Category: Theology

“Perhaps most striking is the difference in emphasis on justification between Luther and Lutheranism on the hand and Reformed theology on the other. For the former, justification is central to the whole of theology. It is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. It functions as a kind of critical methodological tool by which any aspect of theology, or theology as a whole is to be judged….However, there is hardly an instance in Reformed theology placing justification in the center. Not that Reformed theology opposed justification by faith alone, or salvation by pure grace. On the contrary, they saw salvation in its entirety as a display of the sovereign and free mercy of God. The explanation lay in the fact that, for Reformed theology, everything took place to advance the glory of God. Thus the chief purpose of theology and of the whole of life was not the rescue of humanity but the glory of God. The focus was theocentric rather than soteriological. Even in the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), where soteriological concerns are more prominent (one of its authors, Zacharias Ursinus [1533-1587] was formerly a Lutheran) the famous first question ‘What is your only comfort in life and death?’ is answered w/ reference to the action of the Trinity, beginning, ‘I am not my own but belong… to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.

Following from this was an attempt by Reformed theology to grasp the unity of creation and redemption. The whole of life was seen in the embrace of God’s revelatory purpose. With the covenant at its heart, the whole of life was to display God’s glory. Naturally, that included at its heart the restoration of sinners to fellowship w/ God. It also entailed, however the reconstitution of both civil and ecclesiastical affairs. Lutheranism, in contrast, showed less developed interest in the application of the gospel to political life and focused more narrowly on soteriology. Possibly this stemmed from Luther enjoying the patronage of his Elector, which freed him from having to safeguard the Reformation in a political sense in quite the same way as his Reformed counterparts. The net result was that while for Lutheranism justification by faith was the heart of theology, for the Reformed theologians it was subordinate to an overarching sense of the centrality of God and his covenant. Yet, for both, the underlying concern for the gratuitous nature of salvation, its objective reality extra nos, was the same.

Robert Letham
The Work of Christ — pg. 189-190

Another way to put the differences between Lutheranism and Reformed worldviews is that for Lutheranism salvation is for man and terminates on man, individually considered while for Reformed thought salvation is for God and serves the terminating end of a renewed cosmos dripping and saturated with God’s glory. For Lutheranism the teleology is man atoned for, whereas for Reformed thought the teleology includes but doesn’t end with man atoned for. For Reformed thought the teleology is the atonement as well as all the totality of corresponding and inevitable consequences that the atonement brings upon men who have been atoned for. Atonement for individual men is not the end product of Christ’s work. Atonement is the beginning and creating point of enlisting men into the cause of cosmic renewal for the glory of God. Men are not atoned for and saved for the sake of being atoned for and saved. Men are atoned for and saved to be put on a mission to take captive every thought and take dominion over every crevice of the cosmos to make all thoughts and all crevices obedient to King Christ. In Reformed thought, classical Lutheran thought is provincial and anthropocentric and is far to horizontally circumscribed and vertically nugatory.

Straight thinking Reformed folk don’t doubt that real live honest to goodness Lutherans or wanna-be Escondido Reformed Lutherans are part of God’s elect Church. We just think that their theology leaves them developmentally disabled — much like a child who has a rare disease that does not allow them to ever grow up.

Letham, says that the focus of Lutherans is soteriological while the focus of Reformed is theocentric. I think Letham is being diplomatic and kind there. In point of fact both theologies are focused on soteriology. The difference is that that Lutheranism focuses on a soteriology that has a anthropological terminal point whereas Reformed thought focuses on a soteriology that has a theological terminal point.

Clearly, in light of what Letham writes, the Reformed church is being invaded by Lutheran theology body snatchers. Clearly, there has been some cross breeding and pollination that is giving some flavors of the Reformed church a hybrid feel about it.

Let the Reformed church be the Reformed church!

