Category Archives: Opinion

Blessed Among Women (Luk 1:42)

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Visitation ( visit of the Blessed Virgin Mary with Saint Elizabeth, Virgin Mary shown pregnant ), 14th century Wallpaintings, Timios Stavros Church in Pelendri, included in the UNESCO World Heritage List

The Visitation of the Virgin Mary to Elizabeth

Then said Ozias unto her, O daughter, blessed art thou of the most high God above all the women upon the earth; and blessed be the Lord God, which hath created the heavens and the earth, which hath directed thee to the cutting off of the head of the chief of our enemies. (Judith 13:18)

And she [Elizabeth] spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. (Luk 1:42)

After saving her city by beheading Holofernes, the commanding general of the Assyrian army, Judith brings the head to Ozias, one of the governors of Bethulia. This happens in much the same way as the story of the death of Sisera by the hand of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite (Jud 5:24). A great deal of similarity exists between the praise heaped upon Jael by Deborah and Barak, and the praise heaped upon Judith by Ozias. Nevertheless, Elizabeth is clearly quoting from Judith, whereas Ozias — in his praise of Judith — is alluding to the praise of Jael.

Judith Beheading Holofernes (Caravaggio)

Judith Beheading Holofernes (Caravaggio)

Lets not Kill the Lawyers

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The Signing of the Magna Carta (circa 1215) at Runnymede

The Signing of the Magna Carta (c. 1215) at Runnymede

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

William Shakespeare, Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78

Many years ago, when I was an aficionado of Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, and Ronald Reagan, I was of the opinion that lawyers were a blight upon society. For me, a society without lawyers seemed little short of heaven. But like most utopian schemes, this was simplistic and unrealistic.

I recently watched a speech by Joe Jamail at the Stanford Law School. Joe Jamail is the most successful lawyer in the United States, and perhaps in history. In his speech, Jamail describes the difference between Law as a profession, and Law as a business. He describes the difference between an attorney who is out for himself and his firm, and a lawyer who has the best interests of his client at heart. But most telling is his comparison between physical objects like the Statue of Liberty, which barely lasted a hundred years before having to be rebuilt, and a legal document like the Declaration of Independence, written by a lawyer, which set forth ideas that continue to stand the test of time.

The call to abolish lawyers, or at least place limits on them, is the call of the tyrant, the autocrat, the oligarch. It is the cry of the politician who has been bought and paid for. This is what Shakespeare meant when he put his immortal words in the mouth of Dick the Butcher, who was speaking to one Jack Cade, a rebel who thought that by disturbing law and order, he could become king. Getting rid of the lawyers was key to disturbing civil society, fomenting dissent, and creating the conditions ripe for his own rise to power. In other words, Shakespeare was of the opinion that lawyers maintained stability and justice, something the rebel Jack Cade wished to dispense with.

The rights of persons under the law, as over against the rights of the sovereign to impose arbitrary standards, was elucidated at Runnymede in the Magna Carta of 1215. One of the most important legal rights is contained in Clause 39, which enshrines the right to trial by jury: “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.” This is followed by Clause 40, which enshrines the principle of equality before the law: “To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.”

The rights and principles elucidated in the Magna Carta formed the basis for grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence, and formed the basis for the United States Constitution. All these rights and principles were first declared, argued over, defined, and written down by lawyers. These same rights and principles are now under attack by an assortment of oligarchs, plutocrats, politicians, and their sycophants as being opposed to efficiency, free markets, and the capitalist system. Exactly the opposite is true — free markets are enabled and enforced by the rule of law. The diminution of the law is an argument not for free market capitalism, but for oligarchy and mercantilism — for the rule of the few, and for state regulation and protection of industry.

”The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers?” No, but perhaps we should shun everyone who thinks this is a good idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y21Fi65M00

Take My Yoke Upon You (Mat 11:28-30)

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"The Flower Carrier" (1935) by Diego Rivera.

“The Flower Carrier” (1935) by Diego Rivera.

Take My Yoke Upon You (Mat 11:28-30)

Draw near unto me, ye unlearned, and dwell in the house of learning. Wherefore are ye slow, and what say ye to these things, seeing your souls are very thirsty? I opened my mouth, and said, Buy her for yourselves without money. Put your neck under the yoke, and let your soul receive instruction: she is hard at hand to find. (Sirach 51:23-26)

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Mat 11:28-30)

The scholar Henry Chadwick states: “Among Greek-speaking Christians …The wisdom of Ben Sira became so popular that in the west it acquired the title ‘Ecclesiasticus’, and a famous saying of Jesus in Matt 11:28 directly quotes from Sirach 51:27.” Chadwick is speaking of the following verse: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

In our day we speak of blue collar and white collar workers. This tends to mean those who work with their hands, and those who work at their desks. In general, white collar work requires a greater degree of education than does blue collar work. This distinction was even more pronounced in Jesus’ day, when literacy was rare; when most people were unlearned, and therefore laborers.

The two passages are not direct quotations; Jesus is restating the verse from Sirach. This is parallelism, a literary technique used in Hebrew poetry, and would have been familiar to Jesus’ audience. The call to the unlearned to dwell in the house of learning is a call for them to rest from their labors. But the context of Sirach is even more interesting. Chapter 51 is a prayer, and beginning at verse 13 Jesus ben Sirach begins to describe his search for wisdom. Thus when Jesus is quoting from Sirach, he is identifying Himself as Wisdom incarnate.

