Category: Theology

I have often times written and insisted that the Doctrines of Grace (fashionably styled as TULIP) absolutely require the larger context of the Reformed faith in order to retain their meaning. This means that those who hold to TULIP while denying the larger context of the Reformed Faith either don’t really hold to TULIP or are involved in some serious contradictions. I have, on ironink especially made that argument regarding the sacraments.

Recently, I stumbled across an article that makes that same overall argument in spades. I highly recommend it. It was written by Dr. Richard Muller and can be found at,

http://kimriddlebarger.squarespace.com/how-many-points/

I am going to hit some highlights here for those who don’t have the time to read ten pages.

“They also — all of them (Reformed confessions) — agree on the assumption that our assurance of the salvation, wrought by grace alone through the work of Christ and God’s Spirit in us, rests not on our outward deeds or personal claims but on our apprehension of Christ in faith and on our recognition of the inward work of the Spirit in us. Because this assurance is inward and cannot easily or definitively be externalized, all of these documents also agree that the church is both visible and invisible — that it is a covenanted people of God identified not by externalized indications of the work of God in individuals, such as adult conversion experiences but by the preaching of the word of God and the right administration of the sacraments.”

In today’s evangelical church the push is commonly towards externalizing indications that a work of God in individuals has taken place. This push was seen once upon a time in raising a hand or walking an aisle or sitting at the seekers bench. When the Pentecostals came along indications became a little more bizarre. With the third wave we have external indications of God’s work that range from swinging from chandeliers to making animal sounds. What the evangelical church misses is that God has given us externalized indications of his work in the Word preached and the Sacraments distributed. When we push for these non Word and Sacrament externalized indications we are subtly moving away from the importance of the Church where the God given externalized indications take place in Word and Sacrament and are moving towards an individualized me and Jesus Christianity. After all, you don’t need to be at church to get an electric Holy Spirit charge, and even if you are at church the emphasis of church gets changed from God acting in Word and Sacrament to a anticipation of when the Holy Spirit will cause some strange and aberrant behavior. Because we are totally depraved God works in us through the ordained means of Word and Sacrament. Moving the emphasis from the means of grace that God uses to resurrect sinners, to funky behavior that can be mimicked by anybody overturns the TULIP applecart.

“Baptism, rightly understood from the human side, signifies the placement of our children into the context where the promised grace of God is surely at work. And who more than an infant, incapable of meritorious works, can indicate to us that this salvation is by grace alone? By way of contrast, the restriction of baptism to adult believers who make a “decision” and who come forward voluntarily to receive a mere ordinance stands against recognition of baptism as a sign of utter graciousness on the part of God: Baptism here is offered only to certain individuals who have passed muster before a human, albeit churchly, court — or to state the problem slightly differently, who have had a particular experience viewed as the necessary prerequisite to baptism by a particular churchly group. If grace and election relate to this post-decision baptism, they can hardly be qualified by the terms “irresistible” and “unconditional.” There is an inescapable irony in refusing baptism to children, offering it only to adults, and then telling the adults that they must become as little children in order to inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

Muller then moves on to slice and dice the evangelical piety and nomenclature that talks about “having a personal relationship with Jesus.” Muller suggest that such talk that belies such an easy and casual intimacy can possibly detract from the “majesty of the doctrine of Christ’s Kingship.” He also suggests that this “personal relationship” language with its implied reciprocity may subtly inject in our thinking that salvation is, like any personal relationship, a co-operative effort. Muller suggests, by appealing to the Heidelberg Catechism, that a more Reformed way to speak than speaking of a “personal relationship” is by speaking that we belong in body and soul and in life and death to our faithful savior Jesus Christ.

Anyway … I recommend the whole article for your perusal. I would only slightly question Muller on two points. First, I would slightly question the way he connects the decrees of God in eternity to the way those decrees come to fruition in space and time. Muller rightly faults some people for not having a temporal order of grace. I would only add that that other people probably need to be faulted for not understanding that their temporal order of grace needs to be anchored in an a-temporal order of grace.