I just received an e-mail from a friend asking me to help him pinpoint the problem w/ a post he found on another blog. Below is the post in question,

The blog writer tees up his quote by saying,

“When I first read this passage in 2000, I realized that I had for years been something close to a hypercalvinist, and I was committing some of the same fallacies as Hoeksema’s Protestant Reformed Church. Klaas Schilder knocked some sense into me and make me start to think covenantally. Steve Schlissel was the man who recommended him to me. This quotation was what did the trick:

“When I declare — and with the pretention of the greatest accuracy in a new binding — that election is the cause and fountain of our total salvation, then I run the danger of making someone, and later the whole church, think that if election is present then the fountain is bubbling, the cause is working, and the process is on its way. “No,” says Twissus [first prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly, and a delegate at Dort], “nothing is going on yet.” He admonished the Arminians, especially Corvinus, three times not to confuse election with the execution of election. Decree and the realization of the decree are two different matters. Election is not the cause. With election, the decree is from eternity. When I merely decide to travel to Amsterdam, then nothing as yet has happened.

The cause of my coming to Amsterdam is that I finally did put on my coat, went to the railway station, and said goodbye to the silhouette of my residence.

When I decide to do something then this decision can still change for at first I did not make a decision at all, or perhaps I would have decided something different, for instance to travel to London. But in God all decisions are unchangeable, a decision or decree therefore does not change anything in Him. Nor in us. That which causes anything in us and which is thus cause and fountain of all salvation, is something which comes in time. The causes all work with and in time…

“Man, stop,” Twissus now says, “you are forgetting that the decree, strictly speaking, is not the fountain or the cause. We do not tell our children and our people, ‘you are elect, for that is what your baptism indicates and you may now conclude that the stream of God’s clear healing water has started to flow.’ No,” says Twissus, “you Arminians forget one thing. The doctrine of election is not a doctrine of causes or fountains. Causes and fountains only occur in history, in what God started in this world. For instance, and that certainly in the first place, the preaching of the Word is a cause and a fountain. That is where the fountain starts to spout water. There the cause is working…

Consequently we do not make people rely upon election, as ground and fountain, but upon the Word.”

Our earnest writer ends with this tag on line,

“I would only add, “and the sacraments” to the end of the last paragraph

Now, I take the time to examine this not only to help my friend who e-mailed me but also in order to get at some of that which drives the Federal Vision error. The following mentions some of the problems w/ the above quote.

1.) The primary problem here is that it confuses ultimate causation with proximate causation. In matters of salvation the ultimate cause is election but that reality doesn’t negate that Word and Sacrament are proximate causes in their own right.

2.) The decision illustration does not work. The beginning point is the decision to do something or not do something. All else results from that decision. If I decide to go to Amsterdam and then change my mind and go to London instead that change still was caused by a change in my decision. Now, the whole notion that we can somehow divorce God’s ultimate causal decree of election that ends with the elect being saved from the God’s decree that the proximate causal means to that end is Word and Sacrament is to divorce heat and light from the Sun. A trip to a Tulip Festival in Amsterdam has both the ultimate cause of making the decision to go and the proximate cause of actually going and continuing to go. Plainly speaking, such divorcing of decree from execution of decree which leads to a prioritizing over the execution of decree over the decree itself, as if the execution could happen w/o the decree, is stupid.

3.) It is not hyper-calvinism to believe passages like Ephesians 1:3-13. It is not hyper-calvinism to believe that what happens in time is pinioned on what God decreed. What is hyper-calvinism is to believe that the decree itself is the accomplishment of the decree. Now I freely admit that there are Calvinist out there who, pragmatically speaking, operate the way our blog writer speaks of but it does us no good to call the belief that time is conditioned by eternity hyper-calvinism.

4.) That which may be being reacted to by Twissus, and later Schilder, and still later by Schlissel and the Federal Visionists is the tendency by some Reformed people to treat predestination and election like Muslims treat Fate. There have been times when the Reformed have been properly referred to as the “frozen chosen.” There have been times in the Reformed Church when being saved meant having your “I’ve been baptized” Union card. But the cure to Reformed people treating predestination and election the same way that Muslims treat fate is not by suggesting that God’s decrees aren’t causal. The way to defeat Reformed views of predestination that end up getting translated as Islamic fate is by emphasizing that God works in history through His covenant people crafting and shaping history just as he has worked outside of history and that God, as He who decrees, is not divorced from God who rules, governs and sustains this world.