This connection between Jesus and Wisdom becomes even clearer when we discover Jesus’ reference to the yoke comes from Sirach injunction to “Put your neck under the yoke.” In Sirach, this is the yoke of Wisdom; in Matthew, the yoke of Wisdom belongs to Jesus. It is His yoke, it is His burden. He, Jesus, is Wisdom personified, and only in Him do we find rest for our souls.

Forgiveness and The Lord’s Prayer

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Pieter Coecke Van Aelst: The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant

Pieter Coecke Van Aelst: The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant

The Lord’s Prayer

Forgive thy neighbour the hurt that he hath done unto thee, so shall thy sins also be forgiven when thou prayest. (Sirach 28:2)

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. (Matt 6:12)

This is without a doubt the most intriguing of the New Testament quotations from the Apocrypha, as it forms part of what has come down to us as The Lord’s Prayer, or the Our Father. This is not a pure quotation, but neither is it simply an allusion to the passage from Sirach. Instead, Jesus is inverting the two clauses from Sirach, creating what are parallel statements — a characteristic of Hebrew poetry. The one clause supports and interprets the other. Therefore we cannot interpret the statement from The Lord’s Prayer without referring to its antecedent thought from Sirach.

A typical Protestant understanding of this passage is found in Dr. David P. Scaer’s book, The Sermon on the Mount. He writes:

The Matthean version of the Prayer does not suggest that God’s forgiving us is caused by our forgiving others; the word “as” is used, not “because.” “As” means “like” or “similar.” We ask that God would forgive us ‘as’, not ‘because’ we forgive others. Some hold the view that our forgiving precedes God’s, but this is done more from a theological and not a grammatical consideration.[1]

This is only correct if we do not consider the source for this particular clause in The Lord’s Prayer. In Sirach’s version, forgiveness of the neighbor is necessary for your prayers of forgiveness to be heard. Sirach’s interpretation is demonstrated in Matthew’s gospel by the Parable of the Unforgiving Debtor. (Matt 18:23-34) A servant owed his master a great debt, and asked to be forgiven. When the servant refused to forgive a minor debt owed to him, the master refused to forgive the servant. Jesus sums up the parable by saying: “So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.” (Matt 18:35) Jesus is therefore indicating that the passage from Sirach represents the proper interpretation – that God forgives us when we forgive others.

Blessed Theophylact, in his commentary The Gospel According to St. Matthew, writes:

Because we sin even after our baptism, we beseech Him to forgive us. But forgive us as we forgive others: if we remember wrongs, God will not forgive us. God takes me as the pattern He will follow: what I do to another, He does to me.[2]

God therefore respects our free will. He does not respond in kind, but overabundantly. When we truly repent — when we truly change our mind, rejecting the evil and seeking the good — the angels rejoice, and the Holy Spirit fills us, empowering us for service. But when we seek God half-heartedly, we quench the Holy Spirit, and God seems far from us. It is all God’s work, and none of ours. Nothing we do is meritorious, in and of itself. But God is merciful, bestowing great mercy upon us at the least sign that we are responsive to Him, that we desire communion with Him. This, then, is the meaning of the forgiveness clause in The Lord’s Prayer.

 

[1] (D. P. Scaer, The Sermon on the Mount 2000, 184)

[2] (Blessed Theophylact 1992, 58)

The Triune God as Theological Error

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Triune

Triune

The Triune God as Theological Error

The doctrine of the Trinity is perhaps the most difficult topic in theology.  We cover up the difficulties with creedal formulations, but people who confess the same creed can have radically different understandings of the trinity. Thus we have Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, and others who speak of the Triune God, using this term as a synonym for the doctrine of the Trinity. The Eastern Orthodox do not refer to the Triune God because, at a minimum, the term suggests a radically different understanding of the Trinity.

God is ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, existing forever and yet ever the same. For this reason making declarative statements about God is always dangerous, as these statements are couched in human language, using terms and concepts that are amenable to our finite minds. Thus any positive declarations about God (saying what God is) are always false because they serve to limit God into something that we can understand. If God is ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, and incomprehensible, then our ways of speaking of God are nothing more than approximations or mental models. And as the statistician George Box famously stated: “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.”

The mental models we create to explain God and the terms we use to describe God have very specific meanings. The words we use are important. And yet, when speaking of God, we also know that our ways of speaking are imperfect representations of the reality of God, of God in His essence and nature. We cannot avoid speaking of God, even though our ways of speaking of God are imperfect. Some of our models are wrong, but some are more wrong than others; some of our ways of speaking and thinking about God are more imperfect and less useful than others.

With that in mind, let us discuss some of the different models for the Trinity. The most important matter is the distinction between the person and the essence. Since divinity is of one essence existing in three persons, what is the best way to describe this? And what is the relationship of the three persons to the essence?  Paul L. Owen describes the question this way.

What is the major point of difference between the Eastern and Western Church? It has to do with the understanding of the relationship of the Father to the Monarchy of the Godhead.   Both East and West are agreed that the Father has a certain priority of position within the Trinity. The Father alone is unbegotten and non-proceeding. But does the Monarchy, the font of Deity, reside in the Father’s person, or in his Being? Is the Son begotten of the Father’s person, or his Being? Does the Spirit proceed from the Father’s person, or his Being?[1]

All who confess the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are agreed that the Father has some degree of priority within the Trinity. What is not agreed upon is the nature of that priority. Is this a priority of honor, as the first among equals? Or is there something more to this, such that we can legitimately speak of the Monarchy of the Godhead?[2] And if we can legitimately speak of the Monarchy of the Godhead, is this personal or impersonal? Does it derive from the person of the Father, or from the essence of divinity? Paul L. Owen explains:

