Another Reader's Review

The Rhetoric of Preaching in Elizabethan England

2012-01-30T19:51:00.000-06:00

More from Herr, The Elizabethan Sermon, this time noting some rhetorical expectations of the Elizabethan audience.

In Elizabeth's day the distinction between a sermon and a lecture was not what it is today; if a spoken discourse is didactic and upon dogmatic theology we are likely to term it a sermon and if it is upon scientific or other secular matter we call it a lecture, whereas the Elizabethans termed a theological discourse a lecture or a sermon depending only upon whether it was read from a finished composition or preached from memory with the aid of notes only. This distinction was rigidly preserved in the titles when the sermons and lectures went to press. A further distinctive term was reserved for a theological dissertation which was neither preached nor read before an audience; this was called a treatise. When a man came to preach a sermon, therefore, he endeavored to use only notes and to have those notes as brief as possible. To preach without even the notes was the aspiration. The fullness or brevity of the notes from which the sermon was to be delivered was a matter of choice for the preacher. Very few of those notes have been published, naturally enough, but we may presume that they varied in length as greatly as do men's memories. Bishop Andrewes' notes were full to the point of indicating the nature of every sentence, while Hooker used none at all. (35)

The Elizabethan clergy were allowed more time to present their sermons than most churches grant their clergy today, for while we are content with even a quarter-hour sermon, then both the congregation and the preacher felt that one hour was meet and right for sermon length. Lest any contention arise about the matter, we find that the congregation did not disdain to provide an hour-glass nor the clergy to turn over as they mounted the pulpit steps. (34-5)

Gestures were expected to accompany a good strong sermon. So usual were they, as a matter of fact, that there is very little mention of them in contemporary discussions of sermons, except to note anything so unusual as the lack of them. Hooker, for example, stood in his pulpit motionless, not even moving his eyes, and this idiosyncrasy was considered remarkable enough to appear in every account of the great preacher. Since Elizabethan sermon audiences preferred everything else in its most sensational form, it is not taking too much for granted to suppose that they liked their pulpits well pounded. (35)

Problems for Preachers in Elizabethan England

2012-01-30T19:35:00.002-06:00

A few amusing excerpts from The Elizabethan Sermon by Alan Fager Herr. How would you like to have been a preacher during this tumultuous time?

The sermons at Paul's Cross, and perhaps at a few other pulpits, were frequently made more amusing for the audience by the exhibition of people doing penance. At the Cross there was a regular platform, level with the pulpit, built for the penitents to stand upon and receive the jeers of the audience and the gibes of village wits. Sometimes the penitents simply stood up throughout the sermon and were considered amply punished. While Dean Nowell preached on February 10, 1560, a man thus stood up for committing bigamy. More spectacular was the man who stood wrapped in a sheet during the sermon of November 6, 1561, for charging Vernon, the Rector of St. Martin's, with incontinency, and on the 23rd of the same month another man was more deeply humiliated by being forced to kneel and beg Vernon's pardon for circulating a rumor that Vernon had been "taken with a wench." (24)

Before the preacher even mounted the pulpit steps the problem of vestments or habit had to be considered. So high was the feeling on this controversial point that no matter what the preacher wore of left unworn, somebody would find fault. . . .On April 7, 1566, the parish of St. Mary Magdalen in Milk Street asked the bishop to appoint a minister to celebrate Holy Communion for them. The minister came and wore a surplice, as he was instructed to do by the bishop. The sight of this surplice so enraged a member of the congregation that, after the minister had come down from the altar to read the epistle and gospel of the day, he sent his servant up behind the minister's back to seize and run off with the chalice of wine and the paten of bread! Holy Communion was that day precipitously discontinued. (32-3).

One minister felt that he should remark upon this [the lack of reverence among the audience] from the pulpit. "Further, Gods house is abused by them which bring hither hawks and dogs, which is faulted in our Church-homilie, and whereby peoples minds are diverted from their devotions." This same preacher protests against persons in the congregation lying down to rest in the church, tearing clothes off brides, laughing when marriage banns are read, or talking business, and against those who come to church to show off their new clothes and "seem to march as if they would exactly measure out the earth by their mincing, or else leade some pompous train upon the stage." (33)

At Paul's Cross the preacher had one or more companions in the pulpit with him; we might almost call them "seconds" when we consider the preacher's need of protection if he displeased too large a portion of the audience. Despite the presence of guards to keep the peace, daggers might be thrown, as happened early in the reign of Mary when Gilbert Bourne preached a sermon wherein he defended Bishop Bonner. Bourne's companion in the pulpit rose and caught the dagger in his sleeve. There was also the possibility that the pulpit might be stormed if the customary coughing and heckling seemed too mild a rebuke to an unpopular preacher. A type of protest against the sermon that was far more acceptable to the preacher took the form of writing objections on paper and throwing them into the pulpit. This was not considered a breach of the peace and so was allowed." (34-5)

Proclamation of the truth is uncomfortable. . .

2012-01-26T12:46:00.000-06:00

because it exposes our false views and protected sins.

Thus the function of prophecy addressed to the churches is to expose the uncomfortable truth, just as the two witnesses torment the inhabitants of the earth by bringing home to them their sin (I1:I0).

Richard Bauckham. The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New Testament Theology) (Kindle Locations 1536-1538). Kindle Edition.

The role of prophecy as the witness of Jesus to the churches is thus entirely parallel to the witness of the churches, bearing the witness ofJesus, to the world. Judgment at the parousia threatens the churches (2:16; 3:3; cf. 16:15) no less than the world. Prophecy warns of that judgment with salvific intent, just as does the churches' witness to the world. And so there is no reason to suppose that the significant dictum, `I reprove and discipline those whom I love' (3:19), applies only to Christ's reproof of the churches, and not also to his churches' witness to the world.

Richard Bauckham. The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New Testament Theology) (Kindle Locations 1546-1549). Kindle Edition.

Logic and the Nature of God

2012-01-25T10:01:00.001-06:00

I recently read a blog entry by Doug Wilson wherein he retracts his "nominalism, but" metaphysic for a "realism, but" metaphysic. I posted a message of agreement and extension of Wilson's main point, which is that our view of God's nature must acknowledge certain logical laws as part and parcel with His Being.

A couple of commenters, and really one in particular, was uneasy about the idea of logic being an attribute of God. He thought it brought God's nature under a standard it ought not to be placed under. At times he seemed leery because he considered logic an aspect of man's mind, but not of God's and at other times he considered logic to be an attribute of creation, but not of God's nature.

Such views on logic are unfortunate, more so for the fact that they are offered frequently in circles of Christianity where a rational faith is upheld as a Biblical ideal. Few, if any, Christians have heartburn over using logic to understand God's revelation, and those Christians who uphold the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture often adhere to the Westminster Confession of Faith's assertion that we understand the Word of God by what it expresses and by "good and necessary inference." This quoted phrase is an acknowledgment of the Biblical warrant for logic, which Gordon Clark defines as "the science of necessary inference" (Logic 1). The study and use of logic proceeds upon the basis of certain laws of logic, namely; the law of identity (an object is the same as itself), the law of contradiction (One cannot say that a thing both is and is not in the same respect and at the same time), and the law of the excluded middle (for any proposition, either the proposition is true, or its negation is true).

It is easy to derive from Scripture these laws of logic (also known as the laws of thought). The very name of God asserts the law of identity, the statement that God does not lie implies the law of contradiction, and statements that indicate God is God and there is no other exhibit the principle of the excluded middle.

Moreover, the people who decry logic are confused about what is a truth. Truth is an evaluation of propositions. Propositions are the meanings of declarative sentences. Knowledge is the possession, or correct evaluation of truth. Given these basic acknowledgments, one wonder why it would be offensive to claim that God's thought exhibits logic because logic is the way God's thought is structured. We don't get in a tizzy over the claim that God has a mind, simply because we can also recognize minds in human creatures. Nor do we think that God's mind is a derivation of human minds. Why then should we think logic is something of man's mind that we project upon God's mind? Rather Scripture reveals that logic is the structure by which God expresses His thoughts, and since He has made us to commune with Him, our minds are also structured by logic.

