This post is a continuation of the monergism debate and is in response to Perry's comment (3/23/05) down here. The exercise of the faculty of the will always result in action, whether external or in thought; consequently, both faculites of the will in Christ must operate in conjunction. Moreover, it is the person, not the natures, that wills. For any one decision, only as many things as there are persons may be willed. One subject cannot will two different things. When Christ is praying in the garden, the Son is addressing the Father. According to their shared divinity, they have the same faculty of the will, but the things willed are according to the number of subjects.
I did not assert "that it is not possible for persons to be something more than a nature." The implication being that person and nature are synonymous. I said, "A person cannot exceed its nature; nothing can." The implication being that a person and his nature are both distinct and co-extensive. On this understanding of the relationship between person and nature, I rephrased Clifton's "Personhood must necessarily exceed nature," to, "It is in the nature of personhood to exceed nature." What a person must necessarily do says something about his nature and so the contradiction. Nature is both exceeded and not exceeded at the same time and in the same relationship. Modalism or Tri-Theism result from saying that a person is not distinct from his nature, not from saying that a person is not more than [does not extend beyond] his nature.
I did not claim of the Trinity "that the persons are nothing in themselves but only secondary to the essence." The claim that persons are nothing in themselves was not meant to convey the idea that there exist natureless persons who are nothing, but that persons without natures cannot exist. Moreover, persons cannot exist beyond their natures. This was a defense of equal-ultimacy, or co-extension, for any person. Persons are not secondary to their natures, but neither are natures secondary to the persons that support them. Perry also writes, "The idea that a person must have an essence isn't the same idea that a person is determined by their essence." This is true, but no one has said that this is the case. It is the will and actions of a person and not the person himself that are determined by his nature. Furthermore, this should not be understood beyond saying that a person always acts according to his nature. Better still, so this does not turn into a fatalistic determinism, a person cannot act against his nature. There can, however, be a range of options available within the nature, but the will will still be determined according to its strongest inclination at the moment of decision. We cannot explain why creation occurred; however, we can say that it did not go against God's nature.
Perry then writes a paragraph that demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the Reformed position. It starts, "Monergists assume that an act that has merit before God must either be wholly mine or wholly God's but it cannot be both." The 'wholly mine' part is not true unless he's including Pelagianism among the monergists. As to 'wholly God's,' this doesn't capture it either. The point of monergism is not to establish a dichotomy between human and divine works. The difference is maintained between our works and the salvific historical works of Christ. In this respect, there is complete synergy between the human and the divine. It's just that we, personally, have no part in the work. There is no point in blaming a faulty Reformed Christology because the foundation of Reformed monergism is the synergy found in person of Christ according to his two natures. Monergism is not about the inherent impossibility of man pleasing God without God's antecedent help. It is first about the absolute impossibility of a mere man paying the penalty of sin. Secondly, it is about the superfluousness of man pleasing God in order to effect his own salvation when Christ has already done all the pleasing that is necessary.
Perry asks, "The question is does the divine will in Christ determine his human will?" The definition of the faith of the Sixth Ecumenical Council says, "And these two natural wills are not contrary the one to the other (God forbid!) as the impious heretics assert, but his human will follows and that not as resisting and reluctant, but rather as subject to his divine and omnipotent will. For it was right that the flesh should be moved but subject to the divine will, according to the most wise Athanasius." And, "For as his most holy and immaculate animated flesh was not destroyed because it was deified but continued in its own state and nature, so also his human will,although deified, was not suppressed, but was rather preserved according to the saying of Gregory Theologus: "His will [i.e., the Saviour's] is not contrary to God but altogether deified." Going back to the statements in the garden, this definition answers in the negative the contention that the same subject was willing two different things. The divine will does not determine the human will; however, the human will is subject to the divine will. The human will is determined by the human nature of the person, which, in this case, has been deified (without losing its own state and nature). Perry's observation that "if natures did determine agents then we would have to render the fall of humans and the devil inexplicable or it would be possible for morally perfect beings to sin," is true in regard to most Reformed theology. I have offered a possible solution here. The next phrase in his sentence, "in which case it would then be possible for people in heaven to sin as well as God" begs the question of his own position. If the will is undetermined, then how is it possible that people in heaven as well as God can't sin. If we attribute the inability to sin to moral perfection, then all we have said is that the will is determined by the nature. Either true freedom is not forfeited when the will is determined, or heaven is defined either by a lack of freedom or the presence of a sinful population, including God.
I will agree with Perry that Christ "has to assume every property essential to being human;" however, it does not follow from this that he takes on all of human nature rather than a human nature. The assuming of human nature does not constitute union with that nature; rather, it makes union with Christ possible. This union is personal according to our shared natures. The union is prior to our healing, which is begun in the resurrection and fulfilled in our glorification. The wicked have no part in this healing, evne though their bodies to come to life again. The plan to take on mortal human nature and heal it, thus uniting it with the divine, has pre-soteric intent. The main point in creating man was so that God could be united to his people. He could have carried out this purpose without the fall. There is no healing without divine union; consequently, those who remain wicked and spend eternity in hell cannot have been healed. The Reformed view of original sin is consistent with Chalcedonian theology. Christ does not become fully human by taking on all human nature, no more than I am in possession of all of human nature. It is sufficient that his human nature is the same as the human natures of all persons that are to be in union with him.
