The Dutch Reformed thinker and poet Willem Bilderdijk recalls in a letter to a friend in 1822 what his former teacher once said: “When examining the truth of Christianity, you must be as much a heathen as a Christian in order to judge freely.”^[1] This troubled Bilderdijk for the simple reasons that it failed to honor Christ, first and foremost, and to account for the antithesis between believers and unbelievers. He writes,

This beautiful sounding precept, which then dismayed me, is indeed of the evil one and seduces whoever accepts it: because it contains [1] unfaithfulness to God and the Savior to whom we are sanctified in baptism and [2] a fundamental apostacy. — No, we must cling with all of our soul to the Savior, value and hold fast with our heart the Grace that has called us, and fight Unbelief in God’s might and not under the Banner of Reason.

By the “Banner of Reason,” Bilderdijk has in mind not reason in itself but reason understood specifically as an autonomous source of knowledge that can function independent of God and his revelation. And so, he recognized that if believer and unbeliever alike fight under the Banner of Reason, then (autonomous) reason must triumph in the end. For the believer to raise the Banner of Reason is for him to desert his Commander; it is “a fundamental apostacy.” Bilderdijk continues,

Then it will not be difficult to see the falsity of the feigned refutations [of God]. They gleam in the eye, but one must not let himself be moved into the standpoint of those who cannot see the light of truth from their standpoint. I must not close my eyes with the blind man in order to debate with him whether or not the sun shines. If someone denies that I have a good library or a well-stocked cellar, I must not shut up the room or cellar, but bring him in there with me. Or, if he is too crippled to go up and down the stairs with me, then let him talk, and I will enjoy my privilege in gratitude toward God who gives me these refreshments for soul and body. — If I can refute the unfortunate by the communication from there, so much the better; but to set aside my possession and consciousness of it in order to refute his arguments from those arguments themselves would be folly.

Believers and unbelievers view all things from different “standpoints” or “worldviews,” as Bilderdijk speaks of elsewhere. For the believer to adopt the unbeliever’s mode and position of seeing in order to debate with him would be as foolish as someone debating a blind person as to whether or not the sun is shining by closing his own eyes. He deprives himself of that which alone can recognize the thing in question. The Christian must not set aside his “possession,” graciously given to him by God, in order to refute the arguments of unbelievers by the unbeliever’s own arguments. Is it not telling that it is typically those fighting for the faith who are lured under the “Banner of Reason” and not the other way around? Neutrality is a myth.

Bilderdijk realized that someone could object to this as simply begging the question (petitio principii). He responds,

All feeling is petitio principii and cannot be disproved or proved by reason. And so it is with the Feeling of Grace [Genadegevoel], that is, with Religion. It is of God, it is the working of God’s Spirit in our heart, and the mind must receive it from our heart. Without this, intellectual Religion is a mere Historical or Philosophical view, nothing more, and does not prove Christianity but Paganism.

This Romantic version of “faith seeking understanding” is basic to the Reformed theology that Bilderdijk sought to defend and promote. A test case is the believer’s reception of the Bible’s sixty-six books as holy and canonical and his undoubted belief in all things contained in them. The Belgic Confession, which Bilderdijk affirmed, states that the believer receives these books and believes all things in them “above all because the Holy Spirit testifies in our hearts that they are from God” (article 5). As Bilderdijk said, “[I]t is the working of God’s Spirit in our heart, and the mind must receive it from our heart.” The mind is not independent, but dependent upon the heart and the Spirit.

In apologetics, the believer must not set aside “his possession and his consciousness of it” in order to argue from the unbeliever’s resources. Rather, “we must cling with all of our soul to the Savior, value and hold fast with our heart the Grace that has called us, and fight Unbelief in God’s might and not under the Banner of Reason.”

And so Bilderdijk did. As Herman Bavinck writes of him, “Against the Revolution, he raised the banner of the Gospel.”^[2]

^[1] Willem Bilderdijk, “Aan Mr. Samuel Iperuszoon Wiselius,” in Brieven 3 (Amsterdam, 1837). All quotations in this article are taken from here. All translations are my own.

^[2] Herman Bavinck, Bilderdijk als denker en dichter (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1906), 216, my translation.

The Synod of Dort (1618–19) not only produced the famous Canons of Dort and a church order, but also the first translation of the Bible into Dutch from the original languages, known as the Statenvertaling. Along with this translation, marginal notes (kanttekeningen) were added to aid in the study of God’s Word. You could say it was one of the earliest “Study Bibles,” though the Genevan (1560) has historical priority.

Why are these notes significant? First, while no office bearer in the church was required to subscribe to these marginal notes, like as to the Three Forms of Unity, they still provide a window into the biblical interpretation of the architects of the Canons of Dort.

Second, these notes soon gained international recognition in keeping with the international nature of the synod. In 1645 the Westminster Assembly commissioned Theodore Hank to translate them into English, which he later published in 1657. An English translation of the annotations can be found here.[1] The notes on Colossians 2:8 briefly distinguish between a true and false philosophy and posit the proper use of philosophy as an instrument to better understand or explain God’s Word.

Kolossensen 2:8

Colossians 2:8 reads,

Ziet toe, dat niemand u als een roof vervoere door de filosofie, en ijdele verleiding, naar de overlevering der mensen, naar de eerste beginselen der wereld, en niet naar Christus

Beware lest any man carry you off as spoil through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the first principles of the world, and not after Christ.

Marginal Note on Ziet toe (“See to it”)

Hier begint de apostel het verhaal der dwalingen, waar hij hen tegen waarschuwt, namelijk wijsbegeerte, menselijke inzettingen, en vermengingen van de wet der ceremoniën, die hij de een voor, de andere na, wederspreekt.

Here the apostle begins the account of the errors against which he warns them, namely, philosophy, human ordinances and mingling of the ceremonial law, which he, the one first, the other after, opposes.

Marginal Note on als een roof (“as spoil”)

… namelijk van Christus en Zijne waarheid tot andere leringen of middelen ter zaligheid buiten Christus; ene gelijkenis, genomen van rovers, die niet alleen de goederen, maar ook de mensen zelf tot een roof wegvoerden, om hen tot slaven … te maken. Zie een voorbeeld, 1 Sam. 30.

… namely, from Christ and His truth unto other doctrines or means of salvation outside of Christ. A similitude taken from such robbers, who used to carry away not only goods, but also the persons themselves for a prey, to make them slaves …. See an example, 1 Samuel 30.

Marginal note on de filosofie (“philosophy”)

Hierdoor wordt de rechte filosofie niet verstaan, die ene gave Gods is, en zelfs een instrument of middel is, dienstig om Gods Woord beter te verstaan en te verklaren; maar de sophisterij of bedriegelijke schijnwijsheid van enige heidense filosofen, gelijk de volgende woorden ijdele verleiding verklaren, en gelijk Paulus hiervan spreekt, Rom. 1:21, 22, welke filosofen in deze hunne schijnwijsheid enige dingen van God en van den weg tot het opperste goed hadden voorgesteld, die deze leraars met het Evangelie wilden vermengen, gelijk ook de scholastieke leraars in het Pausdom doen, waardoor de eenvoudigheid en oprechtheid der zaligmakende leer van het Evangelie merkelijk is verduisterd en vervalst.

Hereby is not understood the true philosophy, which is a gift of God and is even an instrument or means useful for the better understanding and explaining of the Word of God, but the sophistry or specious discourses of some pagan philosophers, as the following words vain deceit declare, and as Paul speaks hereof in Rom. 1:21, 22, which philosophers in this their apparent wisdom had propounded some things concerning God, and concerning the way to the highest good, which these teachers wanted to mingle with the Gospel, as the scholastic teachers also do amongst the Papists, whereby the simplicity and sincerity of the saving doctrine of the Gospel is notably obscured and falsified.