Far from obliterating the Creator/creature distinction, or holding God accountable to a standard above Him, the laws of logic are the guide for our understanding of the truths we must know in order to love God rightly. Note that saying logic is the guide for knowing God rightly is not the same as saying that logic is the source of truth. God has to reveal to our minds the propositions we must believe, but we could not understand the relationship between the propositions God reveals to us without the laws of logic that govern these relations.

In short, logic isn't bad, though it is often used poorly by men. Logic itself isn't man-made, though certain views about logic are man-made. The Bible exhibits the laws of thought, and it expresses itself in logical forms (Clark gives examples of several logical argument forms appearing in Scripture; see p. 119 of Logic). Without logic we could not know anything, certainly not God in whom we live and move and have our being and for whom our minds were created for communion by means of truth.

The Meaning of the Millennium

2012-01-24T08:56:00.000-06:00

This [the depictions of the defeat of the beast and victory of Christ] shows that the theological point of the millennium is solely to demonstrate the triumph of the martyrs: that those whom the beast put to death are those who will truly live - eschatologically, and that those who contested his right to rule and suffered for it are those who will in the end rule as universally as he - and for much longer: a thousand years! Finally, to demonstrate that their triumph in Christ's kingdom is not one which evil can again reverse, that it is God's last word for good against evil, the devil is given a last chance to deceive the nations again (20:7-8). But it is no re-run of the rule of the beast. The citadel of the saints proves impregnable (20:9).

Richard Bauckham. The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New Testament Theology) (Kindle Locations 1355-1359). Kindle Edition.

The millennium becomes incomprehensible once we take the image literally. But there is no more need to take it literally than to suppose that the sequences of judgments (the seal-openings, the trumpets, the bowls) are literal predictions. John no doubt expected there to be judgments, but his descriptions of them are imaginative schemes designed to depict the meaning of the judgments. John expected the martyrs to be vindicated, but the millennium depicts the meaning, rather than predicting the manner of their vindication.

Richard Bauckham. The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New Testament Theology) (Kindle Locations 1366-1368). Kindle Edition.

The 144,000 - An army of truth-testifying, victorious martyrs

2012-01-18T14:13:00.002-06:00

Chapter 7:4-14 uses the same device as was used in 5:5-6: that of contrasting what John hears (7:4) and what he sees (7:9). The 144,000 from the twelve tribes of Israel (7:4-8) contrast with the innumerable multitude from all nations (7:9), but the two images depict the same reality. They are parallel to the two contrasting images of Christ in 5:5-6: the 144,000 Israelites are the followers of the Davidic Messiah, the Lion ofJudah (note that the tribe ofJudah is listed first), while the innumerable multitude are the people of the slaughtered Lamb, ransomed from all the nations (5:9). Just as the expectation of the Davidic Messiah was reinterpreted by means of the scriptural image of the Passover lamb, so the purely nationalistic image of his followers is reinterpreted by an image drawn from the scriptural promises to the patriarchs. According to these, the descendants of the patriarchs would be innumerable (Gen. 13:16; 15:5; 32:12). Thus, not because Christians in the late first century were actually innumerable, but because of John's faith in the fulfilment of all the promises of God through Christ, the church is depicted as an innumerable company drawn from all nations.

However, there is a further contrast between the 144,000 Israelites and the innumerable multitude which makes the parallel with 5:5-6 exact. The 144,ooo are an army. This is implicit in the fact that 7:4-8 is a census of the tribes of Israel. In the Old Testament a census was always a reckoning of the military strength of the nation, in which only males of military age were counted. The twelve equal contingents from the twelve tribes are the army of all Israel, reunited in the last days according to the traditional eschatological hope, mustered under the leadership of the Lion of Judah to defeat the Gentile oppressors of Israel. But the multitude who celebrate their victory in heaven, ascribing it to God and the Lamb (7:9-10), `have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb' (7:14) . This means that they are martyrs, who have triumphed by participating, through their own deaths, in the sacrificial death of the Lamb. Admittedly, most commentators have understood 7:14 to refer to the Lamb's redemption of Christians from sin, but we have already seen that the reference to the blood of the Lamb in 12:11 must refer to martyrdom. Since 7:14 refers to an action of which the followers of the Lamb are subjects, it is parallel to 12:11, whereas in references to the redemption of Christians by Christ's blood, they are the objects of his action 1:5; 5:9)

Thus, just as 5:5-6 depicts Jesus Christ as the Messiah who has won a victory, but has done so by sacrificial death, not by military might, so 7:4-14 depicts his followers as the people of the Messiah who share in his victory, but do so similarly, by sacrificial death rather than by military violence. This interpretation is confirmed by 14:1-5, in which the 144,000 reappear. Chapters 12-14 portray the combatants in the messianic war. In chapters 12-13 the dragon, the beast and the second beast have been depicted successfully prosecuting war against the people of God (12:17; 13:7). But in 14:1 the Lamb and his army stand to oppose them on Mount Zion, the place of the messianic king's triumph over the hostile nations (Ps. 2:6). The much misunderstood reference to the virginity of the 144,000 (14:4a) belongs to the image of an army. The followers of Christ are symbolized as an army of adult males who, following the ancient requirement of ritual purity for those who fight in holy war (Deut. 23:9-14; 1 Sam. 21:5; 2 Sam. 11:9-13; 1 QM 7:3-6), must avoid the cultic defilement incurred through sexual intercourse. This ritual purity belongs to the image of an army: its literal equivalent in John's ideal of the church is not sexual asceticism, but moral purity. But, just like the combination of the militaristic and sacrificial imagery for Christ in 5:5-6, so the image of an army changes to that of sacrifice in 14:4b-5, and with it the image of the ritual purity of the Lord's army changes to that of the perfection required in a sacrificial offering. The word which the NRSV translates `blameless' (amomoi) is cultic terminology for the physical perfection required in an animal acceptable for sacrifice (Exod. 29:38; Lev. 1:3; 3:1) .

The cultic image is then translated into its literal equivalent: `in their mouth no lie was found' (14:5). This relates to the theme of truth and falsehood, which is so important in Revelation, and evokes the third of the motifs which dominate Revelation's account of the work of Christ: that of faithful witness to the truth. But in using the words, `in their mouth no lie was found', John is also echoing significant Old Testament texts: Zephaniah 3:13, which says of the eschatological people of God that `a deceitful tongue shall not be found in their mouths', and Isaiah 53:9, which says of the Suffering Servant, who was `led like a lamb to the slaughter' (53:7), that `no lie was found in his mouth'. John exploits (in the manner of Jewish exegesis) the coincidence between these texts. The followers of the Lamb resemble the one they `follow wherever he goes' (14:4). This following means imitating both his truthfulness, as `the faithful witness', and the sacrificial death to which this led. Thus the victory of the Lamb's army is the victory of truthful witness maintained as far as sacrificial death. As in 12:1 I, the three images of messianic warfare, paschal sacrifice and faithful witness come together and mutually interpret one another.

Richard Bauckham. The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New Testament Theology) (Kindle Locations 959-991). Kindle Edition.

The Witness of Jesus

2012-01-18T13:58:00.002-06:00

Jesus' work of witness is continued by his followers, who are not only called his witnesses (17:6; cf. 2:13) but are also said to hold `the witness of Jesus' (12:17; 19:10), which is the same as their own witness (6:9; 12:11). `The witness of Jesus' means not `witness to Jesus', but the witness Jesus himself bore and which his faithful followers continue to bear. It is primarily Jesus' and his followers' witness to the true God and his righteousness, which exposes the falsehood of idolatry and the evil of those who worship the beast.

Richard Bauckham. The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New Testament Theology) (Kindle Locations 909-912). Kindle Edition.

John Frame on Cornelius Van Til

2011-12-28T12:08:00.001-06:00

I recently finished reading John Frame's book, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought. While I have read almost all of Gordon Clark's books, I have never sat down to read an entire volume of Van Til. The most exposure to Van Til that I've had is reading about half of Bahnsen's Van Til's Apologetic, which casts its focus more narrowly than Frame's book, but has the benefit of extensive quotations and readings from Van Til's works. Given my limited exposure to Van Til's thought, my comments here will be of a general character.