Perry asks what grace is. "Is grace created or uncreated?" He then answers for both Catholics and Protestants by saying that it is created. For the former it is a "created effect in the soul," and, for the latter it is, "a contingent relationship established between God and the individual." From this he concludes that union with God is made impossible. I'll let the Catholics defend themselves, but grace is not a relationship between God and the indivdual. That relationship is union with God. Grace, broadly speaking, is God being good to his creatures. It is a divine disposition and, therefore, not created. More accurately, grace is God's good disposition to sinners.
In response to my presentation of the atonement, Perry writes, "To see in the atonement a payment of debt to God is to foist an unargued for theory of the atonement onto the discussion, namely, the penal theory, which is quite distinct from the earlier scholastic satisfaction theory and the even earlier Christus Victor model." The penal theory is not all that distinct from the earlier satisfaction theory, which is extensively argued in Cur Deus Homo by Anselm. [I do have some reservations with his argument, which I have expressed here.] In both cases, satisfaction is made to God in the death of Christ. In the former, it is restore God's honor due to man's sin. The latter shifts the emphasis to a debt paid for breaking the moral Law. While it is true that Anselm developed the satisfaction theory in a European feudal context, it does not follow from this that it is therefore wrong and based only on the contemporary context. Perry's allusion to Hosea 6:6, "God desires mercy, not sacrifice," is hardly appropriate. The verse is not about the atonement. Bedsides that, why not take it even further out of context and say that God never wanted any kind of sacrifice. The Levitical sacrificial system, which was not about inspiring love, or paying the devil, or triumphing over the forces of evil, but about satisfying divine justice (you sin, you pay) never happened: God didn't want it. Furthermore, it was never God's intention to allow the sacrifice of his Son. Neither the moral theory nor the Christus Victor model can adequately explain why the atonement had to involve Christ's death. As to the ransom theory, God doesn't owe the devil a thing.
Perry segues into one of the more bizarre accounts of justification that I have ever read. It starts on the premise that "Death is the wages or consequence of sin and death here means annihilation." Okay, let's read the verse that states this, Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin is annihilation, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." But then, "Christ rescues everyone, even those who deny him (2 pet 2:1) from annihilation, which is why everyone is resurrected and receives a measure of eternal life." So now, "eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" applies even to those who deny him. Furthermore, everyone is justified: "In Romans 5;18, how are we to understand that justification to life came to all men if not in the preceding way?" So far, this might be mistaken for your ordinary universalism. Not so, for Perry writes later on, "The scope of the redemptive work of Christ is universal with respect to nature, but not necessarily with respect to person." So then, in healing the natures of everyone, Christ rescues them all from annihilation. This is the free gift of God. Everyone is either declared righteous or made righteous, depending upon your view of justification. But eternal life and justifcation have no bearing on whether or not a person actually makes it to heaven and, supposedly, into union with God. The thing is, a nature, considered in itself, is not a thing that can be healed. Just as persons cannot exist apart from natures, there can be no human nature without human persons. If the nature of a person is healed, then it must inevitably follow that the person himself is healed. This is not a matter of failing to distinguish, but of refusing to separate nature from person. For this is what must be the case for those persons who are not redeemed even though human nature is. A person whose human nature is finally redeemed cannot be wicked and cannot deny Christ.
How should we understand the "all" of Romans 5:18? As all who are in union with the one who performs the righteous act, that is, Christ. Perry offers up other verses in which all just has to mean "every single person without exception." John 1:9, "The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world." A more accurate translation than this one (ESV) reads "all men" (panta anthropon) in place of "everyone." This is all without distinction. The gospel is for the all nations, not just Israel. The following verses contrast "all men" with the world and with his own [people]. These did not know him, nor did they receive him. In other words, they are not a part of "all men." I Timothy 4:10, "For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe." Yes, I suppose that this one could be construed according to Perry's theology- God saves everbody from annihilation, but he really saves those who trust him. Or it could be all without distinction again. Or, more likely in light of the contrast, God is the savior of all people in the sense that the offer is genuine. II Peter 2:1, "But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction." Here, Peter is speaking, not of the actual status of the false teachers, but of their equally false profession.
Perry on hermeneutics: "Retreating to what 'the rest' of Scripture says first begs the question since the same theology will be at issue in the other verses." Quite possibly the first time I have ever been faulted for potential consistency. "Second, it is neglecting the task of exegesis. You can't just run to every other passage every time you find a difficult passage for your theology." Why not? Furthermore, it is not a matter of running to another passage and having verse feuds. It's a matter of alreay knowing what the rest of Scripture says and of being responsible enough to keep everything in context. "A verse must be exegeted on its own merits and not on what "Scripture" says everywhere else." Again, why? Why is it that, with any other interpretive difficulty, be it in literature, music, art, whatever, we are allowed to make comparisons with the author's other work, but, in Bible study, we must stick to the merits of the verse? Individual passages of Scripture do not have their own merits but are designed to be read in context. Exegeting a verse on its "own merits" is prooftexting at its worst. "What is really happening here is that a problematic piece of data is being interpreted according to prior theoretical commitments when we are being told that it is being interpreted on the merits of exegesis." Of course. And the whole idea that death is annihilation and that persons with a justified and redeemed nature still end up unredeemed themselves has nothing whatsoever to do with prior theoretical commitments.
