One of the odder aspects of Nelson Kloosterman’s objections to 2k is the way he blows hot and cold on Reformed Protestantism. On the one hand, he bangs the drum of Reformed particularism, invoking Kuyper and Van Til to argue that 2k is not sufficiently Reformed. This is a version of “if you’re not Dutch, you’re not much.” And because 2kers differ with Dutch Reformed worthies, they are suspect.
On the other hand, other American Protestants get a pass. When it comes to Rick Warren or Chuck Colson (and I don’t mean to dishonor an admirable man who recently died), Dr. K. forgets the standards of Kuyper and Van Til and lifts at least one thumb if not two — to match with his own version of Dr. K’s 2k’s. I understand that Colson claimed the influence of W-Wism as outlined by Kuyper. But sometimes W-W loses sight of the churches’ confession and leads Protestants to join forces — even in the name of the gospel — with Roman Catholics.
In other words, Dr. K. is at times provincial, never moving outside the orbit of Dutch Reformed sources, and at other times treats celebrity American Protestants like the Indiana farm boy who visits Yankees Stadium the first time.
Recent praise for Warren and Colson notwithstanding, Dr. K’s recent quotes from Dutch scholars have me wondering if even the Dutch Reformed are the most reliable guides to Christ and culture.
First, he cites the work of J. Bouma on ethics and says, “Here you will find a substantive, competent, and classically Reformed analysis of one of the issues lying at the heart of the current NL2K discussion. It deserves—and will repay—careful study and reflection.” If you read the attached chapter, you’ll see Douma make a point that is pretty basic to the 2k position:
Nobody can deny that after proper reflection we can reach shared conclusions about many issues. If that were not the case, we wouldn’t be able to speak of living together in a civic community. Often such issues involve the arena of what is legal and illegal. Everybody has some notion of what unfairness and discrimination are. Numerous human rights are clearly formulated and can be accepted as universal claims in the struggle against gross injustice. Everybody knows the rule of thumb, “what you don’t want done to you, don’t do to others.” That rule belongs not only to the Christian way of life, but appears in other cultures as well. Sometimes we have the experience that non-Christians armed with this rule of thumb will expose injustice more effectively than Christians have. Removing poverty, developmental assistance, organ donation, and many more issues provide examples that show the outworking of “universal” arguments.
Within our pluralistically arranged society, Christians also need to work together to reach agreement about various issues. If that doesn’t succeed, they need to consider whether a compromise can be struck.
So the antithesis pedal doesn’t have to pushed to the floor all the time. And it’s even okay to suggest a different approach follows in a world comprised of believers and unbelievers. I wonder where I’ve heard that.
But then Dr. K. goes to the old country again with a mystifying point (implicitly) about the Holy Spirit and good plumbing:
For some Christians it is perhaps confusing that the Spirit who is given to us in Christ should also be active in technicians or artists who are totally unbelieving. We could distinguish between the work that the Spirit performs as Creator (proceeding from the Father and the eternal Son) and the work that he performs as Redeemer (proceeding from the Father through the incarnate Son who now sits at the Father’s right hand). This distinction signifies no separation, for the creating and maintaining work of the Triune God is tied to his redeeming and restoring work.
The statement that “the Holy Spirit works only in the hearts of believers,” seems to me to be formulated too narrowly, with the result that people have trouble with the rest of the Spirit’s work. I would change that statement this way: “The redeeming work of the Spirit of Christ occurs only in the hearts of all those who are reborn unto faith: at that point the human heart is opening up for that same Spirit who has always been doing his creating and maintaining work in all people, very often without these people giving God the honor for that work.”
This is from Jakub Van Bruggen who teaches at the Theological University in Kampen. This is a very strange construction because it self-consciously blurs the antithesis. Lost is the distinction between creation and redemption. Lost as well is the distinction between beautiful art, good plumbing, and extortion. For if the Holy Spirit is at work in non-believers when they create beauty, is the Holy Spirit also at work in non-believers when write beautiful poetry to seduce a married woman?