Frame's book is organized as follows: Part I, which includes three chapters (a general introduction, a biographical chapter, and a brief statement on his legacy); Part II, which examines Van Til's "Metaphysics of Knowledge" in eleven chapters (three on God's nature, two on knowledge [one of which is about the Clark-Van Til controversy]; and one each on Scripture, Presuppositions, Primacy of the Intellect, Logic, Analogical System, and Evidence); Part III, which looks at Antithesis, Common Grace, and Rationalism/Irrationalism dialectic in three chapters, respectively; Part IV, which analyzes Van Til's criticisms of traditional and contemporary apologetic methods as well as expositing Van Til's own method, with an example of it in practice (a total of seven chapters); Part V, three chapters on Van Til's criticisms of philosophical and theological positions past and present; Part VI, two concluding chapters; and two Appendixes, which include a criticism of "Ligonier Apologetic" by Frame and an essay on Van Til's preaching by Edmund Clowney.

Despite the wealth of information included in the volume, it is a fairly easy read for a philosophically oriented book. Frame has a congenial tone to his writing and his criticisms are predominantly focused upon providing the best possible reading of the individuals and seeking the clearest possible terms for engagement. If there is a general weakness, it is probably that Frame's desire to incorporate the best reading leads him to overlook the seriousness of some of the logical implications that will be commonly drawn from the confusing language that he finds in various authors.

The best part of Frame's book is his familiarity with Van Til and his comprehensive treatment of the various topics of Van Til's thought. Frame is not as acute as Bahnsen in his analysis, but Bahnsen's book is less comprehensive, and I think more biased in its analysis of Van Til's opponents; and especially of Gordon Clark. Frame actually gives a lot of ground to Clark in the controversy, but not enough to really bring out anything insightful into the ongoing issues between Clarkians and Van Tillians. Another strength of the book is Frame's appreciation for the effects of a "movement mentality" that arises around strong personalities such as Van Til. Even if Frame were exaggerating the effects of the movement mentality upon Van Til or his followers (and I have no reasons to suspect such exaggeration) it would still prove a sound warning for anyone investing their energy in so-called intellectual giants of a given time. I have sensed my own desire to defend my intellectual heroes beyond reasonable limits, in part because being found in error has less to do with the "glory" of the individual hero and more to do with the sense of loss on one's own investment in their program of thought. Of course, there is no real loss in discovering errors in any thought, since a discovery of error is a step toward truth--but psychologically, for those like me anyway, the first response to such errors isn't joy.

To speak more specifically about Van Til, the most intriguing aspect of his thought seems to be his ability to penetrate to the fundamental problems of a given philosophy or theological system. This certainly made Van Til unpopular with his contemporaries, since (think of the movement mentality again) few people respond well to having their poster-boy's philosophy deflated upon one or two points of critique, as opposed to the sort of nuance and caution that academics tend to employ in evaluating major players. Van Til's rejection of Barth is notable on this score, but also his ability to see that all forms of pagan philosophy necessarily presuppose truths derivable only from the God of Christianity. Admittedly, the sort of criticism lends itself to overstatement, since discerning logical presuppositions and/or implications are distinct from discerning the stated beliefs or entailments of a position. That is to say, all of us possess inconsistencies in our thought, which lead us to believe things about our position that contradict other aspects of which we are unaware. The incompatibilities of our own position are by definition "off the radar" until they are pointed out to us, and the most natural response is to defend our position until such inconsistencies have been fully demonstrated as valid and sound. Then, of course, there is the additional problem of unbelief, which is that unbelievers by nature have a true sense of God's existence and divine authority (Romans 1), but flee from it with all of their might unless God arrests their rebellion through His regenerative work.

Although it would be natural to go from here into the implications of Van Til's strongest contribution, I will leave it to my readers to investigate for themselves Frame's helpful book and Van Til's own writings. I would recommend Bahnsen's volume rather than a smattering of Van Til's own works. Bahnsen is far clearer than Van Til in his exposition of Van Til's own philosophy, if only for his more careful attention to the meanings of terms and his attention to translate technical terms into explicit statements or propositions.

A Must Read

2011-12-21T11:41:00.002-06:00

Philosopher and Christian apologist James Anderson has just posted a link to a very interesting paper that proves the existence of God by proving the necessary existence of the laws of logic. It is highly stimulating, thoroughly argued, and a must read for anyone interested in apologetics or logic, or both!

Allison and the Magi's Star, again

2011-12-15T13:14:00.001-06:00

The following is a presentation I gave this morning for our 2nd annual "Christmas Traditio Symposium," which involved the 9th through 12th graders listening, reflection upon, and enjoying several presentations, lectures, and artifacts presented by the teachers.

Haven’t you ever wondered what it would have been to see theburning bush with Moses? To watch the sun stop in the sky with Joshua? To tastethe manna with the Israelites? Haven’t you ever wondered what it would havebeen to see the hand write the prophecy on Belshazzar’s wall? Or maybe you’vethought further and wondered not only what it would have been to partake inthese strange events, but to understand what actually occurred in them. Was ita real bush that was burning? What sort of fire burns without consuming? Whatsort of bush is fire-proof? What is manna made of? Is it a combination of dewand molecules from the air? Was it just honey-flavored coriander substitutethat God made to appear? Did the earth stop spinning when the sun stood stillin the sky? What would that have done to the winds or to the currents of theocean? Who among us would doubt that God is able to do whatever He wills withwhat He has made, and to do it by whatever means He chooses? We all might saywith Job,

“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose ofyours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful forme, which I did not know (Job 42:2-3 ESV).

Butgranting our belief in God’s omnipotence, whence comes belief, seekingunderstanding? Is it not our proper place as the crown of God’s creation and asHis vice-regents of what He has made to know God’s works in Creation andRedemption as well as we may? And surely God takes delight in our discovery ofHis manner and means for doing what He does so well, so unexpectedly, despiteour bravest and wisest anticipations.

I’d like to propose for you today, a day where we are hearing,contemplating, and enjoying things related to the miracle of Christ’sincarnation, that every day of our lives, every moment of every day (though itseems an impossible goal) ought to be characterized by a holy wonder. A holywonder that leads to a curious investigation of the works of God’s hands, whichin turn cannot but well up inside of us a profound and profoundly humblethankfulness for God’s unbounded bounty. We live in a world made from nothing,nothing other than God’s pure pleasure in making it for Himself and for us. We’vebeen given a story unlike any other, a story that doesn’t have an end, but hasas many rabbit trails, nooks and crannies, and deeply moving subplots as wehave inclination to follow. I want to use the time I have today to guide youalong one of these trails, into one of these nooks and crannies of God’suncommon kindness.

In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, he tells us of a starthat guided certain magi from the east. In verse two of chapter two, the magiproclaim that they’ve come to see the King of the Jews, whose star they haveseen in the East. Later, in verses nine and ten, they depart from Herod and thestar appears again, going before them, leading them to the house where Jesuswas, where it stood over him. I don’tknow how often you’ve stargazed. You ought to try sometime if you haven’t. Iused to sit under the stars at night, out in the country where I grew up awayfrom city lights and smoggy skies, and I would stare at the thousands ofbrilliant iridescent lights littering the heavens. I’ve seen many a shootingstar. I’ve seen the large, glowing planets. I’ve even seen satellites,foreigners amongst their livelier counterparts. But I can tell you, and I’dwager you’d say the same, that I’ve never seen a star that appeared suddenly,moved across the sky, and stopped to descend out of the heavens, to rest over aspot down below, here on the earth. What sort of star does this? Is it really astar at all? Is it really possible for an orb of immense size and volatile heatto leave its solar system millions or billions of light years away to rest overa tiny house in the Middle East? Thankfully, we’re not the first to considerthe question of what exactly was this star.

In the first chapter of his book, Studies in Matthew, Dale Allison examines the history ofinterpretation surrounding the star of the magi in Matthew’s gospel. Allisontells us that there are basically three modern views of the star: 1) it is aplanetary conjunction (where two planetary bodies appear in the sky in closerelation), 2) it is a comet, or 3) it is a supernova (a new star). Allisonnotes that none of these views comports well with Matthew’s account. None ofthe explanations fits with Matthew’s claim that the star “went before” the magi,nor with the detail that the star, “stopped over the place where the childwas.” Conjunctions and supernovas don’t appear to move from the vantage pointof earth, and although comets move, they do not stop over a specific location.Even ancient interpreters were aware of these difficulties in considering thestar to be a planetary body like any other star. Allison cites Chrysostom,Theophylact, and the Protoevangelium ofJames (the earliest source, from the 2^nd century), all of whichassent to the impossibility that the star is any ordinary astronomicalphenomenon. Many of the early church fathers believed that the star that guidedthe magi left the heavens and descended upon the place where Jesus was staying,some even that it rested over Jesus’ head. The strange occurrence of a starmoving across the heavens and descending over a specific locale was the predominantview up through the medieval period of Christianity. Even as late as Calvinthere is no belief that the manner of the star’s appearance is a naturallyoccurring event. The supernatural, uncanny, and inexplicable anomaly—words sohateful to modern science—was exactly that—a curiosity of God’s providence,that was worth considering on its own terms.

