The Calvinist Papers
This blog
conversation took place over the course of two weeks largely between me (Ken
Schenck) and an anonymous blog conversant who refers to himself as “Once a Wesleyan.” From autobiographical comments, we should conclude
that OAW once attended or was raised in the
1.
Preface by Keith Drury (3/15/07)
Thanks to BOTH of you for
spending the time to have a good scrap--even when it bordered at time on a WWF
match ;-) OAW you are a well-read good thinking guy who (IMO) fairly represent
a
But the rhetoric in this discussion has been exciting to
follow and the arguments illustrate (to me, at least) the radical difference in
the views of God, and the radically different approaches to scripture among the
two ways of thinking. Nobody expected these two guys to solve this
difference--their job is to expose the differences, and they have done that
well I think.
I've not jumped in because I've "been there-done that" already. So,
for me, reading along it has been more fun than the final four. Both teams have
made a few three-pointers but "my team" won--but of course I already
knew that when I started reading ;-)
Thanks again to both of you for the time and energy you contributed to all of
us this last week! I have chosen to be Arminian-Wesleyan...unless,
of course, I was chosen to be one. ;-)
2.
A Great Time to be Wesleyan in
Theology (3/5/07)
There were three great cries
in the Reformation: sola gratia
(by grace alone), sola fide (by
faith alone), and sola scriptura (by
Scripture alone). However, each of these concepts as they have typically been
formulated by Protestantism are problematic.
"By grace alone" is problematic in the way it is usually formulated
because of a failure to grasp the nature of ancient patron-client
relationships. Grace was certainly unmerited favor, but that did not mean that
no solicitation was involved or that it came without strings. The NT reads most
coherently against an understanding of grace that 1) involves the solicitation
of the client and 2) requires appropriate response. Any notion of eternal
security or of pervasive dishonor of God's patronage by sin after receiving His
grace is an absurd misunderstanding of ancient patronal
dynamics.
"By faith alone" is problematic particularly in its Lutheran form.
The most basic perusal of Paul's own language shows that he did not see faith
and works as polar opposites. Works in particular did not contradict faith for
Paul; they were simply an inadequate basis for justification. Further, Paul
expected fulfillment of a law core after reception of the Spirit. The notion
that Paul (or 1 John) saw sin as an inevitable part of a believer's life is
thoroughly dismantled.
"By Scripture alone" is an impossibility of language. The so called
Wesleyan Quadrilateral, while itself needing some modification after modernism,
is nevertheless a much more coherent model of biblical appropriation than the
mirage that is sola scriptura. 25,000 Protestant denominations later, with a
little postmodern reflection poured on top, Erasmus is pronounced the winner of
his debate with Luther over whether the meaning of the Bible was sufficiently
clear on its own for most people to grasp its meaning.
What these things imply is that it is a great time to be Wesleyan in theology,
at least on these key points. I don't see how any sane person can look at the
current denominational scene and not see the need for some strong ecclesiology
to balance out our use of Scripture. And whatever we might think of total
depravity theologically, the NT does not consider the Christian life to be one
of unconditional election, irresistible grace, eternal security, or pervasive
sin. The NT remains far more Jewish than most Protestants have imagined.
----------------------------------------
Comment:
OAW (3/14/06):
My, oh My,
as I go through these posts I realize how much you really loathe Biblical
Christians (Reformed). I think I need to
stick around so you have somebody concrete to feel superior over.
3.
Justification/Salvation by Grace
(3/6/07)
David deSilva
makes a very relevant comment for my purposes in his recent book, Honor, Patronage, Kinship, & Purity: Unlocking
New Testament Culture. With regard to grace he writes,
"Because we think about the grace of God through the lens of
sixteenth-century Protestant polemics about 'earning salvation by means of
pious works,' we have a difficult time hearing the New Testament's own
affirmation of the simple, yet noble and beautiful, circle of grace" (141).
deSilva here alludes to what
has now become commonly accepted, namely, that grace and gift language in the
NT is language of patronage. Throughout the Greco-Roman world of Paul's day,
informal relationships existed between the "have's" and "have nots" of society. The "have's,"
the patrons, would give to various other groups who were in need of resources.
The "have not's" received their patronage as "clients" and
in return gave their patrons honor, sometimes suffered for them, might perform
various tasks for them, etc...
Such patronage was of course "unmerited" in the sense that the client
did not pay the patron for services rendered. And because the relationship was
informal, there was no contract that constituted obligation on the part of
either party. The client in that sense had no formal strings attached. On the other hand, a client that
dishonored his or her patron could not assume that the patron would simply
continue patronage as if nothing had happened.
If we look for modern illustrations of such grace, we might think of a donor
for a college building. John Maxwell is not obligated in any way to donate
funds to Indiana Wesleyan for a building. Such donation is gracious on his part, it demonstrates his
willingness to act as a patron, it is an example of
his charis,
his grace. The gift is a charisma,
the product of grace.
Now I don't know if IWU was obligated contractually to name the Maxwell
building after Maxwell. I can at least imagine that the arrangement might be
informal--a kind of mutual understanding. On the other hand, you can imagine
that if IWU were to act ungrateful and say bad things about Maxwell, he
probably would want to donate anything more to the university!
This is thus a fair example of patron-client relationships today, and it works
a lot like it did in ancient times in the days of the NT.
The relevance of this cultural background for
understanding grace in the NT is striking. From God comes "every good act
of giving [dosis]
and every perfect thing given [dorema]"
(Jas. 1:17). The spiritual gifts of 1 Corinthians [charismata] are instances of grace that comes through the
Holy Spirit [charis].
Therefore, when we approach certain key Pauline texts on grace, we should be
careful about foreign assumptions about what it means to say that justification
or salvation comes through grace.
Romans
God has dispensed His grace in Romans through Jesus Christ. God has shown his
propensity to serve as our patron by offering Jesus as a means of our
redemption (Rom. 3:24), offering him as a means of atonement (3:25), thus
showing his love for us (5:8). These are the means and basis for our
justification, our acquittal in the divine court--we are "justified as a
gift [dorean]
by his grace [charis]
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (3:24).
Our Protestant propensity for confusion does not come so much in the discussion
of God as patron. Rather, it comes when we begin to discuss the implications of
grace for us as clients. Take Romans 4:3-5:
For what does the Scripture say, "Abraham
had faith in God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." Now to the
one "working" the reward is not reckoned according to grace but
according to debt. But to the one not working but having faith on the one who
justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness."
Here again we see the key concepts of grace. Grace does not involve obligation
on God's part to give. It is something that God does not have to give but
something He gives "as a gift."
But at the same time, we should not make "working" a polar opposite
to grace or faith. The point of the logic is not that God doesn't want works.