5.) If we teach that God’s decrees aren’t the ultimate cause of all that happens we cut the animating nerve between God’s commands and our compliance. For example, it is because of my certainty that God has decreed that all the nations will come to Christ and that the earth will flower again with the success of the Gospel that has me contending for just that. It is my certainty that God has decreed my increasing conformity to Christ that has me seeking to comply with God’s command for that and so finds me attending to the proximate causes for sanctification in Word and Sacrament.

In the end what we have here, once again, is the desire to over-react to a over-reaction. We don’t beat hyper-calvinism by embracing hypo-calvinism. We beat hyper-calvinism by meat and potatoes garden variety calvinism.

In the well known fairly tale, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” Goldilocks is forever being presented with extremes. The porridge is either too hot or too cold. The chairs were either too big or too small. The beds were either too hard or too soft. Fortunately, at each juncture she found one that was “just right.” The Reformed Church in America is having a Goldilocks moment at this current point in history.

Federal Vision is too legalistic. R2Kt is too anti-nomian. Is there anybody who is just right? John Frame is too broad. Mike Horton is too narrow. Is there anybody who is just right?

I read Mike Horton’s Christless Christianity. I read most of John Frame’s critique of Horton’s Christless Christianity. All I can say is give me something “just right.”

Let me try to explain what I see going on here. Horton comes from a school that believes that the cult should be kept tight while Christians ought to be able to handle the culture in a pluralistic broad fashion. Frame, on the other hand, obviously believes that the cult should be a large tent — indeed so large a tent that Frame finds himself defending numb-skulls like Joel Osteen and Chuck Smith. To be honest if Frame’s model were to be followed the Church would be largely indefinable by virtue of how it would include almost everybody. Frame is just plain wrong in how he would define the parameters of the Church. Indeed, in a move that is more than odd for a Reformed theologian he seems to almost completely ignore the historic Reformed “marks of the Church” in his critique of Horton.

If Frame gives us the “too broad” characterization of the Church, Horton brings in our Goldilocks moment by giving us a “too narrow” version of the Church. Frame is correct when he faults Horton for his loose usage of Theology of suffering vs. Theology of glory. Horton and his R2Kt chums have a bad habit of even slapping this “theology of glory” pejorative even on Reformed people that don’t agree with their innovative and unique style of Reformed theology. Frame is also right when he points out Horton’s incipient Lutheranism in the way Horton frames the Law vs. Gospel dynamic. This Lutheranism is constantly seen in the R2Kt model that Horton would foist upon the Reformed Church. Often one wishes the R2Kt guys would just go to Wittenburg and be done with it. Frame is again correct when he faults Horton’s “Moralism” categories. I know what it means to preach Redemptive-Historical sermons. I really do get it and do often preach that way. But Horton and the R2Kt crowd end up suggesting that any sermon that is imperative oriented is “moralism.” This reverts back to their Lutheran mindset on the Law.

As I read Frame’s critique it was “Goldilocks and the Three bears” all over again except I can’t seem to find that damn third bear where everything is “just right.” Were we to follow Frame’s vision of the Church we’d be holding hands with Pelagians and Word Faith guys like Chuck Smith and Joel Osteen. Yuck … how disgusting is that? However, on the other hand were we to follow Horton’s version of the Church we’d be standing next to guys like Darryl Hart and R. Scott Clark who would refuse to hold our hands because we are stinky theonomists who are icky “theologians of glory.”

One more issue before wrapping up. I can’t help but get a chuckle out of John Frame who waxed eloquent about the dreaded character of the “Machen’s Warrior Children.” According to Frame we needed to get away from the Reformed tendency to always want to fight. And yet here is Frame in all of his warrior regalia fighting with other people in the Reformed Church. The irony is apparently lost on John but remains delicious to those in the know.

In the end Horton has many good points in his book “Christless Christianity” concerning the reality that the Church is missing Christ. The problem however is when Mike goes all Lutheran on us insisting that unless we become R2Kt we are missing Christ as well. Mike’s porridge is too hot. Frame has many fine observations regarding Horton’s hot porridge but the problem is that John’s multi-perspectivalism mitigates his ability to draw proper lines. John’s porridge is too cold.

And here I sit looking for some porridge that is “just right.”

“For religion is not one aspect of department of life beside the others, as modern secular thought likes to believe; it consist rather in the orientation of all human life to the absolute.”