Revelation and Philosophy according to Groen van Prinsterer

Groen van Prinsterer cites this marginal note in his Proeve over de middelen waardoor de waarheid wordt gekend en gestaafd (1834) in support of his claim: “Revelation alone is the foundation of a complete philosophy; it contains the highest, the only true philosophy.”[2] This statement comes in the context of a larger discussion on Christianity and philosophy:

Man is related to the spiritual and the material world. No human reasoning teaches how spirit and matter are united in him; the philosopher has preferably devoted himself to one or the other component, so that one has either spiritualized the dust or materialized the spirit. Spiritualism and materialism emerged.[3]

For man, if he does not know the first cause of universal corruption, then there is no more enigmatic being than he himself. He feels a pull toward a higher existence; but he also feels that he is at every turn led by inclinations and impulses in the opposite direction.  How great and also how miserable; how earthly, and also how heavenly![4]

Christianity solves the riddles that cannot be solved by philosophy, insofar as this is necessary for wisdom about life [levenswijsheid] and eternal happiness. By faith, the harmony of feeling and reason is restored. Revelation teaches how the self-consciousness of greatness and misery can be explained. She gives firmness to principles while she allows freedom of opinions. She gives what philosophy promised.[5]

Christian philosophy … contains the life principle [levensbeginsel] of knowledge and science. She is the sun, which spreads over the field of human investigation brightness, warmth, and life. Every science, properly practiced, bears witness to the truth of revelation; not properly practiced, they glorify, by deviations and misunderstandings, the highest truth nolens volens. Accurate study leads back to the universal source of light and life.[6]

1. Thank you to Slabbert Le Cornu for bringing this English translation to my attention. May the Lord bless your efforts in translating these notes into Afrikaans.
2. De Openbaring alleen is de grondslag eener volledige wijsbegeerte; zij bevat de hoogste, de alleen ware filozofie.
3. De mensch is aan de geestelijke en aan de stofflijke wereld verwant. Geen menschelijke redenering leert hoe geest en stof vereenigd in hem zijn; de wijsgeer heeft zich bij voorkeur aan het eene of aan het andere bestanddeel gehecht, zoodat men óf het stof vergeestelijkt, óf den geest verstoffelijkt heeft. 
4. Voor den mensch, zoo hij de eerste oorzaak der algemeene verbastering niet kent, is geen raadselachtiger wezen dan hij zelf. Hij gevoelt een trek naar hooger bestaan; doch gevoelt ook dat hij telkens door neigingen en driften in tegenovergestelden zin wordt geleid. Hoe groot en tevens hoe ellendig; hoe aardsch, en tevens hoe hemelschgezind!
5. Het Christendom lost de voor de wijsbegeerte onoplosbare raadselen, voor zoo ver dit tot levenswijsheid en eeuwig geluk noodig is, op. Door het geloof wordt de harmonie van gevoel en rede hersteld. De Openbaring leert hoe de zelfbewustheid van grootheid en ellende kan worden verklaard. Zij geeft vastheid van beginsels terwijl ze vrijheid van meeningen laat. Zij geeft wat de wijsbegeerte belooft.
6. De christelijke wijsbegeerte … bevat het levensbeginsel van kennis en wetenschap. Zij is de zon, die op het veld van menschelijk onderzoek helderheid, warmte en leven verspreidt. Elke wetenschap, wel beoefend, legt van de waarheid der Openbaring getuigenis af; niet wel beoefend, verheerlijkt zij, door afwijking en wanbegrip, de hoogste waarheid tegen wil en dank. Naauwkeurige studie brengt naar de algemeene bron van licht en leven terug. 