This argument has important theological ramifications. If the font of Deity is located in the Father’s person, then the divine nature of the Son and the Spirit will of necessity be a derived divinity. In fact, it is a general tendency of the Eastern Fathers (Gregory Nazianzen excluded) to speak of God the Father as the cause of the Deity of the Son and the Spirit. The issue at stake is whether or not each of the Persons of the Trinity can be spoken of properly as God in their own right (autotheos).[3]

To speak of the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit as derived from the person of the Father does not imply that the Father came first, and only afterwards came the Son and the Holy Spirit. The eternal generation of the Son means that the Son existed from eternity with the Father; there never was a time when the Father was, and the Son was not. Likewise the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit means the same; there never was a time with the Father was, and the Holy Spirit was not. The generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit are from eternity past and unto eternity future. Yet this does not answer the question of whether the generation and procession are from the person of the Father, or from the essence of the divinity. Father Zizioulas, in his book Being as Communion, provides a summation of the Eastern Orthodox position.

The unity of God, the one God, and the ontological principle or “cause” of the being and life of God does not consist in the one substance of God but in the hypostasis, that is, the person of the Father. The one God is not the one substance but the Father, who is the “cause” both of the generation of the Son and of the procession of the Spirit. Consequently, the ontological “principle” of God is traced back, once again, to the person. Thus when we say that God “is,” we do not bind the personal freedom of God — the being of God is not an ontological “necessity” or a simple “reality” for God — but we ascribe the being of God to His personal freedom.[4]

In the unaltered Nicene Creed, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. In the altered (or western) version of the Creed, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (the dreaded filioque). The first implies the procession of the Holy Spirit from the person of the Father; the second implies the procession of the Holy Spirit from the divine essence of the Father and the Son. There are potential theological problems with either position. To the western Church, the monarchate of the Father implies the subordination of the Son and the Holy Spirit, which is implicitly Arian. To the eastern Church, the procession from the Father and the Son presents an opportunity for the heresy of modalism to arise.[5] In addition, it upends the monarchate of the Father and subordinates the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son.

In classical Orthodoxy, God is one in essence, existing in three persons apart from the created world, and the three persons of the Godhead also act within the world. Paul L. Owen describes there being “a trinitarian structure to the non-contingent Being of God, so likewise there is a trinitarian structure to the historical “economy” of God. Or in other words, God is three not only in Himself, but is also three-fold “for us.” God’s non-contingent being is reflected in the self-revelation of God in the realm of contingency.”[6] God’s being three-fold in Himself is part of the transcendence of God, something we are wholly unable to comprehend. By contrast, the “God with us” belongs to the immanence of God, the working of God within creation. God’s essence is transcendent; the enacting of God’s will, known as the divine economy, represent God’s immanence. The essence of divinity is contingent upon nothing, and the persons of the Trinity form the structure of the ontological Trinity. The created order is wholly contingent upon the existence and actions of God, and the actions of God have a trinitarian structure, leading us to a description of the economic Trinity.

It is easy for us to confuse the work of God in the world with the essence of God. The filioque, the idea that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, can be understood in terms of God’s essence (which is how it was originally understood), or as part of the actions, energies, or workings of God. In the first case, the Holy Spirit’s eternal generation is from the Father and the Son; in the second case, the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son. This is a rather common understanding today, and the Roman Catholic Church seems to describe it in both essential and economic terms in The Catechism of the Catholic Church.[7] The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, Canon I, is especially clear regarding the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the Son:[8]

We firmly believe and openly confess that there is only one true God, eternal and immense, omnipotent, unchangeable, incomprehensible, and ineffable, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; three Persons indeed but one essense, substance, or nature absolutely simple; the Father (proceeding) from no one, but the Son from the Father only, and the Holy Ghost equally from both, always without beginning and end.[9]

Part of the problem is that while Greek uses different words to represent ontological and personal generation, Latin uses the same word for both. In Greek the word ekporev denotes an ontological procession; the Greek word pemps denotes an economic procession; and both the Greek word pronai and the Latin word procedit can mean either. The passage from John 15:26 (who proceedeth from the Father) uses the word ekporev, meaning the procession of the Holy Spirit is ontological, and therefore the unaltered Creed does not refer to an economic procession. The Latin word procedit is ambiguous and, being the translation of the Greek word ekporev, is the source of much confusion. Roman Catholics still proclaim the monarchate of the Father, but due to the ambiguities of their Latin translation of the Nicene Creed and there later alterations, their theology is muddled in this area.

Let me say it again: the doctrine of the Trinity is perhaps the most difficult topic in theology.  Within the bounds of classical orthodoxy, there are significant variants in the understanding of the Trinity. However, the term “Triune” as a description of the Godhead is relatively new (~ 1630 A.D.), postdating the Reformation by little more than one hundred years. Whereas the term “Trinity” means three, the term “Triune” means three in one. And there the problem begins.  You see, the term “Triune” is a laden with theological meanings which are not readily apparent. To understand this, we need to learn another theological term: “autotheos”.

To be autotheos is to be self-existent, and the term Triune is a confession that the Father, the Son, and the Holy-Spirit are autotheos — that each person of the Trinity is self-existent, deriving its existence from no one; that each is equal to the other, with none subordinate to any other. This is a purely Protestant doctrine, one that derives from John Calvin,[10] and most prominently belongs to those churches of the Reformed tradition.[11] In his The Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin writes: “For instance, what avails it to discuss, as Lombard does at length (lib. 1 dist. 9), Whether or not the Father always generates? This idea of continual generation becomes an absurd fiction from the moment it is seen, that from eternity there were three persons in one God.”[12] In accepting the eternal existence of the Son, while dismissing the eternal generation of the Son, Calvin is claiming the Son to be autotheos. While claiming the Trinity to be one in essence, but made up of three self-existent persons, Calvin’s trinitarian doctrine comes very close to tri-theism.