The point is that no amount of works add up to an
obligation on God's part.
I might add as a side note James Dunn's emphasis that what Paul is primarily
discussing here is "works of law," that is, acts of the Jewish law
and especially acts that tended to distinguish Jew from Gentile. These are
matters of the Law like circumcision, food laws, Sabbath observance, etc...
Dunn's classic article on this topic can be found in Jesus, Paul, and the Law. In his most
recent mention of the topic The New
Perspective on Paul (an expensive Mohr/Siebeck
monograph that reprints his classic articles also on the topic, along with a
some 70 page introduction, I believe), Dunn denies that he ever restricted the
sense of the phrase "works of law" only
to boundary matters.
My own sense is that Dunn's recent comment is the right balance. When Paul uses
the phrase "works of law," he primarily has in mind the kinds of matters that intra-Jewish conflicts
were made out of. The title of the
At the same time, Paul is talking of "deeds of law" and does at more
than one point generalize in terms of works versus faith (e.g. 10:32, see
Stephen Westerholm). So while Paul may be thinking
primarily of "things in the law that distinguish Jew from Gentile,"
we cannot restrict his meaning to such things.
So also Romans 4:16:
For this reason, [justification is] on
the basis of faith in order that it might be in accordance with grace...
At this point post-Augustinian denominations begin to rankle over where the
faith comes from. Is faith a work if it is something a human does? Is it a
"badge of covenant membership" (N. T. Wright), something that shows a
person is a member of the people of God rather than something that gets you in?
Does it refer to Christ's faithfulness (Richard Hays) and not even human faith
in verses like this one at all?
I agree with Hays that Paul refers to Christ's faithfulness in verses like
Romans 3:22 and Galatians 2:16, but I agree with Dunn in Romans 4 and Galatians
3. Ek pisteos for
Paul does come from Habakkuk 2:4, "the person righteous on the basis of
faith will live." But I think Paul primarily has human faith in view
(although I think he would apply the verse to Jesus as a human as well). So I
believe Paul is talking about faith as something a human places in God and in
Christ (see places where the verb is used, especially the sequence in Rom.
9:32-33), like Abraham did.
These Protestant debates are completely foreign to Paul. In my opinion, Paul
says nothing about where some internal faith comes from (Rom. 10:17 is not
talking about internal causes but external ones). He discusses it as a human
act. It would not have contradicted the idea of patronage for the client to
solicit patronage, any more than it would contradict the patronage of John
Maxwell for IWU to ask if he would be willing to donate money to the university for a building. The dynamics of the internal
causes of faith in a believer are of no concern to Paul.
Ephesians
Ephesians is of course different enough from Paul's other writings that the
majority of non-evangelical scholars consider it pseudonymous. One minor place
of such difference (although not of contradiction, in my opinion) is in the
discussion of grace.
By grace you have been saved [and still
are] through faith and this is not from yourselves, it
is the gift [doron] of
God not from works, so that someone cannot boast. For we are
his product, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has
prepared so that we might walk in them (Eph. 2:8-10).
The main difference is the language of salvation
rather than justification. Salvation language in Paul is usually future rather than past oriented, since no one has yet
literally escaped God's wrath.
Notice that as new creations in Christ Jesus, we will live producing good
works. This is significant for the second part of our discussion, the false
opposition often made between salvation by faith and good works.
Disgracing the Patron
deSilva rightly turns to Hebrews 6 to discuss the
potential consequences of dishonoring a patron.
It is impossible for those once
enlightened, and who have tasted of the heavenly gift [dorea] and become partakers of Holy Spirit and who have
tasted the word of God and the powers of the coming age and have fallen away,
[it is impossible for them] again to be renewing for repentance, since they
crucify again to themselves the Son of God and expose him to disgrace.
The author then illustrates with a field that has been watered often and yet
yields thorns and thistles. In the words of James 1:7, "do not let that
person think s/he will receive anything from the Lord."
Conclusion
The preoccupations of the Reformation with regard to God's grace--how it might
be received apart from human work and the impossibility that it might in any
way connect subsequently with human work--were none of Paul's concern in the
manner of our discussion. For Paul, faith was something a human did and which a
human must do to receive God's justifying/saving grace. Similarly, God's grace
subsequent to justification was never understood to be compatible with a
"client" who might flagrantly disgrace Him.
What we see here are points where the Calvinist tradition has often criticized
the Wesleyan tradition as being incoherent or even Pelagian.
But Paul doesn't care. Take it up with him.
4.
Total Depravity (3/7/07)
I
consider the doctrine of total depravity to be a near consensus of Christendom.
I say near consensus because the Eastern Church does not formulate human sinfulness
quite the same way as the Western church has under the influence of Augustine.
Similarly, I'm not sure that the Roman Catholic tradition has always understood
total depravity quite as extremely as most Protestant traditions have. Thus I
don't think Thomas Aquinas thought that our minds were completely fallen.
But
from the standpoint of both Wesleyan, Reformed, and
Lutheran theology, humanity is totally depraved and can do no good in its own
power. Contrary to popular belief, the Wesleyan-Arminian
tradition is not Pelagian and does not believe that
humans have free will independent of God's empowerment. The difference between
the two traditions is the process of moving from total depravity to salvation.
For the Calvinist, it is an all or nothing proposition, like a normal light
switch. Either God turns the light on, and you move toward holiness and you are
saved, or He doesn't. [I might add that I am a little uncomfortable with the
way Protestants both Wesleyan and Reformed alike talk about holiness as
something like righteous living, but that's another series]
By
contrast, the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition thinks of
the movement from depravity to holiness more on the model of a dimmer switch
that can be on in varying degrees. At some point in every person's life, God
turns the light up just enough for the person to indicate whether they would
like more light or not. This is not a point of the person's choosing! If the
person does not respond appropriately when God turns up the light, the person
may not ever get another chance. There goes putting off repentance until your
death bed!
On
the other hand, if a person thus empowered by God signals a desire for further
light, God will turn the light up further unto salvation. In theological terms,
Wesley referred to the "just enough" dimmer light as God's preventing
or as we say, "prevenient grace." It can
lead in turn to "saving" or "justifying grace."
It is now my task to process these theological discussions in the light of
Paul's own categories. I believe that much of our theological language is
mythical, if you would, not thereby meaning that it is false, only meaning that
we tend to process theological truths by way of metaphorical narratives. My dimmer
switch "story" is a good example. I believe I am accurately
representing a truth but I am doing it in a non-literal way.
A more palatable way of putting it is to say that all language is ultimately
"incarnational" language. So Paul uses
certain language in relation to human sinfulness. Augustine used a different
set of images. We should not mistake either for the exact reality. But they both point toward the reality. I
will try not mistake my own images for reality either, but I do want to try to
get into Paul's head on the relevant issues here and then compare them with the
head of Augustine, Calvin, Wesley, etc.