To Perry, "it is not clear at all that Romans 5 is talking in legal terms instead of say consequential terms." First, these are not opposed to one another. Forensic declarations along with their punishment or rewards are consequences of prior acts. What kind of consequences are these? Are they in God's control or out of it? How can a tresspass, which is breaking the law, not have legal consequences? But then, I wouldn't see legal terms either if justification included healing the natures of those who deny Christ. Perry then makes another false claim about Reformed theology, "This is because the Reformed are anthropocentric rather than Christocentric. Their entire theology is constructed on the need to get guilty humans off the hook rather than seeing Christ as the fulcrum and center of every biblical teaching." Just within the confines of this discussion alone, Christ is the only one who merits salvation, Christ is the one with whom we are drawn into union, Christ is the one who assumes human nature in order that we might be healed; moreover, this healing and the intended incarnation of Christ precedes any notion of guilt.
Perry ends with this description of Reformed salvation, "The entire scheme of reaching up and laying hold of the merits of Christ is an essentially Pelagian or at least semi-Pelagian mechanic of salvation, even if it is supplanted by an Augustinian view of divine preemption. This is why any kind of sinfulness indicates for the Reformed that there is no justice present- it is an all or nothing deal because nature is identified with grace." So, how many Reformed people are buying this? First, the idea of "reaching up and laying hold" of anything is contrary to monergistic thinking- man is totally depraved and unable. Second, I've already dealt with the notion that nature is identified with grace. It isn't. Finally, it is not all or nothing; it is not a matter of sinfulness or justice. The Reformed affirm one of Luther's phrases, simul justus et peccator, "at the same time righteous and a sinner." The presence of sin does not cancel our standing in Christ once we have been declared righteous. Of course, in our sanctification, we strive to overcome sin, but the main focus is on Christ and what he has done for us. When our meditation is on him, we become more and more like him even as we are made more aware of our sinful state. Even so, we await the day when we will be completely righteous with no stain of sin. All of which will happen because grace is not nature but an intrusion of God into our natures whereby we are apprehended and our natures are brought into communion with his.
To reason from the premise that the exercise of the will always results in action to the conclusion that the two wills in Christ always operate in together strikes me as a non-sequitor. It isn’t obvious how these two ideas are connected. On the contrary it seems to me that Christ says “not my will but your will” thereby indicating a difference in volitional activity in that two different things were willed by the same person. While I agree that it is the person who wills by virtue of using the faculty of will it isn’t clear to me that the thesis that there can only be one object willed because there is only one person is true. That claim seems completely unargued for. Moreover, since Christ has two wills it seems that there can be at least two things that Christ wills as or in the way that each faculty is enhypostacized. And it seems far more plausible to me to think that a person can will as many objects, and in the case of Christ, as many good objects as are capable of being willed. God for example wills a plurality of things in one act of willing. So there are two acts of will, but one person doing the willing and there can be a whole plethora of objects willed in one act of will in any case. If there can be a plurality of objects willed in one act of will, so much the more reason to think that there can be a plurality of objects willed in two acts of will. Christ as one subject therefore does will two different things because he says he does. In the deity there is one will with respect to faculty and between the three persons there is one unified act. In creation for example there is one and only one act, not three and the same can be said for redemption. This is how we indirectly know that the three persons have the same essence because identity of act implies an identity of essence. It is not the case that the Father creates, the Son redeems and the Spirit santifies, but rather all three do all three acts together.
To some degree we are forced to admit that a person can “exceed” its nature on two grounds. First because to be creator is not in the divine essence, otherwise creation would be eternal. Second, the fall of the devil and our first parents would be rendered inexplicable if they could not “exceed” their natures. Their natures were good but they sinned. Either we have to posit some defect in their nature, thereby making God the author of sin or we have to say that the fall is inexplicable, which is just a fancy way of saying that the proposed model can’t explain the relevant data. It is a signal point that the system has run out of explanatory gas, which is why you get unprincipled appeals to “mystery.”
I am not clear on what you mean by saying that a nature and a person are co-extensive. Usually co-extensivity amounts to the claim that two principles cover or apply to all the same cases. So saying that God’s knowledge applies to all the same objects as his will would be a claim that they were co-extensive. This doesn’t seem to fit because things predicable of my nature are predicable of me in some cases(pain in my hand is my pain), but the converse doesn’t seem true, namely that things predicable of me are predicable of my nature, otherwise, for instance my nature would be guilty. But via modus tollens since natures can’t be guilty (only persons can) things predicable of my persons aren’t necessarily predicable of my nature thereby showing that natures and persons are not co-extensive. What is more the very etymology of “hypostasis” seems to contradict your claim since a hypostasis is the most concentrated or real thing in an essence. It subsists within an essence but it isn’t co-extensive or explanatorily reducible to the essence which means it isn’t co-extensive with the essence.
I would maintain that your rephrasing of Clifton’s "Personhood must necessarily exceed nature" to "It is in the nature of personhood to exceed nature" is mistaken. It just is what it is to be a person not to be exhausted by nature. If we don’t say this, then I can’t see how you can hold on to the doctrine that creation, let alone redemption, was a free act on God’s part. What a “person must necessarily do” therefore seems like an oxymoron. Either it is an ambiguous use of the term “necessarily” or it is a category mistake. To be genuine acts of a person the acts can’t be necessary where necessity picks out the notion of determined. A major motivation for holding to the concept of persons as metaphysically distinct from natures is so that we preserve the idea that persons are free. This is why in part God’s acts do not exhaust what and who God is-the economy doesn’t exhaust the ontology-they are not identical. Likewise with human persons, you can learn all you think you know about a person and they can surprise you. (Think Tolkein.)
