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Reformed Classicalist

Notes on Contemporary Theology: Part 1

RTS Papers / Systematic Theology 2 / Summer 2018


The following pages are what Michael Allen calls “reading briefs” assigned in the Systematic Theology II class at RTS in the summer of 2018. The sources of the readings are Allen and Swain’s Christian Dogmatics, Robert Sherman’s King, Priest, and Prophet, and a few chapters from Allen’s book on Justification and the Gospel, and one from John Webster’s Holiness. There was also a reading from G. K. Beale’s thesis on seeing the new creation as the fundamental theme of New Testament theology. The subject matter covered in the course was Christology, Soteriology, and Eschatology. The section from Swain’s chapter on the Trinity and covenant of redemption includes extra notes.


Following my already mind-expanding studies of Lombard’s Sentences (summer 2017) and Turretin’s Institutes (spring 2018), a few trajectories in my theological thinking, or at least confirmation of older ones. I will mention only two.


First, classical theological categories matter for our doctrines of Christ and of salvation. These seeds were also watered a bit more by reading Dolezal’s All That is in God as I was going through Turretin. Various temptations from “theological mutualism” emerge as one is pondering the Incarnation, Atonement, and Justification. And yet it seems to me that more clarification should be offered from the resources of classical theology proper on these difficulties.


Second, other matters of “in-house debate” are more reconcilable. It seems now as if the differences between the Kline and Robertson schools of thought on covenant, or between the “two kingdom” and “one kingdom” emphases, are not as critical for ecclesiastic or ethical clarity as has often been claimed. When Horton is at his best, as in the assigned chapter here, it is difficult to find fault.


Scott Swain. “Covenant of Redemption,” in Christian Dogmatics, 107-125


Swain offers an exposition and defense of the covenant of redemption as Trinitarian-grounded and Christ-centered (109). This doctrine is either minimized or else dismissed by many who pit biblical theology against such eternal categories. An early definition to the divine decree alerts us to what is at stake. He calls the decree a “hinge” between God’s essence and God’s works (107). It would seem therefore that an aberrant view of the decree will almost certainly distort the whole of our theology. The argument flows from 1. the decree per se, to 2. the unfolding qualities of the covenant of redemption, to 3. its christological ends.


God decrees and consequently everything comes to pass. Swain points to this as a defining contention between orthodoxy and heresy (110). Certain characteristics of the divine will explain what follows. Since God is simple, so is his will, being one with his essence; and yet there is a twofold object: God and the creatures. He wills both in one act but in two different ways. On the level of ultimate causality, it is “the love of the Father for the Son in the Spirit” that is both first cause and end cause (113-14). God’s supreme end in creation and salvation is to communicate - not add to - this glory with the redeemed rational creature.


Swain locates the covenant of redemption in Ephesians 1:5-6 (116). This is to ground the biblical data of the covenant in the decree of God. Two lines of reasons are employed which ought to warm most Christians to the doctrine. The covenant of redemption is the product of biblical reasoning and trinitarian reasoning. Speaking of the first we have a burden to justify using the word “covenant.” This can be done by appealing to the clearer covenant language when the matter is Christ’s accomplishment in history (120). Combine this with the eternal appointments of the Son by the Father, and we have the doctrine.


Difficulties reconciling agreement between Father and Son with classical attributes (contra Letham) are handled by recognizing (with Owen) that distinct subsistence and action are not incompatible with essential unity.


The best theological contours are forged in the fires of controversy. Thus the origins of the concept in debates with Arminians and Socinians is no strike against it.

Swain tackles the fear that causal language in our analysis of the relationship between God and the gospel involves an alien natural theology. False! The New Testament uses causal language to describe this very thing (cf. Eph. 2:8-9). Moreover, very different views emerge among theologians that use much causal language. So causal language is “theologically underdeteriminate” (111).


Swain is very much in the stream of Turretin here. God’s will (Ps. 115:3) and works (Ps. 19:1) please God as they do because of the eternal pleasure already possessed by the Trinity. God’s will is ultimately indivisible, and yet because it concerns two objects, it respects each object (God in se and God ad extra) in two different ways. He is absolutely free with respect to his effects. The description of the Son’s will, as compared with the Father’s, given by Turretin, deserves attention. What is emphasized by the Son “restipulating” (117) what is promised to him? Is this to avoid the appearance of Subordinationism?


Swain has to deal with a more serious objection from Letham. Essentially the criticism is that covenantal arrangements between Trinitarian members leads us away from orthodoxy. If the works of the Trinity are indivisible, then how does any contractual arrangement between the Persons maintain the classical attributes? Here we have distinct wills concurring. Swain draws back on statements by Owen and Brakel that answer this definitively. First to Owen, this meeting of will is “not by a distinction of sundry wills, but by a distinct application of the same will unto its distinct acts in the persons of the Father and the Son” (122). Next to Brakel, “the one divine will can be viewed from a twofold perspective” (122).


What is striking is just how aware the post-Reformation theologians were of the various entailments of the doctrine. The potential dilemmas were explicitly anticipated. So “the will’s unity” and “that will’s tripersonal manner of subsistence” are reconciled.


