Category: Theology

Thumbnail Sketch of the Governmental Theory of the Atonement

For a great many Evangelicals, the Cross of Christ is not an objective, vicarious substitution but a public declaration of divine justice designed to stimulate sinners to choose to follow God. This is called the Governmental theory of the Atonement. In this theory the Father punishes the Son on the Cross NOT as a substitute paying for the designated penalty of a designated elect. Rather the Father is using the Son’s death as a cosmic public demonstration to all sinners everywhere at all times that justice for sin and disobedience has been paid in the abstract. Not for any one concrete individual or any concrete group (Church) but only in the abstract.

Now, that God has made this public declaration of abstract justice “whosoever” is welcome to return to God if they will. Preaching thus becomes a explanation of why Christ was such a victim of the Father and how feeling sorry for Christ should be a motivator for their repentance. This is where the pitiful sentimental pietistic Preaching comes from that so often happens in our pulpits today. God is not commanding all men everywhere to repent. Instead, Jesus is “softly and tenderly calling, calling for you and for me.”

Note in all this man remains sovereign in his salvation. God has provided an abstract justice but it is up to man to decide whether or not he’ll feel sorry enough for poor poor Jesus hanging on the Cross, punished by the Father, to actually choose him to be the sinners savior.

Of course this model still suffers from implicit Universalism. If the Father really has punished sin in the abstract then even the sin of unbelief in what the Father has done has already been punished in Christ and so the unbeliever in Christ is already saved since justice for sin, unbelief and disobedience has been demonstrated.

Foundation of Successful Epistemology

“Since God is the controller of all things, it is for him to determine whether or not we gain knowledge and under what conditions.”

John Frame
A History of Western Philosophy and Theology — pg. 30

The triune God is the one who gives meaning to all things. He is the one in whom meaning finds meaning. God’s transcendence is the necessary context against which everything as text becomes understandable. To be cast apart from God then is to be cast apart from meaningful meaning in favor of autonomous meaningless meaning. Only in Christ can true meaning be restored to otherwise meaningless man. Without God in Christ as the context wherein all else as text finds meaning we are left trying to understand the world it terms of the world or in terms of our own finite minds.

God, in Christ, furnishes the only criteria by which we can discover true truth since in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Christianity is the sine qua non for epistemological success.

The Inevitability Of Monism With A God Who Is Not Trinitarian

The denial by Jews and Muslims of God’s Trinitarian nature leaves them with a Transcendent yet impersonal God. They retain a “outsided-ness” in their theology but that” outsided-ness” is a Transcendent abstraction that cannot come in contact with humanity and as such all man has left is a humanistic monism and so man must live with a functional outsidelessness.

If they try to cure this lack of existential outsidelessness that occurs with their Transcendent yet impersonal God by making God dependent upon the creature for His actualization unto a personal being then God ceases to be God as he is dependent upon man for His reality.

Rabbinic scholar Abraham Heschel (1907-1972) rightly critiqued Islam for seeing God as ‘unqualified Omnipotence,’ who can never be the ‘Father of mankind,’ and thus is radically impersonal. (See Heschel, ‘The Prophets,’ [New York: Harper, 1962,] pg. 292, 311.) Yet post-biblical Judaism cannot escape Herschel’s critique entirely. The medieval rabbi Maimonides, for example, also confessed an “absolutely transcendent God who is independent of humanity.” (See Reuven Kimelmen, “The Theology of Abraham Heschel,” First Things (Dec. 2009). On the other hand, Kimelmen notes that Heschel commits the opposite error to that of Maimonides (and Islam), namely that of making God dependent on man in a covenantal relationship that both God and man need in order to be who they are. Heschel adopts the rabbinical concept that it is a human witness that in some sense makes God real (Kimelmen, “The Theology of Abraham Heschel”). Once more, God is dependent upon humanity. This is the classic dilemma of a monotheism without the Trinity. Because Heschel does not believe God to be Triune, God depends on man to be personal and therefore cannot be “Wholly Other,” in relation to Creation.

So, it seems, if you are a strict Monotheist you can have a Transcendent God that must be impersonal because He can not have contact with man or you can have a Transcendent God who is only personal because of His dependence upon man. The problem here though is that a God who is dependent upon man in any shape, manner, or form, for His being is neither truly transcendent nor truly God.

It should be said here that this is not only the problem of the Muslim and the Jew, it is also the problem of the neo-orthodox who have so emphasized God’s Transcendence that it is only by a completely subjective encounter with God whereby God can find a subjective status of the personal.

Parts of this Inspired, Parts Paraphrased, and Parts Quoted from
Peter Jones — The Other Worldview — pg. 199-200 (footnote — 27)

Alienism and Particular Atonement

Our current Alienist problem in the Western Calvinist Churches is a reflection of the decline of genuine Reformed soteriology. Biblical and Historical Calvinism has always advocated for limited damnation (particular redemption), where Christ is put forth as a sacrifice for only His people.

In the Reformed (Biblical) understanding God’s chief passion is Himself. In the Reformed (Biblical) understanding God does all He does for His own interest. He pursues His own interests and in the context of particular redemption this means He willfully limits His affections to His people.

Reformed folk understood that this had implications. As God’s love was particular so Reformed folk refused the idea of “the Brotherhood of all men.” If God restricts His love so that it is particular so man’s love can be particular as well. In other words, God’s love for His own is a communicable attribute.

If God does not restrict His love so that He loves all men indiscriminately then men must be pluralists and love all men indiscriminately. This is the destruction of family, clan, and nations and the embrace of universal love.

The connection here is that as Calvinists become weak on Limited Damnation they become strong on the Liberal Doctrines of the “Fatherhood of God over all men,” and “the Brotherhood of all men.”

Ask the Pastor — What of John Donne’s Divine Ravishing?

Dear Pastor,

I wonder what you think of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14, “Batter My Heart.” ? It ends with a rape of the soul. But he links it to chastity. The paradox is present.

 
Jayson Grieser
 
 
Jayson,
 
Donne’s couplet in question,
 
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
 
I think one has to understand the points of perspective in order to dissolve the paradox. We, as humans, will always be ravished either by God or by the devil. As such, it is never a matter of being “ravished” or “not being ravished,” it is always only a matter of “ravished by whom.”

I think what Donne is getting at is akin to Luther’s prose in his, “On the Bondage of the Will,”

 
“Man is like a horse. Does God leap into the saddle? The horse is obedient and accommodates itself to every movement of the rider and goes whither he wills it. Does God throw down the reins? Then Satan leaps upon the back of the animal, which bends, goes and submits to the spurs and caprices of its new rider.”
 
So, man is always a ravished being, just as man is always a rode being. If we are ravished by the devil it is a ravishing unto corruption. If we are ravished by God it is a ravishing unto chasteness and purity. Man, having no free will, will thus only be a ravished being. Either we will be ravished unto purity by God or we will be ravished unto impurity by the Dragon.
 
Donne uses the “ravished” language but in my estimation he is using the language from Lucifer’s perspective when he uses that language. If he were to speak from God’s perspective he would have written instead something like,
 
Except you possess me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you keep me.
 
But that doesn’t make for as good poetry. I hope that helps.
 
Thank you for stopping by Jayson and thanks for a thoughtful question.