The idea of a sinful nature is,
as I understand it, Augustinian. It is not Pauline, and I regularly complain in
class about the NIV's translation of the Greek word
for flesh, sarx,
as "sinful nature." Here are some thoughts on Paul's use of the word flesh:
1. It is related to embodiment. After all, why else would Paul use the word for
skin?
2. It tends to have a negative connotation. The word body, soma, does not tend to have a negative
connotation. Even though these two words overlap in meaning at a certain point,
"body" tends to have a somewhat more neutral sense, while
"flesh" tends to have a negative one.
3.
Flesh is often related to sin.
"I know that good does not dwell
in me, that is, in my flesh" Rom. 7:18.
"The law is spiritual, but I am
made of flesh [sarkinos], enslaved under Sin" Rom. 7:14
Indeed, we might infer from these images that flesh is that part of me that is enslaved to sin.
4. It is possible not to be
"in the flesh" in this life. In other words, one can get "out of
the flesh" while still on earth.
"Those who are in the flesh are
not able to please God. But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed
the Spirit of God dwells in you" Rom. 8:8-9.
We see therefore that Paul can use the word "flesh" with varying
degrees of literality, ranging from flesh as literal skin to flesh as a
metaphor for a state of susceptibility to the power of sin.
Although not all agree [e.g., Dunn], perhaps the majority of Pauline scholars
now recognize that Paul is not talking about some current and ongoing personal
struggle with sin in Romans 7. The context argues overwhelmingly against such a
reading. We have mentioned above both the fact that Paul speaks in Romans 7:14
of someone "enslaved to sin" because they are "made of
flesh." Yet in the very next chapter he denies that a person "in the
flesh" can please God. These comments would contradict each other if both
were meant to refer to Paul's current state.
The dissonance of the "current struggle of Paul" interpretation only
increases the more we look at the context. Romans 6:17 is particularly telling:
But thanks be
to God because you were slaves of sin but you obeyed from the heart the type
of teaching which you have received.
Here the timing of enslavement to sin is prior to coming to faith. For Paul to
say that he is currently enslaved to sin would thus imply that he was not even
a person of faith yet. Indeed, the wording of this statement is very similar to
Paul's resolution at the end of Romans 7:
Who will rescue me from the body of
this death? But thanks
be to God--through
Jesus Christ our Lord (7:24-25a).
We should thus read Romans 7:13-15 as a dramatic enactment of the process of
going from being a slave to sin to being free from sin. We should have read it
this way all along, given Paul's preface to this sequence of thought in 7:5-6:
For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins which came through
the law used to work in our members bearing fruit to death, but now we have been released from the law and have died in
relation to that by which we were held so that we might serve in the newness of
the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
So when we now come to the Augustinian imagery of a sinful nature, we recognize
a certain skew from Paul's own imagery. The idea of a nature--particularly for
us who now process human behavior in terms of DNA--raises questions about
physical things inside of me, genetics, brain structure, and such. Before
Christians thought about such things, we still found those in the Wesleyan
tradition arguing over whether a person's sinful nature might be eradicated or
perhaps could only be suppressed.
We can see that these discussions are all somewhat wrong headed. Paul does not
say that we all have a sinful nature. What he implies is that Sin holds power
over this creation. So in Romans 8:20 Paul says that "the creation was
subjected to futility, not willingly, but on account of the One who subjected
it in hope." Our flesh is a part of this creation, and its default state
in this realm is enslavement to the power of Sin.
But it is interesting to note what this state of affairs did not mean in Paul's
own imagery. For example, notice how Paul argues in Romans 7:16-17 in relation
to the person without the Spirit:
If I do what I do not want, I agree
with the law, that it is good. But now it is no longer I doing it but sin that dwells in me.
In
Paul's formulation, the person wants to do good and
wants to keep the law, but is unable to do so because of a foreign power over
them. And Paul is not talking about a believer here. He is talking about a Jew
who might want to keep the heart of the Jewish law, say the prohibition on
coveting.
There is no sense here of depravity of the "I," although we might
overlay Paul's own thoughts with our sense of will. Only then can we say that
this person has a "bent" to sinning. But for Paul, this person's
inclination is not to sin. The person
is simply not empowered to do so.
What we find here is a quasi-dualistic sense of a human person. I am not
totally depraved in my essential being but I may actually be inclined toward
the good in my ego, in my
"inner person" (7:22)!
Similarly, while Romans 5:12 speaks of sin and death entering the world through
Adam, it says nothing of us acquiring a sin nature. In
some way because of Adam, all now sin. But Paul leaves it to us to figure out
the mechanism for why that happens. Reading between the lines, the answer that
sticks closest to Paul's own categories is one that sees the power of Sin
coming on the world and over human flesh because of Adam's sin. At the eschaton we will no longer have such flesh, because
"flesh and blood cannot inherit the
Against
this backdrop, we can see the Augustinian reading of Paul as an overreading. Sure, Paul does quote the psalm, "There
is none righteous, not even one" (Rom. 3:10 quoting Ps. 14:1-3). To do so,
he takes the psalm somewhat out of context because it was originally referring
to fools who say there is no God! But note that Paul does not say that
"there is no one with any good in them whatsoever" or "there is
no one who has ever done one good thing." At the very few points where
Paul's language might sound a little like this, we should understand Paul to be
speaking somewhat hyperbolically, given his default mode of talking about human
action.
As
with other issues later theologians are to blame for this body of argumentative
death. Paul talks about humans as if they have free will and as if they can
desire good. He does not have a worked out theology of how this can be. He does
not fit our apparent free will with the idea that we are elect--and to do so is
not commendable when it ends up skewing one or the other pole of his thinking!
He does not have some dark sense of total depravity. All are sinners, yes. All
need God's grace to be saved, yes. No human is worthy of God, yes.
But he apparently does not think of humans as unable to want
the good, and he can say of himself before he came to Christ that
"according to the righteousness that is in the law, I was blameless"
(Phil. 3:6). He doesn't cover his theological tale here by referencing prevenient grace. He is, to put it simply, talking like a
Jew. Works do not justify, yes. But Paul talks as if unbelievers can do some
good even though they do not have the Spirit.
So,
I'll concede to Thomas Schreiner that the idea of prevenient
grace is more Wesley than Paul. But in terms of which theology produces a
"theological product" that looks more like the NT, Wesley wins over
Calvin. Wesley's doctrine of prevenient grace
accounts for good done by a person who is not regenerate. Calvin will largely
deny it. Wesley's doctrine of sanctification implies that a person can live
above sin after the Spirit. Calvin is far more pessimistic and Luther doesn't
even want to talk about it (shh, it's God's secret,
so Gerhard Forde).