It seems to me this is just another version of Christians trying to take credit for whatever is good in the world in a way that is filled with a host of theological problems. But it does keep you from being 2k even if it means you confuse the categories that are basic to the work of redemption.
I wonder if Dr. K. could spot those problems if he could sort out American Protestants better.
81 Comments
Don, which is it? Schmemann, the catechism, or the Bible?
Terry, the unbelieving magistrate who isn’t pursuing justice but is instead unjust is also doing God’s will (and is still to be obeyed and prayed for). Can neos say that? Or do you guys only look for the kingdom outside the church where it’s rosy?
And you still betray much too low a view of creation to suggest it is denigrated because of its being temporal. I find this to be a common neo tick that seems more aligned with a medieval notion of creation: deficient in its essence because of the fallenness of its condition. But confessional Protestantism thinks in terms of legal-moral, not metaphysical-ontological.
And if you think that in addition to human beings that the stuff they make also make it into the NHNE then that must mean you think Jesus lived and died for more than his people, which is to say his people and their stuff. That’s why I hear my neos pray that God would “sanctify their musical instruments.” But the only thing that can be sanctified, and thus also enter the NHNE, is an actual human being. I know you say you don’t want to be overly literal, but I do wonder if you guys ever consider the implications of your expansivist views and whether it strikes you as odd to suggest that Jesus had in mind pipe organs when he condescended to flesh and ascended into heaven.
And because I know you guys think confessionalists aren’t Scriptural enough, to give biblical reference for DGH’s (and Calvin’s) warning about speculating on the hereafter: no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him. The garden isn’t going to be restored, it’s going to be even greater. That’s another irony of neo-Calvinism—it isn’t nearly optimistic as it thinks it is.
Sean,
I’d encourage you to read Isaiah 24 in its context. The earth will not respond to those who reject its Creator. I’d also encourage you to consider whether the work-reward-merit scheme is something that has been read into or out of Scripture. It seems to me to make Jesus the greatest legalist that ever existed.
Darryl,
All three, unless you show me how Schmemann contradicts either. But then I guess you’d have to read it first.
Don,
Actually the earth groans under the burden of bearing within itself the bodies of those creatures(imago dei) for which it(the earth) was supposed to serve and be ruled by. This is the curse the earth ‘bears’ that it must serve as a graveyard for those who were supposed to be it’s(earth’s) master. As it regards works-merit, if Adam’s merit or demerit was disproportionate to either it’s reward or punishment, then so is our salvation in Christ. If merit isn’t truly possible in ANY sort of proportionate way, then God’s judgement is capricious and we are all still lost in our sins because Christ hasn’t actually merited anything. If true merit isn’t possible let’s all go drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Or what exactly is it, according to your scheme, that Christ has earned? What is imputed righteousness in your soteriology?
The rejection of the biblical view of God’s justification of the ungodly by imputed righteousness tends to go along with a rejection of the imputation of the guilt of Adam to sinners. Michael Bird (Fuller Seminary, Justification: Five Views, 2011) in his “progressive Reformed view”, writes:
“For some commentators, Adam’s disobedience is imputed to sinners and then believers have Jesus’ obedience imputed to them for justification… The word kathistemi refers to an actual state of affairs and NOT to legal transactions. To say that believers will be made righteous is to posit a rectification in BOTH their legal status and in their moral status.” p113
My point is not simply that justification is being defined (contrary to the Reformed confessions, in agreement with Rome) to include transformation. My point is that this argument is based on the rejection of the legal transfer of guilt from Adam to sinners. The debate is also about a denial that the guilt of the elect was transferred to Christ. Representative “union” will be allowed, but legal substitution is rejected.
Of course I am not saying that every neo-calvinist collaborates with the “new perspective”. But minimizing the soteric status of individuals is very much a part of both agendas. “Guilt by association” is one kind of imputation!