I have a hard time seeing the difference between the underlying assumptions of Modalism and your view and here is why. When I write that a person is not explanatorily exhausted by their nature, I mean that there is a level of description that is not fully explainable in terms of some lower level of description. So for example, take water. The wetness of water, the experience of what it is like to be wet is not explainable fully by reference to H2O. To be wet is something metaphysically more than what it is to be H2O. Furthermore, the contradiction you posit, that nature is both exceeded and not exceeded in the same relationship, is only possible if persons are natures, which they aren’t. It seems to me that you are actually holding two positions. The first is that persons just are instances of natures, while the second is that a person acts in accordance with their nature. The second is not as objectionable as the first, but they seem to be two different ideas.
I know that you did not claim that the persons of the Trinity are nothing in themselves by only secondary to the essence but that seemed like a logical consequence of your comments. Claiming that every person has a nature is quite unobjectionable, but that is different from claiming that there is nothing more to being a person than their nature. I affirm the former but reject the latter. To be a person just is to be something else other than a nature and this is one way that we know. We ascribe praise and blame to persons but not natures indicating that there is something predicable of one thing but not of another, indicating that they are two different things. You seem to be conflating the claim that every person has a nature with the idea that persons are something metaphysically more than a nature and these seem like two different ideas.
The claim that persons cannot exist beyond their natures can consequently be taken in more than one way. It can mean that persons always have a nature or that what it is to be a person can’t be fully explained by reference to a nature. For example, referencing my nature to explain what I am as a person is not sufficient to explain personhood. Why? Because there are, for example, other persons who do not have a human nature. Moreover, there are other persons that do have the same human nature as I do but who are not me. And so there seems to be some conlfation between the ideas of person and individual, which are not necessarily the same ideas.
If the faculty of will and the actions were determined by the nature and not by the person then applying this model to God would end up making creation determined by the divine essence and by transitivity making creation absolutely necessary. And let me be clear, when I say “determined” I mean to render inevitable one unique outcome. This is why thinking that natures determine actions is a mistake. It is the person who uses the their faculties to bring about actions, which is why their actions are free and not determined. Here we need to be clear. It is not in God’s nature to create, otherwise creation would be necessary and pantheism would ensue. In this way an agent can act beyond and not according to their nature. The problem that is motivating this thinking is that if we don’t say that nature constrains, determines or circumscribes an agents act then it will be possible for God to sin, which is obviously wrong. But I think that this thinking is wrong and here is why. It is not God’s nature per se that prevents him from doing evil. Apart from the fact that evil acts are defects in the exercise of power by an agent and God is perfect in the exercise of his power such that an evil act for God would be a contradiction in terms, it is the fact that God’s faculty of will and his personal employment of that faculty are “fused” or necessarily tied together that explains why it is impossible for God to do evil. Likewise this is what explains why people in the eschaton cannot sin while we can. Our personal employment of our faculty and the faculty of will itself are not necessarily connected yet since this only occurs in the state of being virtuous. This is why, contrary to your assertion, the devil and our first parents *did* act contrary to their nature because they were not yet fixed in virtue, fixed in the Good.
The idea that an agent always acts on their strongest inclination has pretty much been killed in contemporary action theory in at least the last 50 years. Here are some reasons why it is false. First, because inclinations are not causes and neither are desires. Inclinations, desires, and reasons are dispositional *states* and states don’t do anything since they are not activities. Decisions are activities and hence they explain actions. Second, I can have a desire to do something and yet not do it. And the same can be said for having reasons or inclinations for doing something and yet not do it. If reasons, desires, and inclinations were sufficient for doing some act, then the act would take place. But acts don’t take place without decisions because none of the previously mentioned things are acts, but states.
As a former Calvinist and someone who spent a fair amount of time studying Reformed theology (and I still do) I think my comments are right on target. The core idea concerning merit comes straight from the theological context in which Reformed theology grew out of, namely Scotistic and Okhamistic voluntarism and nominalism. Here you are not taking the words in the sense that I tried to give them. Perhaps I should have been more clear. In any case there is an equivocation here with respect to possession. The acts that have merit are not yours in the sense that you did them, they are Christ’s. They are predicable to you by an act of will on God’s part but they are not grounded in you as their actor. This is why justification in Reformed theology is forensic and grounded in a type of Nominalism. The merit of the acts is a label applied to but not grounded in you. Justification then is a transfer of moral credit. The acts are “yours” only in the metaphysically thinnest of senses as a label, with faith as the only vehicle by which this label is applied to you. The way I glossed the debate is in the history of theology concerning merit is pretty much the scholarly consensus nowdays. I suggest reading McGrath, Steinmetz or McSorely on the question. Here are some helpful links on the matter. http://www.homestead.com/philofreligion/files/RESSAY1.htm
http://www.homestead.com/philofreligion/files/MPAPER1.htm
By “wholly” mine, I meant with respect of being the actor bringing about the act. Pelagianism turns on the same assumption, ironically enough, that an act cannot be wholly mine and at the same time wholly God’s. This results in two options. Either it is the case that God acts or I act, but it is not the case that we both act in one act. The Reformed take the former and the Pelagian takes the latter.
