RTS Papers / The Thought of E. L. Mascall / Spring 2019
INTRODUCTION
The works of E. L. Mascall, though mostly out of print, are much more than buried treasure that would enrich a new generation of Reformed theologians if discovered. In light of the very recent debates over whether the Scholastic tradition has been misread, such a collection of profound insights as Mascall offered may even become weaponized. As a Thomist, we may focus on his natural theology, doctrine of analogy, or the idea of God in pure act. As an Anglican, we could travel his middle way between “the vulgar flamboyance of Rome and the dismal severity of Geneva.” As a contemporary of Lewis, we may note parallels as fascinating as the interest both men took in extraterrestrial life and its theoretical implications for the Christian claims. And then there is the masterful way that he exposes the subtleties of contemporary liberal theologians. Any of these might be suitable entry points for Mascall’s thought. This paper chooses instead his Christology.
At this central point, dogmatics, apologetics, and ethics will all come together. Mascall is not only a great champion of the Chalcedonian Creed and its doctrine of the Two Natures of Christ. In making the ancient doctrine intellectually satisfying, he also draws forth the great irony of the those who would reject it. Anyone familiar with the works of modernist theologians will note a persistent theme. It could not be said any more concisely than in the title of a book by John Shelby Spong: Christianity must change or die. That is always the clear message. This or that element of the classical doctrine of God is alleged as too static, or impersonal, or in some other way irrelevant to modern man. It does not take long, once working through Mascall’s writings, to see that the reverse is actually true. It is precisely those neglected depths of orthodoxy, and especially what he will call “three unions” involving Christ, that will answer all of the dilemmas characteristic of our age.
Accordingly this essay will trace out the following line of reasoning in Mascall’s thought: Orthodox Christology alone provides a compelling framework for humanity in its present and final state.
We begin in his classical theological assumptions and then follow with three sections: one for each of his “three unions” connecting God to Christ to man. These “three unions” in his Christ, the Christian, and the Church overlap with his “four via medias” in the book by that title. In other words, the Trinitarian union is his second via media, the Christological his third, and the soteriological-ecclesiological-eschatological his fourth. That overlap might be a little distracting if attention is not called to it up front. Finally we will move to two sections where this Christological outlook offers correction to modernist theology and positive vision for humanity.
CLASSICAL THEOLOGICAL ASSUMPTIONS
Divine aseity, simplicity, eternality, immutability, and impassibility are necessary to our conviction that God is really God. These are what we will mean by the “classical attributes” that have been readily discarded by modern theologians. Mascall sees a particular view of philosophy as necessary to the integrity of this classical picture of God. On several occasions he flatly declares his approach as “metaphysical in the strictest sense of the word.”
Against those who would criticize the natural theology of Thomists of concluding in an “impersonal” deity, Mascall argues from the contingency common to all effects, to “such a creative ground [as] must have the attributes of thought, will and power, and can therefore, in however analogical a sense, be rightly described as personal.”
Classical distinctions are not left behind when theology transitions to Christology. “The Person of Christ is thus in one sense simple, and in another sense composite.” This is because the Person of Christ may be viewed in two ways: (i) as it is in itself, the Word, and thus altogether simple; (ii) as Person subsisting in a nature, as the Word subsists in two natures, and is thus composite. Nor are classical philosophical distinctions irrelevant.
In the Son, two natures not united to the Person in precisely the same way: “The Person of the Word and his divine nature are … really identical and only logically distinct … The divine Person and the human nature, on the other hand … are not absolutely identical.”
We must say something about Creator and creature, grace and nature, here. Otherwise, we may lack the metaphysical backing for how Mascall applies his theology to the questions of humanity: old and new. Two fundamental cosmological truths must be balanced: (1) finite being genuinely exists; and (2) it exists with an existence that is altogether derived. Short of this balance, we are liable to gravitate to one or another extreme about the cosmos: either it is real and independent, or else dependent but unreal, or illusory. This is not merely about setting up a tetrad of comparative religions (which he does), but it reveals that our theologies can begin to resemble other worldviews at root and branch.
Creation ex nihilo defies both the Platonic and Aristotelian to some extent. We do not mean a formal cause outside of God, as in Plato’s Timaeus, nor do we mean any material cause, as if “nothing” were really the “something out of which” that God made all things. To think of the act or cause of creation as any kind of intermediary is a pagan notion. It is not change or process. Creatures are typified by change and process, but the act of God to effect creation is “from the side of the creature, a pure relation of dependence.” The key, moving forward, is that the creature is not, for reason of his dependence, bad. Mascall surveys these different ways to view the creative act as a means of introducing the relationship between grace and nature.
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