Both agendas tend to have a shared antithesis. The forensic can be included but it CANNOT be “hegemonic”. This is the new intolerance—legal categories cannot be controlling. It cannot be grace vs works, but grace and works, or supposedly we will end up being “couch potatoes” (p155) who fail to bring in the kingdom.
The new perspective does not want us to say anymore that the legal record of Christ’s obedience is a property which can be transferred. That would make Christ to be the “first Pelagian” racking up frequent flyer miles (merits, p145). The neo-Calvinists don’t need to make big accusations like that. They can keep imputation as a shelf doctrine but they don’t waste their time on it.
Once Christ’s merits are removed from the gospel, faith inevitably blends with works, since faith and works are merely two grace-enabled human responses. And then also all kingdoms already now become one and the same kingdom.
David Gordon explains: “John Murray’s disciples inevitably move in a monocovenantal direction. All covenants become essentially the same. Norman Shephard cannot easily distinguish Abrahamic faith from Sinaitic works. Greg Bahnsen could not distinguish Israel’s laws from the laws of non-theocratic nations. The paedo-communionists cannot distinguish a family meal (Passover) from a corporate meal (the Lord’s Supper).
“The so-called Federal Vision cannot easily distinguish the visible (the ‘outward Jew’ of Romans 2) from the invisible (the ‘inward Jew’ of Romans 2) church. Though John Murray himself committed none of these errors, his monocovenantal tendency would inevitably have the effects it has had in each of these areas.”
mcmark: Some of us historians might have a problem with that “inevitably”….
Zrim, I’m referring to the revealed will and not the secret decretal will. The civil magistrate that pursues injustice is NOT doing God’s revealed. I hope you’re with me on this basic distinction–I don’t really understand why that has to be clarified. Why on earth would I be talking about God’s secret will?
Colossians 1:20 — “and God was pleased … through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.” Sounds like pipe organs to me.
And don’t forget Zechariah 14:20ff. On that day HOLY TO THE LORD will be inscribed on the bells of the horses, and on the cooking pots in the Lord’s house will be like the sacred bowls in front of the altar. Every pot in Jerusalem and Judah will be holy the the Lord Almighty, and all who come to sacrifice will take some of the pots and cook in them.
Sounds like more than human beings to me. I hope you get the prophecy here. Even the mundane pots and pans become like the priestly garments on that day. In our already/not yet eschatology “that day” as already begun. “all of life” “24/7″ “pots and pans”–they are all holy to the Lord–sanctified.
Don’t you worry now. We neo-Cals think that NHNE will be better. Part of the unimaginable is life/creation/culture without sin! What a day that will be!
Here are the closing word’s to the neo-Cal contemporary testimony “Our World Belongs to God” (btw, what happens when neo-Cal becomes part of the Reformed confession? Kind of messes with your categories.)
56. Our hope for a new earth is not tied to what humans can do,
for we believe that one day every challenge to God’s rule
and every resistance to his will shall be crushed.
Then his kingdom shall come fully,
and our Lord shall rule forever.
57. We long for that day…
Any problem with any of that?
Terry, the problem is that when neos say “not yet” it always sounds like “already,” as in praying for pipe organs to be sanctified. Holy ivories. But 2k understands that in the NHNE everything will be holy, but it also wants to say there is a significant difference between creation made in the imago Dei and creation that isn’t. Do you really want to say that Jesus lived and died for pots and pans? It sure seems that of all people, the ones with a covenantal theology should be able to read the Bible and see that the history of redemption has to do with God and HIS PEOPLE. Then again, it also seems like of all people, the only ones with something like the RPW should have a much more predictable form of worship. Little wonder to me that neos are not only the ones who tend to expand the target of redemption but also are the ones who tend to expand on how God is to be worshiped.
MMc: You mean you believe that the covenant with Abraham and Moses was not the same?