Second, I could wish that Muller saw the connection between a vigorous postmillennialism and the doctrines of grace. I agree with everything he says about amillennialism (and I think he uses “amillennialism” to include postmillennial notions) but I believe that a denial of a victorious eschatology flies in the face of the perseverance of the saints. Granted, amillennialism perseveres the saints but they persevere in the context of defeat. Postmillennialism does more justice to the triumph of Christ over all of his enemies in my estimation.

Anyway … great article by Dr. Muller. Give it a read and tell me what you think.

“Church leaders have been unable to confront the humanistic world order effectively. First, as we have seen, their concepts of sovereignty and law are defective. They concede these to the state and thereby cease to be Christian. Like the mystery religions of the Roman Empire, their role is limited to providing salvation in the form of inner peace and an abstraction from the world.

Second, churchmen see religion as one sphere among many, and they seek cooperation among the spheres, i.e., such as the harmony of religion and science. Their position involves a fundamental error. It is true that the church is one sphere among many, i.e., spheres such as the family, vocations, civil government, etc. To seek to make the church more than a particular sphere is imperialism, such as the state sphere now exercises. Religion, however, is more than church. It is the ground of all spheres. Church, state, family, the vocations, the arts and sciences, and all things else must be governed by religion, by Biblical faith, and every sphere has equally the duty of faithfulness to the triune God.

R. J. Rushdoony
Sovereignty — pp. 182

Paragraph #1

1.) Many, if not most contemporary expressions of Christianity, are, in the words of Dr. Gary North, nothing but escape religions. Christianity thus serves as a tame pet for the various statist power religions. There seems to be a unwritten truce between the state and much that passes for the Christian faith where the state continues to agree to give churches their tax exempt status in exchange for the church making sure that the natives don’t ever connect their faith to what happens in the public square where the state has its way. Christianity, as the ultimate escape religion, thus, holds hands with the humanism which is the ultimate power religion. It is a very commodious relationship.

Paragraph #2

1.) Churchmen continue to fail to accept that religion (theology / worldview) informs every area of life. Another way of saying this is that different spheres owe their definition and meaning to the religion (theology / worldview) that launches any particular sphere (or discipline) in question.

2.) This means the attempt to harmonize the Christian religion (as only one sphere) with another sphere is that there is no attempt to inquire what religion (besides the Christian religion) is the religion that is responsible for launching the sphere that the Christian religion is trying to harmonize with. Concretely speaking this means that it is grave error for the Christian religion to try and harmonize with a science (as one example) that has been launched by a competing religion. The Christian religion can only harmonize with a science that has been launched by the Christian religion.

3.) There is no common realm where epistemologically self conscious men with different religious commitments can meet and pursue what are thought to be various non-religious spheres or disciplines apart from the impact and consideration of their respective religious faiths. There is no cloak room in reality where our respective impacting religions can be hung up so that another room in reality may be entered where we may consider spheres or disciplines “un-religiously.” The fact that men with different religious commitments do meet and pursue what are thought to be various non religious spheres and disciplines is testimony that most men are not epistemologically self conscious.

“Thomas Aquinas taught what was later called an ‘analogy of being,’ which grounds his account of how human language can be used in talking of God. Analogy is the alternative to ‘univocal’ and ‘equivocal’ language. A word is used ‘univocally’ when it means exactly the same thing in several different contexts, and ‘equivocally’ when it means different things in different contexts. ‘Leaf’ is used equivocally in the sentences ‘Put the leaf in the table’ and ‘Don’t pull that leaf off the tree,’ and ‘man’ is used univocally in the sentences ‘Socrates is a man’ and ‘Duns is a man.’ When applied to theological language, each of these alternatives is an unhappy one. If theological language is equivocal, then we cannot say anything true about God, but if it s univocal, God is reduced to the creaturely level.