In classical orthodoxy, only the Father is autotheos. The Son is only-begotten from eternity, and the Spirit proceeds from eternity. Calvin’s error is ascribing the directional nature of time to eternity, thereby ascribing the Father’s begetting of the Son and the Spirit’s procession to a singular point in time. But there is no directionality to eternity. Whatever has happened is also currently happening — when considered from the point of view of we poor, time-bound wretches. Thus the scriptures note that the Son was slain from the foundation of the world, meaning that from an eternal vantage point, the creation and the crucifixion — to say nothing of Our Lord’s second coming — have a certain simultaneity. Thus it is entirely meet, right, and salutary to refer to the eternal generation of the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Bibliography

Calvin, J. (2005). The Institutes of the Christian Religion. (H. Beveridge, Trans.) Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Catholic Church. (1997). Catechism of the Catholic Church. Washington DC: USCCB Publishing.

Halsall, P. (1996, March). Medieval Sourcebook: Fourth Lateran Council: Lateran IV 1215. Retrieved November 1, 2014, from Fordham University: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.asp

Owen, P. L. (1999). Reflections on the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity — Part 1. Retrieved November 1, 2014, from Institute for Religious Research: http://mit.irr.org/reflections-on-doctrine-of-holy-trinity-part-1

Owen, P. L. (1999). Reflections on the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity — Part 2. Retrieved November 1, 2014, from Institute for Religious Research: http://mit.irr.org/reflections-on-doctrine-of-holy-trinity-part-2

Walts, D. (2008, October 30). John Calvin: a tri-theistic heretic??? Retrieved November 2, 2014, from Articuli Fidei: http://articulifidei.blogspot.com/2008/10/john-calvin-tri-theistic-heretic.html

Zizioulas, J. D. (1985). Being As Communion. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

 

 

[1]  (Owen, Reflections on the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity — Part 2, 1999)

[2] The easiest way for western Christians to think of this is in political terms. Is the Trinity a democracy or a monarchy?

[3] (Owen, Reflections on the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity — Part 2, 1999)

[4] (Zizioulas, 1985, pp. 40-41)

[5] Modalism is the idea that there is one God in essence who has three modes of acting within the created world. In other words, God is ontologically one, but economically three. (Ontology has to do with the nature of being; economy has to do with modes of action.)

[6] (Owen, Reflections on the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity — Part 1, 1999)

[7] (Catholic Church, 1997, pp. 65, 181)

[8] Vatican II, in the Lumen Gentium, also known as the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, discusses the sending of the Holy Spirit in time, for the Church. In other words, this is an economic procession of the Holy Spirit.

[9] (Halsall, 1996)

[10] In his Institutes, John Calvin writes: “For instance, what avails it to discuss, as Lombard does at length (lib. 1 dist. 9), Whether or not the Father always generates? This idea of continual generation becomes an absurd fiction from the moment it is seen, that from eternity there were three persons in one God.” (Calvin, 2005, p. 140) In accepting the eternal existence of the Son, while dismissing the eternal generation of the Son, Calvin is claiming the Son to be autotheos.

[11] (Walts, 2008)

[12]  (Calvin, 2005, p. 140)

An Open Letter to Lutherans

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Dear Pr. X,

Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For some twenty years I was Lutheran. I read the Book of Concord many times, and spent innumerable hours arguing Lutheran theology. I enjoyed the give and take, the parry and thrust, the lively debates and the hostile arguments. Eventually, however, the arguments weren’t enough. The jargon wasn’t enough. The Book of Concord wasn’t enough. Eventually I discovered questions for which Lutherans had no answers, and Lutheran arguments that were inconsistent, short-sighted, and just plain wrong. And so I am writing this letter concerning some of my struggles with the Lutheran faith. Maybe I’m wrong in my conclusions, or maybe I’m wrong for writing this. May God forgive me.

A few years ago I was introduced to Vincent of Lerins and the Vincentian Canon: Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus; that which is believed everywhere, always, and by all. This is the classic definition of catholicity, and the standard by which Vincent of Lerins proposed to discern truth from heresy. I find myself troubled by this, as the Lutheran doctrine of justification, the doctrine by which the church stands or falls, fails this crucial test; and in failing this test, the Lutheran church is revealed as schismatic and sectarian rather than part of the church catholic.

The early church seems to have held to the Christus Victor or the ransom theories of the atonement. The idea of atonement as a satisfaction of God’s offended honor was a late development, coming from Anselm of Canterbury’s book, Cur Deus Homo, written in the 11th century. From the Protestant Reformation came the idea of Penal Substitution, which is derivative of Anselm of Canterbury, and made popular in the 16th century by Luther, Calvin, and the Protestant Reformers. (See Dr. Masaki, Contemporary Views on Atonement, Concordia Theological Quarterly, October 2008) Since forensic justification is such a late development, how then is it catholic? And if the doctrine by which the church stands or falls is not catholic, how then are Lutherans part of the one, holy, apostolic, and catholic church?

St. Athanasius, writes the following in Chapter 2 of On the Incarnation:

The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death; yet He Himself, as the Word, being immortal and the Father’s Son, was such as could not die. For this reason, therefore, He assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection. It was by surrendering to death the body which He had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from every stain, that He forthwith abolished death for His human brethren by the offering of the equivalent. For naturally, since the Word of God was above all, when He offered His own temple and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all, He fulfilled in death all that was required. Naturally also, through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with incorruption in the promise of the resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word’s indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all.