David Gordon explains the temporary nature of the need for ethnic purity:
“The Mosaic covenant, burdensome as it was for the hapless Israelites, was needed for a
variety of reasons. In terms of Paul’s concerns in Galatians, it was necessary for there to be a
covenant that, at a minimum, preserved two things: memory of the gracious promises made to
Abraham and his “seed,” and the biological integrity of the “seed” itself. Sinai’s dietary laws
and prohibitions against inter-marrying with the Gentiles, along with Sinai’s calendar and its
circumcision, set Abraham’s descendants apart from the Gentiles, saving them (in some degree)
from their desire to inter-marry with the Am ha-Aretz until the time came to do away with such a
designation forever.
“There were things necessary to teach, via the types and sacrifices of the Old Testament system, in order for the work of the coming Christ to make any sense when He appeared. And during this season of preparing the world for the coming Christ, it was necessary to have a covenant that by the harshest threats of curse-sanctions would prevent inter-marriage and idolatry among a people particularly attracted to both. Sinai’s thunders did not prevent this perfectly, but they did so sufficiently that a people still existed on earth who recalled the promises to Abraham when Christ appeared, and the genealogy of Matthew’s gospel could be written.”
Mark,
I agree and would only add that the law also served to establish Israel as God’s Priests/Servants in His creation until Christ came and initiated the priesthood of all believers..
Terry,
You have to remember that 2ks can only think of redemption as people abstracted from any context such as creation. Therefore they can only appreciate an unembodied worship of God in the already and some completely incomprehensible, discontinuous glorious state in the not yet. In the meantime, their consciences are clear because they can enjoy all the things of this world without feeling any guilt, because, after all, they are only temporary. Of course they will also say not to get entangled in the things of this world for the same reason.
Sean,
Christ is the Lord of creation, so His merit is infinite. Since He is the Lord, He is not subordinate to the law as though He needed to be judged in the sense of merit per your scheme.
Don,
So according to your logic the incarnation was superfluous, why bother with the whole redemptive history bit, and this nasty stuff of God requiring his pound of flesh from his own Son of all things. Just so unnecessary. He should’ve just snapped his ‘fingers’ and maybe wrinkled his nose, and bobbed his head and it’d all be good. I don’t need Jesus coming in the flesh to show me how much he cared nor do I need Him dying on the cross to show me how bad my sin is and what it costs. I’ll stay home and read my paper and play golf on sundays if this is all that’s at work. Adamic merit was either real and possible or you don’t get to have Christ’s merit on the flip side. And it’s not my scheme, it’s scriptures. This is the traditional bi-covenantal, WCF scheme. See chapter 7
Sean,
Its not Scriptural for if Adam or any man can be saved by works then it is not by grace you have been saved through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works so that no one can boast.
Why bother with the whole redemptive history? Because Adam forfeited the rule of creation to Satan. This is why Satan was quite authenically able to offer Jesus rule of the world when he took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor and said “All this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me.” This is why Christ is referred to as the last Adam — He came to take back what Satan had stolen from the first Adam, but He would do it His way, not Satan’s way. Little did Satan know that by shedding the blood of an innocent man, he lost his right to rule and why Christ could say, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”
Actually, Terry, what you should try and keep in mind about 2kers is that we take the doctrine of sin seriously enough that we don’t recognize ourselves in any construction that has us feeling guilt-free. It’s this same doctrine of abiding sin that tends to put the kibosh on utopian neo tendencies for world improvement, and evidently makes some so frustrated they suggest Gnosticism. But if what is meant is that 2kers enjoy and indulge the created order because we are not to call anything unclean what God has made clean, but not too much because it’s all fading away, then (ahem) guilty as charged.
don f: “Of course they will also say not to get entangled in the things of this world for the same reason.”
mark mcculley: Are all who disagree with you about continuity, Don, to be thought of as “gnostics” and docetists”? For example, is a pacifist like me, who denies “responsibility” for “the one and only culture” by “leaving the wrath to God” (who has ordained even evil powers), is a person like me probably a careless “guilt free” antinomian?