Thomas believed that the solution to this was to say that theological language is ‘analogical.’ When we say ‘God is wise’ and ‘Socrates is wise,’ ‘wise’ is used analogically. We are not using ‘wise’ in exactly the same way, but we are not using ‘wise’ in completely different senses, either. There is an ‘analogy’ or ‘similarity’ between the two uses. Thomas applied this to all the attributes of God, including the fundamental attribute of ‘existence’ (Being). God’s existence is his essence, but this is not true of other beings. Thus, in the sentences ‘God exists’ and ‘My toenail exists,’ the word ‘exists’ is being used in an analogical way.

By contrast, John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) defended the ‘univocity of being.’ Though it pertains to theological language, the dispute has much larger implications. Scotus did not deny analogy per se. Terms are not predicated of God and creatures in exactly the same way, and Scotus believed that analogy is necessary because ‘creatures are only imperfect representations of the divine. Yet, he said that without some univocity within the analogy, there can be no analogy. In brief, ‘analogy presupposes univocity.’ More fully, ‘If of two things one is the measure of the other, then they must have something in common that permits the first to be measured of the second, and the second to be measured of the first. If of two things one excess the other by some quantity or degree, however great, then they must have something in common with respect of which the first exceeds the second….

Scotus argued that similar points must be true of our language about God and creation. God is more perfect than man, but that raises the question; a more perfect what? What is the common term? God is more perfect in ‘wisdom’ and ‘justice.’ But if this is to make any sense at all, then ‘wise’ and ‘just’ must be used univocally. Unless we are able to form a concept ‘wisdom’ that will encompass both God’s and man’s wisdom, the analogy is impossible….

In some respects, his (Scotus) arguments in favor of univocity seem correct, yet his treatement has radical implications for the relationship of theology and philosophy. Richard Cross points out that God’s ineffability, his transcendence of all our concepts of him, is weakened in Scotus’s account, so that ‘we can know quite a lot about God.’ That seems to put the case to mildly…. As a result God is paled on a continuum with his creation, and the Creator-creature distinction is blurred….

By distinguishing God and man as ‘two degrees’ (finite and infinite) of a single concept (‘being’), he flattens out the Creator-creature distinction….”

Peter J. Leithart
Medieval Theology And The Roots Of Modernity
Revolutions in Worldview — pg. 169-171

I bring this forward because I believe we are still stumbling over this issue today. Leithart lays out the contours of the issue but he doesn’t answer how to navigate through this epistemological problem.

It is interesting that Gordon Clark argues in a very similar way in one of his books that Leithart reveals Duns Scotus argued on the issue of univocal and analogical language.

As I’ve thought about the Van Til, and Clark blowout (which really remains with us today) I think the issue is captured by how Leithart lays out the issue. It seems to me that the issue is whether or not there really is such a thing as analogical language in a pure sense. In my reading it seems that Van Til used “analogy” in a way that fell off the equivocal side of analogical whereas Clark, when he used the word “analogy” fell off the univocal side of analogical.

If I am reading this correctly then the problem for Van Til and his disciples is that the Creator creature distinction becomes a barrier that no language can get through. On the other hand the problem for Clark and his disciples is, as Leithart notes concerning Scotus, the Creator – creature distinction is flattened out and the mind of man and the mind of God become one at every point of univocity in analogy.

Obviously a Creator-creature distinction that cannot be overcome by language and a Creator-creature distinction that really isn’t a distinction because it is conquered by the univocal in the analogical are both fraught with serious problems. The former is going to lean towards a unwholesome rationalistic theology while the latter is going to lean towards a unwholesome mysticism in theology.

Hey, I don’t have the answers (and apparently Leithart didn’t either) I’m just trying to lay out the ideological topographical map.

In “The Politics of Guilt and Pity,” by R. J. Rushdoony (1995 – Ross House Books) Rushdoony as a chapter where he precisely explains how the belief in the “Kingdom of God,” and “justification by faith alone” shaped and affected the social order of Protestant nations. Rushdoony traces how the core beliefs of the Medieval age formed and shaped the social order of the Medieval age. He then goes on to relate how Calvin’s understanding of the “Kingdom of God,” and “justification by faith alone” was not only a threat to Medieval Catholicism’s doctrine of soteriology but as importantly how those twin doctrines were a threat to Medieval Catholicism’s social order. In short the doctrines were a threat to not only the Church but also to the Medieval way of life in the public square. Rushdoony contended that “Rome and Reformed theologies have their distinctive sociologies of justification,” which lent to distinctive social orders.