This is clearly not substitutionary atonement, and clearly not penal satisfaction. For Athanasius, justification is not forensic, no matter how Dr. Weinrich spins it. (Weinrich, God Did Not Create Death: Athanasius on the Atonement, Concordia Theological Quarterly, Vol. 72, Num. 4)

Polycarp, disciple of the apostle John, writes the following in his Epistle to the Philippians:

…our Lord Jesus Christ, who for our sins suffered even unto death, [but] “whom God raised from the dead, having loosed the bands of the grave.” “In whom, though now ye see Him not, ye believe, and believing, rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory;” into which joy many desire to enter, knowing that “by grace ye are saved, not of works,” but by the will of God through Jesus Christ. (Polycarp, Epistle to the Philippians, chap. I)

While this passage does not provide the details of soteriology, yet it is significant that Polycarp provides not even a hint of substitutionary atonement, nor any idea of juridical satisfaction. Polycarp does not see salvation in terms of the Father seeking satisfaction for his offended honor, nor in terms of the Father as judge seeking to fulfill some juridical mandate.

This focus on forensic justification to the exclusion of other views was exemplified for me when I attended a symposia at Concordia Theological Seminary. Dr. Just was given the topic of Justification in the book of Galatians. He concluded that in Galatians, Paul spoke of justification more in terms of a recreation than as forensic. As it happens, I was seated next to the recently departed Rev. Klemet Preus (writer The Fire and the Staff, and son of the late Dr. Robert Preus). Rev. Preus was incensed by Dr. Just’s presentation, and I later saw him commenting on it in a vociferous manner to Dr. Wenthe, the President of Concordia Theological Seminary. This became quite a contentious issue among the so-called Confessional Lutherans, many of whom accused Dr. Just of the Ossiandrian heresy for suggesting that justification could be anything other than forensic. But of course, Dr. Just was correct, as born out by scripture.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (1 Cor 5:17-21)

This idea of justification as regeneration or recreation is even found in the explanation of the Small Catechism on the Sacrament of Holy Baptism:

What does Baptism give or profit?–Answer.

It works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.

Which are such words and promises of God? Answer.

Christ, our Lord, says in the last chapter of Mark: He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

How can water do such great things?–Answer.

It is not the water indeed that does them, but the word of God which is in and with the water, and faith, which trusts such word of God in the water. For without the word of God the water is simple water and no baptism. But with the word of God it is a baptism, that is, a gracious water of life and a washing of regeneration in the Holy Ghost, as St. Paul says, Titus, chapter three: By the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our Savior, that, being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This is a faithful saying. (SC IV, 5-10)

This leads me into another problem with Lutheranism: its antinomianism. Yes, I know the arguments about the third use of the law, but in the words of Dr. Phil: “How’s that working out for you?” Lutherans give lip service to the third use of the law, yet most Lutheran pastors don’t preach it, and most Lutherans don’t live it. “You are free,” as my Lutheran pastor once sermonized, “you don’t have to do anything.” Let’s see what Polycarp would say about that.

He who raised Him up from the dead will raise up us also, if we do His will, and walk in His commandments, and love what He loved, keeping ourselves from all unrighteousness, covetousness, love of money, evil speaking, false witness; “not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing,” or blow for blow, or cursing for cursing, but being mindful of what the Lord said in His teaching: “Judge not, that ye be not judged; forgive, and it shall be forgiven unto you; be merciful, that ye may obtain mercy; with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again;” and once more, “Blessed are the poor, and those that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God. (Polycarp, Epistle to the Philippians, chap. II)

Lutherans do not preach this way, and would consider it the preaching of the law. The law is a curb, a judge, and a guide, many say. Lutherans do not believe, teach and confess that we will be raised “if we do his will, and walk in His Commandments, and love what He loved, keeping ourselves from all unrighteousness.” Lutherans do not preach the law as a guide for holy living; Lutherans especially do not preach the law as a necessity for salvation, as did the early church. Lutherans preach that we have been set free from the law of sin and death, as sayeth the scriptures, but then neglect the words of our Lord Jesus Christ: “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15); and again, “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love” (John 15:10).

I find a striking pattern in the epistles of the blessed apostle. The first two thirds are usually concerned with matters of theology, while the latter third is concerned with matters of church order, and with prescriptions for holy living. The epistles to the Corinthian Church are even more explicit, mixing prescriptions for church order and discipline, theology, and exhortations to holy living throughout these letters. How we live as Christians mattered to the apostle. We are to live out our faith; we are to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Other New Testament authors say the same. James tells us to resist the devil (Jas 4:7). In his exhortation to holy living, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews write: “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin” (Heb 12:4).

Let us examine some of the works which preserve the church order of the early church. The Didache (a.k.a. the Teachings of the Apostles), is a very early work, perhaps written as early as 70 AD, possibly preserving for us the church order of Jerusalem. The Didache contains very little doctrine, but is mostly concerned with matters of church order, church practices, and holy living. (Anonymous 2004)

In the third century, Hippolytus (c. 170-c. 236) wrote his Apostolic Traditions, preserving the church order and practices in use in Alexandria, but containing none of what we today would call doctrine. (Hippolytus 1997)

The so-called Constitutions of the Holy Apostles appears to be a second or third century work (with fourth or fifth century interpolations), which preserves the church order and practices of the churches in Asia Minor. This work consists of eight books, most of which are solely concerned with church order and holy living. Only the sixth book against Heresies contains any doctrine—and apart from a creedal portion in Section III entitled An Exposition of the Preaching of the Apostles, most of the work consists of a description of various errors or of the prescriptions of the apostles. What we would term the doctrinal portion of this work is surprisingly brief. (Anonymous, Constitutions of the Holy Apostles 2004) From these we may surmise that doctrine was considered a mystery, passed on orally in the early church, and that how one lived and worshiped was also a matter of great concern in the early church.