J. H. Bavinck. The Riddle of Life.Translated by Bert Hielema. Grand Rapids, MI. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2016. Pp. 94. $20.00. For fallen man, life is a riddle that was, and that is, and that will continue to be. A few brief notes on the history of Western thought demonstrate this point. The self-proclaimed autonomous man of the Enlightenment sought to employ either his reason (rationalism) or his sense experience (empiricism) to interpret a supposedly open, un-interpreted universe that included himself. However, unable to ground the law of cause-and-effect or even the most basic notion of a subject-object correspondence, David Hume buried the autonomous man. On his gravestone he wrote: a relativist, a skeptic, an unsolved riddle. Eventually a shift occurred. After repeatedly arriving at the absurd and irrational as a conclusion, the absurd instead became a self-given, the assumed starting-point. This was particularly the case for consciousness and existentialist thinkers. For example, Albert Camus, in his work The Myth of Sisyphus, assumes from the outset that the life of man is akin to that of Sisyphus who was condemned to ceaselessly rolling a stone to the top of a mountain, which would only roll back down of its own weight. Yet, Sisyphus is not to be pitied, but imagined to be happy. “Sisyphus is the absurd hero,” writes Camus, “He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing” (The Myth of Sisyphus, 120). From nothing man came, to nothing man is fated, and everything in between is absurd—if only he will embrace this, he will live. Out of the absurdity that is life or existence, others called forth monstrous beings, like Nietzsche’s Übermensch who would reject the hopes of another world as pitiable escapism, declare the death of God, fully embrace his irrational existence, and forge for himself value and meaning. Thus, the testimony to the futility of fallen thought is manifold: man is no more able to create meaning and purpose than he is able to give life to the dead or call into existence the things that do not exist. Man and his world remain an unsolved riddle, an impenetrable mystery. Yet, we are not to despair. There is, in fact, a clear way forward as J. H. Bavinck demonstrates in his book The Riddle of Life. In a simple, understandable, and persuasive manner, he presses in to answer the big questions that have riddled life: What do we know? Who are we? Why are we here? Where do we come from? What is our destiny? How should we live? His basic point is that if we begin with the self-attesting man of the Enlightenment, then we are doomed to irrationality and absurdity. But if we begin with the self-attesting Christ of Scripture then and only then can we move forward to find the answers to the mysteries of life. Accordingly, Bavinck argues for the necessity of a revelatory epistemology, that is, a theory of knowledge that arises from the revelation of God in Scripture. The only silk thread that leads us out of the labyrinth of life is that which God has let down from heaven: his Word. Bavinck writes, “God has spoken. The eternal mystery of the ultimate basis of everything that exists has been revealed. In Jesus Christ the Light has come, the Light that bans all darkness from our hearts and instills in us the unspeakable joy of having found and having been found” (5). Bavinck further clarifies this point by affirming that the only way to arrive at any knowledge is “to believethat we are part of a rational universe,” which can only be maintained if “we confessthat an almighty and all-wise God has created the world and the human race in mutual dependence” (16). From this revelatory foundation, Bavinck proceeds to answer the mysteries of life in the light of Scripture. For example, in order to answer the question, “Where do we come from?” we must know whether or not God exists. Bavinck lists the various classical proofs for the existence of God that have been given, but concludes that they are “in themselves … not totally convincing” (24). The reason for this is that we are always biased in our conclusions, which means our intellect and logic “cannot possibly be the final arbiter” (25). In contrast, “the Christian faith, realizing this truth, strongly stresses the confession: I believe in God, the Father, creator of heaven and earth. That is not a scientific conclusion, not a well-rounded statement, but it rests on faith in God’s Word. When I, in this world, amidst an untold number of mysteries, ponder the question of ‘Where do I originate?’ I only can trust that the whole of this rational and yet so mysterious universe has been wrought by a superior Reason, by an all-wise Maker who is also our Father” (25). Another question that Bavinck takes up is: “What is the meaning of life?” His answer opens with a helpful illustration. Imagine you come across the words: the silver moonlight radiated businessmen across the water. The obvious point is that within that sentence “businessmen” has no real meaning. Why? Because it is out of place there and does not fit in. “So when does a word make sense? It makes sense when it can seamlessly melt away in the context, when it fits in the totality. When does the life of a human make sense? It only makes sense when it has harmoniously inserted itself into the greater meaningful totality, when it is part of an overall world concept” (33). Man is not capable of forming the totality for himself because he is finite and limited. Rather, this totality is only found in Jesus Christ who repeatedly has told us that “the ultimate meaning of human life is the kingdom of God. … Measured by that criterion everything makes sense, every human act contains something of value” (34). In keeping with this revelatory base, Bavinck utilizes the threefold scheme of man found in Scripture. Man is rational, moral, and spiritual, which corresponds to knowledge, righteousness, and holiness as well as his office as prophet, priest, and king (see Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 12). This scheme proves very useful for Bavinck in explaining the full-orbed nature of man’s original design and purpose, the effects of sin on him, the redemption he needs, and the person and work of Jesus Christ. Bavinck also utilizes this scheme to expose the inadequacy of the other world religions: Buddhism and Islam. Common to both is the belief that deliverance is solely a matter of knowledge, so all that is needed is a prophet. The prophet, whether Buddha or Mohammed, preaches the truth and so offers the possibility of salvation. It then becomes a matter of self-redemption: we must apply the truth to ourselves in order to be saved. The problem is that this does not penetrate to the deepest parts of man. Man’s misery is not singular, but threefold. “We lack the knowledge, the insight into the truth. We also lack the peace, the true justice, the harmonious attitude to God. Finally we also lack the holiness, the will to do good. To be truly free we must surrender the entire structure of our existence: our redemption must be threefold, just as our misery is threefold” (71). Herein is the peculiarity of Christianity. Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, answers to the threefold plight of man. He is the Prophet who reveals true knowledge of God and man, the Priest who offers peace by his sacrifice on the cross, and the King who offers holiness by eradicating the desire for sin and fills us with life eternal. These three benefits are represented in what Jesus calls the “kingdom of God,” which “is composed of all that life contains, the world and all that it is” (80). It is only those who repent and believe who find entrance into this kingdom (83). The final question that Bavinck asks has to do with the completion of life: “What is behind that strange, mysterious curtain that we usually call death?” (90). The Gospel, according to Bavinck, teaches that all men either face death alone or with Jesus Christ (92). The person who enters death apart from Christ belongs to the kingdom of darkness doomed to eternal destruction. But the person who enters death “in Christ” will have it proved “the great revelation” (93). He explains, “As soon as we see the reflection of God’s presence in the distance, then an infinite joy will be born in us. … With inexpressible rapture I will flee to him and embrace him as my all, as my salvation. And observing him, the pure sight of him and his glory, I will go from joy to greater joy, from light to greater light. In the joyfulness I will then experience lies the hallmark of eternity, because God is eternal” (94). While the book is to be recommended on the basis of the previous analysis, especially its commitment to a revelatory epistemology, there are still a few areas that warrant critique. First, Bavinck states that the essence of humanity is that they are “children of God” (27). This language, however, does not seem helpful because of the salvific connotations of it in Scripture (e.g., Rom. 8:16-17) and the more clear description found in Genesis of man being made in the “image of God.” It is true that Adam is entitled the “son of God” in Scripture, as well as Israel and David’s kingly sons, but this phrase has covenantal and eschatological implications that Bavinck seems to overlook. Furthermore, it does not allow for the adoption that takes place in Christ, so that those who were once “children of wrath” are made “children of God” (Rom. 8:14-17; Eph. 2:1-10; 2 Pet. 2:14). Second, Bavinck speaks about the “law of service,” which he observes is evident in the various levels of creation from the inorganic to the organic to humanity, as the fundamental law of creation and the “overarching purpose for every being” (18). Bavinck seems to arrive at this law by way of natural observation and so deviates from the revelatory foundation he argued for earlier. Because of this his conclusion from nature can be labeled naïve since while the creation is seen to serve each other at some level, it is also seen to devour one another at an even higher level. The fact that creation is not in harmony with itself is not self-evident, but only properly understood on the basis of the biblical doctrine of sin. Likewise, the law of service must be drawn from God’s revelation to man. In addition, Bavinck construes this law with a predominately horizontal focus, while the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Third, in a couple of places Bavinck seems to deny the historicity of Adam and the fall, though this may not have been his intention. Regarding the former, he writes, “We are Adam … God’s children” (30). This suggests that Adam was a mere symbol of every person, rather than the historical federal head of humanity, in whom all died when he sinned (Rom. 5:12ff.). Regarding the latter, Bavinck says, “The Good News shows us that the history of the world, from its very inception, is dominated by two factors” (88, emphasis mine). The two factors that he identifies are sin and grace. But in Scripture neither sin nor grace (understood redemptively) dominated until the historical fall of man in Genesis 3. Furthermore, Bavinck says that these two factors “will give us some insight into the meaning of the world, and why we are here” (88). On one level this is true, but it is also problematic because it makes the soteriological absolute, rather than the eschatological. Scripture is clear that there is an absolute end posited for humanity and the world beforeand apart fromsin. To this pre-redemptive eschatology is added a soteric force on account of the historical entrance of sin into the world, but this addition does not eclipse or eliminate man’s original destiny, a destiny that is fulfilled in Christ (Ps. 8; Heb. 2:5-9). Overall, this book would benefit believers by helping them better understand the worldview implications of the doctrines of God, man, sin, and redemption and by equipping them to better share the gospel with their neighbor. It would also be useful to give directly to unbelievers who will find in it a concise and clear commendation of the Christian faith as the only sound and coherent way of viewing oneself and the world. It demonstrates that Christianity is not a conglomerate of abstract propositions designed for esoteric cloud-gazers and irrelevant spiritualists, but draws its life source from the concrete acts and words of God that have entered our world and our history, preeminently in Jesus Christ, who forms its organic center from which the whole world will one day be consummated a new creation.