John A. Hutchinson
Faith, Reason, and Existence — p. 210

“Religion is the substance of culture and culture the form of religion.”

Paul Tillich
The Protestant Era — p. 57

If religion were a zit and it were popped what would come out of the popped zit is culture.

One thing we try to communicate to people about Calvinism is that Calvinism doesn’t really have 5 points of Grace (TULIP) as if those 5 points of Grace were stand alone doctrines. In actuality Calvinism is one doctrine of grace which is taught as five interlocking and interdependent aspects that we call TULIP. This is why it is literally impossible to be anything but a 5 point Calvinist when it comes to the Doctrine of Grace. To contend that one is a 4 point or a 3 point Calvinist is to give up Calvinism on the Doctrine of Grace since the 1 point of Calvinism’s doctrine of grace requires all five aspects known as TULIP. The five points of grace together serve to define Calvinism soteriologically. (Calvinism as as a whole requires more then TULIP but we are here speaking of Calvinism as a soteriology.)

This can serve as an illustration for the way we understand culture. Culture has many points (economics, law, family life, politics, education, church, international relations, etc.) just as Calvinism is one soteriologically but as 5 aspects of grace (TULIP) so a culture has all of these different aspects of the one religion of a people.

Religion is what orients us a people to their absolute and once that people are oriented to their respective absolute that orientation reveals itself in culture.

This is a far different view of the relation of religion to culture that one generally finds in modernity. In modernity religion is but one aspect of culture. Religion gets listed as a department of culture and it is so denigrated by many that legion is the name of those who think we can get rid of religion and still have culture — as if religion is just a kind of extra that we would be better off without.

Of course the pursuit of eliminating religion from culture is merely a reflection of the religion of those writes who advocate such a silly thing.

This of course is why we can never speak of “secularism” as if the secular provided a sphere where religion was put on hold or was muted. Every sphere of life is conditioned by and is a reflection of some religion and there is no sphere that we may speak of as being “secular”, if by secular one means a sphere that is not the product of religion.

“A truly secular culture has never been found, and it is doubtful whether American materialism can be called “secular.” Even communism, like Nazism, has its gods and devils, its sin and salvation, its priests and its liturgies, its paradise of the stateless society of the future. For religious faith always transcends culture and is the integrating principle and power of man’s cultural striving.”

Henry Van Til
Calvinistic Concept Of Culture — p. 39

In every sphere of culture and in every aspect of our living man is pursuing, incarnating, and living out his religion.

Try to think of it this way. The cultus (religion) is that which animates the culture. The cultus (religion) is to the culture what the soul is to the body. As the soul gives life to the body, the cultus gives life, meaning and direction to the culture. Change a person’s soul and you change the person. Change a culture’s cultus and you change the culture. The cultus is the first animated ripple of the spiritual relationship between a man, men and God. Out from that first animated ripple comes the successive ripples that comprise, form, and make up culture.

This is why protecting the purity of worship as being where we find a sense of the vertical, and where we find Word and Sacrament as central is so important, for if and when we lost our way in the cultus the consequence will be that we will lose our way in the culture. Further, the restoration of a culture gone astray will only be seen when the cultus is restored so that worship is pleasing to God…. and the cultus will only be restored where man’s spiritual relationship to God is revitalized.

However it is also absolutely necessary to understand that there is a distinction between the cultus and the culture. If we make them one in the same then we run the danger of suggesting that the cultus is over the culture or that all of the culture finds its meaning only when it is in submission to the cultus. Just recently I read of this mistake being made by somebody moving into a new residence. Before they actually started living there they needed a priest to come by and bless the house and the rooms. This is to lose the distinction between the cultus and the culture. But there is an opposite extreme that we as Westerners are more prone to and that is to totally separate the cult from the cultus so that a denial arises that religion is significant for life. (Of course such a denial would spring forth from religious presuppositions.)

If it is true that by changing a cultus one can change the culture it is also true that one can change the cultus by attacking the culture…. but even here those who attack the culture in order to change the cultus are attacking the culture with a cultus of their own which is springing from an alien religion from that of the culture that they are seeking to transform.