Or do you need to find out first what kind of gnostic I am? A separatist pacifist or merely a cowardly parasite who wants to enjoy stuff (guilt-free) while asking others to kill for me (guilt-free)?
The only way I am guilt free is by legal identification with Jesus Christ who died to sin and to the law. But since we can’t (and don’t need to) make atonement like Jesus Christ did, are we now resigned to the immanence of creating a culture we can share with the age to come?
So Don, you are Christus Victor all the way? No legal categories at all when you think of Christ’s death? No imputation of the guilt of the elect (before the law) to Christ? I don’t want to read too much into your anti-merit comments, so can you explain how your Christus Victor view reads Romans 6 without effectively denying penal substitution?
Thanks for your explanation, if you have the time.
MMc: You quote David Gordon. Do you know that in the same article he says: “I raise these questions grateful that John Murray, to my knowledge, never wrote so much as a paragraph about the Galatian letter”? He’s wrong:
“He [Murray] did not write a full length commentary on Galatians (as he did on the Epistle to the Romans). But the claim that he never dealt with the Epistle’s teaching, particularly on the matter of the Mosaic law and the covenants, is patently false.”
https://sites.google.com/site/themosaiccovenant/john-murray
So that leaves us with the question: How good a scholar is T. David Gordon?
Murray makes a whole lot more sense in “The Unity of the Covenant of Grace” than Gordon does in the article from which you quote.
Don,
Besides the Pauline use of grace you cite being a necessarily post fall understanding of favor in the face of demerit and not an Edenic consideration even pondered through God’s condescension.
Your Christus victor motif is apparently devoid of penal substitutionary atonement consideration I haven’t heard in prominence like that or even quite that way outside of Pentecostal theology. Your Adamic motif is odd and fairly unique to you. Probably way too much to tackle by combox and iPhone
Mark and Sean,
I do believe the Christus Victor theory is well grounded in Scripture, in the Old Testament’s many promises by Yahweh to liberate His people through royal action, in Jesus’ proclamation of the coming of the kingdom, and in Paul’s emphasis on the liberation from the law and the curse. This model becomes problematic if it denies the requirements of justice, wrath, and propitiation which are also clearly grounded in Scripture. To put it another way, Christus Victor works so long as (with Luther) we insist that one of the adversaries that is conquered by the cross is the wrath of God.
The problem with most of the theories of atonement today, including Christus Victor and the satisfaction theory which conservatives often see as the orthodox view of the atonement, and certainly the dominant one in Western theology since the 11th century, is the way that the theories focus almost exclusively on the death of Jesus with little emphasis on His resurrection.
Robert Sherman has developed a Trinitarian theology of atonement (King, Priest, and Prophet [T&T Clark, 2004]) that attempts to synthesize various theories of the atonement by combining a Trinitarian frame with the triple office of Christ. As Sherman puts it, to affirm Christ as victorious king is to say that God the Father has bestowed royal authority upon the incarnate Son to accomplish in the power of the Spirit the proclamation and reestablishment of divine sovereignty in a world enslaved by alien and illegitimate powers. Trinitarian theology thus helps to address some of the criticisms that are brought against satisfaction theories: If one understands the will and work of the Father as distinct from and in some sense imposed upon the Son, or the merely human Jesus, then concern for the fundamental injustice of the procedure is clearly warranted. Yet part of the point of the doctrine of the Trinity has been to emphasize the divine equality of being between Father and Son, as well as their complete harmony of will and purpose. In such an understanding, coercion becomes impossible, because the conditions needed to enable it simply do not exist. Thus he formulates the priestly perspective on the atonement as in accord with the loving and righteous will of God the Father, God the Son freely takes on flesh by means of God the Spirit to become Christ the priest and sacrifice, to atone for human sin and restore creation to right relation with God and its own integrity. He takes on human flesh to serve as humanity’s representative and priest, because it is humanity that stands in need of making sacrifice to God.