--------------------------------------------
Comments:
Craig: Ken... that was one of the best explanations of Semi-Pelagianism I have read. You have almost convinced me that
I had some inherent goodness in me and that is why I chose to receive Christ. I
wasn't spiritually dead, only spiritually sick :)
Ken: I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to believe here--I've only
tried to describe a few different perspectives and point out that Wesleyan-Arminianism is closest to Paul himself of the three. I'll
let the church decide where we should be on this issue now. Of
course if semi-Pelagianism turned out to be God's
position, then I'm all for it! ;-)
Nathan C.: A trap that I think many people fall into is to say
that humanity is sinful. To be human is to be sinful. But then what do we do
about Jesus' humanity? Was his humanity not sinful? Then that seems to me to
slip into a sort of docetism.
Is humanity not inherently sinful? Then we lose a long line of traditional
thinking on sin.
On another line, I heard a comment this weekend at the WTS that in Scripture,
sin is not original, but is always volitional - it has to do with the choosing
to sin. Care to comment?
Ken: I guess it partly depends on what Paul means when he says that "in
Adam all die." In 5:12 he does pin it on us not because of Adam but
because we all sin (thus volitional). I am not inclined to take the statement
about all "in Adam" to imply a well worked out Augustinian sense of
original or inherited sin. It seems to me a figure of speech without a material
connection between us and Adam. We sin like Adam did and thus die as Adam did.
Of course I do believe a person can wrong another person unintentionally, which
I suppose to be fully human, even Jesus must have done??? Did Jesus wrong his
parents when he did not do as children were obligated to and stay with their
train of pilgrims??? Luke says he was subject to them!!! If so, then we must
understand the vast majority of NT mention of sin to be about intentional
sin, the kind that involves temptation (tempted in every way yet without sin).
Scary things to ponder!
Nathaniel M.: The Eastern and Oriental churches (as well as the
Assyrians to a lesser extent) have a different understanding of the Trinity,
which leads to a different anthropology. In the West, "God" means the
essence shared by F/S/HS. In the East, "God" generally means the
Father (who shares His essence with the S/HS). In the West, God (F/S/HS) create
the world with its own ontological substance which it is then able to maintain
on its own. In the East, ontology is "looser." A common maxim is
"To exist is to be in the mind of the Father." Thus, God is not
merely the catalyst of ontology, but the eternal source of it. In this
understanding, the East would hold that Evil/Satan has no ontological reality
in and of itself and Satan has no ability to "manipulate" existence.
Satan's only power is utility: he can use that which was created for a purpose
that it was not created for.
Thus, when discussing Creation and the Fall, man is
created in the "image" and "likeness" of God. The East and
West agree that the "image" and "essence" of man are
closely related. The East and West disagree on what is corrupted in the Fall. In the West, the "image" is corrupted: Roman
Catholic's teach only partially; Calvin teaches fully. For the East, the image
could never be corrupted because it would imply that Satan/humanity have a power that they don't possess: the power to modify
the "essence" of humanity. The West somewhat realizes this too and
thus moved to an Anselmic view of atonement where the
progenitor of the Fall is God himself (rather than
Satan in the Eastern view). In contrast, the East talks about the corrupted
"likeness." It is this likeness that is restored through the
incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ and appropriated
through our baptism.
So, yes, the Eastern Church formulates the fall fairly differently than the
West. However, one should also note that it is still not Pelagian.
You talk about having "free will apart from God's empowerment." The
Eastern Church does not allow for *anything* apart from the Fathers's
empowerment. This is the East's ontology.
One should also note that, while the East does hold Pelagius as a heretic, it
is for a different reason. Pelagius is condemned for his connection with Originism in the East, while the West condemns his his theology at
5.
By Faith Alone (3/8/07)
All we need do to show that
Luther's "by faith alone" is not the whole biblical picture is cite
James 2:24: "so we see that a person is justified by works and not by
faith alone." Paul himself never uses the adverb "alone" when
speaking of justification by faith. The closest he comes is in Romans 3:28 when
he says, "a person is justified by faith and not
by works of law."
As we might expect, the meaning of faith and its relationship to deeds in Paul
is somewhat complex. We might summarize the landscape as follows:
1. We should not understand faith and works to be
mutually exclusive concepts. In 1 Thess. 1:3, Paul
commends the Thessalonians for their "work of faith." Also, faith by
its very nature "works," as in Gal. 5:6, where Paul says that neither
circumcision nor uncircumcision matters--only faith working through love. Eph. 2:8-10 can say
from one verse to the next that we are saved by grace through faith, not of
works, and then say in the next verse that we were created for good
works--clearly the two concepts do not contradict each other.
2. Paul does teach that a person cannot merit justification by his or her
works--no amount of deeds merits a "not-guilty" verdict. However,
since Augustine we are prone to see this as an abstract faith versus works
proposition. Paul surely processed the expression "works of law" by
way of the Jewish law. And
since Paul's primary topic of discussion is the differences between Jew and
Gentile, arguing that Jews do not have a different path to justification than
Gentiles do, we should primarily think of the phrase "works of law"
as a reference to law observances that distinguished Jew from Gentile
(circumcision, sabbath observance, food laws, etc...).
Paul's point is thus that a Jew did not stand a better chance at justification
simply because they were Jews. All have
sinned--both Jew and Gentile. All need the faithful death of Jesus Christ in
order that their sins might be atoned for and they might be redeemed.
3. The expression "through the faith of Jesus Christ" in Romans 3:22a
and Galatians 2:16a is likely a reference to the faithfulness (to death) of
Jesus, his obedience unto death. In that sense, the most
important faith by which we are justified is not even our own. "I
have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
And what I now live in the flesh, I live by trust/in the faith of the Son of
God who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20). The word order
suggests to me that Paul wants the audience to hear both connotations. First they hear, "in faith I live" and think of their own
faith. Then Paul tacks on "the of the Son
of God [faith]" and they think of his faithfulness unto death.
4. But Paul does move the train of thought in both Romans 3 and Galatians 3 to
human faith as the principle for our justification. Romans 4 uses the example
of Abraham's faith in the God who justifies the ungodly (4:5) and who raises
the dead (4:17, 24) as a model for our justification.
The point of justification by faith in Christ versus works of law is thus not that works of law are bad. In
fact, we would argue that for a Jew they remain important as part of their
ongoing relationship with God. Paul never encourages Jews to stop observing the
Jewish law in its ethnic particulars. Only when purity regulations came into
conflict with more essential principles like the unity of the body of Christ
did Paul "fudge" on aspects of the Jewish law (Gal. 2:11-14)
They simply are inadequate to justify. In fact, Paul explicitly denies that we
make void law because of faith (3:31). Faith thus does not even remove the
principle of law!