In, “The Age of Atonement,” by Boyd Hilton (1988 – Oxford) – subtitled “The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785 – 1865,” the author identifies a doctrinal emphasis on the Atonement during this period and meticulously documents how this emphasis affected social order and economic ideas. As a result of this influence, the author notes what he terms the “rage of Christian Economics” in the early decades of the 19th Century. The Age of Atonement closes as the prevailing doctrinal emphasis shifts from the Atonement to the Incarnation, which gave rise to pietism and the “social gospel” liberalism of the late 19th Century.

George Grant in his lectures on Ancient History spends several lectures explaining how Egyptian religious beliefs incarnated themselves into and provided ballast for their social order. Grant spends time connecting the ancient Egyptian Mahat social order was a reflection of Egyptian religion which held to a chain of being organicism. Grant explains how the architecture in Egyptian social order likewise proclaimed Egyptian religious belief.

Social orders and cultures are always a reflection of the prevailing religion of a people. Attempts to sanitize social order or culture from the religious impulse of a people, is futile. First, because such an attempt itself would be the result of a religious impulse. Such an impulse, when pursued by putative Atheists might be called a kind of public square nihilism and when pursued by Christians might be called a kind of public square Deism. Second, such an attempt of sanitizing social order or culture from the religious impulse of people is futile because both social order and culture are nothing but the outward manifestation of a people’s inward religious beliefs. Trying to build a social order or culture or public square that is a-religious would be like trying to draw a square circle or trying to touch dry wet.

Christians who seek to delete Christian considerations from the public square are insuring that a social order and culture will come to pass that is hostile to the Christian faith. A Christianity that refuses to create a social order is a Christianity that insures the attempt on the part of the social order to try and eliminate the Christian faith. Further, a Christianity that refuses to create a social order is a Christianity that will find itself creating heretical forms of Christianity that are formed in order to conform to the prevailing social order that the otherwise orthodox Christianity allowed to come to pass.

There is no such thing as a secular social order. The sooner Christians realize this the sooner they will be about asking how they can be part of building a social order that is distinctly Christian.

“There are three, and only three, fundamental views of the underlying nature of the social bond. Each of them reflects a particular view of the cosmos, which in turn undergirds the particular view of society. These views are organicism, contractualism and covenantalism. The first two have been dominant in Western philosophical and social thought. The third, being uniquely Biblical, has been ignored.

Organicism. This is by far the most widespread view on man’s history, though not in the modern West. Society is viewed as an organism, just as the cosmos is: a growing thing that has the characteristic features of life. The model institution of the organic society is the family, which is closely associated with physical birth, culture, and physical nurturing, and death. This organic view of society is often associated with the concept of a hierarchical chain of being that links God, man, and the cosmos. It is also associated with magic and with magic’s fundamental princple: ‘As above, so below.’ Man supposedly can manipulate any aspect of the cosmos (macrocosm) by manipulating representative features (microcosm)…. Philosophically, this view of society is associated with realism: an underlying metaphysical unity transcendent to mere individuals ….

Contractualism. This is the dominant view in the modern world, although its philosophical roots go back to the Middle Ages (e.g. — William of Occam). Society is based either on a hypothetical original contract among men in pre-historic or on a constitution of some kind. The primary model is the State, not the family, although in some modern social philosophies, the free market is the model. The familiar phrase associated with this outlook is ‘social contract.’ Men in the distant past voluntarily transferred their individually held politically sovereignty to the State, which now maintains the social order. Each social institution is governed by the terms of an original contract, whether mythical or historical….Philosophically, this view of society is associated with nominalism: the denial of any underlying metaphysical reality or transcendent social unity apart from the thoughts and decisions of individual men. Contracutalism is divined into two major historical streams: individualism (right wing Enlightenment) and collectivism (left wing Enlightenment). The former is evolutionary in its view of society; the latter is more revolutionary.