So that was a no? No legal identification with Christ’s death and no imputation? The wrath is somehow on the Son but not by means of God’s justice?
When the Bible says death, it means also resurrection. But Christus Victor tends to say resurrection in order to teach that the death was only prelude and not rationally or judicially necessary. I suggest you read Abraham Booth or John Owen on the vindication of God’s justice. Christus Victor puts so much stress on the Deity of Christ that it tends to play down the need for the incarnation.
The next thing you know, Don, you will be telling us that Anselm and Calvin were also gnostics. Sherman’s book agrees with the Socinian objections. This agreement will lead you very far from the Reformed Confessions. But of course I remember that I don’t know most of you guys. Don, could you tell us if you currently subscribe to one of the Reformed Confessions? If you don’t believe what they say, it would of course be good if you didn’t need to translate them into something opposite….
I Peter 1:11 tells us of the Spirit’s prediction of “the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.” I Peter 3:21 speaks of an “appeal for a good conscience, through the resurrection.”
The gospel is not the death without the resurrection, or the resurrection without the death. The good news about one is good news about the other. Calvin: “When in scripture death only is mentioned, everything peculiar to the resurrection is at the same time included, and that there is a like synecdoche in the term resurrection.” (Institutes 2:16:13)
See the Ephesians 4:8 quotation of Psalm 68: 18—“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. In saying, He ascended, what does it mean but that he also descended…?” From the word “ascension”, we can also infer the descent from heaven.
John 3:13:“ No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of man.”
I am adventist but not a gnostic. That means my hope is not the reformation of this age/world (the hope some are finding in Nevin) but the second coming of Jesus Christ and resurrection to immortality on the new earth.
Mark,
I take a more sacramental view of creation than most, so I tend to see varying shades of gnosticism where others don’t.I believe the Bible teaches that all that exists is God’s gift to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man’s life communion with God.So the only natural reaction of man to whom God gave this blessed and sanctified world, is to bless God in return, to thank Him, to see the world as God sees it, and — in its act of gratitude and adoration — to know, name, and possess the world. All rational, spiritual and other qualities of man, distinguishing him from other creatures, have their focus and ultimate fulfillment in this capacity to honor God, to know, so to speak, the meaning of the thirst and hunger that constitutes his life. The basic definition of man is that he is the priest, standing in the center of the world and unifying it in blessing God, receiving from and offering to God, and thus transforming his life into communion with Him. The natural dependence of man upon the world was intended to be constantly transformed into communion with God in whom is all life. From this perspective then, the original sin is not primarily that man has “disobeyed” God; the sin is that he ceased to be hungry for God and God alone.
So in response to your question about incarnation, legal identification with Christ’s death, and resurrection, this view puts the strongest emphasis on all of these concepts. Christ had to be incarnated to fulfill the role that man was made to fulfill, He had to die as man’s perfect sacrifice to God, His death puts an end to the present order of this world and the rule of this world by Satan since Satan has now lost his power as the accuser since he accused the perfect man and God, and Christ’s resurrection is the inauguration of the new life and the new creation to be consummated upon His return. This all comports with your earlier reference to Romans 6.
Romans 6 describes two legal states, one of which is “free from righteousness”.The true God will not accept us into His presence based on something in us, not even on something God has put in us. If we have not yet been legally justified by God on the basis of WHAT CHRIST DID, we are still in our sins.
Romans 6 defines the “new creation in Christ” in terms of legally being placed into the death of Christ. Instead of a “sacrament with water” which makes us participants in Christ, our hope as the justified is that God has counted the death of Christ as our death.
II Corinthians 5:14 “one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live would no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sakes died and was raised….If anyone is in Christ, there is NEW CREATION. The old has passed; the new has come.”