5. While works are not adequate to justify a person, faith expresses itself
through appropriate works. On the Day of Judgment, God "will repay to each
according to his works" (
Indeed, far from faith removing works as a basis for judgment and
"final" justification, faith brings the Spirit which enables the works necessary for
justification. "Do we cancel law therefore through faith? God forbid! But
we establish law" (Rom. 3:31). "Shall we continue in sin that grace
may abound? God forbid! How will we who have died to sin still live in
it?" (6:1-2). And of course Paul speaks of
Gentiles who "demonstrate the work of the law written on their
hearts" in Rom. 2:15. These individuals "by nature do the things of
the law" (2:14). This language is reminiscent of Jer.
31 cited in Hebrews 8, 10 and alluded to in 2 Corinthians 3. It is new covenant
language that pushes us to see these Gentiles as individuals who have the
Spirit and are thus able to fulfill the righteous expectation of the law (Rom.
2:26; 8:4).
The confusing part of Paul's rhetoric is that he almost functions with two
different conceptions of law here. Works of law have overtones of Jewish particularism and ethnic boundary issues. But in Romans 2
and 8, law seems to refer to a certain kind of core law that a Gentile might
keep by nature even though uncircumcised. For our discussion, the important
thing to notice is that Paul claims that the person who is unable to keep the
law in Romans 7 is able to do so in Romans 6 and 8. And while works cannot justify
in themselves, they are necessary for final justification in his thought.
Clearly Paul's thinking here is problematic for Lutheran theology in
particular. On this point especially, Wesleyan-Arminian
theology is beautifully situated between Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism in
relation to Paul's thought. If medieval Catholicism did not have an appropriate
sense in which grace asks for faith as its initiator, Lutheranism did not have
an appropriate sense of how grace asks for particular works--here understood as
the avoidance of sin rather than good deeds--as essential for final
justification. Wesleyan-Arminian theology correctly
holds to both: faith as the only effective solicitation of God's grace and
works as a natural (and essential) by product of faith brought through the
Spirit, where works are here understood more as the avoidance of sin rather
than positive good deeds.
6.
Wesley, Wesleyans, Scripture, etc.
(3/9/07)
That means, however, that reasoning is involved with
the correct appropriation of Scripture--reasoning beyond Scripture.
Many of the key, even essential beliefs of
Christendom--the Trinity, the dual nature of Christ, the contours of the canon--took
on their quasi-current form in the 300's and 400's. The contours of the canon
are particularly poignant. The same drive that allowed Luther to resist the
book of James also led him to remove the Apocrypha completely from the canon.
They had been in use up to his day at least as deuterocanonical,
even if they may not have had as full a status as what we would consider the protocanonical books.
In any case, the Bible alone cannot
by its very nature cannot identify the limits of what should be in the Bible.
So
both in the nature of language in relation to context, given the contexts of
the books of the Bible and our different context, and in the very question of
what the contours of the canon are, the Bible alone is insufficient to provide
us either with a stable meaning for today or a stable set of words on which to
base that meaning. The so called Wesleyan Quadrilateral is thus a far sounder
hermeneutic. It is, however, more of a trilateral in reality. There are the
biblical texts, there is the history of interpretation of those texts by the
church, and there is contemporary experience. Reasoning is necessary to process
all of these. It is the roundhouse through which all the trains of meaning
inevitably pass, whether we like it or not.
But
all that is passe stuff I have written often before.
I can't see how any of it is even debatable, really. What is more difficult is
to identify what Wesleyan theology even is in the first place.
When
I ask myself, what was distinctive about John Wesley in his own day, I think of
things like 1) the idea of prevenient grace, 2) the
idea of the assurance of salvation, 3) his ordo salutis, which was characteristic
both in its "methodist" character and particularly
in relation to 4) the doctrine of Christian perfection that was a part of it
(as also prevenient grace). But the Wesleyan
tradition has not been static, even if some of its wandering has been
unconscious movement.
So
most Wesleyans, as most Baptists and others, have become semi-Pelagian to believe--or at least to operate as if--we have
free will apart from some miraculous intervention of God. I'm not convinced it
should be called semi-Pelagian, but the current
Wesleyan (broad) sense of prevenient grace differs
from Wesley's somewhat in that we tend to think of prevenient
grace as the grace that makes it possible for us to choose God at any time.
Wesley of course thought the opportunity only came on God's time.
Russ
Gunsalus had a good "light" metaphor for the current way of thinking,
extending my previous metaphors. If for the Calvinist, God turns the switch of
salvation on or leaves it off, if for Wesley it was more like a dimmer switch
that God at some point turns up enough for us to say we want more light, Russ
suggested that the current understanding of prevenient
grace is of a switch that God has wired to be hot so that we can throw the
switch at any time. In other words, it is prevenient
grace that makes the throwing of the switch possible, but we are empowered to
throw it at any time. This prevailing understanding is different from Wesley's.
The
doctrine of assurance is no longer distinctive. Most believe we can know now
whether we are on the way to heaven or not. In fact, I believe the idea of
eternal security is a variation on the original Calvinist "perseverence of the saints" in the sense that it
brings assurance into the equation. Before, a Puritan didn't know if s/he was
saved until s/he made it. But with assurance now, if you know you are saved now
and those who are saved will persevere, then once you
are saved you know you are going to be saved. It is a kind of
one point Calvinism without the logical basis!
My
sense is also that most Wesleyans have become very tentative about Christian
perfection as an instantaneous experience. Here let me suggest that the
following components of Wesley's soteriology remain
essential Wesleyanism:
1.
The importance of imparted righteousness in the life of the believer. In other
words, Wesleyans in the broad sense continue to emphasize the need for victory
over sin and the power of God to make it possible.
2.
The possibility of losing one's assured salvation. Wesleyans continue to have a
sense of sin as a matter of a relationship with God, a relationship that can be
offended, broken, and even restored again.
3.
Although you don't hear much preaching on sin natures and such these days,
Wesleyans would continue to preach the need for entire consecration of oneself
to God. And along with this, I think most Wesleyans would still agree that you
can not only win over temptation, but you can like it. In other words, that you
can be oriented toward doing the right thing rather than sinning.
Beyond
soteriology, let me also add that
4.
The Wesleyan tradition has increasingly seized on Wesley's method of using
Scripture, summarized by Albert Outler as Wesley's
Quadrilateral. This is a keeper. Wesley wouldn't have put it quite this way,
but we can see him more objectively now than he could have in his day and
categories.
