Athanasius continued this tradition by stomping out the weeds of Arianism, drawing on Origen’s exposition of the eternal generation of the Son. Then, from the heart of Turkey, came the Cappadocians, led by Gregory of Nyssa, his brother, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Basil the Great. The Cappadocians laid the groundwork for the persons of the Trinity to be differentiated by their mutual relations—a concept carried through the middle ages and well into the twenty-first century. But we could not in good conscience proceed any further without mentioning Augustine, who rightly rebuffed the residual semi-Arianism of his predecessors, opposing any claim that the Father was the source of divinity. He thus brought out the consubstantiality and distinctness of the persons simultaneously, especially when he emphasized the famous (or, for some, infamous) filioque clause: the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. In doing so, as Hill puts it, he “purged the doctrine of every trace of subordinationism” (87). This was a fitting contribution to the continuing development of what came to be called perichoresis, the teaching that the persons of the Godhead mutually interpenetrate, indwell, or are “in,” to use Augustine’s language, each of the others (De Trinitate 6.10). This is one of the Trintiarian teachings that is so prominent today, and we owe this, in many ways, to the Cappadocians and to Augustine, among others (Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus, who came later). Cyril of Alexandria followed Augustine by addressing the issue that had led to the building of the trellis centuries earlier: Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity: the Son come into flesh. In all of this, then, Christology was in large part the trellis that gave Trinitarian dogma room to stretch and climb. But that trellis would be exchanged for another in Byzantium and the medieval era. A fixation on Christology eventually lead to mystical speculation on how one comes close to a three-personed God (a second trellis for Trinitarian theology). How can man have communion with the transcendent, triune Lord? That was a question that burned in the hearts of Psuedo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, and Symeon, to varying degrees. The resulting mysticism and negative theology came to an end with Gregory Palamas, whose discourse on the “energies” of God sought to explain how, exactly, we could experience the Trinity: we do so only by God’s acts upon us—the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit. This was to have echoes in the twentieth century with Karl Barth and Emil Brunner. In the medieval and scholastic era, we still find remnants of mysticism, especially with Erigena, which is to be expected—history is a stream, not a string of puddles. But the trellis of experiential communion with God, by and large, traded for the trellis of rational exposition. It can be difficult to see how the latter might be a trellis for Trinitarian theology, which is inherently mysterious. But while it is easy to categorize Anselm’s arguments for the existence of God as “Unitarian” (pointing to Aquinas’ de Deo uno), there were clear Trinitarian threads in his thought, such as his work on the necessity of God’s becoming man in the person of Christ. Peter Abelard’s work, Theologia, is perhaps a better example. Abelard follows the path of rational exposition, but seems to have gone too far in trying to erase all mystery from the Trinity. Thomas Aquinas, though he sought to preserve mystery in Trinitarian dogma, fell into a similar trap with his unbound reliance on Aristotelian philosophy. In attempting to articulate the relation of the persons to the essence, he let mystery become more nominal than normative for Trinitarian theology. Much of Aquinas’ work, along with that of Anselm and Abelard, built Trinitarian theology on the trellis of rational exposition. And though this was countered by later medieval mystics (Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart), it seems to have nevertheless held sway until the early Reformers set their hands to building a third trellis: the trellis of soteriology. For many of the mainstay Reformers, discussions of Trinitarian dogma were set on the trellis of salvation and sin. Luther, for example, focused much of his theology on personal, faith-wrought union with Christ, who was given by the Father, and whose work of redemption and sanctification, applied internally by the Spirit, always led grace to triumph over law. Calvin, as well, though markedly different from Luther in his thought and mannerism, focused much of his attention on depravity and salvation in Christ. And this was set within its Trinitarian context. Calvin even went so far as to say that if we do not grasp that we serve and are saved by one God in three persons, then “only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God” (Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.13.2). Salvation, as many in our day have reminded us, is Trinitarian. The trellis of salvation and sin that was so prominent in the Reformation would wane with the waxing of a new trellis in the modern era: a return to rational exposition, but of a different sort, fueled, in large part, by the Enlightenment. This trellis, admittedly, would keep the ivy of Trinitarian theology all but out of sight. With attacks on the logical coherence of Trinitarian dogma by figures such as Voltaire, Locke, Hume, and Rousseau, and with the unparalleled rise of deism, Christian philosophers and theologians felt compelled to rearticulate Christian dogma in a manner that at least acknowledged the so-called “Age of Reason.” Sadly, oftentimes they sold their heritage of belief for day’s wage in the empirical market. As Lessing and Reimarus excised the miraculous from Scripture, one could see it was only a matter of time before something as complex and mysterious as Trinitarian dogma would become suspect. It was Immanuel Kant who questioned the practicality of belief in the Trinity, and his phenomenal/noumenal distinction may not have helped matters here. By relegating God to the realm of noumena, he could effectively turn Christianity into a kind of pragmatic moralism. Such a context was not conducive to the growth or maturation of Trinitarian thought, which is perhaps why we see so little Trinitarian work emerging from that era. The work of the Puritans—masterpieces from the pen of Francis Cheynell, Thomas Goodwin, John Owen, and the like—would carry the church until the Protestant Trinitarian revival in the twentieth century. And by that time, the Protestant church was in need of a return to its Trinitarian roots, crippled as it was by rampant moralism, still evident in the thought of Schleiermacher and Ritschl. It needed a new trellis on which Trinitarian truth could bud and blossom, and Karl Barth’s “theology of revelation” seemed to fit the bill (Hill, 269). Thus, the doctrine of revelation became the new trellis: enveloping general revelation, Scripture, and proclamation, according to Barth (Church Dogmatics, 1.4.4). The wholly other God of Barth’s theology was proclaimed to be wholly “for us” in his triune self-revelation, namely in the “event” of Christ, which transcended time. But Barth’s understanding of revelation in the context of the Trinity, while refreshing, was riddled with fissures that would only widen with time. Part of this was due to the debris of existentialism: the shift in thinking of truth as experiential and subjective rather than external and objective. Certainly, Barth opposed all of this, but his focus on an encounter with the “event” of Christ left the door open for those who sympathized with the existentialist movement. Following the footpath of twentieth century theology at the time, Rudolph Bultmann attempted to “demythologize” the revelation of the New Testament, extracting moralistic kernels from mythological husks. From there, it is not too difficult to see how and why Reinhold Niebuhr would ignite the twentieth century with a call to ethics and morality, nor how Paul Tillich would call on Christians to engage their culture with an apologetic existentialism. In fact, we can even see how Karl Rahner would end up arguing for the concept of “anonymous Christians.” Those who have experientially witnessed the truth of God need not cling to the Christian Bible, or even the name of Christ, for, in Justin Martyr’s terminology, all people have within them the “seed of the Logos” anyway. Such a conclusion cannot be divorced from Rahner’s view of the Trinity. In claiming that the economic Trinity (what God does) is identical with the immanent Trinity (who God is), Rahner was working out one of the implications of an existentialist view of revelation. If the truth of the triune God’s revelation can only be subjectively experienced, then what sense would it make to ponder God as he exists “in himself,” apart from his creation? That logic is directly linked to Barth’s prior claim that God is only ever “for us” in Christ. In other words, there is no Trinity “behind” or “prior to” Christ’s work for us. This set the stage for Jürgen Moltmann to emphasize the centrality of the cross, claiming that God is a “suffering God.” While this had the benefit of drawing people’s attention to the unfathomable empathy God has for us in our own suffering, it posed a plethora of problems for orthodox Christianity by binding God to his creation and practically effacing the Trinity of independence. Wolfhart Pannenberg’s contention that all of history is, in fact, revelation in which we choose to believe enabled him, like Barth and Bultmann, to embrace critical scholarship and symbolic interpretations of revelation because what really mattered was the subjective commitment of the individual to the truth of a particular event. The influence of existentialism here is still evident. In sum, the trellis of revelation, leading from Barth to Pannenberg, did indeed give the dogma of the Trinity room to climb, but it also did no small amount of damage to the orthodox understanding of God’s ontology, not to mention the existential blight it spread to other doctrines. All of this brings us to the Trinitarian trellis of our day: language. This is not too far afield from the trellis of revelation, since all revelation, in many ways, can be considered profoundly linguistic. As Jonathan Edwards pointed out centuries ago, not only is the truth of Scripture linguistically delivered to humanity, but also the entire cosmos, which was uttered into being and is upheld by the God who speaks. Scripture is God’s word, but the rest of creation is a “word” from God in another sense. A scad of material has been emerging in the last decade or so on God as a communicative being, and on human language as a derivative and analogical behavior. This, it seems to me, is quite fitting, since the Trinity is the hearth of communion and has eternally communicated with himself in the “speech” of love and glory (Frame 2013, 480–81). Of course, we still have our issues to work out—issues that have long been part and parcel of every theologian’s curiosity: in what sense is the Son the “Word” of the Father? Should we adopt a consciousness model of the Trinity—in which the Father speaks the Son in the power of the Spirit—or an interpersonal model—in which the persons of the Godhead are understood as mutually engaging communicative agents? Or are both models valid? In answer to the former question, there is room for Trinitarian dogma to grow as we work out how the Son is both the thought of the Father, which stretches all the way back to Justin Martyr, and how he is the communication of the Father, which can be traced back to Augustine. And more work needs to be done to explore precisely in what sense the Spirit is involved in this communication. As for the latter question, we seem hard pressed to resolve the age old quandary between the east and west. The stale rumor that the Latin west defaults to a consciousness model while the Greek east upholds an interpersonal model has been dispelled. And thank God it has, for the church is now in an age of unprecedented global awareness and intercontinental communication. That is why linguistics (semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, hermeneutics) is such a fitting trellis for Trinitarian theology: global communication is no longer burgeoning; it has blossomed. In such a setting, the nature and function of language is replete with implications not only for our understanding and development of Trinitarian dogma, but for our practical engagement with one another in the gloriously diverse, communicative body of Christ. We have, no doubt, just rushed through a cornucopia of theological discourse spanning two thousand years, and scarcely done it justice. But the point in considering what the trellis was for Trinitarian dogma in each era is to notice that we are at an opportune place for global discussion in the church, and we would be remiss if we wrote off the current surge of interest in linguistics and the Trinity as a passing trend. In my opinion, we are in the midst of one of the most appropriate Trinitarian discussions in the history of the church: a discussion of the nature and work of a communicative God for, in, and through his communicative creatures. At the outset, I proposed two questions on which Protestants, in particular, need to meditate, both of which are related to the twenty-first century’s trellis for Trinitarian dogma. Why has the Trinity come roaring back into our theological discussions? In brief, I would say that this can be attributed, in part, to the rise of interest in linguistics, for language and the Trinity are inextricably intertwined: the triune God is a communicative being, and humans are image-bearing communicators. It would be strange indeed to witness a rising interest in linguistics without seeing any corresponding interest in the God of language. The late twentieth and early twenty-first century interest in linguistics has thus built a worthy trellis on which Trinitarian dogma can grow, but we need to continue exploring the relationship between divine and human communication, and use the results of such study to enhance and support the communion of the global church. The second question, however, is perhaps more critical: how can Protestants ensure that Trinitarian dogma retains a prominent place in theological discourse? The answer here seems tied to what we have already said: language must, as it has, stay in the limelight of our theological discussions. We must vigilantly guard the trellis of language from those who would, with Derrida, derogate language as a labyrinth of différence. We must dwell on the divine roots of human discourse, ever remembering the ancient truth that language is not simply something we do but is a vital part of who we are. We are creatures of communion. And the communion we long for is structured on the Trinity itself, both the consciousness and interpersonal models. We are speakers with thoughts and breath, persons who thrive in a web of relationships. In light of what has been said, there seems to be no better place for our discussions of the Trinity than in the context of language, for our speech reflects the Speaker, our words the Word, and our breath the Spirit of the speaking God. At this moment in history, we have become deeply aware of ourselves as communing persons bound to the self-communing, tripersonal God. What better time for the global church to unite against a world hell-bent on disrupting and destroying the communion of the body of Christ? Language, I say, is at the roots of the Trinity, the roots of humanity, the roots of the church. Let us tend to this trellis together.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington

Dan Ragusa speaks about Herman Bavinck’s Trinitarian theology and its implications for a revelational epistemology and worldview. Bavinck argues for an organic connection between general and special revelation, which results in a “triniformity” in both.

Links

• The Bavinck Review
• Messiah’s Reformed Fellowship (URCNA), Manhattan

Participants: Camden Bucey, Dan Ragusa

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

Option #1: God’s sovereignty is limited by man’s freedom. Man’s moral and rational capacities are withdrawn from the eternal decree of God and given an independent and autonomous significance and existence. Option #2: Man’s freedom is eliminated by God’s sovereignty. Man’s moral and rational capacities are wholly determined by the eternal decree of God and cease to have any real significance or existence at all.

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

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

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

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

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

“If God and his human creatures can only be conceived as competitors, and if the one can only retain his freedom and independence at the expense of the other, then God has to be increasingly restricted both in knowedge and in will. Pelagianism, accordingly, banishes God from his world. It leads both to Deism and atheism and enthrones human arbitrariness and folly. Therefore, the solution of the problem must be sought in another direction. It must be sought in the fact that God—because he is God and the universe is his creation—by the infinitely majestic activity of his knowing and willing, does not destroy but instead creates and maintains the freedom and independence of his creatures” (Reformed Dogmatics, 2:376-77, emphasis mine). “The fact that things and events, including the sinful thoughts and deeds of men, have been eternally known and fixed in that counsel of God does not rob them of their own character but rather establishes and guarantees them all, each in its own kind and nature and in its own context and circumstances. Included in that counsel of God are sin and punishment, but also freedom and responsibility, sense of duty and conscience, and law and justice” (The Wonderful Works of God, 145).

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

“God’s decree grounds the certainty of His free knowledge and likewise the occurring of free actions. Not foreknowledge as such but the decree on which it rests makes free actions certain” (Reformed Dogmatics, 1:20). “…God can realize His decrees with reference to His creatures without needing to limit their freedom in a deterministic manner. Their free acts are not uncertain and the certainty to which these acts are connected is not brought about by God in a materialistic, pantheistic, or rationalistic manner. As the omnipresent and omnipotent One, the personal One, He can so govern man that man can do nothing without His will and permission and still do everything of himself in full freedom. When God sanctifies someone, He is at work in the depths of his being where the issues of life are, and then the sanctified will acts of itself and unconstrained outwardly no less freely than if it never had been under the working of God. The work of God does not destroy the freedom of the creature but is precisely its foundation” (Reformed Dogmatics, 1:90-91, emphasis mine).

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

“Our view of man as the spiritual production of God points to God as the archetype of all human freedom. Human freedom must be like God’s freedom, since man resembles God, and it must be different from God’s freedom since man is a finite creature. In God, then, lies the archetype of human freedom. … We are fashioned after God and our freedom after God’s freedom. But never ought we to lose sight of the fact that our freedom is distinguished from God’s freedom by reason of our finitude” (“Freedom,” 4). “We found … that the Reformed covenant theology remained nearest to this Biblical position. Other theories of the will go off on either of two byways, namely, that of seeking an unwarranted independence for man, or otherwise of subjecting man to philosophical necessitarianism. Reformed theology attempts to steer clear of both these dangers; avoiding all forms of Pelagianizing and of Pantheizing thought. It thinks to have found in the covenant relation of God with creation the true presentation of the Biblical concept of the relation of God to man. Man is totally dependent upon God and exists with all creation for God. Yet his freedom is not therewith abridged but realized” (“The Will in Its Theological Relations,” 77, emphasis mine).