Allison remarks that the opinions of ancient pagan philosopherswas that the stars were animate beings, living creatures, who interacteddirectly with the world of humanity below, even while exhibiting themathematical “habits” so readily observable. Greeks, including Plato and theStoics, as well as the Jewish Neo-Platonist Philo, all believed the stars to beliving beings. Apparently non-Hellenistic Jews shared Philo’s belief as well, orat least something similar, as their interpretations of Judges 5:20, where thestars of heaven fought against the army of Sisera, acknowledged these heavenlybodies as animate cosmic forces. Accordingly, Allison does not believe itplausible, and nor should we, for Matthew’s view of stars to be prescientlymodern in contrast to the predominant view held by philosophers and otherscientific-minded men of his own time.

Within the Jewish and Christian literary milieu severalaspects of angels appear to be reasonableexplanations for Matthew’s account of the star. Angels function as guides; forexample, in Exodus 14:19 where the angel of God either went before Israelwithin the cloud, alongside it, or as thecloud itself. Several other extra-biblical Jewish and Christian sourcesattest to this characteristic of angels as well. Angels are also described asbright and as descending from the heavens. Matthew 28:3 describes the face ofthe Angel of the Lord to be “like lightning.” Paul calls Satan an angel oflight (2 Cor. 11:14). In Genesis 28 angels ascend and descend in Jacob’s visionof the ladder, and Jesus uses the same language of ascending and descending inJohn 1:51. At the very least, Allison argues, Matthew’s description of the star’sbehavior in guiding the magi and resting over where Jesus was is moreindicative of angels than of astronomical objects. The assertion or plausibilityof an angelic star is prominent throughout early Christian interpretation andartwork, as well.

At this point in the chapter Allison briefly offers hisexplanations for several variations in the history of Christian interpretationof the star. Origen’s association with pagan philosophy left a bad taste inlater church fathers’ mouths to the extent that they self-consciously sought topurge all hints of syncretism between Neo-Platonism and Biblical exegesis.Since Origen and the ancient pagans believed in animate heavenly bodies, Jeromeargued against the view, and the Second Council of Constantinople condemned theview as heresy. Despite this reservation, many fathers maintained a specialcircumstance regarding the star that led the magi. Rather, they argued, thestar was not really a star at all, or, if it was a star that its nature was uniqueto itself. Modern astronomy also shook confidence from the view of an angelicstar. Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler all denied the possibility of an animateheaven, while also recognizing (at least for Kepler) that Matthew’s star couldnot be what current science was describing as stars—burning orbs of fire fixedat the center of galaxies, millions and billions of miles away. Renaissance andpost-Renaissance interpreters continued away from an angelic star. By theenlightenment and modern periods even the staunchest literalists, whose highview of Scripture was eclipsed by none, would conclude that Matthew’s accountof the star was poetical, metaphorical, or otherwise a veiled perspective onwhat actually occurred.

Allison concludes the chapter by offering some tentativeconclusions of his own. Was there an actual light? What sort of phenomenoncould it have been? His own suspicion is that Matthew is recounting ahaggadic-type legend for some purpose other than historical reporting. In otherwords, Matthew isn’t concerned with what actually occurred. As Allison says,the prejudices of interpreters for what is, or is not possible will ultimatelydetermine what interpretation they are willing to accept.

Given Allison’s own recognition, we might also question thepresuppositions under which he labors in his attribution of haggadic-typelegend to Matthew’s account of the star. Why couldn’t the star, as the ancientChristians thought, be an angel of God? How often do we find in the OldTestament, an angel of the Lord appearing prior to, or in the in event of, aspecial circumstance? An angel of the Lord appeared to Abraham to confirm thatthe son of the promise would come in the following year. An angel of the Lordappeared to Joshua prior to his going down to destroy Jericho in the firstbattle within the Promised Land. Angels appeared to Daniel and to hiscompanions in times where their lives were threated with death in a foreignland. Closer to the context of Jesus’ birth, if we look at the Synoptic accountstogether, an angel of the Lord met with Joseph prior to Jesus’ birth (Matthew1), one meets with Zechariah to foretell the birth of John the Baptist (Luke1), we’re also told that the angel Gabriel tells Mary of Jesus’ birth-to-be(Luke 1), and finally an angel of the Lord appears to the shepherds outsideBethlehem to indicate the birth of Jesus (Luke 1). Each of the appearancesoccurs in the midst of the everyday activities of the individuals involved.Joseph gets a dream, Mary an unexpected visitor to her home, Zechariah as heministers in the temple, and the shepherds as they herd their flocks. Giventhese manifold manifestations of angels to promote the birth of Christ (andJohn the Baptist as the coming of Elijah) it does not seem implausible that themagi from the east would be greeted in similar fashion by an Angel of the Lord,described by them as a star—something magi would find irresistibly interestingand common to their daily endeavors.

It does not seem, unless one is unwilling to take seriouslythe Bible’s way of expressing itself, that an angelic star is even the mostout-of-sorts event. Clouds by day and pillars by night, parting bodies ofwater, food from the sky and water from rocks, the sun immovable, angelic hostsinnumerable, fire from heaven consuming even the rocks on which the offering islaid—all of these and many other inexplicable activities of God and Hisministers should give us pause, as God’s recounting to Job of His wondrousworks gave Job pause. Our God defies all of our attempts to anticipate thelengths He is willing to go, the things He is willing to use, the things He iswilling to say, and ways in which He is willing to accomplish His purposes. Heis not like this because He wants to hide His true self from us. He is likethis, because it is His true self. Heis not simply an object of our knowledge. He is not the projection of ourhigher selves. He isn’t just the friend of sinners, or the man named Jesus, orthe God who is there. He is the power and wisdom and person in whom we live andmove and have our being. If considering His stranger ways cannot captivate ourcontemplation, cannot stagger our attention, cannot transform the way we walkin His world that He has made for us—in order that we might learn who He is—if these things cannotbe our passion and pursuit—if questions about stars and angels and rivers androcks and widows and wanderers cannot linger in our thoughts—then we ought togo back to the drawing board and figure out just what sort of people we thinkwe are. And in seeking for ourselves in the revelations of Himself and Hisworks that God has given to us for us to communewith Him, we might actually find what we’re looking for—no, more than we couldhave imagined!—for our God delights in giving gifts that surprise us right inthe places where He has set us.

Blessing and Cursing

2011-12-12T13:28:00.001-06:00

Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law. (Proverbs 29:18 ESV)

Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. (Proverbs 29:18 KJV)

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. (Hosea 4:6 ESV)

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou has rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou has forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children. (Hosea 4:6 KJV)

I have been told before by a beloved brother who believes in a form of Dispensationalism that Covenantalism wants to claim the blessings of the Covenant between God and Israel, but it refuses to accept the curses that God also attaches to the Covenant. It is, perhaps, the case that many who espouse Covenantal Theology (CT) fail to appreciate and reflect upon the stipulations and consequences of the Covenant between God and His people. In one sense, all of the requirements of the Covenant were fulfilled in Christ, and therefore His obedience has secured what our inevitable disobedience would have forfeited otherwise. Insofar as CT folks are proclaiming this truth, there is no imbalance as to recognizing that, ultimately, the curses were realized in Christ's crucifixion, and because of His innocence He also procured all of the blessings of the Covenant, as testified before the world in His resurrection.