Since the cultus is that which animates the culture the most important aspect of a culture is that which is responsible for the cultus. Historically, in Christendom, that which has been responsible for the cultus is the Church. The Church protected the theology and doxology of the the cultus and the cultus gave strength and vitality to the culture. However in the last 150 years of so in the West the cultus in America can no longer be identified as having the Christian Church be responsible for it. The reason this is so is because the religion which animates our culture any more is no longer Christianity but rather it is some form of the religion of humanism. As such, if we were to look for the cultus that is responsible for our modern culture we no longer must look to the Christian church but rather we must look to the humanist church which takes up residence in the public schools in these united States.

“Christ is indeed the savior of all people prior to the day of judgment (I Tim. 4:10). Christ sustains the whole universe (Col. 1:17). Without Him, no living thing could survive. He grants to His creatures such gifts as time, law, order, power, and knowledge. He grants all of these gifts to Satan and his rebellious host. The answer to the question, ‘Does God show His grace and mercy to all creation, including Satan?’ is emphatically yes. Satan is given time and power to do his evil work. To the next question, ‘Does this mean that God in some way demonstrates an attitude of favor towards Satan?’ the answer is emphatically no. God is no more favorable toward Satan and his demons than he is to Satan’s human followers. But this does not mean that He does not bestow gifts upon them — gift that they in no way deserve.

Thus the doctrine of common grace must apply not only to men but also to Satan and the fallen angels. This is what Van Til denies, because he defines common grace as favor in general rather than gifts in general. The second concept does not imply the first.

God does not favor ‘mankind’ as such. He showers favors on all men, but this does not mean that he favors men in general. Man in general rebelled against Him in the garden. Adam and Eve, mankind’s representative, brought the entire human race under God’s wrath. God in His grace gave them time and covenant promises, for He looked forward to the death of His Son on the cross. On this basis and only on this basis, men have been given life in history. Some have been give life in order to extend God’s Kingdom, while others have been give life (like Pharaoh) to demonstrate God’s power, and to heap coals of fire eternally on their head.”

Dr. Gary North
Dominion and Common Grace — The Biblical bases of progress –pg. 44-45

Whether or not common grace really exists has been a bone of contention for centuries. If common grace exists then the seeming problem is that we are insisting that God loves those that Scripture teaches he has hated before they were born. A genuine contradiction. If common grace doesn’t exist then the seeming problem is that it is difficult to see how it could be true that “the goodness of God to the reprobate was intended to lead them to repentance,” or how in despising this genuine goodness of God towards them they were storing up God’s wrath. If God never had any inclination of goodness towards them that was to issue in repentance then how could they be storing up God’s wrath by living in defiance of that goodness?

The answer to this is in making distinctions between God’s gifts (favors) given and God’s favor given. Perhaps common grace should be defined as God giving gifts (favors) to those (reprobate) whom He has no favor towards. If we could use this definition then we could say that God extends favors towards the reprobate without extending favor to the reprobate. By extending His favors towards the reprobate, He superintends how His eternal decree works out in time so that the reprobate who have been differentiated from the elect from eternity by God differentiate themselves from the elect in time and history.

Try to imagine the reprobate as Christmas Geese set apart for the day of destruction by Farmer John. Over the course of the year Farmer John gives the Christmas Geese the best of gifts in the way of feed that will fatten them up. On the outside it may even look that Farmer John favors the Christmas Geese even more then the other Geese of the barnyard.

Despite the gifts of Farmer John the Christmas Geese despise Farmer John. Through their despite of Farmer John they are storing up wrath. In all of this Farmer John gave gifts to the Geese without having any intention of favor.

By dividing common grace up in this fashion we avoid the contradiction that God loves those He has set apart for destruction while at the same time we avoid denying that God gives good gifts to the reprobate. We would also be able to truthfully teach that the reprobate despise the goodness of God, that the reprobate have only themselves to blame for not repenting in the face of God’s goodness, that the reprobate, by not repenting have stored up for themselves God’s wrath because of their hardness of heart.

Some might insist (with understandable reasons) that this is equivocating on the traditional definition of common grace. Perhaps we should call this God’s “common benevolence.” If we did that then we could deny common grace while insisting upon common benevolence.