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

Jonathan Edwards: Better than Turretin

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

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

Richard Muller: Locating Mastricht

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

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

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

Ernst Bizer: Mastricht First Introduced into the English World

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

Aza Goudriaan: The Relationship between Philosophy and Scripture

Aza Goudriaan, in his volume, Reformed Orthodoxy and Philosophy, 1625–1750, focuses on the relationship of theology and philosophy as formulated in the thought of three key Dutch Reformed theologians: Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676), Petrus van Mastricht (1630–1706), and Anthonius Driessen (1684–1748).[5] All three were at the forefront of the philosophical debates that swirled in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially instigated by the arrival of Renee Descartes (1596–1650) in the Netherlands in 1628. “If it is true,” Goudriaan writes, “that orthodox Protestant theologians made more extensive use of philosophy than the Reformation itself, the question can be posed how they actually used philosophy. Or it can be asked what theological positions they held in areas that philosophers could also reckon to their territory.”[6] By studying these three theologians, Goudriaan “seeks to understand better how Dutch Reformed theology integrated and responded to philosophical views in the period from 1625 through 1750.”[7] Voetius, professor of theology at the University of Utrecht, was initially the premier defender against the Cartesian encroachment upon the Dutch Reformed Church that sought to undermine both her theology and piety. This mantle would be taken up by his successor at the university, Petrus van Mastricht. As might be expected, Goudriaan demonstrates that Voetius and Mastricht were in essential agreement with one another in their theology and polemic against Cartesianism as they engaged it from distinctly Reformed premises and commitments. Goudriaan deals successively with specific loci where the relationship between theology and philosophy was acutely tried and tested, including: reason and revelation; creation and the physical world; the providential rule of God over the world; anthropological issues of the relationship between the soul and the body; and divine and natural law. He notes that both Voetius and Mastricht had aligned themselves with the older Aristotelian philosophy against the newer Enlightenment philosophy, yet the debate was not waged over whose philosophical system was correct. This in itself would have been a losing concession, for it was precisely their aim that Reformed theology not be corrupted by alien philosophical concepts or categories that ultimately undermined Scriptural authority and teaching. Philosophy was instead viewed by them as an instrument or servant of the most basic Reformed principle, namely, the authority of Scripture as their principium cognoscendi. For them Scripture was not subordinated to philosophy, but philosophy to Scripture. This starting point alone accounted for the full-orbed nature of creation with its rich diversity, including spirits and bodies, heaven and earth, which Cartesian dualism could not account for or bring into any real, dynamic relation. Because of this common commitment to the Reformed principle of Scripture’s authority, Goudriaan observes, “the theological development from Voetius to Driessen supports the broader claim that biblical Christianity outlives the philosophical and conceptual apparatus with whose help it is explained.”[8] To put it another way, philosophy was not the indispensable lord of theology, but its disposable handmaiden—it would, therefore, continue even when philosophies changed or failed. Goudriaan’s conclusions are consistent with what we see in Mastricht’s Ad Verum Clariss. D. Balthasaren Beckerum. He does not utilize Aristotelianism to combat Bekker’s Cartesian and Spinozistic intention of disenchanting the world by casting doubt on the existence of spirits, including the devil, and rejecting any interaction between spirits and bodies. Rather, he formulates his argument on the basis of Scripture as its starting point and the true worship of God as its goal, thus wedding theology and piety.

Adriaan Neele: Doctrine and Piety

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

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

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

[1] Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, 1:73. [2] Ibid., 1:74. [3] Ernst Bizer, “Reformed Orthodoxy and Cartesianism,” in Journal for Theology and the Church, vol. 2, Translating Theology into the Modern Age, ed., Robert Funk (New York, 1965); orig. “Die reformierte Orthodoxie und der Cartesianismus,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 55 (1958). [4] Ernst Bizer, “Die reformierte Orthodoxie und der Cartesianimus,” in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche55 (1958), cited by Adriaan C. Neele, Petrus van Mastricht(1630-1706), Reformed Orthodoxy: Method and Piety, Brill’s Series in Church History vol. 35 (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2009), 7. [5] Aza Goudriaan, Reformed Orthodoxy and Philosophy, 1625-1750: Gisbertus Voetius, Petrus Van Mastricht, and Anthonius Driessen, Brill’s Series in Church History vol. 26 (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2006). [6] Ibid.,2. [7] Ibid., 5. [8] Ibid., 331. [9] Adriaan C. Neele, Petrus van Mastricht (1630-1706), Reformed Orthodoxy: Method and Piety, Brill’s Series in Church History vol. 35 (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2009). This study arises from his earlier doctoral dissertation The Art of Living to God: A Study of Method and Piety in the Theoretica-practica theologia of Petrus van Mastricht (1630-1706) (Th.D. thesis, University of Utrecht, 2005: Pretoria: Pretoria University Pres, 2005). [10] Ibid., 1. [11] Ibid. [12] Also observed by Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1: Prolegomena to Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 1:62. [13] Neele, Petrus van Mastricht, 285.

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.

Moving on from Van Til’s first published criticism of Barth (see the previous six posts entitled In The Beginning) we now consider his first published monograph dedicated entirely to a criticism of “the Theology of Crisis” in The New Modernism (1946).[1] The overall contention of the book is that the Reformed Faith is no friend of “the Theology of Crisis,” but rather its mortal enemy (p. ix; p. 3). Everything he says about Crisis Theology will seek to substantiate that basic contention. Also it is worth our noting how The New Modernism differs from his second monograph on Barth in 1962, Christianity and Barthianism. There, taking his lead from J. Gresham Machen’s well-known Christianity and Liberalism, Van Til argues that Barthianism is not a legitimate expression of Christianity but another religion altogether. Whereas in his earlier volume he sets the Theology of Crisis over against the Reformed Faith, in the latter he sets Barthianism over against Christianity as such. But for now, let’s stick with The New Modernism. In particular, I would like to highlight how Van Til opens the book. Whatever you think of his thesis that the Theology of Crisis and the Reformed Faith are enemies, careful attention must be given to how Van Til understands Barth and Brunner’s theology. It is assumed today by many that Van Til “got Barth wrong.” That seems to me an unhelpful sweeping claim. Did he get anything right about Barth?  If so, which parts did he get right and which ones wrong? Furthermore, it strikes me as an easy way to dismiss Van Til’s critique. What is needed, however, is a thoughtful and close read of Van Til’s critique. So, in the spirit of trying to set the record straight I believe it is helpful to distinguish between Van Til’s thesis about Barth on the one hand and his understanding of Barth on the other. We’ve already said what his thesis is: the Reformed Faith is the enemy of the Theology of Crisis. Now, that is a big claim. But a claim that cannot be agreed with or disagreed with until one first grapples with Van Til’s understanding of Barth. Until one evaluates his understanding of Barth one cannot evaluate if his thesis is correct. So, what I would like to do here is highlight how Van Til understood Barth (and Brunner). We will unpack the details in a future post as we work our way through The New Modernism. But for now Van Til gives us a summary of how he understands Crisis Theology right at the beginning of the book:

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

Notice Van Til describes the whole Crisis program as one of protest. They have protested against liberalism, catholicism, and Reformed orthodoxy. But, according to Van Til, there is one thing that holds these three targets of protest together: the beati possidentes.[3] But what is the beati possidentes? It means literally “the blessed possessors.”[4] It refers to those systems of theology which believe that man has the capacity for receiving God’s revelation. So, for instance, for liberalism God reveals himself in man’s feelings of absolute dependence. In Reformed orthodoxy God can be known by man in and through his revelation in both creation and Scripture. But Barth rejects these systems because they all believe man has the capacity for receiving directly from God his own self-disclosure. For Van Til, the denial of direct revelation is what lies at the heart of the Crisis Theology. This denial will have a rippling effect throughout Barth’s theology. And that is what Van Til will unpack in the rest of the book. Now, immediately we need to ask: is Van Til wrong here? Is he wrong that Barth targets those three theological systems for their commitment to the beati possidentes? If he is wrong about that, then the rest of his critique should be called into question. But if Van Til is correct about this, then it seems to me he should at least get a further hearing. Certainly if Van Til got this right he cannot legitimately (with any level of intellectual honesty) be dismissed out of hand. Now, let’s wrap up with this. That Van Til got at least this one thing right should be easy enough to substantiate. It really is a non-controversial point, even among current Barth interpreters.[5] The idea that man has no capacity for revelation is a frequent claim in Barth’s famous Nein! to Brunner. Furthermore, take for instance Trevor Hart’s excellent way of describing Barth’s rejection of direct revelation in saying that revelation is not a “commodity” that can be “handed over” to man to make his own possession.[6] This is what Van Til means when he says that God’s revelation is always and only indirect in Barth’s theology. And that seems to be a fairly uncontroversial claim. And if we can agree that Van Til got that right, then we need to move on to further consider how Van Til understands Barth.

[1] It should be noted that Van Til takes aim at both Barth and Brunner in this volume.   [2] Van Til, The New Modernism: An Appraisal of the Theology of Barth and Brunner, 2. [3] This is language Van Til uses also in The New Synthesis (1975, pp. 8 and 11), which I document and briefly unpack in another Essential Van Til. [4] Van Til notes this in a footnote on this page. [5] I am familiar with Bruce McCormack’s “Afterword: Reflections on Van Til’s Critique of Barth” in Karl Barth and American Evangelicalism. However, I will reserve engaging with that piece for another time. [6]Trevor Hart, “Revelation,” in John Webster, ed.  The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: CUP, 2000), 45.