Daniel Treier. “Incarnation,” in Christian Dogmatics, 216-242


Treier begins with some methodological issues - how to do Christology - and then quickly moves to a definition. Incarnation “means becoming embodied,” implying that it is “an event with a beginning” (217). That the eternal Word causes the hypostatic union solves many issues: one being the objection that the Son would require a male Y chromosome in the same way as all others fully human (Adam didn’t). Likewise the inability to sin is not incoherent with human nature; for full humanity is defined by the image into which we are conformed (Col. 3:10). Incarnation presupposes the deity of the Son. John’s prologue (1:1-18) is straightforward. Treier spends some pages on Philippians 2:5-8 for those who see his kenōsis standing against full pre-incarnate deity.


What does the Christology of the creeds show us? Arianism seemed reasonable at first glance, but by it true worship and salvation are both overthrown. One who is not fully God must not be worshiped and cannot mediate in righteousness. The extremes of Nestorius and Eutychus may not seem as wide, but short of the definition at Chalcedon, the Son is envisioned as two persons or else one nature.


Calvin’s doctrine of the Trinity is highlighted as a kind of crossroads between the classical formulation and later Reformed and Evangelical departures. While the Reformer did not reject the classical doctrine, his own development did not explicitly deal with the Son’s divinity primarily in terms of shared essence. Trouble followed: “It is fundamentally misguided to move from isolated exegetical discoveries, such as monogenes in texts like John 1:18 not necessarily denoting ‘begotten,’ toward denying eternal generation” (228). Calvin himself was keen on retaining the in se versus ad extra distinction, particularly regarding the incarnate Christ. Not one attribute of divinity was reduced when the Word assumed flesh. Treier ends with ends and implications of the Incarnation. Christ’s exalted state and “self-involving” love (241) call for a particular ethic, intellectual life, and ecclesiology.


Key Terms: (#communicatio #gratiarum #autotheos #munus #triplex #extra #Calvinisticum)


Robert Sherman. King, Priest, and Prophet, 47-115


Drawing on the metaphor of the foundation to a house - and after a good bit of ground clearing about narrative and tradition working together - Sherman asserts a Trinitarian theology of atonement. First, there are practical insights from the doctrine of the Trinity to defend: 1. who the triune God is, 2. how the church came to experience this God in salvation, 3. in what sense we are to image this God, 4. by its paradoxical nature, that we will never “pin it down,” and 5. it clearly marks out the Christian God from rival concepts. Next, Christ fulfilling the three offices links Trinity to atonement - as opposing “a triple cure to sweep away this triple misery” (70). Sherman surveys the development of this doctrine among the Reformed.


Chapter 3 traces the “trinitarian construal of salvation” (77) from the Scriptures. The first way to see this is in the life of the early church, which was to “live in” the Trinity. New Testament texts positioning the Trinity as the ground of practical action show this. The divine Persons are the subject of “enabling, undergirding, or engaging in the community’s life” (80). The church’s identity, motive to persevere, means of discerning and receiving truth, are all rooted in the Trinity (1 Pet. 1:1, Jude 20-21, 1 Jn. 1:1-3, 13-15, Heb. 1:1-2, 3:3-4); and in Paul’s letters such formula covers greetings, doctrinal descriptions, prayers, imperatives, doxologies, and benedictions.


The backbone of this thesis is that “the external works of the Trinity are undivided,” yet the challenge is “where the work of one begins and that of another leaves off” (87). The narratives of Luke-Acts, and especially John 13-17, begin to show a definite order to the Trinitarian economy. A general rule is proposed: “the Father initiates, the Son accomplishes, and the Spirit applies” (96). The accounts of Jesus’ baptism are crucial. There he is anointed as a Trinitarian act. Baptism and temptation initiate a dual emphasis on Jesus acting as the Christ and the whole Trinity acting.


Key Terms: (#perichoresis #appropriation)


Robert Sherman. King, Priest, and Prophet, 116-168


Now dealing with the royal office of Christ, Sherman begins with the data of both Testaments. As King, Christ is achieving the Father’s victory in all things and over all foes; and especially in the New Testament this is built upon the resurrection. The Gospels’ post-resurrection narratives each invest Jesus with all authority under the Father, which is only reinforced in the Epistles (cf. Phi. 2:9-11, Eph. 1:20-22, Heb. 1:3, 1 Cor. 15:23-28). Other texts are illuminating by way of contrast. Palm Sunday and Pilate’s questioning become backdrops of redefining the royal office; but all the deeds of Jesus serve as “enacted examples” (130) of the redefined kingdom. To the first church, the Old Testament was the whole Bible. Sherman reviews the history to examine the nature of the king as guardian of Israel’s justice, but all as servant of the LORD.


With biblical credentials firmly established, Sherman can get on with the form of the doctrine. The ultimate King “redefines” reigning and ruling; and consequently we New Covenant Christians, no less than Old Covenant Jews, cannot reduce the implications to ethics or politics. Such was the post-Kantian tendency: to collapse the spiritual into the ethical (154-56) and subsequently the “civilized” into “the kingdom.”

More doctrinal and pastoral implications follow. Christ’s reign “displays none of the characteristics typically associated with worldly kingdoms” (143). Resources such as money and might are of no avail here, but rather meekness.


Coming full circle, in the Son’s glory in humility, what kind of a Father authorizes this? The most “Christ-like” aspects of the economy show the immanent Trinity (148). He closes making his case that Christ’s royal work should come first: as in king, priest, prophet. A victory was needed over the “cultural” fabric of sin - the dark spiritual powers over it - before the other two atonement dimensions (priestly, prophetic) will make sense.


Key Terms: (#praus)


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