This
may seem like a watered down list of Wesley-an
characteristics. As others have posed, it is a legitimate question as to
whether we can even speak of an essence of Wesleyan theology without
referencing Calvin and Augustine, to where Wesley's theology is a tweak rather
than a free-standing theology. This suggestion bugs me. Chris Bounds also
pointed out to me yesterday that my descriptions of Paul might actually be
closer to the Eastern Orthodox tradition than to Wesley himself, which also
bugs me.
So
how might we describe a Wesley-an theology that is
systematic in its own right today, not as a variation on Calvinism? I wonder if
one direction such a theology might take is a somewhat pragmatist turn, one
that fits with the death of conventional metaphysics. Wesleyan theology seems
well suited in flavor to make certain theological statements that are in
potential tension with each other but which we do not logically try to resolve,
assuming the resolution of the tensions is in God.
1.
God offers the opportunity of faith to all persons.
2.
Those who have faith are elect of God, predestined by
Him.
3.
The default state of all humans is one of separation from God and the end
thereof is death in the dual sense.
4.
God's justification of those with faith is gracious and not by any obligation
on His part.
5.
Reconciliation with God is only possible on the basis of the atoning death of
Christ.
6.
God empowers those in Christ and thus expects fulfillment of his core
("moral") law thereafter.
7.
Continued willful sin after adoption as God's child endangers one's
relationship with God and can break it if one wrongs God enough.
8.
Final justification will be based on the status of one's relationship with God
on the Day of Judgment.
These
bald affirmations raise all sorts of other questions, questions that have
spawned the "mythologies" of various Christian traditions about
natures and such. But it seems particularly appropriate in a postmodern
age--and quite amenable to Wesley's practical nature--to leave the gaps.
------------------------------------
Comments:
Craig: Ken... I have enjoyed your theological reflections.
The questions I have are these. You said "that God justifies those with
faith," which is a standard Wesleyan and Reformed understanding. I have
always wondered why one will have the faith to be justified and someone else
will not. Where does justifying faith come from? From the Holy Spirit and prevenient grace I think you would say. If someone does not
muster up enough faith or fails to respond in a positive way to God's offer of
grace, where is the breakdown? Are some individuals more depraved, posses less
intrinsic goodness, less intelligence or born more foolish than others? Why did
you and I choose to receive Christ and many we know reject him? I guess it is
better to say that if someone dies having refused to receive grace,
we can blame that individual for his own damnation. But to blame God for not
choosing or electing someone offends us. I think leaving the choice to depraved
people who are by default inclined to sin and resistant to God also sounds
unkind. This question has caused me to lean more Calvinistic in the last 5 or 6
years. I asked Chris Bounds about this last year and I would like to hear your
comments.
Also, Wesleyan "eternal insecurity" sounds to
much like car insurance. To many violations and you get cancelled out. I think
God is more involved in keeping us in fellowship with Him instead of leaving it
up to us to maintain a good driving, I mean living record.
Ken: I deliberately left the prevenient grace,
irresistible grace issue out of the final list because it's where we begin to
fill in the gaps and run the most risk of skewing the basics. Free will is easy
to affirm until you begin to think about the way the brain works and realize
how determined our wills really are as a by product of brain structure meets
body and world. If true free will exists in some way, I believe we would have
to consider it a miracle of God's intervention.
In
terms of security, I think we should think of God in terms of a very patient
husband or wife. Issues of His honor surely come into play at some point, but I
wouldn't say in any way that there is insecurity. God's not looking to get out
of the relationship.
My thoughts... Yours?
Craig: Ken, the brain structure and free will diversion was
merely a cleaver way of side-stepping the issue. I have found that Wesleyan
theologians don't want to deal with this issue. Maybe it is irrelevant and
skews the basics. The origin of effectual saving faith has always been a
question for me and Wesleyans have never answered it to my satisfaction.
Reformed theology seems to at least have a reasonable response. Maybe I should
leave you guys alone. Semi-Pelagianism is the only
explanation I think is available for the Wesleyan and I have big problems with
it.
You
are right, God is not looking to get out of the
relationship. The work of regeneration and sanctification is his plan for
keeping us in. You guys at IWU know better, but in my years in The Wesleyan
Church, "losing" your salvation was preached all the time. Man, I
lived in fear of being one sin from hell much of my early adult life.
Ken: Not clever enough ;-)
Yes,
I grew up with the "one sin you're out" teaching too, and I don't
agree with it at all.
Just to defend Wesley, I don't think of him as a semi-Pelagian
because God completely dispensed the power of will at will. I'm not convinced
that current Wesleyanism must be semi-Pelagian in the sense that God dispenses the power of will
equally to all.
I can see your problem with the second, because it sure does not look like
every person on this planet has an equal opportunity to come at every point.
However, who is to say that at some point in their life God does not
dole out a moment of light to each individual in the midst of an otherwise
darkened existence? In that sense I think Wesley himself both fits our
experience and avoids Pelagianism (assuming that we
should avoid it ;-).
I think you're right that most pop-Wesleyans (Baptists, etc...) are Pelagian without knowing it.
But in my view, a 5 point God cannot truly be a God of love and cannot offer
any satisfactory answer to the problem of evil, that is, unless he is a universalist. To me, this is a far
worse answer to the equation that trivializes all the biblical statements about
God's love for the world. And of course, if God determines who will be saved. And if God wants everyone to be saved. Then everyone will be
saved. Only if a person is willing to accept that all will be saved, then the
position cannot be reconciled with Scripture.
Craig: Yes, the "pop" Wesleyans and Baptists
compelled me to run to the Calvinists. But, I will have to say that Drury's
articles on the subject and Bounds have been very helpful and I can live with
their version of Wesleyanism. But, no one else seems
to be saying these things in the Wesleyan camps that I am aware of. I talk to
Wesleyan & UM clergy and laity alike and all I get is
the choice to be saved is up to me when I decide to make it.
Much of the evangelism strategy of high pressure decisions, guilt inducement
and emotional pleas that seems to be designed to close the sale on the
listeners is influenced by this faulty theology I think. As you may agree, many
of the decisions for Jesus don't last and wilt away.
I got my fill of that in the 80's and early 90's as a Wesleyan. In Methodism it
is not a problem because evangelism and preaching the gospel is rare.
I think your version of Wesleyanism is as healthy as
it can get. I hope you and the other faculty at IWU can train a new generation
of Wesleyans who do not follow the "pop" Wesleyanism
of the past. As for me, I feel much more at home in the Reformed world.
OAW:
1. God offers the opportunity of faith
to all persons.
No Reformed person would disagree with this. The
general call goes out to all. The command is to repent and believe. The promise
is that to those who repent and believe (what God requires He must first give)
they will find a gracious Savior.