Currently, amidst the Reformed discussion concerning God’s simplicity and immutability, there has been repeated references to the anthropomorphic language of Scripture. It is commonly understood that language attributing human emotions or physical features to God is not meant to be understood “literally.” A typical example is Deuteronomy 26:8, “And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders.” God does not have physical body parts, so such language is immediately classified as anthropomorphic and seldom given a second thought. The same goes for a passage that attributes emotion to God, such as Genesis 6:6, “And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” Certain theologians claim that God cannot experience emotion in any way, because that would suggest that he undergoes change or is affected by creation. This, it is claimed, would compromise the Creator-creature distinction by making God somehow dependent on the world he has made. In such cases, the anthropomorphic language of Scripture has become a sort of throwaway, a means of dismissing semantic possibilities that do not accord with particular historical or confessional understandings of God. My aim here is not to address the concerns of the current debate directly, but to raise a question that may reorient us to God’s divine purposes in using human language. Is the way in which many theologians treat anthropomorphic language, as a tool that God uses to convey something that cannot be taken “literally” (whatever that means), a helpful way of processing this language? To me, the approach seems to assume a fairly shallow view of the nature of language and God’s purposes for it. More specifically, it misses the worship we should give to God in response to reading it. Let me explain this after examining the concept of anthropomorphic language itself. Anthropomorphic language is often treated as a unique instance in which God speaks to us in covenantal condescension. He comes down to our level and communicates something in terms that we can readily understand. This seems relatively simple, but there is a lot of mystery and complexity here that goes overlooked. First, consider the fact that all language is anthropomorphic. All human language with reference to God is an occasion wherein the infinite is related to the finite. In revealing himself to us, God always speaks anthropomorphically. Human language is just as much a part of being human as is having body parts or emotions. There is a profound sense in which, from the very outset of Scripture, God speaks anthropomorphically. He uses human language to express something of his infinite love, wisdom, and divine intentionality. Second, labeling language as anthropomorphic does nothing to explain such language. It appears to explain it, but the question that I do not see being asked is this, “Why did God choose to use this language?” Surely, if God wanted to speak to us in a more literal manner, he could have done so. God is the author of Scripture, and it is he who chose to reveal himself in this way. Why? Why use poetic and metaphorical language—of arms and hands and emotions—rather than language that is plainer? In other words, what is God’s intention for using this language? Some, no doubt, would say that his intention is to communicate on our level. But that answer needs to be more developed. If by “communicate on our level,” we mean, “say something that is not really true about God,” then that should give us pause. Is that God’s intention—to dish up dialogue that, in the end, is semantically vapid? Does God present his children with linguistic ornaments just so they can dismember them and see what lies behind? I think that is a shallow way to read Scripture. It leaves out the richness of divine-human communication. Third, is “anthropomorphic” even a valid category for language? This is related to the first point, but introduces a distinct problem: we assume that human language is merely human. And so we must move, as it were, from the merely human language to what it might say about God. But God himself is the giver of language and is everywhere reflected in it. What’s more, Jesus used language in conversing with the Father (John 17). If Jesus is one person with both a human and divine nature, must we not also say that his divine nature was engaged in speaking with the heavenly Father? And if so, does that not mean that language cannot be merely human? God is profoundly involved with human language. And because everything that God has created reflects him, we simply cannot say that language is merely human. Language has divine origins. In that sense, all language is really theomorphic. Our use of language reflects the God who communicates with himself in three persons and who has blessed his creatures with an ability that analogously reflects what he, as the original communicative being, does. So, using the phrase “anthropomorphic” actually gets the whole thing backwards: it assumes that our language is the original and that God has fit himself to it, when in reality God’s communication is the original, and he has endowed us with the ability to communicate as a gift that is derived from and reflective of his loving communion. It seems that I am raising a lot of questions without offering many answers. So, let me get to the real point. This “anthropomorphic” language in Scripture seems to be expressing something very different about God’s intention for human language. To me, it seems to express the awe-inspiring truth that the creator of heaven and earth has condescended, has come down, and has spoken to us. In so doing, God brings us to marvel. He is not afraid to condescend in human language, to take on syllables and syntax, to enter the world of words, for that world is ultimately a reflection of his own communicative nature. Nor is God, in an even more profound sense, afraid to take on flesh. The Incarnation is the climax of God’s revelation, of God’s speech to us, for there he not only utters words to us; he utters the Word, his eternal Son, in the power of the eternal Spirit. How could God do such a thing? It is here that God draws our attention to the response we should have to his revelation, be it literal, metaphorical, anthropomorphic, or incarnational: worship. We worship God for the greatness of his mysterious grace in speaking to us—not because he condescended in human language and life, but because language and life themselves have divine roots. They are gifts. Why would God give such gifts to us? I do not know. I cannot know. But I can worship him for such gifts because they reveal the inexhaustible truth of salvation, of what God has come down to do for sinners. I believe that the whole debate over anthropomorphic language is missing something quite basic to the nature of God, something that goes well beyond our ability to articulate his nature and essence: God speaks. Creation, redemption, salvation—he speaks all of it. I hear it, and I want to worship because God has come so far, to a creature who is so low, to do something so incomprehensible.

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

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

It is statements like “Barth has no room for revelation” that tend to get Van Til into trouble! The statement, on the surface anyhow, seems ridiculous. But Van Til is quick to acknowledge that his statement can seem absurd. He notes that a surface read (“at first blush”) of Barth would prove the absurdity. After all Barth says that “all knowledge comes by revelation.” Now, there are two points that need to be made here. One of the points Van Til says here, the other he does not. First, Van Til understands that for Barth for a person to know something that person must know it comprehensively. I think Van Til is on solid ground here. Barth will often indicate that man cannot know God because man as limited and the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. God is eternal, we are temporal and therefore we cannot know the eternal. This is what Van Til means by “eternal truths.” Truth is eternal, and therefore in order for there to be true knowledge of those truths one must likewise be eternal. And here only God qualifies because only he is eternal. The trouble here is that truth, eternal truth, is an abstraction. It is a kind of tertium quid which is neither God nor man. Truth is independent of both. It is an object, quite distinct from both God and man. It is only potentially known by either God and man (i.e., “all knowledge for man as well as for God is based upon analysis of the eternal truths that exist apart from time”). And only God has the kind of mind that qualifies for knowing eternal truths comprehensively. Therefore, only God can know, man cannot. The upshot to all this is that if there is going to be revelation at all it must be something that takes place in eternity (i.e., transcendentally). It must be an act that takes place quite apart from and above us. This means, for Van Til, Barth has no room for revelation as it has been traditionally conceived. Barth has a doctrine of revelation to be sure, but according to Van Til it is not a biblical doctrine of revelation. Second, the way in which Barth solves this problem is through Jesus Christ. Van Til does not say this here, though he will articulate it in his later writings. Jesus Christ alone is revelation. Revelation is not, therefore, a thing that can be grasped. It is not words captured on a page nor man’s experience of absolute dependence. It is God making himself known in a divine act of grace in Jesus Christ. Christ is himself both sides – the divine and human – of revelation. This is an eternal act that takes place quite transcendently relative to us living in the hear and now. Only in Jesus Christ is God made known, to himself in Jesus Christ, comprehensively. The problem with this view, according to Van Til, is twofold. First, God and man are in similar epistemological positions. Both are subject to eternal truths. However, God has an advantage; a qualitatively greater advantage. He can know those truths because he is himself eternal. Man cannot, because he is not eternal. But still, God and man both have the same object of their knowledge – eternal truths. Nevertheless, God is relativized by these eternal truths which he himself must know. In this way, as Van Til will later note, the universe is therefore superior to God. Because eternal truths and God are co-existent the creator-creature distinction is eliminated. To be sure, Barth would never say that. But that is what Van Til believes it amounts to. Coordinated with this problem is the fact that man cannot know God (nor can he know eternal truths). If man cannot know comprehensively then he cannot know truly. And he cannot know eternal truths comprehensively, and therefore not truly. He also cannot know God truly because he cannot know God comprehensively. At the end of the day man must be skeptical about God, and with his skepticism about God he must be skeptical about all things. At the end of the day Barth is both a a rationalist (because God and man have the same source and object of knowledge – eternal truths) and an irrationalist (because man cannot know God, or anything eternal for that matter). And because of this, Barth has no room for revelation as revelation has been historically and biblically understood in Reformed theology.