This conclusion is born out by the Anti-Nicene Fathers, who over and over again exhort their readers to holy living, to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling. This is such a common theme that I am forced to ask why this same fervor for holy living is lacking amongst Lutherans? I once noted that I received more moral guidance from Dr. Laura, a secular Jew, than from my own pastor. I wondered why that was, and presumed that it was because my then pastor was from a more liberal wing of the Missouri-Synod. But I have since been forced to reexamine my conclusion since I see this same tendency no matter on which side of the theological or political spectrum a Lutheran pastor falls.

Lutherans are more concerned with purity of doctrine than with purity of life. Of course purity of doctrine is important, but doctrine does not save. We do not work out our own salvation through more and more learning, but through prayer and fasting, through fear and trembling, through progressive sanctification, through peering into the glass darkly and in doing so becoming more and more like Christ. It does not appear that the early church was terribly concerned with dogma, only reluctantly defining it when forced into it as a necessary means of preserving the faith against heresy. Yet Lutherans (and others) give each other litmus tests, creating ever greater delineations of dogma which we proclaim to the benchmark by which we measure the faith, and by which we determine our essential unity. Thus dogma becomes a means of establishing divisions and creating breaches amongst the faithful, not of uniting the body of Christ. I’m not suggesting we create a lowest-common-denominator faith, but I am suggesting that we make the mistake of equating doctrinal purity with rightness before God, of presuming that God is more pleased with us for our right belief than our right living.

I could go on and on about the flawed arguments of the Lutheran Confessions and how radical they are, and how in some cases they are contrary to Scripture. But this letter has gone on much too long already. Instead, I will quote from Luther’s Winterpostille of 1528: “Marriage is far superior to the celibate religious life, and not only because it is clearly instituted and honored by God. It is an estate of ‘faith,’ for those who enter into it should be convinced that they are doing God’s work and fulfilling their calling. It is an estate of love, for in it one “must and should” help and serve others.” (Kreitzer 2004, 98) I note that this directly contradicts our Lord’s words in Matt 19:11-12, and the argument of the blessed apostle, who proclaims virginity to be preferable to marriage (1 Cor 7). Luther’s argument in this Winterpostille underlie the arguments in Articles XXII and XXVII of the Augustana, and similar arguments made elsewhere in the Book of Concord. In these areas the reformers describe Romish abuses of monasticism and, instead of providing the necessary corrective, they eliminated the practice altogether. While Philip Carey in his article Why Luther is Not Quite Protestant considers Luther to be a conservative reformer, the views and actions of Luther in these areas are quite radical in their theology and their practical implications for the Christian life.

And with this we are back to the Vincentian Canon; Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus; that which is believed everywhere, always, and by all; and I pose the following question (and yes, I know it is begging the question): how do Lutherans deny catholicity and yet consider themselves to be part of the one, holy, apostolic and catholic faith?

On The Protestant Doctrine of Inspiration

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"That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests cannot, or that the Bible cannot." Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine – God cannot lie

We err when we assume inspiration requires inerrancy, as though the doctrine of Sacred Scriptures would be unreliable if the text were not inerrant. When Protestants ascribe inerrancy (in its modern theological formulation and understanding) to Sacred Scripture, they are subscribing to a view of inspiration that goes beyond what Sacred Scripture says about itself. Moreover, the concept of inerrancy is not derived from Sacred Scripture, but is a theological presupposition imposed upon the Word of God. As such, it is a divinization of the text and a desacrilization of the doctrine. Practically speaking, the divinization of the text forces us to spend time and energy focusing on side issues (like proving that the Bible is scientifically accurate) instead of focusing on Jesus Christ. And what did Jesus say about himself? “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me”. (John 14:6) The Sacred Scriptures are not the way, but the means through which the way is revealed to us. Christ alone is the divine self-expression of the Father; the text is the guidepost pointing us to Christ, the medium through which the Holy Spirit works to bring us to faith in Christ. For this purpose the Sacred Scriptures were given to us as the inspired revelation of God the Word — to make us wise unto salvation, and are therefore profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness.

Unfortunately, many Fundamentalists and Evangelicals assume inspiration requires inerrancy. If you extract the material regarding inerrancy from their statements, what is left is an entirely inadequate description of inspiration. As an example, the following is the statement of Moody Bible Institute, modified to remove the references to (and consequences of) inerrancy.

The Bible, including both the Old and New Testaments, is a divine revelation. Revelation is God’s making Himself known to men. God has revealed himself in a limited way in creation. But the Bible is a form of special revelation. The Bible is “special” revelation in the sense that it goes beyond what may be known about God through nature. It is divine in origin, since in the Bible God makes known things which otherwise could never be known.


The Bible is unique because it is God’s revelation recorded in human language. According to II Timothy 3:16–17 the words of Scripture are “God breathed” or inspired. This implies that God is the source or origin of what is recorded in Scripture. God, through the Holy Spirit, used human authors and human language to make himself known to men.[1]

There is nothing in this altered statement about the Scriptures making us wise unto salvation, no unpacking of the statement that Scripture is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for instruction in righteousness, nothing about the manner in which Scripture brings us to perfection, or how by means of the Scripture we are thoroughly furnished unto good works (2 Tim 3:15-16). There is no mention of how the special revelation of the ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, and incomprehensible God can be contained within the limits of human language, and no discussion of how the infinite God can be circumscribed by the finite mind. In other words, the doctrinal statement of Moody Bible Institute asserts inerrancy rather than inspiration.