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

I’ve come again, afresh, to the writings of Cornelius Van Til. Lord willing, my plan is to compose a monograph on Van Til’s critique of Karl Barth over the next several years. In light of relentless criticism, from both Barthians and evangelical Calvinists, I would like to offer a fresh reading and defense of Van Til’s critique, on his own terms. To that end, I have begun reading Van Til outside of his works that specifically target Barth.[1] This approach is purposeful. I believe that the best way to understand how and why Van Til criticizes Barth is to understand his thought as a whole. If one tries to abstract Van Til’s critique of Barth from his theology as a whole – and the apologetic/polemic approach that arises from it – then Van Til’s critique will never be properly understood. So I have begun with two of the newly released annotated versions of Van Til’s works published by P&R Publishing, Common Grace and the Gospel (annotated by K. Scott Oliphint) and An Introduction to Systematic Theology (annotated by William Edgar). I have also made use of the digital version of Van Til’s works by Logos. If you do not have Logos, and you want to engage in serious study of both the Bible and theology, do yourself the favor and save your pennies for it. And, while you’re saving, save also for the digital Van Til set! So, what I would like to do here is offer a series of posts containing some of the best quotes I come across in Van Til’s writings and offer some brief commentary. I hope you enjoy it, and benefit from Van Til’s faithfully and consistently Reformed insights. The first quote comes from Common Grace and the Gospel, p. 13:

To use a phrase of Kierkegaard, we ask how the Moment is to have significance. Our claim as believers is that the Moment cannot intelligently be shown to have any significance except upon the presupposition of the biblical doctrine of the ontological trinity. In the ontological trinity there is complete harmony between an equally ultimate one and many. The persons of the trinity are mutually exhaustive of one another and of God’s nature. It is the absolute equality in point of ultimacy that requires all the emphasis we can give it. Involved in this absolute equality is complete interdependence; God is our concrete universal.[2]

One of the common misconceptions out there about Van Til’s apologetic approach is that his great insight was that everyone has presuppositions. That no one comes to the process of thinking about anything neutrally. And so the believer presupposes the existence of God, while the atheist does not. And God is the believer’s basis for ethics, logic, etc. The atheist, however, has no basis. All that is true enough, as far as it goes. But the misconception is due to the fact that it does not go far enough. Van Til does not offer a generic deity as the Christian’s presupposition. It is not as if Van Til’s God can be swapped out for the God of Islam, Judaism, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Rather, Van Til presupposes the self-contained ontological Trinity as he reveals himself in the Bible. That is important because a generic deity cannot account for anything in the universe – unity or differentiation, universals or particulars, the subject-object relationship, etc. A generic deity yields only a meaningless and unintelligible creation. For Van Til only God as absolutely self-contained (i.e., a se) can render anything and everything intelligible. I hope to be able to unpack that idea some more in future posts.

[1] The several works I have in mind here are The New Modernism, Barthianism and Christianity, Has Karl Barth Become Orthodox?, The Confession of 1967, Karl Barth and Evangelicalism, and Barth’s Christology. Of course, he has critical statements about “the new modernism” all throughout his writings. But these are particularly focused on the thought of Karl Barth (and others). [2] Cornelius Van Til, Common Grace and the Gospel, ed. K. Scott Oliphint, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2015).

The doctrine of the Trinity is the architectonic principle of the whole theological and apologetic enterprise of Herman Bavinck. While it may be debated as to how consistent he was in the application of this principle with his occasional nod to realism, it cannot be denied that he was self-consciously committed to the triune God of Scripture as the alpha and omega point of his thought. In his chapter on the Holy Trinity, he concludes with a useful section entitled, “The Importance of Trinitarian Dogma,” in which he provides a global comment that warrants this claim. He writes,

The thinking mind situates the doctrine of the Trinity squarely amid the full-orbed life of nature and humanity. A Christian’s confession is not an island in the ocean but a high mountaintop from which the whole creation can be surveyed. And it is the task of Christian theologians to present clearly the connectedness of God’s revelation with, and its significance for, all of life. The Christian mind remains unsatisfied until all of existence is referred back to the triune God, and until the confession of God’s Trinity functions at the center of our thought and life.[1]

This approach avoids the incept nature/grace dualism that has plagued scholasticism with an impassable chasm between the natural and supernatural and the monism of secular philosophy that seeks a common, unifying element at the expense of all diversity. Both will come directly into the crosshairs of Bavinck’s apologetic, which has its epistemological grounds in the self-revelation of the triune God in whom unity and diversity are equally absolute. Bavinck writes, “In God … there is unity in diversity, diversity in unity. Indeed, this order and this harmony is present in him absolutely. … [I]n God both are present: absolute unity as well as absolute diversity.”[2] The point, then, is that the ontology of the creation finds its archetype in its triune Creator-God, in whom absolute unity and absolute diversity are eternally harmonized. The creation, understood according to the basic Creator-creature distinction of Scripture, possesses a relative unity and relative diversity, with neither destroying or canceling out the other. This agrees with what James Eglinton has labeled Bavinck’s “organic motif”: “Trinity ad intra leads to organism ad extra.”[3] He explains, “God as the archetypal (triune) unity-in-diversity is the basis for all subsequent (triniform) ectypal cosmic unity-in-diversity.”[4] The organic motif enables Bavinck to communicate a distinctly trinitarian worldview.[5] Nathaniel Gray Sutanto writes, “Creation displays an organic ontology of diversities in unity precisely because in God there is an archetypal unity and diversity.”[6] More concisely, Eglinton states, “Theological organicism is the creation’s triune shape.”[7] For this reason, any investigation of the creation, whether scientific, historical, sociological, psychological, etc., must expect to encounter and be able to harmonize its ectypal unity and diversity in keeping with its very nature. Herein is the force of Bavinck’s apologetic: it is only by a revelatory epistemology that begins with the triune God, as he has revealed himself in Scripture, that any true knowledge, whether of nature or humanity, can be arrived at without sacrificing its unity for its diversity or its diversity for its unity. Special revelation is necessary for general revelation to be interpreted correctly. Bavinck does not employ the term in the above quote, as he does elsewhere, but the doctrine of the Trinity—derived from special revelation alone—provides this organic link between nature and grace, general revelation and special revelation. This doctrine of special revelation becomes the mountaintop vantage point from which the general revelation of God in creation, which stands before us as a most elegant book, is properly read and interpreted.[8] They are neither isolated from, nor set in opposition to one another, but complement each other in an organic manner, the one requiring the other. “Special revelation should never be separated from its organic connection to history, the world, and humanity.”[9] It is “in the light of Scripture we know it is the Father who by his Word and Spirit also reveals himself in the works of nature and history.”[10] With the glasses of Scripture on, the believer is able to discern the “creation’s triune shape.”[11] Herman Bavinck’s organic ontology, which holds that the archetypal unity-in-diversity of the triune God of Scripture requires an ectypal unity-in-diversity in the creation, provides the theological rationale for his philosophical apologetic.[12] Because the creation is not amorphous, conforming to the subjective and variegated philosophies of man, but has an objective unity-in-diversity ontology, both monism and dualism are unable to account for the full-orbed life of the world and humanity. The former destroys all diversity at the expense of unity and the latter posits a diversity that never arrives at a unity—neither can satisfy both the heart and the mind. Such satisfaction is reserved only for the revelational epistemology of Scripture that takes the doctrine of the Trinity as its alpha and omega point. This is evident in the failure of both pantheism and materialism succumbing to a monism that dissolves all distinctions “in a bath of deadly uniformity.” Bavinck observes,

Pantheism attempts to explain the world dynamically; materialism attempts to do so mechanically. But both strive to see the whole as governed by a single principle. In pantheism the world may be a living organism, of which God is the soul; in materialism it is a mechanism that is brought about by the union and separation of atoms. But in both systems an unconscious blind fate is elevated to the throne of the universe. Both fail to appreciate the richness and diversity of the world; erase the boundaries between heaven and earth, matter and spirit, soul and body, man and animal, intellect and will, time and eternity, Creator and creature, being and nonbeing; and dissolve all distinctions in a bath of deadly uniformity. Both deny the existence of a conscious purpose and cannot point to a cause or a destiny for the existence of the world and its history.[13]

In contrast, only the Christian worldview maintains that in the creation there is “the most profuse diversity and yet, in that diversity, there is also a superlative kind of unity.”[14] Bavinck explicitly locates the foundation of this diversity and unity in God.[15] The world has its beginning in God’s act of creation, its continuation in his governing power and finds its consummation in him as its ultimate goal.