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

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

In short, if God reveals himself wholly, then what man knows is not God but only “man and his world.” A God who is wholly given over and identified with creation cannot be known. He is as much hidden in his revelation as he is as “absolutely other.” Some more clarification is in order. Van Til here leaves some important things unsaid which would illuminate his point had he included them here (he does, however, makes these points elsewhere). First, for Barth God’s revelation only takes place in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is not a medium of revelation – he is revelation. In Christ God is at the same time wholly revealed and wholly concealed. Jesus Christ is the dialectical relation between God’s act of veiling and unveiling. He is both simultaneously. Second, Barth is known for having said “God is Jesus Christ.” That is quite different, note, then saying “Jesus Christ is God.” In the former expression Barth is identifying God with Jesus Christ such that the incarnation becomes a dialectical relation between God and man – which is quite different than traditional Chalcedonian Christology. In Barth’s theology God then is wholly identified with Jesus Christ. In orthodox Christianity we would say the finite (humanity of Christ) cannot contain the infinite (divine nature). But for Barth God exhaustively reveals himself – in fact, gives himself over – in and by the God-man Jesus Christ. Third, if God’s revelation of himself is found only in Jesus Christ and not in nature and not in Scripture, that leaves man with a knowledge that is disconnected from revelation. And knowledge which is disconnected from revelation is, according to Van Til, autonomous and therefore rebellious knowledge – and thus no true knowledge at all. At the end of the day we are left with pure skepticism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then finally:

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

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

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

I have been working through the third volume of Geerhardus Vos’ Reformed Dogmatics on Christology and have appreciated the implications he draws throughout for properly understanding the Old Testament revelation. This, however, should come as no surprise: our doctrine of Christ should impact our reading of Scripture since it was written about him (Luke 24:44). So, for example, Vos makes some keen observations regarding the various names of the Mediator in chapter two and the three offices of prophet, priest and king on pp. 11, 85, 90, 93, etc. But what I found of particular interest was the implication he drew from the personal unity between the human nature and the Logos. But before disclosing that insight, it will help us to consider briefly what exactly he means by this. Simply understood, the Logos is the divine person (see p. 50). It is the Logos who assumes a human nature into the unity of the person. The hypostatic union is not the union of two persons, one divine and one human, but the union of two natures in one divine person, in the Logos. Appealing to Junius, Thesis 27:16, Vos writes, “The divine assumes, the human is assumed—not so that from these two a sort of third is forged together, but the human nature, at the outset [anhypostasis or impersonal], was assumed by the Logos into the unity of the person, and thus made [enhypostasis or in-personal]” (43). What follows from this union is that “one may no longer separate [Christ’s human nature] from his deity” (48). So when we worship and pray to Christ, we do not abstractly worship and pray to his divine nature, in exclusion of his human nature. Rather, our worship and prayers are directed concretely to his divine person, which has assumed a human nature. In other words, we worship and pray to the Word become flesh, the Logos enfleshed. Christ is venerated as the God-man, “possessing human nature in the unity of the person” (48). So Vos writes,

That Christ the Mediator may no longer be prayed to and worshiped exclusively as God, apart from his humanity. As the Word become flesh, He is the object of our worship. His human nature is personally united to Him; it is taken into his hypostasis; one may no longer separate it from His deity. Just as the Triune Being of God exists only as triune being, and we do not worship an abstract Godhead but the triune God, even so the Logos may not be venerated in His abstract deity but in his concrete personality, which is both God and man (48).

We are now in a position to understand the implication of all this for the Old Testament revelation. Vos goes on to say that “even before his incarnation, it was only possible to believe in Him as the one who would become flesh” (48). This is grounded in the eternal counsel of peace (or covenant of redemption), in which the Son assumed his role as Mediator and Surety of the covenant of grace (see pp. 1-4) “not as the Logos in the abstract, but as the Logos who would become flesh in time. He did this as Logos incarnandus [to be incarnate]…” (84). He was anointed in his person to be Mediator from eternity (p. 90). So the revelation of the Logos in the Old Testament was never speculative or abstract. Instead, it was entirely concrete as it disclosed his person to be incarnate. You could say the Old Testament draws its significance and meaning from what was to come in Christ. (Note it does not obtain a new meaning with the coming of Christ, but always had Christ as its center and goal). Vos makes a similar point earlier in his Reformed Dogmatics regarding the three offices under the old covenant: “Now, we must not derive from their offices what Christ was, but must rather infer from Christ what their offices were. They were anointed because He would be anointed; He was not anointed because they had been” (11; see also p. 90). We can now come to Vos’ implication for understanding the Old Testament:

[O]ne prays directly only to the Son as Mediator, since the humanity assumed in the unity of His person can no longer be separated from his person. It is for that reason that all revelation of the covenant of grace under the old dispensation had to point forward; that [which was] presented was not the Logos qua talis [as such], as Head of the covenant who had secured it from eternity, but always the Logos who over the course of the centuries was to come and was to become flesh (49).

Notice three things. First, the revelation of the old covenant was not concerned with the Logos in the abstract, but concretely in his work of redemption, which he would accomplish in his incarnation. Vos assumes here the redemptive focus of revelation, which is reflected in his mention of the covenant of grace. In his Biblical Theology, he writes, “Revelation is the interpretation of redemption” (6). Second, the shadows of Christ in the Old Testament—such as the offices of prophet, priest and king, Adam and Israel as sons of God, the angel of the Lord, Joshua, Melchizedek, etc.—pointed forward to the Logos who was to become flesh. These old testament types were never to be speculated about, but through them, in action and power, the eternal Logos worked redemption for the people of God, in anticipation of his coming in the flesh to accomplish final, eschatological salvation. Third, and implied from our first two points, the Old Testament revelation had to point forward. The anticipatory nature of the old covenant revelation was founded upon the coming incarnation of the Logos in history to work salvation. Through the types and shadows, the old covenant believers looked forward to the Logos enfleshed, the God-man. In fact, as Vos said earlier, the Christ could not be believed upon except as the One who would become flesh.

The apostle Paul teaches that “the Jerusalem above,” that is the eschatological Jerusalem, “is our mother” (Gal. 4:26). Likewise the author to the Hebrews exclaims, “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12:22). The believer has already in part reached the destination he seeks by faith. Though he is a pilgrim on earth, today he belongs to that eschatological city, which the saints of old greeted from afar:

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city (Heb. 11:13-16).