All who hear the command to repent have the natural ability to respond but
because they are dead in their trespasses and sins they do, like the Pharisee's
in Stephen's speech in Acts 7, always resist the Holy Spirit. So obviously
because of this moral inability people must be regenerated so that their
natural ability is compliment by a new moral ability.
What makes Wesleyanism
unique here (and so in error) is the presupposition beneath statement #1 that
the Sovereign God wants something he fails to get and that is the salvation of
all men. For Wesleyans God, decretively speaking,
wants all men saved and so offers the opportunity of faith to all people.
2. Those who have faith are elect of
God, predestined by Him.
Again, this is something that all Reformed people
believe. The difference is however is that we can equally turn it around to say
that all who are elect of God and they alone will have faith.
Also the normative Wesleyan premise under girding this statement #2 is that
predestination is posited upon a foreknowledge that
see's what men will do and predestines them on account of what God sees they
will freely do. (Hence the question of libertarian free will that Rev. Moore
brings up can't be easily sloughed off.)
Actually though, interestingly enough, if God knows what men not yet born will
do when it comes to their decision regarding salvation then those men once
coming into their own cannot do otherwise then that which God has foreknown
from eternity that they will do which raises the question whether or not even
in this construct libertarian will survives.
3. The default state of all humans is
one of separation from God and the end thereof is death in the dual sense.
This is something that all Reformed people agree with.
The difference for Wesleyans is that when the dimmer switch gets turned up
crippled but not dead man has the ability to co-operate with Grace to the end
of going from dim to full brightness.
As Rev.
4. God's justification of those with
faith is gracious and not by any obligation on His part.
Reformed agree here again.
5. Reconciliation with God is only
possible on the basis of the atoning death of Christ.
A question here.
Does the atoning death of Christ make reconciliation possible or actual?
6. God empowers those in Christ and thus
expects fulfillment of his core ("moral") law thereafter.
We can all agree that He expects fulfillment but the question I think is does
He expect that His covenant people can achieve perfection like He is perfect?
If the standard for fulfillment is absolute perfect to all the demands of His
righteous law does the infinitely perfect and Holy God expect His people to
achieve the fulfillment of His law in that way or is it the case that while God
expects us to fulfill his moral law He knows we will never achieve it and so
the righteousness of Christ is imputed not only to our persons but also to our
works that we and they may be made acceptable.
I will say this though...
There is a strain of Reformedom that could find great
common ground with Wesleyanism's Holiness. The only
problem would be moving away from pietistic notions of Holiness to the kind of
Holiness that we find in God's revealed law.
7. Continued willful sin after adoption
as God's child endangers one's relationship with God and can break it if one
wrongs God enough.
Are you familiar with the concept of outer and inner covenant?
Many Reformed agree with this if they could nuance it
somewhat. I would say for example that continued willful sin after being put in
the covenant of Grace as God's child endangers one's relationship with God and
can break it if one wrongs God enough.
Certainly Hebrews 6 and 10 teach that those who are
Sons of Israel who are not Sons of the Israel of Israel can be expelled from
the community of God's people and in the expelling they lose something that
they had gained from being around the House of the Holy (Heb. 6) though they do
not lose the essence of a covenantal favor they never had. They were in the
place where the sap of salvation flowed but they never partook of that sap.
8. Final justification will be based on
the status of one's relationship with God on the Day of Judgment.
Are there any who are initially justified who do not partake in eschatological
justification?
This is probably a huge disagreement because Reformed would say that what
happens in initial justification is that the eschatological justification is
brought into the experience of the one who has faith thus guaranteeing that
there is a relationship between initial justification and eschatological
(final) justification.
Ken: OAW, as usual you have so much in your comment that
we almost have to make it its own post so that we can have a good dialog.
Part of my design in this list was to stay close to the surface of the text as
it were. Both Reformed and Wesleyan theology go
considerably beyond the text to glue these statements together. So the Reformed
position cannot take verses like 1 Timothy 2:4, 2
Peter 1:10, or Hebrews 6:4-6 at face value, because they do not fit with the
Calvinist glue. Similarly, Wesleyans do not typically take any passage on
predestination in a deterministic way because it does not fit with their Arminian glue.
In my list I have intentionally stopped short of gluing the comments together
because it always seems to be the glue that skews Paul in one direction or
another.
I would agree that it seems at least superficially true that if God knows that
a person will have faith then that person cannot possibly not have faith (I
have to say superficially because can we really know how these things work for
God?). But for me this would not at all imply that God determined that
they would have faith.
If I watch the Superbowl live and then watch it with
a group who are watching it on a delayed broadcast, I know what is going to
happen even though I am not determining what will happen in any way. The
problem in this scenario is not that foreknowledge implies determinism, particularly
if God is "outside time" in some way. The potential problem for my
theology is that God seems (again, superficially) to be gaining new knowledge
from outside Himself. But since we have no point of reference by which we might
have any idea how God knows things, one can hardly
demonstrate that this is fatal with any force.
OAW: Howdy Ken,
First
let me thank you for your patience. My goal in any post is that we might
together grow up in the knowledge of the one faith we mutually embrace.
I like your glue analogy. Instead of saying that 'the devil is in the details'
we can now say that 'the sticking points are in the glue.'
Rodney Dangerfield eat your heart out!
Also, I would contend that your view of the Creator's foreknowledge makes it contingent
upon the creature's action as opposed to a seemingly more God glorifying
arrangement where the creature's action is contingent upon the Creator's
knowledge.
Of
course you already know that in Hebrew, 'to know' is not merely an abstract
familiarity but rather includes the idea of intimacy. When you marry that idea
with texts like Hebrews 2:10ff (esp. 14) and II Tim. 1:9 one begins to get a
sense (mysterious to comprehend though it genuinely is) that some kind of
pre-temporal relationship existed between the Triune God and His beloved ones
that perhaps gives us a clue about the idea of foreknowledge.
Well,
I will quit because, as you implied, I can far to
easily get carried away and so distract from the subject at hand.
P.S. -- Problem for your Super bowl analogy is that Scripture explicitly
teaches that God determines the beginning from the end. (Is. 46:10)
Ken: Thanks OAW (I always think of the UAW when I write that ;-). I didn't
mean to imply that you get carried away. If they weren't "meaty" comments,
I wouldn't feel compelled to respond so much...
OAW: Well given what is happen to our industry base in These United States
maybe OAW could stand for
Outsider
Auto Workers
7.