However, there is another wrinkle to the Covenant relationship, because although Christ has procured all of the benefits of the Covenant for His people and has endured all of the penalty of the curse which we incurred by our sinful state and actual transgressions--although all of this is true--it is also true that God's dealings with His people in the present age are founded upon His revealed law, given to them as a means of life; or what Calvin called the third use of the law. Calvin also considered the third use of the law to be its most important use, for the ultimate purpose of God's people is to bring glory to His name, and the way to glorify God is to live as His character demands; i.e. by every word that proceeds from His mouth.

Therein lies the principle of the abiding validity of the law, which Jesus' sermon on the Mount assumes as the basis for the Christian life. Many folks get hung up on whether or not the civil and ceremonial laws continue under the present reign of Christ, but the principal fact to which all Christians ought to agree is that we are all bound to image the character of God as it is revealed in Christ. Christ broke none of God's laws , ergo neither should we. Only then does the question, "what laws of God continue to apply to us as they did for Jesus Christ?"

Putting aside that question for a moment, I wish to go back to the issue of God's Covenant. If Christ accomplished for us the procurement of blessing and the remission of guilt that would entail curses, what exactly is the relationship between the Christian and the law of God as it regards the Covenant of God with His people? Are Dispensationalists are right to charge with inconsistency those Covenantalists who do not accept the curses as part of their reality as God's people? I would argue that they are, for while the ultimate realization of blessings and cur sings have been finished once for all in the work of Christ, there remains the very much unrealized work of sanctification in the lives of God's people, the Church. CT folks do love to recognize that God's gracious Covenant extends to their children by virtue of God's promises to be faithful to those who are faithful to Him (i.e., those who are true believers) for generations to come. All CT folks recognize that this promise is conditional, that is, God retains the prerogative to refuse a child of the Covenant for His own heir and to abandon that child to Satan. However, His promises indicate the typical response of God that we can expect. We might remind ourselves that God often promises destruction that He sometimes withholds, which is a good thing. If He is free to show mercy upon whom He wishes, He is also free to withhold it from whom He wishes, and only His promise and His law guide us in how we are to think about God's character as a general principle of action.

Therefore, the stipulations of the Covenant that have always been basic -- love God, love neighbor, trust in God's character for one's claims to His kingdom and to sonship, and so forth -- these stipulations form the background for present day blessings and cur sings for the people of God. The upshot of this conclusion is that the people of God ought to always look to themselves in times of cultural decomposition. A little leaven leavens the whole lump, whereas widespread disobedience brings God's vengeance and discipline ever closer to hand. If people want to argue about why the Church in Europe has been dying, or why the Church in the USA is in decay, one need not point to the sins of abortion, or homosexuality, or feminism, or warmongering, or economic injustice. These are not causes of cultural decay in the West. They are consequences of cultural decay. They are symptoms of a Church in retreat from the law of God. They are curses upon a people who have failed to live up to the express image of God given to us in Christ. Many people rebuff at such a conclusion because it is a religious claim. However, if you took a garden and the predominant number of workers who made it what it was decided to stop tending it, who else would be to blame? And who could argue that those who have presently taken up the task to built it according to their own image are the cause of the loss? Add this to the fact that God has always promised to provide unassailable victory to His people when they abide in His character and commandments.

Christianity survived Rome because God was mighty to give victory to those who stood upon His name and His commands. It survived the schisms of the early Church and the Reformation because God was mighty to give victory to those who stood upon His name and His commands. Not because the people were inherently righteous, but because they knew that upon which their righteousness was founded and they, in their great gratitude, felt compelled to walk as He said they must walk before Him; not looking for a reward in this life, but recognizing that with each step of obedience they were advancing their King's reign over darkness and would hasten the day of His final triumph when death itself would be wrested of all its power. Only when the Church has abandon its true source of power -- the very simple, but often difficult trust and obey; the trust and obey that would take in the exposed Roman infants into their homes, the trust and obey that would not take advantage of another simply because it was possible to do so and the prevailing sentiment was to do so where one can, the trust and obey that would work hard without corruption while everyone else worked hard at corruption, the trust and obey that did not consider one's own rights and property worth shaming a brother or sister in public court trials, the trust and obey to remain faithful to a spouse in all circumstances, the trust and obey to raise children with one's own life rather than the accoutrements of monetary capital and prevailing pagan expertise.

Without the knowledge of God, without the vision of Christ's Kingdom pervading every step in the Christian walk, the people perish, they cast of restraint and run headlong into destruction. Blessed, happy is the man who keeps the law of God, who does not forget or forsake His ways.

Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain! Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways. Confirm to your servant your promise, that you may be feared. Turn away the reproach that I dread, for your rules are good. Behold, I long for your precepts; in your righteousness give me life! (Psalm 119:33-40 ESV)

Neo-Aristotelian Analysis

2011-12-09T13:06:00.001-06:00

The following is a summary of the basic components of Neo-Aristotelian analysis that I wrote up for my 10th and 12th graders. If you have any feedback to offer, I welcome it!

Historical Context

With the Pericles’ speech, it is of particular importance topay attention to two details of the historical context: the occasion and thegenre. The occasion is a funeral oration following the last battle of the firstyear of the Peloponnesian War. The battle was a loss for the Athenians. Thefact that Athens lost and that this is the initial year of the war brings a lotof uncertainty into the situation for the speaker: what will be the audience’sopinion as to the wisdom of this war, the strength of Athens to win it, and theworthiness of cost of lives given the recent defeat? The genre is a eulogy, ora speech praising the dead. What sort of expectations does Thucydides tell usabout how this sort of speech is typically given, and what sort of things it issupposed to say or accomplish? What does your own experience of eulogies in ourown culture lead you to surmise about what they are to say and accomplish?

Invention

Invention has to do with both the means of persuasion, how itis that the speaker makes use of certain arguments, facts, details, etc. tomake himself and his message more likely to accomplish whatever is his aim oraims for the particular audience. The first step is to identify what you thinkis the aim of the speaker. Only in proposing an aim can you evaluate what he isdoing in the speech. Then comes the criteria for proofs that can beaccomplished by the speaker: logos, ethos, pathos.

Logos has to do with the arguments or reasoning demonstratedby the speaker. Aristotle says that all arguments come by example or enthymeme.Examples have to be made or chosen, and so what the speaker uses as examplesreflect his thoughts on what sort of audience he is dealing with, and how hewants them to be directed in terms of their thoughts. Examples also haveelements of ethos and pathos, but to consider logos exclusively for a moment,one must ask how it is that the example is a means for persuasion, as opposedto saying something else, or nothing at all. What type of assumption isrequired for the example to be considered good? What values are made use of inoffering the example as something good? For enthymemes, you are payingattention to the arguments or claims that are being made. How is it that theconclusion is being supported? What rationale is given or exhibited by thespeaker? What values, presuppositions, or cultural capital does the speaker useto advance his claims?

Ethos has to do with the credibility the speaker is able todevelop with the audience by virtue of hisspeaking. Certain credibility is had simply because of the reputation ofthe speaker, the occasion, etc., but these factors are only supports orpotential problems that the speaker must work with in his actually speaking tothe audience. Credibility is made or lost upon three fronts: competency,goodwill, and display of virtue. Competency has to do with the audience’sperception of the speaker’s knowledge on the subject matter, and his ability toput what he knows into common sense or easily to understand and acceptlanguage. Goodwill has to do with the audience’s perception of how well thespeaker shows his concern for the audience’s well being and their interests.Display of virtue has to do with the audience’s perception of the speaker’s ownmoral character—does he impress with his ability to speak the right word at theright time, or does he handle difficulty with ease and appropriate respect, andso on. Aristotle says that ethos is the most important rhetorical proof,because people are more willing to accept a person whom they considertrustworthy than they are someone who is only good at argument or only good atstirring emotions.

Pathos has to do with the emotions the speaker is able todisplay and promote among the audience. The speaker may wish the audience tofeel pity or to arouse their anger, and whatever emotions are sought, they aresought with a view toward bolstering an argument, avoiding an argument, raisingthe speaker’s credibility in the eyes of the audience, or driving home theaction or mindset the speaker desires to elicit from the audience. Analyzingpathos is difficult because we don’t always have knowledge of how the audienceresponded to the speech during its delivery. Here is where we have to try andrelive the speech while putting ourselves in the position of the audience. Thebetter able we are to reconstruct for ourselves the potential emotions of theaudience, the better will be our analysis of the speaker’s ability to usepathos as a means of persuasion. Generally speaking, a speaker must balanceemotion Too little emotion and the audience with lose interest, respect, orlack compulsion at the speaker’s claims (for he seems too dispassionate himselfabout that which he speaks. Too much emotion and the audience will suspect dissimulationand grow skeptical of the speaker’s intentions. Both of these extremes impactthe speaker’s ethos, and how his arguments are taken as well.