I have tried this experiment with a variety of doctrinal statements, and have come up short every time. This leads me to conclude that the 20th century Evangelical Protestant Church have replaced inspiration with inerrancy (and its corollary, infallibility). In doing so, they began to argue over trivial issues (like science vs. religion) that have nothing to do with the Christ who is revealed in the Scriptures. It is past time to remove the false idol of inerrancy from the temple of our hearts.

Bibliography

Moody Bible Institute. (n.d.). The Inspiration and Inerrancy of the Bible. Retrieved November 20, 2008, from Moody Bible Institute: http://www.moodyministries.net/crp_MainPage.aspx?id=600

Endnotes

[1] (Moody Bible Institute n.d.)

Verbal Inerrancy, Literalism, and the Re-opening of the Canon

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The Bible is always right.

Inerrancy

In modern statements of faith, the connection between inspiration and inerrancy is made plain, such that Christians believe the concept of inerrancy is necessary to properly define inspiration. But that is incorrect. In fact, the idea that the scriptures are trustworthy and infallible is an ancient Christian teaching, whereas the idea that the Scriptures are inerrant is a modern conceit.

First, it depends what exactly is inerrant: the Sacred Scriptures that make us wise unto salvation (the forma), or the text—the peculiar combination of marks on a page (the materia), which change from language to language, and from translation to translation. These textual differences can be significant. A particular word may have a subtle range of meanings in Hebrew, but when that word is translated into Greek, the translator picks one word to represent the primary meaning. Thus the act of translation is an act of textual interpretation.

Second, if one postulates the verbal (and plenary) inerrancy of the autographs (being the original peculiar combination of marks on a page), this postulate then drives the task of textual criticism. No longer do textual critics seek determine the authoritative text (a theological enterprise), but instead seek the recovery of the original text (a critical enterprise), which they deem authoritative by virtue of its being original.[1] The search for the original text is itself an act of textual interpretation. Although textual criticism proceeds on the basis of rules, and gives the appearance of being scientific, the rules are in fact arbitrary, based on assumptions made before one approaches the text. For example, if you favor the Masoretic text of the Old Testament, your rules will give primacy to that text and other texts will be of secondary importance.[2]

Verbal inerrancy in the autographs necessitates the understanding that only the original author was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and that subsequent corrections, additions, and deletions by later copyists and/or churchmen are corruptions.[3] The clear implication is that the word of a particular man (the author) was inspired; indeed, that the author was himself inspired. When Peter writes of the “holy men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2Pe 1:21), the assumption is this applies to the particular man or prophet who initially produced the writing, as opposed to the later copyists and churchmen who modified the text in one way or another. This means that passages deemed by both conservative and liberal scholars to have not been part of the original text are suspect, even though the extant texts are part of the canon of Sacred Scripture. The natural result is the re-opening of the canon of scripture and the excision of suspect texts from Sacred Scripture. The obsession with verbal inerrancy logically leads to the error of Marcion.

There is another way of thinking about all this. What if we ignore the minor errors of scripture? As a practical matter, we do that already. Do we really care that 1 Kings 4:26 says that Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses, whereas 2 Chron 9:25 says Solomon had four thousand? No, of course not. We recognize that a copyist made an error and move on. It is not germane to the subject at hand, and represents no threat to the inspiration and trustworthiness of Scripture. The only way this becomes a problem is if we begin to incorporate modern understandings of inspiration into our thinking, which requires a series of rationales and tendentious arguments for each and every difficult passage in the Bible.

A literalistic understanding of Sacred Scripture can lead to all sorts of problems. For example, the United Methodist Minister Richard Hagenston writes of the direct contradiction contained in the final verses of Psalm 51. In his analysis of this passage, verses 16-17 indicates that God does not want sacrifice, while verses 18-19 says that God is pleased with sacrifices. So which is it?[4]

For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem.
Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar. (Ps 51:16-19)

You, dear reader, may find it interesting to compare different approaches to this passage. Richard Hagenston’s approach is to take the text at face value. The text means exactly what it says, and has no deeper meaning. The literal interpretation is the only interpretation, you might say. And having said that, we are left with a rather glaring contradiction.

Most other Bible scholars would look at this passage in its context of the Psalm as a whole. Since the overall theme is of repentance, verses 16-17 would indicate that God prefers repentance to sacrifice; verses 18–19 says that God is pleased with sacrifices when they are offered with a repentant heart. But note that this interpretation goes beyond the literal meaning of the text, and depends upon the idea that the text contains deeper meanings than the mere literal reading can reveal.

To a strict literalist, the passage in Psalm 51 represents a contradiction, which is clearly an error. The accumulated weight of these errors (and others, of different types) drives some, like the scholar Bart Ehrman, to a loss of faith in God. For others, like Richard Hagenston, these errors drive them to a loss of faith in the Bible, and a questioning of doctrinal orthodoxy. All because we conflate inspiration and innerancy. God help us.