Because the believer is said to have “come to… the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. 12:22) in a way he has already “received the things promised,” which the Old Testament believers only “greeted … from afar” (Heb. 11:13). How can this be? Only through the person and work of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. He has become for them true Israel, summing up the entire nation in himself, and the new Jerusalem. Just as Christ is the true tabernacle in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Col. 1:19), the true Israel who loved God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind, the true son of David who has ascended the throne of his everlasting kingdom, so he is also the true Jerusalem and the true promised land. But he does not remain these things alone. As the Spirit gathers his people from throughout the world and works in them faith so that they are united to Christ, they too partake of these ineffable realities. All who identify with Christ are themselves part of the true tabernacle, true members of Israel, true sons of David, and true citizens of Jerusalem.

Believers are Given a New Name: The New Jerusalem

Jesus wrote to the church in Philadelphia, “The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name” (Rev. 3:12; cf. 2:17). The new name that Christ now possesses (“my own new name”) is “the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem,” which he writes on the believer. Thus, upon the believer is written the name of the new Jerusalem. This reference to a “new name” is an allusion to Isaiah’s repeated prophecy that in the eschaton God’s people will have a “new name.” For example, “The nations shall see your righteousness, and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give” (Isa. 62:2; cf. 56:5; 65:15). This new name, according to Isaiah, designates Israel’s future kingly status: “You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God” (Isa. 62:3). It also designates the restoration of the covenant marriage relationship in the land: “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married” (Isa. 62:4). Notice the inextricable relationship between Israel’s kingly designation as the New Jerusalem and the restoration of Israel’s land. The fulfillment of the land promise (in which the Lord swore to return Israel from exile) coincides with the new name that Israel is to receive. For this reason, the church is given a new name from the Lord, which implies the beginning restoration of the land. It was Christ who first received this name as the true Israel and true Jerusalem and who then writes this name on all believers. By having the new name written on them the believer is identified with Christ and have, therefore, begun to be restored to the land. The name of the very city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God, that Abraham was looking forward to by faith (Heb. 11:9-10), has been given to the church by Christ in whom the land promise is now being fulfilled. The heavenly city, which was typified in the Old Testament, has been entered into by its rightful king, King Jesus. He has taken his seat upon the throne of his eternal city to reign forever and ever. And all who are united to him by faith come to join him in this city to share in his anointing as eschatological kings. This means, as the Heidelberg Catechism so nicely puts it, we are to “fight with a free and good conscience against sin and the devil in this life, and hereafter reign with him over all creation forever and ever” (Q/A 32).

The author of the letter to the Hebrews makes explicit in the prologue that there is an organic progression to God’s revelation[1] and that the content and mode of God’s revelatory speech demarcates history into two comprehensive epochs: “long ago” and “these last days.” He writes, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (1:1-2a). I want to consider in this article three implications of this passage for the exhortation that will come later in 6:1, “Let us leave standing the basic teaching about Christ and go on to perfection [τελειότης].” We will then try to define what exactly the author has in mind by the basic teaching and perfection.

1. God’s Revelation is Objective and Historical

First, the revelatory speech of God is an objective reality in redemptive-history that is not dependent on its subjective reception. In other words, God has spoken whether or not it is recognized and received by faith. This means that the epochal shift brought about by the speech of God in his Son is the indicative upon which the imperative of 6:1—to progress in knowledge—is grounded. The author is exhorting his readers to be up-to-date in their knowledge with respect to redemptive-history; he does not want them to be lagging behind or living according to an outmoded, antequated or obsolete redemptive-historical model (cf. 8:13). The author, then, desires his readeres to progress from the basic teaching about Christ (τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ λόγον) to perfection (τὴν τελειότητα) not because he is an intellectualist or committed to a Gnostic epistemology, but because it is appropriate and fitting, even demanded, with the recent advancements in redemptive-history that have taken place in Christ. To put it another way, the reason the recipients of the letter are to go on to perfection in their knowledge (imperative) is because God has definitively and objectively advanced the knowledge base of his people by a new speech in his Son (indicative). Since God has spoken in these last days in a Son, to remain knowledgeable only of what he has spoken in the past to our fathers is inadequate and antiquated in light of the objective historia salutis situation of the readers. The church is to progress along with God’s revelatory speech. When God speaks new and fresh things, the church, by a redemptive-historical necessity, must receive it and live accordingly.

2. God’s Revelation Progresses from Good to Better

Second, the nature of the progression of God’s revelatory speech is not from evil to good or from false to true, but from good to better since both find their source in God who cannot lie. The two are organically related with the former anticipating the latter, just as the old covenant anticipated the new and the Levitical priesthood anticipated the Melchizedekian. This implies that the good and better are redemptive-historically qualified. That which was good was good for a specific time in redemptive-history; it does not remain good in a timeless or generic sense. It is not as if that which is good and that which is better exist simultaneously in history as two viable options to be chosen from. Rather, that which is good grows obsolete and soon vanishes when that which is better arrives (8:13). There is no returning to what once was good when the better has come. Once the better comes, the good can no longer be faithfully appropriated.

3. God’s Revelation Constitutes Covenant Knowledge

Third, the revelatory speeches of God in history constitute the knowledge base of their respective covenants. “Revelation,” writes Vos, “is the speech of God to man. It forms one side of the covenant intercourse. … [It is] a process of fellowship between God and man.”[2] Neither the old covenant, nor the new exist apart from God speaking, and his speech is what is to be known and believed. The speech of God to our fathers by the prophets comprises the knowledge of the old covenant, while the speech of God to us by a Son comprises the knowledge of the new covenant. This is not to say there is no overlap, there is, for these two sets of knoweldge are not in antithesis to one another, but organically related. Furthermore, while the first is good, as it is temporary and anticipatory, so the second is better, as it is final and eschatological. The speech of God in his Son brought about an epochal shift from what is temporary and subeschatological to what is permanent and eschatological.

Looking at Hebrews 6:1 Directly

Coming now directly to Hebrews 6, the author begins his argument by tapping into this two-fold covenant knowledge scheme. He will carry this scheme through the entire pericope. He writes, Therefore, let us leave standing the basic teaching concerning Christ and go on to perfection” (Διὸ ἀφέντες τὸν τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ λόγον ἐπὶ τὴν τελειότητα φερώμεθα). The participle ἀφέντες (“leave standing”) is not to be taken in the negative sense of abandoning or forsaking something, but rather in the positive sense of progressing beyond something in the same way a builder progresses beyond the structural foundation of a house by putting up walls and a roof. Lane properly translates it as “leave standing.”[3] The author then has in mind some kind of advancement from one knowledge base to another. These two sets of knowledge are organically related in the same way the walls and roof of a house are related to the foundation. The first is spoken of as τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ λόγον (“the basic teaching concerning Christ”) and the second is spoken of as τὴν τελειότητα (“perfection”). The author is exhorting his readers, along with himself, to progress from the one to the other. The question then is what does the basic teaching concerning Christ and perfection refer to? Can both be subsumed under the same knowledge base—so that he has in mind a mere quantitative progression or maturity within the same set?[4] Or does the author have in mind the historical speeches of God that constitute two different knowledge bases—so that he has in mind both a qualitative and quantitative progression from one to the other? A case will be made for the latter: the author has in mind the transition from subeschatological, anticipatory old covenant knowledge to eschatological, final new covenant knowledge, which resulted from the epoch-shifting speech of God in his Son.[5] It will become evident that the elements that constitute the “basic word about Christ” can all be found in the old covenant, which were spoken in the prophets, while “perfection” consists of all new covenant-specific items, which were spoken in a Son.

What is the basic teaching concerning Christ?