Arrangement

Arrangement has to do with the overarching structure of thespeech as well as the internal divisions the speaker uses. The power ofstructure is manifold. It can allow the speaker to seem more competent, it canaid the audience in their ability to follow the speaker, it can enhance ordetract from the arguments made, and it can be used to create emotive responsesas well. The analysis of arrangement must be done in conjunction with ethos,pathos, and logos, for these are the means of persuasion for which thearrangement is crafted according to the speaker’s aim or aims. There is ameasure of observational skill required to discern a speech’s structure, andseveral possible structures may emerge as possible. Analyzing the effects ofthat structure is more subtle, and more tenuous as well. How can we ensure thatthe audience was effected by the structure in such and such a way? Does itmatter whether or not the audience was aware of the structure? Are theresubstructures or hidden elements of emphasis that result from the structure?There are some points of view (e.g. structuralists and post-structuralists) whoplace a great amount of emphasis on structure as it regards the means ofpersuasion, or even as a means of undermining the more explicitly attemptedmeans of persuasion (such as arguments, emotions, etc.). Aristotle and hiscontemporaries often used very formulaic and intricate structures as a meansfor the speaker to easily remember claims and the progression of the speech.Others, like the Pythagoreans (including Plato), used structure to veil theiressential doctrines that are otherwise apparent upon the surface of their speechesand writings. Structure is also an element that ties in closely with style,since a large part of style is how the elements of language are structured.

Style

Style, like arrangement, considers the speech as a whole aswell as in its parts. Low style is relatively free of ornate arrangements andfigures of speech; clarity and plain terms of description characterize lowstyle. Middle style incorporates more figures of speech and ornate patterns forthe purpose of delighting the audience in addition to giving them clearunderstanding. High style engages with even more ornate figuration and purposesto arouse the audience to emotion and conviction that leads to action ratherthan understanding, delight, or contemplation alone. The figures of speech areas numberless as are the possible variations of language at the level of theword, the clause, the sentence, and so forth. Some figures play with thestructure or arrangement of words while others seek to play with how words meanor symbolize; still others make use of sounds and rhythms for various purposes.Like arrangement, certain perspectives on style make it the primary aspect forthe means of persuasion, and also like arrangement, the elements of style areintricately connected to the way arguments are made, understood, and received.

Delivery & Memory

Delivery consists of all of the non-verbal aspects of aspeech: vocal level, quality, and variation; physical gesture, positioning, andexpression; and all other potential uses of the body and its senses. It is atruism that 90% of communication is made through nonverbal aspects, but it isoften difficult to reconstruct the delivery of speeches after the fact prior tovideo technologies. Furthermore, even the ability to detect these factors doesnot ensure that the audience’s response to them is easily predictable, as manysuch nonverbal cues go either unnoticed, or may be interpreted in various ways,despite the additional contextual aids of the message’s content, the structure,and so on. If delivery cannot be reconstructed by having actually witnessed orseen footage of the speech, it can in some cases be partially reconstructed bywitness testimony. If no such testimony to the actual speech exists, testimonyas to the normal delivery exhibited by the speaker may prove useful togeneralize to the speech in question. If none of these aids exist, one’sanalysis of delivery may need to be omitted with a note to the reader as towhy. Memory has to do both with the means by which the speaker has committedthe content of the speech to memory (whether entirely memorized, spoken fromnotes, completely extemporaneous, etc.), in which case it might be useful toexamine drafts of speeches or structures within the speech that provide insightinto this process. Memory also has to do with cultural memory, or the abilityof the speaker to recall upon immediate needs the aspects of the audience’scultural realities to aid him in his speaking. Sometimes memory is consideredin terms of the audience, and how the speaker attempts to make memorable tothem the contents of what he is saying.

Audience Effect

Perhaps the most contested area of analysis is the effects ofa speech upon a given audience. What are the appropriate criteria for evaluatingthe effects of a speech? Is a speech effective only if it results in theaudience taking some observable action? And if so, how long after the speechmust the action take place for its purpose to be effective? Much of the valueof analyzing the effects will result from properly identifying the speaker’sintentions, the constraints of the situation in which the speech is given, andthe particular categories of effects that can be applied to the various typesof people in the audience. For example, in a speech before an audience ofwide-ranging demographics, the speaker may have multiple audiences, gearingdifferent aspects of his speech in hopes of impacting each audience for verydifferent goals—to bolster one’s allies while simultaneously inspiring fear inone’s enemies, and move those indifferent toward one or the other camp. Audienceeffect may also be considered apart from the speaker’s intentions, not only inthe sense that certain effects were not met, but also in terms of unforeseen orunforeseeable effects that result from a speech. In this way a speech canfunction as a historical artifact, from which questions very different from“was it persuasive to audience X” are asked. Whether or not such questionscontinue to be proper to “rhetorical analysis” is open to question, but the keyis to allow “effect” to be considered from various and sometimes opposingcriteria.

Light

2011-12-08T13:18:00.001-06:00

Illumine, enlighten, vivify dark pools into which
you dive; dying to the outside world you thrive,
in a reception of colors divided, separated,
sundered from sun-orb's signal rays, yet you remain.
Remainders, retainers, entertainers of multiplicity;
through the one, many, through many, the one,
sent, seen, sheen-shorn, awash-over-worn space,
enervated to innervate and explicate a testimony:
reveling in revealing the real you have gathered,
as a question gathers thought,
as a thought gathers will,
as a will gathers emotion,
so your motions conjure communion,
world with body, body with soul,
these several in a unified whole.

Allison on the Magi's Star

2011-12-07T09:37:00.001-06:00

I have been asked to give a brief presentation on a chapter from Dale Allison's Studies in Matthew. The opening chapter summarizes the early Christian interpretations of the star that guided the magi in Matthew's gospel. Over and against modern, or really post-renaissance exegesis, the earliest Christian exegetes believed that the star with either an angel, or some sort of unnatural star that literally descended and rested above the house of Jesus, or perhaps even above his very head.

Allison cites Chrysostom, Origin, Irenaeus, Theophylact, Augustine (who never made up his mind on the issue), Maldonatus, and even John Calvin as individuals who indicate their conviction that the star is not a natural star or regular astronomical phenomenon. With the advent of modern astronomy, exegetes were more inclined to offer interpretations that downplayed the supernatural, angelic, or even "animated being" view of the star (Allison notes that the predominant view among ancients in all traditions was that stars were animate beings). Allison points to those who hold a high view of Scripture's veracity, John Gill and J. Gresham Machen, as examples of those who consider Matthew's description of the star to be poetic (Machen) or reject without support the angelic interpretation (Gill).

Allison himself thinks that Matthew has incorporated a legend into his narrative, despite producing numerous texts that show the association of angels and stars. While these associations do not rule out a metaphorical interpretation of stars and the planetary bodies (in fact, some of the associations seems to be obviously metaphors), Matthew's description of the star is unlike any normal action of stars (the closest parallel, perhaps being in Judges, where the stars of heaven come down to destroy the army of Sisera).

Wherever one falls in interpreting the historical reality of the star, Allison's study should remind us of how inescapable presuppositions will determine the limits of what is "rational" or "scientific" or "believable" or "probable" in interpreting the oddities of Scripture.

Herem in Judges 9

2011-12-06T13:11:00.001-06:00

During the wilderness sojourns in preparation for entry into the Promised Land, the Lord commanded the people to "devote to destruction" the cities of the Canaanites and to drive them out of the land. The meaning of Herem (devote to destruction) in this case is that of holy war--the Lord is taking vengeance upon the Canaanite peoples for their long history of sinfulness (cf. Gen. 15:16 where the Lord explicitly tells Abraham that He is waiting until the transgression of the Amorites is complete before He punishes them). The purposes of Herem are several, but perhaps most acutely is the testimony they are to serve to the people; that the Lord God's wrath and curse is upon those things "under the ban" (herem). It is a negative call to repentance from rebellion and re-alliance with the Lord God, as Rahab would recognize (Josh. 2), and even as the Gibeonites (Josh. 9) would recognize.