Here is a unity that does not destroy but rather maintains diversity, and a diversity that does not come at the expense of unity, but rather unfolds it in its riches. In virtue of this unity the world can, metaphorically, be called an organism, in which all the parts are connected with each other and influence each other reciprocally. Heaven and earth, man and animal, soul and body, truth and life, art and science, religion and morality, state and church, family and society, and so on, though they are all distinct, are not separated. There is a wide range of connections between them; an organic, or if you will, an ethical bond holds them all together.[16]

For further study check out the address Dr. Jim Cassidy gave at the 2016 Reformed Forum Theology Conference: The Trinity, Image of God, and Apologetics: Bavinck’s Consistently Reformed Defense of the Faith. We also have an interview with Dr. Carlton Wynne reviewing James Eglinton’s book Trinity and Organism and numerous podcast episodes with Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, a PhD Candidate at New College, University of Edinburgh.

[1] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:330. [2] Bavinck, RD, 2:331, 332. [3] James Eglinton, Trinity and Organism, 80. [4] Ibid., 54. [5] Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck on the Image of God and Original Sin,” International Journal Of Systematic Theology 18, no. 2 (April 2016): 175. [6] Ibid. [7] James Eglinton, “Bavinck’s Organic Motif: Questions Seeking Answers,” Calvin Theological Journal 45, no. 1: 66. [8] Belgic Confession art. 2 notes the two means by which God is made known to us, which are typically denoted as general and special revelation. With regard to the latter, it reads in part, “First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book.” [9] Bavinck, RD, 2:353, emphasis mine. [10] Bavinck, RD, 2:340. [11] Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck on the Image of God and Original Sin,” 174. [12] The phrase “organic ontology” was taken from Sutanto, “Herman Bavinck on the Image of God and Original Sin,” 174. [13] Bavinck, RD, 2:435 [14] Bavinck, RD, 2:435-36. [15] Bavinck, RD, 2:436. [16] Bavinck, RD, 2:436.

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

In developing this doctrine, Ragusa draws upon Cornelius Van Til’s Trinitarian theology, covenant theology, and representational principle. Ragusa writes,

According to Van Til’s representational principle, for man’s will to operate and for an act of his will to be significant and meaningful it must take place within an exhaustively personal environment, that is, it must take place within the sovereign and eternal plan of the self-sufficient triune God. The absolute freedom of God does not take away or limit man’s freedom, but rather establishes it in an analogical fashion.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Dan Ragusa, Jim Cassidy

All heresies with respect to the Trinity may be reduced to the one great heresy of mixing the eternal and the temporal.

— Cornelius Van Til

Cornelius Van Til cut through the densest theological controversies like a hot knife through butter. What some readers dismiss as daft conclusions or graceless criticism, others learn to appreciate as incisive critical synthesis. You might say, some wince at Van Til’s work while others whistle at it. I put myself in the latter group. After years of reading his work, I’m still struck by his theological acumen. Van Til’s discussion of Trinitarian heresies is a case in point. Throughout his chapter on the Trinity in An Introduction to Systematic Theology, he keeps coming back to the same point: at base all Trinitarian heresies are the result of mixing the eternal and the temporal. This is tied to his emphasis on the Creator-creature distinction. He reminds us that

all non-Christian thought would have us think of God as one aspect of the universe as a whole. In one way or another, all heresies bring in space-time existence as the other aspect of the universe as a whole. … Here, in fact, lies the bond of connection between ancient and modern heresies. For this reason, the church has emphasized the fact that the ontological Trinity, that is, the Trinity as it exists in itself, apart from its relation to the created universe, is self-complete, involving as it does the equal ultimacy of unity and plurality. But it was a long and arduous road by which the church reached its high doctrine of the Trinity.[i]

Indeed, the church is still walking that road, ever vigilant of its feet, for a precipice lies on each side of the doctrine. Every century the church has stamped the dust of dogma and left footprints for the faithful to follow. It was in looking at such footprints, I believe, that Van Til drew out his incisive critique of Trinitarian heresies.

Gnosticism

He first takes aim at the Gnostic notion of the Logos (not to be confused with the biblical understanding of the Logos in John’s Gospel). The Gnostics could not see how the eternal God could be self-contained and yet still engage with creation. To solve this problem, they understood the Logos to be “the self-expression for God in the universe.”[ii] In other words, the Logos for them was a middleman between eternity and time, the divine and the human. But their conclusion merely muddied the water by making God dependent on creation. The Gnostics had mixed time and eternity by making the latter inextricable from the former. It was Irenaeus who would step onto the road of orthodoxy to claim that “God did not in any wise need the universe as a medium of self-expression; he was self-expressed in the Trinity.”[iii]

Sabellianism and Arianism 

Van Til next set his sights on Sabellianism and Arianism, showing that they were two sides of the same coin. The Arians refused to let go of the Son as a creature. Put differently, they refused to let the self-contained eternal Trinity engage with the dependent temporal world on God’s own terms. God was, in some sense, made correlative to the world. We might even say that Arianism attempted to force time into eternity by demanding that the Son be understood as a creature. Sabellianism, too, tried to force Trinitarian doctrine to fit the confines of temporality. In attempting to harmonize God’s threeness with his oneness, Sabellius and his cohort opted to make the three persons temporal manifestations of an eternal unity. For Van Til, this meant that they wanted to have “the temporal world furnish the plurality as a supplement to the eternal world, which furnished the unity of reality as a whole.”[iv] The plurality of persons in the Godhead was thus made correlative to the plurality we find in creation. This is drastically different, mind you, from the eternal unity and plurality of the Trinity being the basis for the temporal unity and plurality of creation.[v] In both Arianism and Sabellianism, adherents were guilty of “uniting the temporal in a correlative union with the eternal.”[vi] To say that the Son is a creature is to say that God must follow the norms of creaturely reason (Arianism); to say that the divine persons are merely modes of the one God is to say the same thing, really. In both cases, God is denied as the self-contained three-in-one; he cannot house in himself unity and plurality in perfect harmony, apart from creation. But, as Van Til affirmed frequently, he does. That is what the true church came to confess.

Nestorianism and Eutychianism 

Van Til then turns to Nestorianism and Eutychianism, which seem strange victims for a critique of Trinitarian heresy. Yet, Van Til saw these blunders as “no more than modified forms of opposition to the church’s doctrine of the Trinity.”[vii] Nestorius conceived of two persons in Christ (which is linked in a sense to equating time and eternity), while Eutyches argued that Christ only had one, divine nature (not a divine and a human nature), thus segregating eternity (Christ’s divine nature) from time (Christ’s human nature). In both cases, the deity of Christ was not properly related to his humanity and there is a false conception of the relationship between the eternal and the temporal, which in Christ are neither confused nor divided. Mixing up the relationship of the temporal and eternity in Christ is, in essence, an offshoot of mixing up the temporal and eternal in the Trinity.