 

 

Bibliography

Hagenston, R. (2014, September 29). 8 Things Your Pastor Will Never Tell You About the Bible. Retrieved October 4, 2014, from Patheos.com: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/09/29/8-things-your-pastor-will-never-tell-you-about-the-bible/

 

 

[1] The search for the original text ignores the fact that the bible has a history, and that the collection of texts into the canon existing today was curated by the Church. The search for the original text must yield to the search for the authoritative text.  In turn, this means that we can only understand the bible within the community that curated it, within the “matrix that includes the thoughts and writings of the early church: its bishops, priests, poets, monks, theologians, and artists.” (Miller 2012)

[2] Favoring the Masoretic text may seem reasonable, as (apart from the Dead Sea Scrolls) it is the most ancient extant Hebrew text. There is a marked preference for translating the Old Testament from the Hebrew text, a preference that goes back to the Renaissance Humanists who argued for a return to the sources. The rallying cry of this movement was the Latin phrase “ad fontes“, meaning “to the sources.” The reformers, being products of their time, thought that using Hebrew sources rather than the Greek translation was right and proper.

[3] Interesting examples include the following: 1) The epilogue of John 21 may have been added later. The original Gospel appears to end at Jn 20:31. 2) The pericope on the woman taken in adultery (Jn 7:53 – 8:11) is not in the oldest and best-attested manuscripts. 3) The oldest manuscripts for the Gospel of Mark do not include Mk 16:9-20; instead, it ends rather abruptly with the resurrection appearance to Mary Magdalene. This all results in the following question: if the Sacred Scriptures were inerrant in the original manuscripts, and these texts were not part of the original text, are they then Scripture? Do we excise them from our bibles? And if so, how is this different from what the heretic Marcion tried to do?

[4] (Hagenston 2014)

On The Existence of Suffering Amongst God’s People

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Seven Maccabean Martyrs

Seven Maccabean Martyrs

Now I beseech those that read this book, that they be not discouraged for these calamities, but that they judge those punishments not to be for destruction, but for a chastening of our nation. For it is a token of his great goodness, when wicked doers are not suffered any long time, but forthwith punished. For not as with other nations, whom the Lord patiently forbeareth to punish, till they be come to the fulness of their sins, so dealeth he with us, lest that, being come to the height of sin, afterwards he should take vengeance of us. And therefore he never withdraweth his mercy from us: and though he punish with adversity, yet doth he never forsake his people. But let this that we have spoken be for a warning unto us. (2 Macc 6:12-17)

In nearly every case, the word “Holy” is used of God, of God’s law, and of the Sacred Scriptures. However, in Paul’s writings we begin to see the idea of God’s people becoming Holy through their connection with Christ. In Paul’s letter to the Romans he builds upon Christ’s metaphor of the vine and the branches: “For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches.” (Ro 11:16) He indicates that holiness is both the normative state and the goal of the Christian life: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” (Ro 12:1) Paul tells us the point of his crucifixion was to present us to God as holy. (Col 1:22) Writing to the Corinthians, Paul first states that the “temple of God is holy”, and then that we are the “temple of the Holy Ghost”. (1 Cor 3:17; 6:19) Paul describes the church as a holy temple, holy and without blemish. (Eph 2:21; 5:27) In his moral and ethical prescriptions that typically end the writings of Paul, he describes holiness as the goal of the Christian life. God wants us to be a holy people (Lev 11:45; 1 Pe 1:16).

In the second book of Maccabees we read that suffering comes into the life of God’s people not as punishment, but as a corrective tool. Suffering is presented as a sign of God’s mercy, in that he doesn’t leaves us to our sins, but guides us away from them. The point of our present sufferings is for us to avoid the judgment of God.

The apostle Peter writes how it is better to “suffer for well doing, than for evil doing.” (1 Pe 3:17) He then describes “the longsuffering of God”, how “God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.” (1 Pe 3:20) In this passage the sufferings of the few are nothing when compared against the judgment of the world, a theme Peter appears to have taken from 2 Maccabees.

The Self-Authenticating Scriptures

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The Gospel of John

The Gospel of John

Protestants are told the scriptures are self-authenticating; because the scriptures are God’s word, they have the power to convince us of their truth. Johann Gerhard writes: “Because it is God-breathed, published, and spread by divine inspiration, therefore it is credible in itself, having credibility from itself.”[1] David Scaer simplifies this thought: “Because the biblical writers were recipients of immediate illumination, the Bible possesses a self-authenticating authority.”[2] Thus the Bible is “credible in itself, having credibility from itself”; thus the Sacred Scriptures are “self-authenticating”, whole unto themselves, needing nothing external to themselves as witness to their inspiration. While this makes sense in terms of the Protestant antipathy to Rome, they fail to realize the concept of self-authentication makes the Scriptures into a demiurge, a created god. Not God in essence, not a fourth person of the Trinity, but much more than an ordinary created being. The Gnostics (and others) described this type of lesser god as a demiurge. The idea that the Sacred Scriptures are “self-authenticating”, that their credibility is intrinsic, elevates the Scriptures above all other creation, and effectively denies the person and the extrinsic witness of the Holy Spirit. The author of Hebrews says “the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Heb 4:12) However, we are to understand this passage as a description of the work of the Holy Spirit in the world, in the Church, and in the heart of each human person. We know this directly from the words of Jesus Christ, when He spoke of the work of the Holy Spirit. “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” (Jo 14:26) And again: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.” (Jo 15:26) Either the Holy Spirit is our guide to understanding the Sacred Scriptures, or the Sacred Scriptures are a witness unto themselves, with no God necessary. You can’t have it both ways.

Bibliography

Gerhard, Johann. On the Nature of Theology and Scripture. Translated by Richard J. Dinda. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2006.

Scaer, David. “Baptism as Church Foundation.” Concordia Theological Quarterly 67, no. 2 (April 2003): 109-129.

 

 

 Endnotes

[1] (Gerhard 2006, 68)

[2] (Scaer 2003, 118)