Regarding the first—τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ λόγον—three arguments can be advanced to take it as old covenant knowledge. First, the phrase harkens back to “the basic principles of the oracles of God” (τῆς ἀρχῆς τῶν λογίων τοῦ θεοῦ) in 5:12. Schreiner, acknowledging this connection, says that this “confirms the notion that the basic principles have to do with a Christian understanding of the OT.”[6] Lane also writes, “[It] may have reference to a preliminary and insufficient teaching based upon the OT, without specific reference to Christ.”[7] This connection with 5:12 implies that the foundation, made up of repentance and faith, was something that the readers had already laid some time ago.[8] Second, the author denotes it as a foundation: “Therefore, leaving the basic [τῆς ἀρχῆς] word about Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation (θεμέλιος) of repentance away from dead works and faith toward God” (6:1). Earlier in 1:10 the author brought together ἀρχή and θεμελιος in quoting Psalm 102:25, “You, Lord, laid the foundation [θεμελιος] of the earth in the beginning [τῆς ἀρχῆς].” The two words appear also to complement one another here in 6:1. Third, and building upon the previous point, the items that constitute the foundation—repentance and faith—are both explicitly found in the Old Testament (cf. Heb. 11). Furthermore, the teaching (διδαχή) in 6:2, which is either conjoined with or in appositional relationship to the foundation, is also found in the Old Testament: “washings [βαπτισμῶν], the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.” Before looking at the second heading, a possible objection should be answered. Does not the fact that the author speaks of the basic word as being about Christ exclude an old covenant formulation? While much can be said in answer to this, Acts 18:24-28 may be most helpful. There we read that Apollos’ knowledge had not progressed beyond John the Baptist (his knowledge was not redemptive-historically up-to-date). Not that he rejected the further redemptive-historical developments, but word of them had not yet reached him. Nevertheless, we read that he still “taught accurately the things concerning Jesus” (18:25). Thus, consistent with Jesus’ own words in Luke 24:18, the knowledge pertaining to the old covenant was about him. While this knowledge will be supplemented and heightened by the revelation belonging to the new covenant, it is still true and accurate—it is still good. The old is not in antithesis to the new so that to move from the one to the other is the equivalence of moving from what is evil to what is good. Rather, the new organically develops out of the old in the same way a shadow gives way to its substance or as a promise turns into fulfillment or as a type is superseded by its antitype—in all of these cases the former is good, while the latter is better. This objection, therefore, actually adds to the redemptive-historical argument being made: the contrast is not between what is evil and good, false and true, unbelief and belief, but between old covenant belief that is good and new covenant belief that is better. In the same way milk is good, even necessary, for a specific time in the life of a person, solid food is better as it supersedes an all-milk diet and provides more wholesome nutrition for greater growth and superior strength.

What is perfection?

The second—τὴν τελειότητα—is often translated as “maturity” (ESV, NIV, NASB, etc.), but “perfection” should be preferred.[9] Lane is correct when he writes, “The problem with translating the word with ‘maturity’ is the implication that a state is being described that is achieved gradually by successive steps of development. What is described, however, is the accomplishment of God through Jesus Christ.”[10] Silva rightly observes that the author links τελος with the new covenant in a technical sense throughout the letter. This suggests an eschatological interpretation of “perfection” in terms of new covenant fulfillment. This, however, does not exclude the traditional cultic interpretation (i.e., being fit for service before God),[11] but provides “a more consistent use of the word-group in Hebrews.”[12] If this can be applied to τὴν τελειότητα in 6:1, then what the author had in mind was eschatological knowledge that belonged to the new covenant. This eschatological reading of τὴν τελειότητα may be objected to on the basis of the readers elsewhere in the letter being said to already belong to the new covenant and the age of fulfillment. How can the author exhort them to go on to perfection if they’ve already been made perfect? Silva draws a parallel with Paul’s theology to provide an answer. While Paul can make an eschatological statement regarding all Christians by referring to them as spiritual (πνευματικός; e.g., 1 Cor. 2:15), he can nevertheless “also restrict the use of the word so that it has reference to those who give proper manifestation of their spiritual status.”[13] He goes on,

For example, [Paul] hesitates to call the immature Corinthians spiritual (1 Cor. 3:1); similarly, in Galatisn 6:1 he speaks of those who are spiritual in contrast to those who are caught in a fault. Could we not argue therefore that the author of Hebrews in some contexts may restrict the meaning of perfect to those who are giving proper manifestation that they belong to the age of fulfillment? Indeed, the danger faced by the recipients of the letter was that of going back to the old, obsolete, pre-eschatological (!) covenant.[14]

In further support of an eschatological, new covenant reading of τὴν τελειότητα, we should also recognize that the items of the second list are all new covenant specific: “who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come” (6:4-5).

Conclusion

We have made the case for a redemptive-historically sensitive reading of 6:1, which the author will carry through the entire passage of 6:1-6. In light of what has been said so far, we can paraphrase the verse as such: “Therefore, leave standing the foundational subeschatological knowledge of the old covenant, which is the product of God’s previous speech to our fathers in the prophets long ago, and let us go on to the eschatological knowledge of the new covenant, which is the product of God’s speech to us in a Son in these last days.” The progress he desires for his readers is redemptive-historical in nature. The author is urging his readers to have knowledge that is up-to-date or current with the recent developments in redemptive-history. To put it negatively, he does not want their knowledge to lag behind their present redemptive-historical situation.

[1] Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1956), 68; Idem., Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977), 5-8. [2] Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 68-69. [3] William L. Lane, Hebrews 1-8 (Dallas, TX: Thomas Nelson, 1991), 131. [4] Cf. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1994), 1:48, 49, 52. [5] This is contrary to the entry for θεμέλιος in NIDNTE, which reads, “[It] evidently refers to the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. The distinction made here is between the groundwork, which every Christian has to know, and further insights that come to those who are prepared to study the Scripture in greater depth (cf. 5:11-14)” (2:432). This implies progression within the same knowledge base, instead of progression from one knowledge base into a greater, though organically related, knowledge base. [6] Thomas R. Schreiner, Commentary on Hebrews (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 2015), 175. [7] Lane, Hebrews, 140. [8] See Lane, Hebrews, 131. [9] See Moises Silva, “Perfection and Eschatology in Hebrews,” WTJ 39, no. 1 (September 1976), 69n18. [10] Lane, Hebrews, 131-32. [11] See for example Geerhardus Vos, “The Priesthood of Christ in the Epistle to the Hebrews,” in The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1980). [12] Silva, “Perfection and Eschatology in Hebrews,” 68. [13] Ibid., 69. [14] Ibid.

In episode 47, your hosts, Rob and Bob, discuss chapter 7 of the Book of Revelation. If like most people you are listening to the radio when you drive you know that usually at the top and bottom of the hour there will be a news update. Usually this will bring tension just to hear that familiar opening music. It doesn’t help that the news media know that if they present everything as potentially life threatening they will get your attention, which is why according to the news media everything from your toothpaste to tomatoes is going to kill you. But we are also reminded everyday of every natural and manmade disaster that is taking place around the world. Floods, fires, wars, rumors of wars, provide the negatively fueled news media an ample supply of stories to terrify us with. When Jesus used the example of a tower that had fallen over and killed people He used an example that everyone knew. The fall of this tower was the talk of the town and seems to have been used to teach unrighteous people that unless they repent they will suffer a similar fate. But Jesus redirected the thinking. Instead of seeing this as sinners getting what they deserved, Jesus made it clear that the people who died were just as guilty as the people that He was talking with. Jesus is highlighting to those listening, and to us that we will all die. We all will suffer the same fate. Jesus was pointing to the repentance through Faith that leads to life that is the only way to escape everlasting death. When a volcano explodes or there is a large flood or earthquake not to mention wars where lots of people die, some will be Christians and some will be unbelievers. So how should we look at these tragedies? Were they God’s judgments? Were they persecutions? Was it something that is outside the control of God? Are there only 144,000 people that will be safe from these kinds of events?  

Participants: Rob McKenzie, Robert Tarullo