Deism and Pantheism

But Van Til does not stop here. He moves on to link Nestorianism and Eutychianism to deism and pantheism. “Any doctrine that denies God’s providence (as deism does) or his providence and creation (as Greek thought did) must in the end become a confusion of the eternal and the temporal. Deism and pantheism are no more than two forms of the one basic error of confusion of the eternal and the temporal.”[viii] Van Til’s critique here is a classic example of how what was often obvious to him was not so self-evident to the rest of us. What does he mean here? Deism supposes that God is outside of and distant from created reality, which runs like a clock thanks to the laws of nature that God himself has instilled within it. God exists, for deists, but only as a hazy figure just within earshot of creation’s ticking clockwork. This belief system allowed deists to clutch a form of theism (which was not by any means Christian) without having to accept the rationally suspect claims of Scripture: that God became incarnate in the person of Christ and continues to work in his people through the power of the Spirit. These claims of the Bible assaulted the rules of human reason, so deists left them behind and supported a clear distinction between the clockmaker God and his gear-grinding world. Deists, in other words, enforced an extreme form of separation between the divine and the human, the eternal and the temporal. Thus, the “confusion of the eternal and the temporal” here is simply the practical removal of the former from the latter. God is stripped of his Trinitarian economy because that economy does not seem to cohere with the standards of temporal (human) reason. For Van Til, this is linked to Nestorianism. Just as the temporal is not divorced from the eternal in God’s economy, neither is the eternal divorced from the temporal in the person of Christ. This may be why Van Til suggested that Nestorianism was “the deistic form of opposition to the true doctrine.”[ix] The distant heretical step-sister of deism is pantheism. Deism segregates the eternal from the temporal; pantheism blends them together so that we cannot distinguish them anymore. For pantheists, God is in everything. The divine is mixed into the fabric of creation. This mixture thus frustrates all efforts to distinguish between God and the world. In the end, pantheists simply resolve the issue by concluding that creation is divine. This parallels the attempt of Eutyches to show that Christ only had one, divine nature. The human is dissolved into the divine. With Nestorius, the human and divine were set apart; with Eutyches the human is collapsed into the divine. In both cases there is confusion of the relationship between the eternal and the temporal.

Solution: God Exists as Triune

What is the solution to this confusion? It is our recognition of the biblical truth that “God exists as triune. He is therefore self-complete. Yet he created the world. This world has meaning not in spite of, but because of, the self-completeness of the ontological Trinity. This God is the foundation of the created universe and therefore is far above it.”[x] The Trinity is properly understood and worshiped only with a biblical understanding of God’s transcendence and immanence. The ontological Trinity is independent of creation, and yet all of creation has meaning because of God’s independence and sovereignty over it, even as he is present with us in it. The triune God created the world and stands above it, and yet all of reality has meaning because he is involved with it. The Trinity might be likened to a gloveless gardener. He is responsible for planting the rose bushes and the rhododendron, but he is not thereby dependent on them. Yet he also chooses to fill his fingernails with the dirt that hugs the roots of what he has made.

Calvin and Arminius

Modern Trinitarian heresies followed in the same path as the ancient ones. They once again fumbled with a “false conception of the Trinity, the self-contained God of Scripture.”[xi] The issues may have changed over time, but the problem was perennial. In Calvin’s day, the biblical doctrine of the Trinity was distorted by Arminius, who—again, following principles of strict rationalism—tried to resurrect the specter of subordinationism. Like Origen, Arminius wanted to push the taxonomy of the Trinity too far, ultimately reducing the divine to a unity rather than a Trinity. Calvin, in contrast, “was strongly interested in asserting the consubstantiality of the three persons of the Godhead.”[xii] While this was in some senses novel in Calvin’s day, it was really nothing more than a re-articulation of the ancient catholic doctrine that God is both one and three.

Idealism and Unitarianism

Continuing his critique, Van Til chastises Arminius for opening the door to “more radical departures” from the biblical doctrine, which came in with the idealists. “The idealist philosophers have identified the Trinity with the principle of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in reality as a whole.”[xiii] This Hegelian principle, once more, leads to an ultimate unity, not an ultimate Trinity. It leads to Unitarian faith rather than Trinitarian. What’s worse, it binds God to his creation so as to render him dependent. So, Van Til restates his synthetic summary of Trinitarian heresy.

Unitarianism is nothing but a new form of the old error of mixing the eternal and the temporal. Modernism is the happy heir of all heresies, and basic to all its heresies is the denial of the consubstantiality of the Son and the Spirit with the Father; or rather, its error is even deeper than that, since the Father himself is for modernism no more than an aspect of reality. If ever there was need for reaffirming and teaching the true doctrine of the Trinity, it is now.[xiv]

Indeed, the same is true for us today, especially in light of the longstanding liberal push to forsake the immanent Trinity for the economic—to seek God for us rather than God in himself. Such a push could easily be translated into Van Til’s vernacular: we should seek the God in time rather than the God of eternity. But it is exactly at this point that orthodox Christianity must check its feet and follow the straight and narrow. It is only because God is in himself that he is for us. God is for us in time by a loving and gracious decision, and such a decision emerged from the eternal Trinity who is love.

Conclusion

T. S. Eliot once wrote, “Only through time time is conquered.”[xv] I always interpreted this to mean that the God above time entered time in order to redeem time. But time did not always need to be conquered. Indeed, time did not always exist. Seconds were spoken into motion by the voice of the Trinity. Before there was time, before there was such a thing as history, there was simply the Trinity. I end with Fred Sanders’s words.

God’s way of being God is to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit simultaneously from all eternity, perfectly complete in a triune fellowship of love. If we don’t take this as our starting point, everything we say about the practical relevance of the Trinity could lead us to one colossal misunderstanding: thinking of God the Trinity as a means to some other end, as if God were the Trinity in order to make himself useful. But God the Trinity is the end, the goal, the telos, the omega. In himself and without any reference to a created world of the plan of salvation, God is that being who exists as the triune love of the Father for the Son in the unity of the Spirit. The boundless life that God lives in himself, at home, within the happy land of the Trinity above all worlds, is perfect. It is complete, inexhaustibly full, and infinitely blessed.[xvi]

In remembering these words, let us continue in the footsteps of orthodoxy, never mixing the eternal and the temporal, the God who is love in himself with the God who is love for us. As Van Til wrote, it has been “a long and arduous road by which the church reached its high doctrine of the Trinity.” Let us continue to walk it, in praise of the self-contained tri-personal God.

[i] Cornelius Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology: Prolegomena and the Doctrines of Revelation, Scripture, and God, ed. William Edgar, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2007), 353. [ii] Ibid. [iii] Ibid., 354. [iv] Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology, 356. [v] Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, ed. K. Scott Oliphint, 4th ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2008), 47–51. [vi] Van Til, Introduction to Systematic Theology, 356. [vii] Ibid., 358. [viii] Ibid., 359–60. [ix] Ibid., 360. [x] Ibid., 359. [xi] Ibid., 360. [xii] Ibid. [xiii] Ibid., 361. This is a reference specifically to Hegel’s dialectic, the notion that history is in the process of moving towards an ultimate unity as a result of the continuous cycle of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. [xiv] Ibid., 362. [xv] T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1943), 16. [xvi] Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 62.

Today we speak with Austin Reed about Karl Barth’s theology of election. Austin is a student at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and walks us through a critical review of Karl Barth’s Infralapsarian Theology: Origins and Development, 1920-1953 by Shao Kai Tseng. Tseng challenges the scholarly status quo, arguing that despite Barth’s stated favor of supralapsarianism, his mature lapsarian theology is complex and dialectical. It demonstrates elements of both supra- and infralapsarianism, though it favors the latter. In Tseng’s assessment, Barth’s theology is basically infralapsarian because he sees the object of election as fallen humankind and understands the incarnation as God’s act of taking on human nature in its condition of fallenness. Be sure to read Austin Reed’s review of Reading Barth with Charity: A Hermeneutic Proposal by George Hunsinger.