The point of monergism is to supposedly preclude anyone from laying claim that they did anything of themselves to merit salvation and this does result in a bifurcation between human and divine acts, which just is why none of your acts can merit God’s favor on a Reformed understanding. And here it seems as if you contradict yourself for you say that the difference is maintained between our works and Christ’s historical works and then say that there is a synergy between the human and the divine. If you have no part in the work, that just is the divide that I explicated above. And it is because you “have no part in the work” that it isn’t your work and why the Reformed think that it is meritorious, because it is only God’s work. By contrast, on Augustine or Aquinas’ views for example, my good works done under grace are meritorious just because they are also the works of Christ
As to Reformed Christology, I think you will find that if you look closely, there really isn’t any real synergy between the two wills of Christ but rather a co-opting of one will by the other. This you can find in Hodge, Turretin and other Reformed authors who essentially take the Thomistic line that the divine will determines the human will in Christ implying that the only real energy of operation is the divine will which results in a kind of monothelistism. This is the locus of Reformed predestinarianism which is essentially rooted in a faulty Christology. If God can determine Christ’s human will legitimately, then he can determine any human will legitimately.
Monergism is about precluding the possibility of a human being finding favor with God by anything they do, even with God’s help, thereby supposedly securing the conclusion that only God does anything that pleases God. From here we could secure the conclusion that only God could pay the penalty of sin. This is why in Reformed theology I participate in or contribute to progressive sanctification but not justification.
3rd Constantinople is quite right in its definition but notice that it says that the human will follows the divine, it does not say that it is determined. This implies that the human will acts as a will, namely freely. To will just is to act in freedom and here is how I know. Because God as the paradigm case of willing wills creation in freedom, as opposed to acts of nature which are necessary. When the council speaks of willing contrary, they mean in dialectical opposition, where one will wills something evil and the other will wills something good. This was the claim of the Monophysites and Pyrrus specifically, that if there were two wills, it would imply willings in moral opposition. They supposed this because they supposed that the good was absolutely simple so that if the divine will wills the good and the human will doesn’t but wills something else, since there is only one absolutely simple good, this would imply that Christ sinned. But it is, they reasoned, impossible for Christ to sin, therefore there are not two wills in Christ. The theology of 3rd and 2nd Constantinople is constructed out of St. Maximus’ writings on this very point. Deification doesn’t annul or obliterate but perfects nature so that the natural powers by which Christ acted in his humanity were perfectly preserved and perfected. The whole point of the garden texts is to show that Christ freely in his humanity wills the salvation of humanity. He wills to suffer even though this goes against his equally good and natural desire to live, which is also something willed by God. Christ freely assents in contradistinction to Adam who refused. This is the theological significance of saying that Christ in his human energy of operation (will) is subject to the divine will. The problem is, that you are reading subject as a kind of circumscription by the divine will, when the council means it in the sense of freely placing oneself under the divine will. Reading the council the way you seem to makes absolutely no sense given the theology constructed by the defenders of dyothelitism who asserted exactly the position I am advocating contra the monothelites. Moreover, you clearly go beyond the council and put words into their mouths since they do not say that the nature determines the actions of the person. Moreover, this would result in a divine person being determined, which is impossible because nothing determines God-nothing renders his acts inevitable.
As to the determiniation of personal acts by natures and their relation to the Fall in Reformed theology, as you acknowledged my argument bakes bread against the Reformed position. Nevertheless I do not think that your proposal will work for and here is why. First, if human nature were corruptible, that is capable of being corrupted, this still would not explain why the Fall took place. At most it would only explain how it was possible for human nature to be ruined and not how it was possible for the fall to take place. The fall is a personal act and not an act of nature and this is why appeals to human nature to explain it do no explanatory work. Second, human nature qua human nature, or considered absolutely doesn’t involve corruptability. Corruptability is accidental to human nature. To link the Fall to some inherent instability in human nature would imply that in order to preclude the possibility of evil, human nature would have to be annihilated or transformed into some other kind of nature, or that evil is always a possibility setting us up for Origen’s cycles of Falls and Redemptions, or still further it could imply a kind of Manicheanism, where created objects are inherently defective. There is no inherent instability in human nature qua human nature and to think so implies Manicheanism.
The reason why our first parents were able to sin and those in the eschaton aren’t has nothing to do with human nature qua human nature, but rather with the relation between the faculties of a nature and the person’s employment of those faculties. Briefly put, virtue is acquired through habit and in the acquisition of virtue, the faculty of will and the personal employment of the will by the agent are fixed in the Good. The reason why sin was possible was because this union had not yet taken place. This was the whole point of the easy commandment to set our first parents on the road to virtue. One virtue is attained and they became fixed in the Good, the possibility of sinning is removed. The problem is that prior to this point it is possible for the will as a faculty in being naturally and necessarily directed towards goodness may not end up being directed towards a real but only apparent good by the person employing the faculty. Sin then is a personal turning of the faculties of a nature against itself in a personal exercise of freedom.
This is how it is impossible for God or those in the eschaton to sin and yet not be determined by their nature. God never acquires virtue, he just is the Good necessarily. Those in heaven have acquired virtue but this doesn’t imply a lack of free will in a libertarian sense on their part, since libertarian freedom doesn’t imply an ability to do acts of differing moral worth, but rather only a plurality of acts. It is just because there is an infinite number of Goods in the Good that they retain their freedom even though they cannot sin. This is why Christ in his human will had libertarian freedom and yet it was impossible for him to sin *in his humanity.* The will as faculty is always and necessarily directed towards that which is presented to it as a good. It is just that for those not yet fixed in virtue, real or apparent goods can be presented to it as objects for volitional activity in its personal employment or use. This is why it was possible for Satan and some angels to fall and why those later “confirmed” and thereby making it impossible for them to sin without any diminution of their freedom. The problem is in supposing that the Good is absolutely simple so that free will implies a choice between good and evil options. If that is true, then either we have a choice between moral impeccability but a loss of freedom or freedom and the impossibility of moral impeccability. This is essentially Origen’s dialectical problem that he could not solve, which you have, it seems, unwittingly fallen into. It is ultimately motivated by a faulty doctrine of God that sees God as absolutely simple. This view is the common inheritance of Latin Christianity, which is why debates about freedom and God’s “sovereignty” continue to plague it. Dump the Neo-Platonic view of absolute simplicity and the dialectic that you have stated falls apart.