Covenantalsm. This is not a fusion of organicism and contractualism; it is a separate system. It views society as a complex system of legal bonds, with God as the ultimate Enforcer of these covenants and contracts. There are only four covenants: personal (God and the individual); ecclesiastical (sacramental), familial, and civil. These final three are monopoly institutions founded directly under God’s explicit sovereignty. Covenants alone are lawfully established by a self-maledictory oath under God. The oath-taker calls down God’s wrath upon himself if he ever violates the stipulations (laws) of the covenant document. All other relationships are either personal (e.g., friendship) or contractual (e.g., a legal business arrangement). God is the final Judge because He is the Creator, and He brings His judgments, in time and eternity, in terms of His permanent ethical standards (i.e., biblical law). Covenantalism has developed no separate philosophical tradition in Western history, for Christian philosophers, including those interested in society, prior to Cornelius Van Til (1885- 1988) virtually always adopted in the name of Christ some version of either realism or nominalism. The biblical covenant model is based on creationism, not realism or nominalism. This philosophy asserts an absolute separation of being between God and any aspect of the creation: the Creator-creature distinction. This concept, so fundamental to Van Til’s philosophy, categorically denies the existence of a chain of being linking God to the cosmos (realism). Creationism leads to providentialism, which affirms the absolute authority of God and His sovereign control over all things in history (i.e., His decree), thereby denying the autonomous power of man to name any aspect of the cosmos authoritatively (nominalism). Covenantalism is a separate philosophical system.

Dr. Gary North
Millennialism & Social Theory

Note that Roman Catholicism is more beholden to Organicism types of Social theory. Roman Catholicism promotes the chain of being between God and man. For RC the fall resulted in a loss of being and regeneration includes the recouping of being. Also in RC you find the classical idea magic in the handling a representative aspect of creation in order to manipulate the underlying reality that the representative is representing. (This is what the Mass is all about.)

Protestantism is much more closely aligned with social contract types of social theory, although I would suggest that the Puritan Commonwealth was a precursor to what North labels covenantalism.

It is interesting to note that if Organicism is pushed to far what you will get is pantheistic views of social theory. In Organicism the distinctions between man and God tend to get lost in the chain of being so that heaven and earth become fused and God and man become indistinguishable (at least man at the top of the hierarchical food chain). In Organicism God and man become identified as one so that man becomes God and earth becomes heaven. On the other hand we should note that in Contractualism the tendency is toward Deism. God is really an after thought and the emphasis falls on man. In Contractualism the emphasis falls not on the continuity between God and man as in Organicism but in the discontinuity between God and man. In Contractualism man and God become divorced so that man becomes God and earth becomes heaven.

What is interesting here is that despite the opposite movements of these two grand social theories they end up in the same place with God and Man being identified as essentially the same and as heaven and earth being identified together — either in the earth losing its earthiness in the chain of being or in earth needing to become heaven because heaven as been lost in Contractualism’s nominalism. This is another example of Van Til’s rational and irrational wash-women taking in each others laundry. It is also an example of how opposite worldviews come around and kiss. The argument between Contractualism and Organicism is not really over where they end up but rather whether one should go West in order to get to the East or whether one should go East in order to get to the West.

Finally, I am becoming convinced that the philosphical issue of continuity vs. discontinuity is THE philosophical issue. Just think of all the places where that issue raises its head over and over again.

Continuity vs. Discontinuity of Old and New Testaments
Continuity vs. Discontinuity between the Old and New Covenant
Continuity vs. Discontinuity of God with His creation
Continuity vs. Discontinuity of Justification & Sanctificatioun
Continuity vs. Discontinuity in Social Theory
Continuity vs. Discontinuity in the Incarnation
Continuity vs. Discontinuity in the Eucharist
Continuity vs. Discontinuity between our present bodies and our glorified bodies
Continuity vs. Discontinuity in the Nature of the Eschatological age & the Millennium
Continuity vs. Discontinuity in the the abilities of fallen man (think Natural Law)