Participants: Austin Reed, Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy

On this episode, we are joined by Ryan McGraw, who speaks about the foundational role and practical significance of Trinitarian theology to John Owen. Dr. McGraw is Professor of Systematic Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Greenville, South Caroline. His article, “Trinitarian Doxology: Reassessing John Owen’s Contribution to Reformed Orthodox Trinitarian Theology” was published in The Westminster Theological Journal, Vol. 77, No. 2. Dr. McGraw joined us on a previous episode of Christ the Center to speak about the meaning of the phrase “good and necessary consequence” in the Westminster Confession of Faith 1.6.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy, Ryan McGraw

“Image-bearing means becoming fully human, not becoming divine.” In the opening chapters of her book None Like Him, Jen Wilkin gives us two lists:

What follows is the thesis for the rest of her book: “Though we know that the list on the right is for our good and for God’s glory, we gravitate toward the list on the left—a list that is not good for us, nor does pursuing it bring glory to God. It actually seeks to steal glory from him. It is a list that whispers, as the Serpent whispered to Eve, ‘You shall be like God’” (p. 24). The hope? “It is the natural inclination of the sinful heart to crave this list, but as those who have been given a new heart with new desires, we must learn to crave the list on the right. The list on the right represents the abundant life Jesus came to give us” (p. 24-25). Wilkin works throughout the book to open our eyes to how we, subtly or blatantly, reach for the forbidden fruit like children trying to touch something they know they shouldn’t. Or Adam and Eve eating something they shouldn’t. Our hearts have not progressed past garden-variety temptations, and Wilkin’s applications of this reality provide the most insight in this accessible book. None Like Him is written for women, as is evidenced by the pretty flowers on the cover. Wilkin’s examples are often targeting women, although she draws from various fields of study or pop culture that keep the book from becoming overly feminine. In terms of relationships, she speaks as an experienced wife and mother, and works in ministry at her church. She writes, not as an academic, but as a wise friend. I found this worked well in the application sections, but at times found the introductions to each chapter elementary. She used each chapter introduction to describe a quality of God, but did not stretch my understanding as much as I would have liked. She also highlighted her “feeble efforts” near the beginning of the book, something that I’ve seen women writers do frequently. Doing so is distracting and draws the reader away from the work and precludes the reader’s own conclusions. I wish this hesitation had been removed. Again and again, what I did appreciate is Wilkin’s solid theology. She spent numerous sections correcting my understanding of a certain text and making God big where I had made him small. In the chapter “Self-Existent,” Wilkin explains that “all worship of the creation is actually a veiled form of self-worship” (p. 47-8). Connecting this temptation to the story of God’s humbling of Nebuchadnezzar, she likens the insanity of Nebuchadnezzar’s creator complex to how “we convince ourselves that we deserve credit for creating that which we are called to steward. … It is sheer wild-eyed grass-eating madness to ascribe to ourselves the role of creator” (p. 50). I found Wilkin’s chapter “Self-Sufficient” to be the most convicting and pastoral. She leads the reader to do some heart analysis, and gets at a layer of self-deception that is profound:

We love autonomy and view dependence as a sign of failure, a flaw of some kind, a lack of proper planning or ambition. Christians, in particular, can interpret physical, financial, or spiritual need as a sign that God has removed his blessing from us because of some failure on our part. But why do we take this view? It’s almost as though our reasoning can’t separate the presence of need from the presence of sin. But is sin the cause of human need? A quick examination of Genesis 1-3 answers this question with a resounding no. In pre-fall Eden, Adam and Eve were created to need. … God created them needy, that in their need they might turn to the Source of all that is needful, acknowledge their need, and worship (p. 62).

It should disgust us that we, as Christians, would see things so perversely. Of all people, we should know how needy we are and be ready to acknowledge this reality. And yet we don’t. In an earlier chapter, Wilkin says, “One of the most frightening truths the Bible implores us to acknowledge is that we do not know our own hearts. Reflecting on this, the psalmist asks, ‘Who can discern his (own) errors?’ (Ps.19:12). The prophet Jeremiah warns that our hearts are characterized above all else by an internal, pervasive treachery that thwarts self-knowledge: ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?’ (Jer. 17:9). We don’t know our own hearts” (p. 36-7). Wilkin’s examination of the culture and Christianity reveals a deep-seated independence that can live in our hearts but wreak havoc on our lives. Thankfully, Wilkin points to some really good food for thought: “We were created to need both God and others. We deny this to our peril. We are not needy because of sin; we are needy by divine design. … Sanctification is the process of learning increasing dependence, not autonomy” (p. 63). Each chapter ends with four study questions, making this book suitable for individual or group study. I can see good discussion flowing from her questions. An example from the “Incomprehensible” chapter: “Think of a difficult person in your life. How well do you truly know him or her? How might acknowledging your limited understanding change the way you interact with him or her?” (p. 41). Or from the “Omnipotent” chapter: “Of the four types of power discussed (physical strength, beauty, wealth, and charisma), which do you have experience with? Which do you wish you had more of?” (p. 136). The book is hopeful but not trite. Wilkin does a nice job focusing on our union with Christ and his sanctifying work in us as a means to growth, and directs the reader’s eyes to spiritual blessings. “Not everything will be made new in this lifetime, but his promise to grown in us the fruit of the Spirit means we can know abundant life whether relationships and circumstances heal or not” (p. 52). There were a couple of times where Wilkin threw out a statement that seemed out of place without some Scriptural support or further explanation. On page 96 of the “Omnipresent” chapter, she states: “Even in hell, God is fully present, though its inhabitants perceive only his wrath” (p. 96). And from the “Eternal” chapter: “When we invest our time in what has eternal significance, we store up treasure in heaven. This side of heaven, the only investments with eternal significance are people” (p. 79). I found myself desiring a footnote or two to help me understand more fully why she said what she did. The book concludes with a “Sovereign” chapter and then a re-examination of Psalm 139:14: “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Wilkin restates her thesis in another way: “Our primary problem as Christian women is not that we lack self-worth, not that we lack a sense of significance. It’s that we lack awe” (p. 154). Using the entirety of Psalm 139, she points her readers once again to God, the real subject of the passage. It is a fitting conclusion for the book—to worship our God in awe and wonder. None Like Him quotes several times from A. W. Tozer’s book, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life. Published in 1961, this book is a classic and would be a fitting next read for those whose appetites Wilkin whet. None Like Him is a theologically-sound, witty, accessible, and probing study of the attributes of God. I hope it’s not the last book you read on the subject, but if you’re a Christian woman between the ages of 19 and 90, it’s a decent place to start.

In a previous episode of Christ the Center, we threw our oar in the water on the recent discussions regarding the proposed Eternal Functional Subordination (EFS) of the Son to the Father. If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, I would encourage you to do so. One of the helpful contributions of the panelists was their call for the inclusion of the pactum salutis (also known as the covenant of redemption or the counsel of peace) in our discussions on the Trinity, especially as it helps us to properly distinguish between (1) God’s necessary processions ad intra (which cannot be otherwise) and (2) God’s free and voluntary missions ad extra (which can be otherwise). The covenant of redemption is that work of God ad extra in which the three persons of the Godhead (each knowing themselves in distinction from the other two persons) freely and voluntarily covenant in person-to-person relationships to undertake the decrees of creation and redemption. As a work ad extra, the covenant of redemption is not natural or essential to God. In other words, it is not something eternally necessary to God. The processions ad intra are eternally necessary, since God cannot be otherwise than triune, but the covenant of redemption as a work ad extra is freely and voluntarily undertaken by each person of the Godhead. There is no ontological subordination obligating or requiring any of the persons to enter into this covenant. It is freely and voluntarily entered into by all three persons of the Trinity. In the episode, Dr. Tipton sheds further light on the covenant of redemption and expresses the importance of it for addressing the current issues at large. He says,

Built into the idea of the pactum salutis are three distinct self-conscious persons (not separate self-conscious persons since that would be tritheism) within the unity of the Godhead undertaking the decrees of creation and redemption, and doing so freely and voluntarily. That moves us into the idea that even though we want to affirm without compromise that there is one God and one essential will in the Godhead, there are nonetheless also three self-conscious distinct persons hypostatically, personally willing certain things. The Father wills to send the Son; the Son wills to be sent; the Father and Son will to give the Spirit; and the Spirit wills to be given. Understanding this as a background gives you a Reformed, theological, and trinitarian-covenantal context for addressing some of these issues.