Interestingly, there seems to be a negative example of herem in Judges 9. Gideon, or Jerubbaal ("let Baal contend") has recently defeated the Midianites who were oppressing Israel, but in his weakness Gideon sets up idolatry in his hometown by making an ephod out of the spoils taken from the Midianite kings and princes. Gideon also multiplied wives, one of which was a Shechemite, who bore Gideon a son, whom he named Abimelech ("son of the king"). Abimelech wasn't a full Israelite, and since Gideon had seventy other sons, it would have been near impossible for him to have any hopes of kingship within the land. So he entices the Shechemites to slough off the yoke of Gideon's seventy sons and accept the rule of Abimelech, their brother (or rather, only half-brother, as Gaal son of Ebed, "worthless son of a slave," will later point out).

It is Abimelech's means for ridding himself of his brothers that seems reminiscent of herem. The Shechemites give him seventy pieces of silver from the temple of Baal-Berith ("lord of the covenant"), which he uses to hire mercenaries to capture his brothers. Once captured, he seems to offer them as a sacrifice to Baal-Berith, for he slays them all on a rock at Ophrah--the same place where Gideon slew the kings of Midian as the Lord commanded, and where Gideon had set up his false religious worship. Then Abimelech is crowned king "beside the terebinth tree at the pillar that was in Shechem"--perhaps the same tree where God first appeared to Abram in Canaan and possibly where Jacob set up an altar to the Lord. So we have Abimelech resorting to the aid of a foreign god in order to destroy the sons of the Lord's anointed judge, and set himself up as the god's anointed king in place of YHWH of the Covenant. It would seem that there is a holy war between Baal-Berith and his people and YHWH-Berith and his people.

Of course the rest of the story plays out the fact that YWHW is the only one who has the power to accomplish His ends, as Abimelech destroys the temple of Baal-Berith in his destruction of the rebellious Shechemites, and then he is killed by a woman who drops an upper-millstone on his head at the tower in Thebez. Perhaps one reading of the narrative is that YHWH, the only true God and Holy One has the prerogative and power to enact herem on His enemies?

Thoughts on Plato's Phaedrus

2011-12-06T12:57:00.001-06:00

I. Prologue: Speaking of Eros (227a-230e)

II. First Speech: Lysias’ encomium of the non-lover(231a-234c)

III. First Interlude: Lysias’ argument good, but helacks proper rhetorical form (234d-237a)

IV. Second Speech: Socrates₁‘ encomium ofthe non-lover (237b-241d)

V. Second Interlude: Socrates rhetorical form good, but the god Eros will be offended (241e-243e)

VI. Third Speech: Socrates₂‘ encomium ofthe lover (Eros) (244a-257b)

VII. Discussion 1: Proper Method of Communication:Dialectical v. Rhetorical (257c-274b)

VIII. Discussion 2: Proper Mode of Communication: Oralv. Written (274b-277b)

IX. Summary of Discussions 1 and 2 (277b-279c)

Socrates’ main burden is to persuade Phaedrus to acknowledgethe superiority of philosophical discourse. In order to do this, he mustconvince Phaedrus that his present highest pursuit—rhetorical discourse—isinadequate. Lysias’ speech does not fulfill the epitome of rhetoricalexpression, though its basic argument fits the criteria for debating the weakercase. Socrates, in his second speech, adopts the argument of Lysias in order toshow Phaedrus that he is more than competent to speak about rhetoric, since heis himself a consummate rhetorician. Socrates’ rhetorical expression isimpeccable. Now that Phaedrus has been captivated by Socrates ethos, Socrates can move Phaedrus morecapably than before.

Socrates repents of the argumentof his first speech, acknowledging the ideal nature of eros, which is to stimulate the return of the soul to its primarybeing; union with the Forms. The second speech epitomizes Socrates’ goal forPhaedrus and demonstrates Socrates’ argument for rhetorical art in thefollowing discussion: Socrates’ knows that Phaedrus’ soul is speech-loving,which is definitive of the philosophical, kingly or Zeus-loving soul. However,Phaedrus has been deceived by the appealing nature of rhetoric, thus Socratesmust purify Phaedrus through dialectic—a process he can only arrive at throughfirst winning the admiration of Phaedrus in his current state of confusion. SincePhaedrus’ soul is multi-faceted, Socrates presents the same idea through facetsof speech (i.e., first something prettily formed, then something pretty-formedand true in content, then something formed for truth and true in content). Thesecond speech is Socrates’ appeal to pathos,for it is meant to stir in Phaedrus a desire for the sort of Eros that leads to knowledge and theproper pursuit of knowledge.

Socrates proceeds from his second speech to discuss the trueart of speaking, which is, of course, dialectical rather than rhetorical—orbetter yet, any rhetorical art necessarily presupposes dialectical discussion.The latter portion of the discussion, which evaluates written and oraldiscourse, is necessary (and so is the discussion of dialectic) due to Plato’sepistemology. Plato believes in a three-tiered reality; at the top, theunchanging and unified Forms; in the middle, the somewhat stable and unifiedintellectual reality of definitions; at the bottom the realm of appearances andbodily sensations, which are constantly in flux. The Forms are only understoodthrough a divine intuition, which occurs through a gradual ascent from therealm of appearances up to the Forms. To recall Socrates’ second speech: beautyis visible in appearances, which can stimulate one to recollect the Form ofBeauty, or not. The common response to eroticstimulus is to reproduce bodily desire: beautyàdesireàsexualintercourseàreproductionof a body. Another, uncommon response, is to reproduce knowledge of the Forms:beautyàdesireàintellectualintercourseàrecollectionof the Form of Beauty. The orgasm resulting from sexual intercourse is,perhaps, analogous to the divine intuition of the Form resulting fromintellectual intercourse.

The process of intellectual intercourse is properly dialectic,because it is able to extrapolate from appearances the more stable definitionsof things in themselves, which prepares the soul to receive the divineintuition of the thing-in-itself, which is not reproducible discursively.Herein lies the division between the Forms and Intellectual Reality. Becauseintellectual reality depends upon discursive reasoning, it depends uponlanguage. Language is highly codified, but it remains unstable because thenames of things change or encompass more than one term, making even gooddefinitions susceptible to confusion (cf. Plato’s Seventh Epistle).

The instability of language even in the realm ofintellectual reality also reveals the greater incapacity of written discoursewhen compared to oral. In oral discourse there is greater assurance that thenames we use correspond to the terms of the definition—the speaker is alwaysfree to correct his own or his interlocutor’s errors. In written discourse the non-presentauthor cannot correct misconceptions of the names being used, therefore thereis less stability even in the realm of definition. Oral discourse can also bedirected to a specific audience, and preserved from foreign audiences for whomthe discourse is not intended. Written discourse may be picked up an read byanyone, whether or not the individual’s “soul is fitted” to the discourse. Additionally,written discourse is a copy or image of the thoughts in the mind, which makesit metaphysically as well as epistemologically inferior to dialecticaldiscussion within one’s own mind. At best writing functions as a reminder ofwhat one already knows but has not had on the mind, or as a playful activity,or as a stimulus for those souls who will take up its discourse in their own searchfor eternal truths.

Rhetoric, oral or written, in Plato’s epistemology, is apropaedeutic to discourse on knowledge, or “mature” speech (contrast withCallicles’ view that dialectic is propaedeutic to rhetoric, or “mature” speechin Plato’s Gorgias). Furthermore,rhetoric is only helpful as a propaedeutic when it has been established uponthe foundation of dialectical discourse—scientific knowledge grounds right opinion;so not only is episteme superior to doxa, but so too techne as Plato defines it.

Isaiah 4

2011-12-06T08:34:00.001-06:00

In Isaiah 4 we have the end of a lengthy indictment of Israel for her sins, closing with a vivid depiction of the haughty women exchanging their finery for the clothing of lament, exile, and barrenness. Yet in the second verse there is a promise of renewal--the Branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious for those who escape the wrath of God's vengeance. Those whom God keeps from destruction shall be purified from the filth of sin, the blood of injustice, and the spirit of judgment--they will be holy (vv. 3-4).