On a Chalcedonian understanding, Christ is fully God and fully man. To say that Christ is fully God means that Christ participates in the divine essence. He is not an instance or partake of an instance of the divine essence. All of the divine essence is in each of the three divine persons equally and fully without division. On pain of equivocation, Christ is fully man, which means that he takes upon himself the humanity of all, which is why all are redeemed in the incarnation. The problem for the Reformed is that they use the term “redemption” as meaning salvation and this is not the case here. Christ is the source of life for all peoples, which is why even the wicked persist eternally. If Christ doesn’t take on human nature en toto, then we need an explanation for why the wicked persist eternally. If Christ is not their principle of life, then who is? Dualism lurks with this option and therefore is not acceptable. This is why Christ says in John 6:39 “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise *it* up on the last day.” Christ is the source of life for everyone, even the wicked. All are raised because Christ has been raised. And the assuming of human nature does constitute a union with that nature, that is why it is called the hypostatic union. If the assuming of the nature doesn’t constitute a union, then that is tantamount to Nestorianism. Moreover, you seem to be confusing union with Christ in one way, with union with Christ in every way. Certainly the wicked are not united to Christ personally, because they have not in freedom so aligned their will ascetically with Christ’s and like Christ said, not my will, but your will be done. The problem is that you are thinking of union with Christ in terms of personal union only.
The personal union can’t be according to our shared natures, otherwise it would not be a personal union but a natural union with Christ, which would result in universalism with respect to salvation. Moreover it is exactly because the Reformed are not fully Chalcedonian on this point that the Incarnation is useless in and of itself with respect to redemption. If Christ takes on an instance of humanity, then how does that affect me? The incarnation then becomes a means to an end, namely so Jesus can get a whoopin’ by the Father. This is why satisfaction models were developed 1,000 years later and penal models 500 years after that, because of this lack of understanding Chalcedon among the Latins. The union of human nature en toto with Christ is part of the healing since it saves humanity from annihilation, which was the devil’s goal-to murder people by getting them to sin. If the wicked have no part in the incarnation, then why are they resurrected and why do their bodies persist for eternity and why do they live forever if Christ is not their principle of life? And an appeal to some legal principle seems ad hoc not to mention historically out of step with how say Athanasius, Cyril, Basil or Augustine thinks of the matter. All come to Christ no matter what-he draws everyone to himself and he loses nothing. I quite agree that logically speaking the incarnation has pre-soteriological intent but that doesn’t imply that it lacks soteriological intent or effect. This is a non-sequitor. I agree that there is no healing without union, which is exactly why they do not go out of existence. It is a vindication of God’s eternal logoi for humanity, that they exist eternally. Noting that you do not partake of human nature en toto doesn’t imply that Christ doesn’t and so does no work.
On a Protestant reading, the union with God is a nominal union constituted by legal relationships or relationships constituted by the transfer of moral credit by means of a volition on God’s part and a cognitive act on our part (faith). Union with God is therefore a contingent relationship since it is grounded in the divine will and here we can see how voluntarism shapes the Reformed understanding of grace. What grace is, is fully rooted in the absolute divine will such that it ends up being metaphysically thin. Saying that “it is God being good to his creatures” doesn’t make grace any less constituted by a nominal and contingent relationsip since first, it is an activity not an object, and second, it is contingent because it could be otherwise since the divine will could have willed otherwise, and third, it is created since God doesn’t always see you as justified since you were under wrath and now under favor. But even if I concede your reading of grace it still doesn’t comport with the Biblical data, since Peter says that we become partakers of the divine nature, not that God has a good disposition to sinners. Grace just is the life of God, it is the divine nature.
As to the atonement, it is quite true that the penal models are built on the back of the satisfaction model, but this doesn’t imply that they aren’t “all that distinct.” Take Aquinas’ satisfaction model, that Christ offers the love to the Father that Adam failed to offer. That sounds a whole lot distinct in sum from the penal model expressed by various Reformers. Thinking of satisfaction made to God by offering love is very different from thinking that someone is punished in order to make satisfaction to God to say nothing of the Christus Victor model.
I never argued that because Anselm’s theory was developed in a feudal context that it was therefore wrong. I argued rather that the ideas upon which it is built are an artifact of that context and therefore could not have been the intention of the Biblical and post-Apostolic writers, therefore implying that it is unbiblical. Since it is constructed on concepts that simply weren’t available to the NT writers it is foreign to the NT.
Ps 51:16 For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give [it]: thou delightest not in burnt offering.