The remainder of this post will look to briefly summarize and explain some aspects of Geerhardus Vos’ formulation of the covenant of redemption from his formative article “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology.”

Perfect Freedom in the Trinity

The first major point Vos makes is that

the covenant of redemption is nothing other than proof for the fact that even the work of redemption, though it springs from God’s sovereign will, finds its execution in free deeds performed in a covenantal way.

The freedom of God’s execution of redemption is important because for Vos the covenant idea demands this freedom. The demand is met with the perfect freedom that dominates in the triune Being. And it dominates in the triune Being because the three persons covenanting are of absolute ontological equal ultimacy. In other words, there is no necessary or ontological subordination in which one person of the Godhead is “duty bound” to receive the covenant arrangement. The Father doesn’t come to the Son, for example, with a covenant proposal that the Son is obligated to enter into and submit himself to on the basis of and because of his eternal generation. Rather, the Son submits freely, voluntarily and willingly to the covenant arrangement as One equally ultimate with the Father and Spirit. To say that the Son is obligated because of his eternal generation is to confuse God’s processions ad intra (which cannot be otherwise) and God’s missions ad extra (which can be otherwise). Vos clarifies this by contrasting the parties of the covenant of redemption (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) and the covenant of works before the fall (God and Adam). The covenant of works, writes Vos, “had to be regarded as one-sided to the extent that man, as God’s subordinate, was in duty bound to act upon the covenant that was proposed.” Adam couldn’t debate the terms of the covenant, nor could he reject and refuse entrance into it; rather, he was “duty bound” to the covenant that God sovereignly imposed upon him. This, however, is not true of the parties of the covenant of redemption because it is between the equally ultimate persons of the Godhead. For this reason Vos refers to it not as “one-sided,” but “two-sided.”[1] While Adam was duty bound to the covenant of works, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit exercised perfect freedom in their coming together in the covenant of redemption. No person was duty bound. There was no necessarily subordinate party in the covenant of redemption as there was in the covenant of works (i.e., Adam). Thus, the covenant of redemption was arranged, as Vos is going to say, between the three persons “judicially.”

The One, Undivided, Divine Will

Vos sheds further light on the covenant of redemption by distinguishing it from predestination. “Although this covenant of redemption may now be included in God’s counsel in that it operates within the Trinity, it should still not be confused with predestination.” He continues,

In predestination the divine persons act communally, while economically it is attributed to the Father. In the covenant of redemption they are related to one another judicially. In predestination there is the one, undivided, divine will. In the counsel of peace this will appears as having its own mode of existence in each person. One cannot object to this on the basis of the unity of God’s being. To push unity so strongly that the persons can no longer be related to one another judicially would lead to Sabellianism and would undermine the reality of the entire economy of redemption with its person to person relationships.

While Vos unequivocally affirms that God’s will is one and undivided, he nonetheless is able to speak of this “one, undivided, divine will” as appearing to have a mode of existence in each person. This allows the persons to relate to one another judicially, as they do in the covenant of redemption. If we don’t allow for this, then we fall into the error of Sabellianism (which is a form of modalism).[2] We cannot pit unity over against diversity. Instead, we need to maintain the equal ultimacy of the unity and diversity in the Godhead. These equally ultimate persons are able to relate to one another “judicially” with each being self-conscious and, therefore, knowing themselves in distinction from the other two persons and freely willing to the covenant arrangement: the Father, knowing himself as Father, wills to send the Son; the Son, knowing himself as Son, wills to be sent; the Spirit, knowing himself as Spirit, wills to be given. There is, then, in the covenant of redemption “person to person relationships.”

The Glory of the Triune God

While we have only scratched the surface of Vos’ article, one last point is in order. After tracing the history of the covenant concept, Vos asks an important question at the outset of his study: “To what … does one attribute the fact that from the beginning this concept of the covenant appears so much in the foreground of Reformed theology?” He answers that it was the Reformed principle of “the preeminence of God’s glory in the consideration of all that has been created,” “which served as the key to unlock the rich treasuries of the Scriptures.” These treasuries of course included the great opulence of covenant theology. It is only fitting then to conclude this post with Vos’ articulation of how this Reformed principle interlocks with the covenant of redemption:

The fact that redemption is God’s work by which He wills to be glorified can in no wise be more strongly expressed than by thus exposing its emergence from out of the depths of the divine Being Himself. Here it is God who issues the requirement of redemption as God the Father. Again, it is God who for the fulfillment of that requirement becomes the guarantor as God the Son. Once again, it is God to whom belongs the application of redemption as God the Holy Spirit. In the clear light of eternity, where God alone dwells, the economy of salvation is drawn up for us with pure outlines and not darkened by the assistance of any human hand. It is a creation of the triune One from whom, through whom, and to whom are all things.  

[1] Here is the full quote from Vos, “For it is only in the triune Being that that perfect freedom dominates which the covenant idea appears to demand. Here the covenant is completely two-sided, whereas before the Fall it still had to be regarded as one- sided to the extent that man, as God’s subordinate, was in duty bound to act upon the covenant that was proposed.” [2] “Sabellius believed God is like the sun that emanates light and heat. At different points in history we see God differently, just as we experience the sun’s light and heat differently. Ultimately, Sabellius erased all distinctions between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he taught that the Father is the Son is the Spirit: in ages past, God was the Father; during Jesus’ ministry, God was the Son; today, God is the Spirit. There is no eternal, personal communion between three distinct persons. We have one God who wears three masks, not three distinct persons in relationship with one another even though they share the same essence, according to Sabellius.” http://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/modalistic-monarchianism/.

For the last couple of weeks, many people have been discussing the doctrine of the Trinity, especially as various theologians have linked a doctrine of complementarianism to the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son. This relationship has been characterized by some as an eternal relationship of authority and submission or by others as an eternal subordination of the Son. In this episode, we address the current controversy by looking at the eternal relationship among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three persons are one God, equal in power and glory. Their essential relationship entails no relationship of authority, subordination, or submission. They are related by an irreversible taxis: the Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Theologians often call this the immanent or ontological Trinity. Yet, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit freely will to create, and eventually to redeem a people unto himself. This free, yet still eternal agreement, to redeem is known as the pactum salutis or Covenant of Redemption. This is an economic relationship that involves willful submission. The persons of the Godhead espouse different roles for the accomplishment of redemption. Theologians often call this the economic Trinity. How does divine ontology relate to the economy? Listen to this important discussion as we establish important doctrinal categories en route to a genuine advancement of the conversation. After listening to this discussion, please consider two previous episodes of Christ the Center that deal with similar issues:

• Christ the Center episode 245, Eternal Generation of the Son
• Christ the Center episode 295, The Aseity of the Son

Catch up on the entire discussion by consulting Adam Parker’s omnibus post.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington, Jim Cassidy, Lane G. Tipton

Van Til’s trinitarian theology is at the heart of his apologetic. Yet there are several aspects of his theology difficult to understand and others that are left undeveloped. We speak with Dr. Brant A. Bosserman about these issues. Bosserman has written The Trinity and Christian Paradox: An Interpretation and Refinement of the Theological Apologetic of Cornelius Van Til, which seeks to explain not merely why God is and must be one and many, but also why he is equally both one and three.