“Those who live” means those who are justified and who have eternal life. The category of “we died” is not about a sacramental addition to or renewal of nature but about an imputed legal reality. The category of “those who live” is also about forensic status, legal life because of WHAT CHRIST DID now imputed.
The transfer from old to new is not effected or maintained by “sacrament” or by “feeding on Christ”. So how then do the justified stay in Christ? For those in Christ legally, the old has passed. Some of the elect have now already been justified. One day, at the resurrection, there will be visible evidence of that verdict.
Don, sacramental view of creation? I thought you held to the Westminster Standards.
Mark,
No disagreement with your view regarding forensic justification of the elect. However, I was not addressing individual salvation or even the sacraments of baptism or communion specifically. While your question was focusing on the individual being saved, I was looking at salvation from the perspective of God’s original purpose of creation and why Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection are necessary. Individually, I hold to the reformed doctrine of salvation by faith alone, through Christ alone, by grace alone.
The reason I took the perspective I did is because, as you may recall in an earlier post, I took issue with DVD’s reference to Adam’s original task of cultivating the earth as completed by Christ. From the perspective I took, I was trying to show how instead of being a task, interacting with creation (now inaugurated as new) is the means by which man’s life is transformed into communion with God. I am not talking about cultural transformation, because the order of this world is passing. I am defending the continuity and liberation of creation to the redeemed people of God when Christ comes back — only then will culture be as it would have been if Adam had not failed to see creation as the gift of God it was meant to, and will again be.
1. All that has happened was meant to be and decreed by God.
2. The sin of Adam was ordained by God as a means to the redemption of the elect by Christ to the glory of Christ. (The Reformed confessions do not condemn supralapsarianism).
3. The sin of Adam was not a failure to build a culture but eating from the forbidden tree.
4. The command to not eat from the forbidden tree was not a gift of grace, but law.
5. Grace assumes sin and the need for grace, therefore there was no grace manifest in the garden before Adam’s sin, even though of course grace was always in the decree. (For more on this, see Mark Karlberg and other Klineans.)
6. Adam was not created as neutral “nature” in need of “supernature grace”. Adam was created in a righteous relationship with God, but that does not entail the (later?) Roman Catholic antrhopology.
7. But this is not to say (with Lutherans) that redemption is a return to what was, nor is it to speculate on what Adam “could have or might have” done in a “covenant of works”, but to say that grace is located nowhere but in Christ’s work for those God loves.
8. Christus Victor rhetorically claims a past victory by God, but it fails (and you Don have failed) to show how it rationally relates to penal satisfaction of God’s law so that the work is finished already and remains to be be imputed to all the elect not yet justified. Don, it’s not enough to say you believe in forensic justification, by faith only, when you need to (with the confessions) identify the object of faith NOT in our cultural activity also but alone in Christ’s legal-work at cross and resurrection.
mark mcculley: 7. But this is not to say (with Lutherans) that redemption is a return to what was, nor is it to speculate on what Adam “could have or might have” done in a “covenant of works”, but to say that grace is located nowhere but in Christ’s work for those God loves.
RS: Or grace is located in Christ Himself. All spiritual blessings are in Christ (Eph 1:3).
McMark: 8. Christus Victor rhetorically claims a past victory by God, but it fails (and you Don have failed) to show how it rationally relates to penal satisfaction of God’s law so that the work is finished already and remains to be be imputed to all the elect not yet justified. Don, it’s not enough to say you believe in forensic justification, by faith only, when you need to (with the confessions) identify the object of faith NOT in our cultural activity also but alone in Christ’s legal-work at cross and resurrection.
RS: Or the object of faith could be the triune God since it is through Christ that we are brought to the Father. What Christ did the Father did, or at least that is what Jesus said (John 14:10).
Mark: 1. All that has happened was meant to be and decreed by God.