Heb 10:5-10 Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; 6with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. 7Then I said, ‘Here I am–it is written about me in the scroll– I have come to do your will, O God.’ ” 8First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them” (although the law required them to be made). 9Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. 10And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
While Hosea 6 is not a treatise on the atonement, it does speak concerning issues of sacrifice, as do the passages listed above and that was the point. I think the Levitival system was desired by God as a reminder and as something that pointed forward to Christ rather than something that turned away God’s wrath. I think the Christus Victor model does a fine job of being compatible with the Biblical language of say Is 53 or Hebrews with respect to Christ’s sacrifice. Christ died *for us* but that of itself does not imply the penal view that Jesus get’s punished on our behalf. The language in those and other passages only licenses that Jesus suffers on our account and for our benefit, which is something the Christus Victor model is happy to affirm. The Christus Victor model explains, contrary to your assertion, why the atonement had to involve Christ death because Christ takes on what afflicts us to defeat it and the only way you can take on death is by dying or so I am told. ;) Death is the weapon of the devil, which is why Christ suffers under it and casts off the power of death breaking it, which is why Paul says that he disarmed the forces of darkness. Death no longer leads to our annihilation but is a testament now to God’s victory. As Florovsky says, every tombstone is a marker of God’s victory over his enemies. Certainly this kind of thinking seems very semetic and Biblical.
My account of justification may seem bizarre if one hasn’t spent time in Athanasius, Cyril, Basil or the two Gregory’s. Justification has different senses and first refers to God’s vindication over the claims of the devil. It also refers to the vindication of humanity against the power of death. Thirdly it refers to our personal standing before God as we are personally and not just naturally united to Christ. The wicked have the former, but not the latter. Everyone receives eternal existence but how they spend it, in ever suffering or ever blessedness is up to them. If you do not think that the wages of sin is annihilation one wonders if you believe that the soul is naturally immortal, which I think is flatly false. The eternal life in Romans 6 is not at varraiance with my view since it is a gift and the gift is in Christ. To the degree that we are united with Christ, either just naturally or naturally and personally, we partake of that gift. 2 Pet 2:1 makes it pretty clear that it is speaking of redemption. The terms there are only used on other occasions for Christ’s redemptive work and there is no reason on the basis of the text or the chapter entire to think of it in any other way. As to Romans 5 it isn’t universalism in the Unitarian sense on my view. First, on my view the justification or vindication of life did come to all men since all now will life everlastingly. Second, it comes to all men because the consequences of Adam’s sin came to all men, which is why all men died. Justification has to do with vindication, specifically with respect to death in Romans 5 so that we are vindicated or made free from death by Christ and this again is why there is a *general* resurrection. The degree that one partakes of this life is determined by their use of their freedom, which is why justification does relate to someone’s eternal destiny. Human nature in itself with respect to its motion towards annihilation can be healed by union with an eternal person, which is why Christ taking on an instance of humanity doesn’t heal anything. All persons get dragged back to God as their source of life. Some go willingly in freedom and others do not, but all come to Christ. It is because persons subsist within an essence that the redemption of the essence “drags” human persons into eternal existence. There is no escape from God, even for the devil, the supposed lord of corruption/annihilation. It does not follow that if the human nature is healed that the person is, because the nature is minimally healed in terms of what is proper to it, namely corruption, but if a person is to be healed it has to be healed in terms of what is proper to it, namely in freedom. Sin remember is personal, not natural. Sin in personal freedom affects human nature bringing about a turning away from the source of its life leading it to annihilation. But it does not logically follow that the relation here is symmetrical so that what is done to the nature qua nature is done to the person, because again, persons and natures are metaphysically different things. This does not imply a separation, but rather it implies that a kind of metaphysical inter-theoretical reductionism is false. You can’t explain the wetness of water fully by appealing to H2O.
My point in citing John 1:9 was to note that Christ is the source of life for all, and not to argue that all means each and every. Christ raises all up on the last day irrespective of their standing thereby showing that he is the source of life for all, which is why John 6 talks about his flesh as a source of life. If we wish to argue that all means all kinds, then we need to some textual warrant for doing so and I don’t see any driving textual warrant. Moreover, why not take Romans 3:23 as referring to all kinds since there the sense is without distinction. Now Paul will mean not that every individual sinned, but that all kinds of people have sinned without distinction. I don’t think I need to argue from texts where “all” is employed to dice up Limited Atonement. I think 2 pet 2:1 does that work for me quite nicely. To argue that God is the savior of all men in 1 tim in the sense that the offer is genuine (which is difficult to see on textual or moral grounds) is to argue not that God is the savior, but that God could be the savior of all men since he genuinely offers but doesn’t make effectual salvation for everyone to whom he offers it in any sense. To say that he is the savior is to say that he saves and not just that he offers it.
2 pet 2:1 is speaking of their profession but in light of their being bought or redeemed by Christ. Any decent lexicon will affirm the usage there as meaning redemption. At what other time or in what other way did Christ purchase people for himself than in his redemptive work? He says that they were bought and they deny the one who bought them who is obviously Christ.
As to hermenutics, I am not faulting you on being consistent but rather in giving the impression that one thing was being done while something else was. I suppose if the readers wanted to see, this is how you interpret a passage on the assumption of a Calvinistic theology, then sure, that’d be fine. Here is why you cannot go to every other passage. First because the theological commitments that guided you with this verse will guide you in evaluating the meaning of those verses making your appeal to the other verses question begging and circular reasoning. Moreover, if we have to go to what Scripture says everywhere else we would never be able to begin the exegetical task since every verse would have to be interpreted in light of its context and so on until we would have to understand the entire Bible first before we understood any part of it. Moreover, this would imply that theological models are brought to the text and they are the means by which we understand the text, which implies that we are not so much deriving our theology from the text but the facts are being interpreted in light of our theology. This is a fine consequence if we acknowledge that facts are not interpreted outside of a context but then we need to establish the theological grid on other grounds than an appeal to the text. And I for one would be really interested to know how a Calvinist is going to pull that trick off without some kind of subjectivism.