Links

• Van Til’s Trinitarian Theology
• Van Til’s Trinitarian Distinctives
• Trinitarian Personality
• Charles Hodge on Trinitarian Personality
• Trinitarian Personality in the Theologies of Barth and Rahner

Participants: Brant Bosserman, Camden Bucey, Jim Cassidy

The evangelical Internet is abuzz with discussion about ad intra relations within the Trinity. Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem have been recognized as presenting forms of Eternal Functional Subordination (EFS) of the Son to the Father in their respective books, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Crossway) and Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Zondervan). Owen Strachan and his co-author Gavin Peacock hold to what they term Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission (ERAS) in their book, The Grand Design (Crossway). This current discussion is bound up with complementarianism, an articulation of God’s design for the relationship between men and woman. Eternal subordination or submission is appealing to many, because it seems to bolster the case for complementarianism by rooting it in divine ontology, or at least the divine economy. It raises the issue above any conjecture of being arbitrary. Strachan is the president of The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). Grudem serves as a board member, and Ware serves as a council member. Many recognize that there are potential serious theological consequences for traveling this path. Carl Trueman, Liam Goligher, and Fred Sanders have written notable responses. Our colleague Jeff Waddington reflected on the issue as well. Regrettably absent from most of the discussion is the pactum salutis, or covenant of redemption (Jeff is the sole exception I’ve seen [UPDATE: and Mark Jones]). I suspect that a deeper familiarity with this historic Reformed doctrine would answer some of the questions proponents of EFS and ERAS raise. But at the end of the day, rooting complementarianism in the pactum salutis is problematic as well. We plan to treat the subject thoroughly on a future episode of Christ the Center. In the meantime, I encourage you to listen to two previous episodes of Christ the Center that deal with the issues at hand:

• Christ the Center episode 245, Eternal Generation of the Son
• Christ the Center episode 295, The Aseity of the Son

Catch-Up on the Conversation (updated)

• D. Glenn Butner, Jr., Eternal Submission and the Story of the Seven Ecumenical Councils
• D. Glenn Butner, Jr., “Eternal Functional Subordination and the Problem of the Divine Will” in JETS 58/1 (2015) 131–49
• Mark Jones, Why Did the Son Become Incarnate? Because He Submitted?
• Liam Goligher, Is it Okay to Teach a Complementarianism Based on Eternal Subordination?
• Liam Goligher, Reinventing God
• Carl Trueman, Fahrenheit 381
• Wayne Grudem, Whose Position on the Trinity Is Really New?
• Carl Trueman, A Rejoinder to Wayne Grudem
• Bruce Ware, God the Son—at Once Eternally God with His Father, and Eternally Son of the Father
• Carl Trueman, A Surrejoinder to Bruce Ware
• Owen Strachan, The Glorious Godhead and Proto-Arian Bulls
• Fred Sanders, 18 Theses on the Father and the Son
• Mark Jones, Propositions & Questions (for Fred Sanders) on the Trinity

Christians profess that God is triune. Many understand the importance of maintaining this doctrine. But many may also wonder where the doctrine is found in Scripture and what practical difference it makes being “Trinitarian” regardless. Brandon Crowe joins us to remedy this ill as he speaks about The Essential Trinity: New Testament Foundations and Practical Relevance, a new book he has co-edited with Carl Trueman. The book includes many excellent contributors. We’re excited to welcome this book, and hope it has an impact upon the Church’s life and understanding of historic Christian orthodoxy. Dr. Crowe is Associate Professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Participants: Brandon Crowe, Camden Bucey, Jeff Waddington

Perhaps you will remember from the last post, according to Jenson, Israel’s hope, as well as our own, is for participation in God’s own reality, which is nothing less than deification.[1] Working this idea out, Jenson asks, can God as Triune “bring other persons into that life?”[2] His answer is, on the surface, less threatening than we might have expected, though minimally. He writes, “that if bringing other persons into the triune life were in such a fashion to ‘deify’ them as to increase the number of persons whose life it is, if it added to the identities of God, then God could not accommodate them without undoing himself.”[3] So, how does Jenson explain the deification of participants in the divine life? Not surprisingly his answer has a grammatical focus. In other words, the participant who is deified does not become a divine identity. But what does that mean? According to Jenson, “a divine identity is a persona just of that dramatis dei actually told by the gospel,” thus any other relation than this “is not a divine identity.”[4] Consequently, Jenson is drawing a distinction between the narrative of Scripture and history itself. Thus, the Triune God is eternal “by the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection.”[5] However, in and through Christ God takes our time into His time. Thus, the source of God’s temporal infinity is found in the Person of Christ. Therefore, we find that Jenson wants to distinguish between Creator and creature even in the telos. This constant attempt to maintain a Creator creature distinction is also consistent with his understanding of the analogia entis. Let us return one final time to Jenson’s revolutionized understanding of analogy this time as it relates to deification or perichoresis. I have already pointed out that for Jenson the analogia entis is an irreducibly grammatical construct as it relates to being, which is conversation. However, Jenson realizes that there is a breakdown between grammatical assertion “God is” and “creatures are.”[6] Thus, Jenson adopts categories that will help us to understand the breakdown. He says, “‘x is’ is univocal in its locutionary sense” but “equivocal in its ‘illocutionary force.’”[7] In other words, the utterance’s illocutionary force is the particular act performed when it is said.[8] We might interpret Jenson as saying that the illocutionary force is the product (act) of the locutionary sense. Thus, says Jenson, “We may ask, when we say “God is,” what do we do?”[9] Consequently, Jenson maintains an archetype ectype distinction in his understanding of analogy and in his view of deification. But can he uphold the distinction? Again, let us return to Jenson’s conception of the incarnation. For him, it is simply the adoption of Christ; an adoption that is only constituted in the univocal address of the man Jesus of Nazareth to God the Father. However, can there be a coincidence between the thought of man and the thought of God, or according to Jenson, between the conversation of man and God, without there being a coincidence of being? Surely the answer is, no. Thus, the implications are obvious. If there is a univocal epistemological address between God and man then there must be a univocal correspondence between the being of God and man. Thus, in and through the application of Jenson’s view of the analogia entis to the incarnation of the second Person of Trinity, Jenson has destroyed the archetype ectype distinction that he seeks so carefully to maintain. Thus, God has become history or perhaps more to the point, man has become the Biblical narrative. Thus, Jenson has thoroughly temporalized God. There is now, no distinction between God and man. God has been thoroughly temporalized; man has been thoroughly deified. Thus, both God and man are irreducibly univocal grammatical constructions. Having come to the end of this series, which was one post more than intended, I believe that I have demonstrated my thesis. Through his revolutionized understanding of the analogia entis Jenson laid the groundwork for the total temporalizing of God. What is more, Jenson’s inability to reconcile the univocal address of the man Jesus in his adoptionistic grammatically oriented view of the incarnation destroyed any residue of an archetype ectype distinction. Furthermore, such a move opened the door for the full deification of participants in the Godhead. Throughout these posts the nagging question has been; has Jenson gone beyond Barth? Now, we may answer without reservation. Yes, though Barth sowed the seeds, Jenson has indeed reaped a Barthian harvest of ideas with regard to the Creator-creature distinction that are simply contrary to the Biblical account and the orthodox confessions of the faith.   [1] Jenson, ST 1, 71. [2] Ibid., 226. [3] Ibid. [4] Ibid. [5] Ibid., 219. [6] Jenson, ST II, 38. [7] Ibid. [8] Ibid. [9] Ibid.