The “Analogy of Faith” (imported
from a later conversation, 3/21/07)
[Meta-Comment:
This is the discussion that ensued
after a later post on 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, which I argued implies that a
person can be baptized and yet not inherit the
OAW: Recently, some Reformed scholars are beginning to
re-think visible and invisible Church categories augmenting such categories
with Historical and
Clearly, the Apostle is communicating that within the
Further, it should be said that all those who were and are put into and are
part of the Historical Church but who don’t finish, as part of the
Eschatological Church, because of a lack of perseverance, had advantages in
every way (Romans 3:2). Like those in the Old Covenant who squandered the
advantages of being baptized into Moses, drinking from the rock who was Christ,
eating the same spiritual food, and passing under the cloud and through the sea
(I Cor. 10) those in the New Covenant have advantages
that can be squandered. Having heard the gospel proclamation it could be
rightly said of them that they were ‘once enlightened.’ Having come to the
table they had tasted of the heavenly gift. Being part of the covenant
community they were, with all of the Historical church, covenantally
speaking, partakers of the Holy Spirit. In coming under the preached word and
in being part of the Church they had tasted the good word of God and the powers
of the age to come (Hebrews 10). No one should ever argue that
Now there will be those who object that this explanation doesn’t make any sense
because the elect covenant members in the Church don’t need such a warning
because they will always persevere and the non-elect covenant members won’t
heed such a warning because they are reprobate. The problem with such an
objection is that it doesn’t take into account that God predestines means as
well as ends. It is true that the elect covenant member will persevere and the
non-elect won’t but it is also true that God preserves His covenant people
using these very real warnings to work in the elect covenant member
perseverance and to increase the responsibility of the non-elect covenant
member for their lack of perseverance. Should someone who thinks of themselves
as an elect covenant member ignore such warnings against apostasy by assuring
themselves they are elect this guilty presumption testifies against their
hopefulness for being part of the
So what does this teach us? It teaches us that not all who begin the journey
(Baptism) in the
Warning passages like I Corinthians 10, Hebrews 6, 10, and Revelation 1-3 speak
to people who are Christians who are in the
These people do not lose everything as the Arminians
would have us believe for these people never had everything as their leaving
reveals (I John 2:19) but neither do they lose nothing as some Hard Shell
Calvinist might argue, as certain texts (Romans 11, Rev. 1-3, II Peter 2:20-22)
reveal. They lose all the real objective advantages they were offered if only
they had continued to bring forth the proper subjective response they began
with of a continuous faith and obedience (Matthew 13:20-22), and in the turning
away from those objective advantages their judgment is all the more harsh
(Hebrew 10:29f). Indeed this understanding alone potentially provides a way
that could satisfy both Arminian and Calvinist
convictions, while maintaining the integrity of all of Scripture.
Given this we can understand we can understand passages like I Corinthians
6:9-10 or Galatians 5:19-21 or passages where a warning is given to the Church
that uses as an analogy apostasy in OT Israel (Hebrews 3, I Cor.
10, Hebrews 10). The analogy isn’t that some of the Israelites
were in Christ but fell away and so they being in Christ should learn of them
so they don’t fall away. Rather the analogy is since it is true that just as
they are not all of Israel who are of Israel so it is true that they are not
all of the Church who are of the Church and the warning is that which
differentiates the two is judgment that came and will come upon unfaithful and
disobedient.
Ken:
These are very intelligent thoughts indeed and show
Reformed theologians (in both the formal and informal sense of the word) doing
what they should do, to connect the specifics of the biblical text to their
overarching theological understanding. I do it; we all do it; we have to do it.
We differ on at least two points: 1) on what that overarching theology turns
out to be and 2) the denial that what we are doing here is not unfolding
biblical theology in the sense of a theology in the Bible but
identifying a theology beyond the Bible that takes the entire Bible into
account.
Thanks for sharing some very intelligent working out of theology vis-a-vis the text.
OAW:
Must not all the theology we find in the Bible take
account of all of the Bible?
I mean we can't read Romans 4 in a way that flatly contradicts James 2 can we?
(As just one example)
He surely wasn't getting a theology beyond the Bible was he?
Ken:
The "analogy of faith," which of course
Wesley agreed with Calvin and others on, largely operates by way of a
non-contextual paradigm. The words of the entire biblical text become a
somewhat complex speech-act in which God is the sender and we are the receiver.
Historical and contextual factors are taken into account to varied degrees as a
part of that speech act. But because God is the overarching speaker, words must
be harmonized on one level or another so that the words are not primarily read
in terms of the question "What is the most likely meaning these words had
given their original contexts."
Paul largely interprets the text this way as well, although he often harmonized
in non-literal, non-contextual ways that most evangelical Bible teachers would
flunk if their students tried them (e.g., allegory).
However, the books of the Bible themselves tell us that they were individually
speech acts between Paul and individual ancient audiences (allowing that Paul
believes the Spirit is speaking through him).
Here is where we run into a problem. Using the analogia
fidei approach, we can finagle the words however we
think we need to in order to make the text, the entire text yes, fit with
whatever theological system we want it to fit together with.
But the contextual approach follows rules of specific historical and literary
contexts. It is flexible to be sure (just look at the commentaries of those
following a historical-critical approach), but not nearly as flexible as the
analogy of faith approach. We have to judge meanings on the basis of what an
audience in the first century could have understood rather than in terms of what
we believe God had to have meant by the words.
Further, this approach claims that God was writing these meanings for all time,
yet because we are inevitably the ones determining that universal meaning, we
end up basically reading the words against our own context over and against all
the other contexts of history.
OAW:
So am I understanding you correctly that your
hermeneutic is in some sense in pursuit in the way the message would have been
understood by the receivers of the message and not in the way the message was
intended to be understood by the ultimate or even penultimate sender of the
message?
Further is it correct to say that in your understanding since we can't get back
to the original understanding (presumably because of our historical situated-ness) of the sent message we therefore are allowed to, and
even should find a meaning in the text that is shaped by our own historical
situation in life?
If God was writing these meanings for all times knowing that we would be the
ones who would determine the universal meaning then how is it that God really
had any intent that His meanings would be for all time?
Do most of your students understand the difference between the
Historical-Critical approach and the Historical-Grammatical approach?
I also have a question about historical and literary contexts but I will save
that for a future go.
Finally do you believe that the Holy Spirit was speaking through Paul?
Ken:
You:
Your hermeneutic is pursuit of how the message would have been understood by
the receivers of the message and not by the ultimate sender of the message?
Ken: The most significant insight into the answer to this question is to
understand the distinction. The words from Paul to first century Romans had a
meaning. Were they written to the people Romans says they were written to? If
so, they must have had relatively understandable meanings in relation to what
words could mean according to Webster's AD58ish Greek Dictionary, whose entries
were numbered (as all dictionaries) from the meaning most commonly used by
people around the Mediterranean to the least commonly used meanings.