Already knowing what Scripture says just means that you understand the context of every verse and the context of the context until you reach the entire Bible. Context is therefore anatomical in that if one passage has a context then what that context is, is in part constituted by the context of some other passage. The point here is if you are going to go by exegesis, then don’t appeal to what Scripture supposedly teaches somewhere else, because that isn’t exegesis-that is interpreting the facts according to an assumed theory or model. So 2nd pet 2:1 can’t mean that Christ redeems everyone, not because there is anything in the passage that says that but because it conflicts with such and such theological commitments I have with these other passages. But I am not willing to give up these other commitments so 2nd pet 2:1 can’t mean that Christ buys everyone. That is what I take to be going on and that is not exegesis but an expression of what someone else is willing to give up. The argument can just as easily go the other way. Since 2nd pet conflicts with my interpretation of these other passages, then my interpretation of these other passages has to go. Now we need an argument to indicate why we should select on option over the other. Again, this isn’t exegesis but theory selection.
And I am not differentiating the Bible from any other interpretive difficulty but rather staking my claim just on the fact that it is exactly like every other kind of interpretative difficulty. We see this in the sciences with anomalies for example that a theory is retained and the anomalies are rejected or the anomalies are accepted and the theory rejected which just points out that not only in the empirical sciences but with theology, theories are underdetermined by facts. Hence running to “what scripture says elsewhere” is not an argument as to what the text means from the text, but what it must mean to be consistent with my theological model, which is why it is an argumentative slight of hand. And noting that I have theoretical commitments just reinforces the original point I made. What we need here is a philosophical argument to discriminate between positions. For example Van Til takes the notion of chance to discriminate between philosophical worldviews and he thinks that Calvinism is the best theory because it eliminates chance and all of the problems it engenders. I on the other hand think his arguments fail and rather think that his view cuts against a Christian view of God as a free creator.
I never argued that in romans 5 consequential was opposed to legal terms. Rather I argued that Romans 5 isn’t talking in legal terms. Forensic declarations and such can be consequences, but Paul seems to be talking about things done, like people sinning, dying, etc., which I generally don’t think of in terms as forensic declarations. Moreover, since Paul wasn’t a late scholastic nominalist I don’t see any reason to read Romans 5 as speaking about “forensic” declarations and such. Paul here seems to be speaking of death, corruption, life, etc. which doesn’t seem to fit well with the idea of a transfer of moral credit and arbitrary names grounded in a voluntaristic theory. Sin was in the world but was not credited without the law as Paul says. The point is not the law which only serves to show what sin is, but rather that sin by Adam brought death and Christ brought life. The emphasis doesn’t seem in any way to be about a transfer of moral praise and blame but rather of a bringing of death and the bringing of life.
I am quite right to claim that Reformed theology is anthropocentric. Take a look at all of the major Reformed systematics or commentaries. Everything is about soteriology per se. Anything that isn’t directly about soteriology is subsumed in some way to serve the explanatory needs of soteriology. So the doctrine of the Trinity is important because we need an agreement between the three persons concerning salvation. The doctrine of God is important because God predestines this person to be cosmic toast. Just think about it. How much time is spent on preaching about salvation and how much about the doctrine of God? How much time is spent on what God does for you as opposed to who God is? As to your assertion, I think I will stand with Augustine and deny that Christ is the only one who merits salvation. God justifies us but he does not justify us apart from us. Talking about the union with Christ sounds great, but really what it comes down to is a nominal relation. God thinks about you in such and such a way or God is oriented towards you in such and such a way. How does that map on to Peter’s claim that we become partakers of the divine nature? How exactly does faith being the only vehicle whereby I am declared righteous nominally make me a partaker of the divine nature to escape the corruption that is in the world? Or perhaps the corruption is nominal too?
The language of reaching up and laying hold of the merits of Christ by faith is certainly the language of the Reformation era in its major exponents-Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Bucer, Urisnus, Vermigli, et al. Faith is the formal cause of justification, which means that it is only by faith as a vehicle that has no merit or value of its own, so that it is a worthless virtue with respect to our standing. The notion of sola fide is built on that language of reaching up and laying hold of the merits of Christ by the vehicle of faith that is semi-pelagian in origin. It is just supplemented with an Augustinian-like view of the primacy of grace mixed with Scotistic voluntarism and Okhamistic Nominalism.
For the Reformed nature is grace which is what licenses the doctrine of total depravity and which is why the Reformed depart from Augustine’s teaching on the distinction between nature and grace. Because nature just is grace, when grace is lost, nature loses all of its value and power. See Henri de Lubac, Augustinianism and Modern Theology. And it is so a an all or nothing deal. Since either it is the case that we are righteous or we are declared so. The only way to maintain the simultinaeity here is by keeping the realism with respect to our actual state and nominalizing our standing so that our standing has nothing to do with our state of being. Our standing is not grounded in what we are. Either it is God’s act or it is my act, but it cannot be both. Either two acts co-operating (Nestorianism) or one divine act (Eutychianism). As to being in communion with God’s nature, given that the Reformed think that God is absolutely simple, how exactly does one become a “partaker of the divine nature” by Reformed lights? When I was a Calvinist, I was never able to figure that out so perhaps you can explain it to me.
Posted by: Perry Robinson aka Acolyte at março 27, 2005 1:40 AMPerry- I have responded up here.
Posted by: Kevin at abril 7, 2005 12:07 AM