Don: Ok
Mark: 2. The sin of Adam was ordained by God as a means to the redemption of the elect by Christ to the glory of Christ. (The Reformed confessions do not condemn supralapsarianism).
Don: Ok, but redemption is a very broad term. See below.
Mark: 3. The sin of Adam was not a failure to build a culture but eating from the forbidden tree.
Don: I never said the sin of Adam was a failure to build culture nor that it was not eating what was forbidden. Every act of sinning proceeds from the heart. My point was that Adam”s heart was not right with God when he ate from the forbidden tree. His hunger for God as reflected in thankful acceptance of God’s gift to him was superceded by a desire for the thing itself.
Mark: 4. The command to not eat from the forbidden tree was not a gift of grace, but law.
Don: I’m not sure what I said made you think that I thought the command not to eat from the forbidden tree was a gift of grace. It was a command, and may have been repealed when Adam had matured enough to eat of it, but I did not say that it was a gift of grace. Clearly Adam was forbidden to eat of it. I suspect you are going with Kline here and turning the command into the law court scenario. While I agree that it was a test, I don’t think its primary purpose was to show that Adam was a sinner (a miserable, disobedient creature) that needed to be redeemed by grace, followed by a grateful response to God. Rather, though Adam was a sinner, he was made to be the priest/king of God’s creation and needed to be redeemed (freed from slavery to desire for the things of the world instead of for God) so that his desire could be restored to eucharistic communion with Christ and the Trinity through all things which were made by and for Him.
Mark: 5. Grace assumes sin and the need for grace, therefore there was no grace manifest in the garden before Adam’s sin, even though of course grace was always in the decree. (For more on this, see Mark Karlberg and other Klineans.)
Don: Creation was a gift which Adam did not merit. You may not want to call it grace, but you can’t deny that it was a gift.
Mark: 6. Adam was not created as neutral “nature” in need of “supernature grace”. Adam was created in a righteous relationship with God, but that does not entail the (later?) Roman Catholic antrhopology.
Don: He was made from nothing. He needed to learn and grow in knowledge of God, His maker, which would have come naturally through his grateful acceptance and offering of the gift of creation to God if he had not disobeyed God.
Mark: 7. But this is not to say (with Lutherans) that redemption is a return to what was, nor is it to speculate on what Adam “could have or might have” done in a “covenant of works”, but to say that grace is located nowhere but in Christ’s work for those God loves.
Don: But the grace comes through Christ Himself by whom, for Whom, through Whom, unto Whom, and in Whom all things in heaven and earth are made. Redemption is the glorified state that man would have achieved if he had been patient and continued to direct his desire to Christ by, for, through, and in Whom all things in heaven and earth exist. This is the sacramental perspective of creation that Scripture, especially Col 1 forces us to acknowledge and why destruction of creation cannot begin to be conceived of.
Mark: 8. Christus Victor rhetorically claims a past victory by God, but it fails (and you Don have failed) to show how it rationally relates to penal satisfaction of God’s law so that the work is finished already and remains to be be imputed to all the elect not yet justified. Don, it’s not enough to say you believe in forensic justification, by faith only, when you need to (with the confessions) identify the object of faith NOT in our cultural activity also but alone in Christ’s legal-work at cross and resurrection.
Don: I’m not sure how I fall short in showing how my view relates to penal satisfaction of God’s law. Christ died as our substitute, and rose from the dead. If all things have been created by, for, through, and in Him, our faith and desire for him is evidence of His life in us. It is expressed as our grateful acceptance and offering of all things (i.e., our cultural activity) to Him and our consequential drawing deeper into communion with Him, and by the Spirit, into the Trinitarian love that has eternally existed between Father, Son and Spirit. In other words, I suggest that Scripture defines the finished work of Christ as our reconciliation and future glorification, inaugurated now, that we might become partakers of Christ (Heb 3:14)and His divine nature (2 Pet 1:4) through our eucharistic reception and offering of all things to Him by, for, through and in Whom they were made.