Then verse five presents a powerful image of the Lord's glory and presence--the cloud of smoke by day and the shining fire by night--a clear reference to the cloud and fire that led Israel through the wilderness in their exodus from Egypt. The key difference to note, however, is that in this renewal of His presence, the Lord will not concentrate His glory in one place, say, the tabernacle or the tent of meeting; nor will His glory only cover the leaders of Israel such as Moses or Aaron the High Priest. Now the glory of the Lord will be over all of the assembly, over every household, to be a covering for the glory of the people of the Lord.

Not only is this portrait a testimony to the expansive nature of God's restoration of His people from the death of exile into the resurrection of the promised land (think new heavens and new earth), but it is also a testimony to fathers who are seeking to understand what they are to be for their family.

First and foremost, the father is to be holy and to keep his family holy. The purging of sin is the primary benefit that the Lord bestows upon His people. Second, the father is to cover the glory of his wife and children with his own. This means not only that he provides and protects them, but also that his own glory is made manifest in how well he has preserved the glory of his family. Father need to internalize that truth, for more often than not fathers seek their glory in their profession, in their career accomplishments or promotions, or by how smart, strong, or successful they are in the eyes of the world. However, God will judge fathers on how well they glorified their wives and children--how pure will the father present his bride and his children to their Heavenly Father? Truly this is a man's eternal glory, that he has covered his family as God covers His family--being to them a tabernacle for shade in the daytime and a place of refuge and shelter from storm and rain.

On Jonathan Edwards On Being

2011-12-02T08:57:00.001-06:00

I ran across a reminder this morning of why one must always take great care in reading any particular author, but especially of those who are very careful in drawing distinctions. Jonathan Edwards is such an author, whose mind is at once so far-reaching and yet so close to the point before it that he is able to account for many distinctions that a lesser mind could not conceive. If there was one mind other than Christ's that I would seek to emulate, it would be a toss up between Augustine and Edwards.

Anyway, to the point. Here is a conclusion to a section from Edwards' philosophical notes On Being:

This infinite and omnipresent being cannot be solid. Let us see how contradictory it is to say that infinite being is solid. For solidity surely is nothing but resistance to other solidities. Space is this necessary, eternal, infinite, and omnipresent being. We find that we can with ease conceive how all other beings should not be. We can remove them out of our minds and place some other in the room of them, but space is the very thing that we can never remove and conceive of its not being. If a man would imagine space anywhere to be divided so as there should be nothing between the divided parts, there remains space between, notwithstanding. And so the man contradicts himself. And it is self-evident, I believe, to every man that space is necessary, eternal, infinite, and omnipresent. But I had as good speak plain. I have already said as much as that space is God. And it is indeed clear to me that all the space there is, not proper to body, all the space there is without the bounds of the creations, all the space there was before the creation, is God Himself. And nobody would in the least stick at it if it were not because of the gross conceptions we have of space.

Edwards' conclusion sounds controversial. Space is God. Historically, the Church has understood God to be "outside" or "beyond" both time and space. The reason for this restriction was because time and space have predominantly been conceived with respect to material bodies. But Edwards is careful to preface his conclusion with arguments that remove the problem of solidity (i.e. material bodies) from consideration. God (the infinite and omnipresent being) cannot be a solid, for He would have to be in resistance to some other solid or solids. He would not be the simple, self-existent, and eternally one God. There would be another or others that are not God against which God would be existent and defined. Thus, God is not a solid.

But here is where Edwards' brilliance shines. Our minds cannot conceive of anything irrespective of space. We need the concept or attribute of space as a basis for thought. The Biblical knowledge that Edwards' possesses provides the solution: space must be God, for what else but God is a necessary precondition of thought? He will later have to clarify what he means by distinguishing space proper to body and space within the bounds of creation, but all that space not so defined is an attribute of God. As Paul says, quoting a wise pagan, in God we live and move and have our being. He is our space, or maybe as Augustine would say, the home we inhabit. Is it any wonder that men, however much they might wish to deny God or escape Him, cannot, for their being that particular thing in the space of all that is, is their being in God. All souls are restless until they find their rest in God.

Here is where some might consider Edwards a full-blown pantheist. But for a thing exist within something else is not the same as for the something else to exist within a thing. I may inhabit a house without the house being in me. A thought may exist within my mind without being predicated of my essence. Pantheism only follows from a misconception of space, a misconception Edwards laments at the close of the passage.

I find that I, unlike Edwards, am too prejudiced a thinker. I too often want to have a party-line to play, a conclusion fixed by some other, more-reliable thinker, so that I may rest in his conclusion. But what if Edwards had not allowed himself the freedom of thought to examine space in ways hitherto neglected? Of course speculation has its dangers as well as does narrow=mindedness. But perhaps here is where the Anselmic, Athanasian, Augustinian dictum comes to our aid: believe in order to understand. There are basic truths that any child can understand about God, and indeed Christians all over the world teach their children to believe these things in order that they may understand; and also frequently repeat that they never be forgotten (even unto old age). But to mature we must also allow our minds to seek understanding that broadens the scope of our belief. If I may be permitted a physical analogy. In weightlifting, the muscles used to force the weights undergo microscopic tears in their fibers--there is a breakdown of their previous unity. But it is in these microscopic tears that the space necessary for muscle growth is opened up. With rest and good diet added to the weightlifting, the muscles grow into the spaces opened by the tearing down produced by the force exerted by the muscles. The growth of our understanding is similarly grown. When we force our minds to consider thoughts that are difficult, and may even cause spaces of doubt or the unknown to open, there is created space for the nourishment of recovery in the things we do know to grow into these spaces and increase our understanding.

Edwards pursues an observation about space that seems to contradict the common faith of Christianity -- space seems to be necessary, eternal, infinite, and omnipresent, but we affirm that God is not bound by or contained by space. Instead of retreating he pursues the problem, drawing upon what he knows well already, in order to seek an understanding that reconciles the problem. The result is a conception of space that not only reconciles the problem, but opens up opportunities for developing more understanding on immaterial space.

I realize that I'm dramatizing a bit here. Edwards may or may not have undergone the sort of process I describe above. However, what troubles me in the current age is how quickly many in the Church are to censure the intellectual weightlifting that is essential to sanctified spiritual understanding. Yes, heresies abound. Yes, novelties can lead to great error. Yes, yes, yes, to a thousand other dangers that persist whether or not Christians pursue the exercise I here recommend. Augustine once said that rhetorical abilities should be pursued by Christians so that the truth would have a better expression in its defense against promoters of error who were already using eloquence. The same is true, I think, of intellectual inquiry. The thousand and one ways in which it can result in error to not negate the (at least) several ways in which it directs us to greater understanding of the truth.

Handout on the Progymnasmata

2011-11-29T20:28:00.001-06:00

Below is the first part of a handout I used in a faculty workshop on the Progymnasmata.

I. Origins of the Progymnasmata

1. Emerged as a pedagogical program for upper-classGreek boys during the late empire (4^th Century).

2. Contains fourteen exercises, which proceed fromsimple to complex:

a. Fable,Narration, Anecdote, Maxim, Refutation, Confirmation, Common Topics, Encomium, Invective,Comparison, Speech in Character, Description, Thesis, Introduction of a Law

3. Expectations of the student

a. Itwas expected that the student of progymnasmatawould have a good working knowledge of Greek mythology, important works ofliterature (especially Homer), and the highlights of Athenian history.

b. Eachexercise develops particular composition skills, which would eventually serveas elements in more advanced exercises or complete speeches.

II. Progymnasmata within the Classical program

1. Grammar

a. Progymnasmatawere originally the grammar stage of rhetoric.

b. Theywere exercises designed to help young people learn different tools of speakingthat would aid them in assemblies, courts of law, and public addresses

c. Fables,narratives, anecdotes, and maxims are the simplest and require the most amountof repetition through variation—changing of perspective, alternation of tenseor time period, reversal of outcome, change of starting point, and so on. Theidea is to get children familiar with as many ways of manipulating language byusing short and enjoyable “building blocks.”

2. Logic

a. Someprogymnasmata involve tacitly logic-stage skills, such as finding the bestarguments on both sides.

b. Refutation,Confirmation, Commonplace, Encomium, Vituperation, and Comparison are the mostlogic-stage in nature, for they emphasize argument-making and logicalarrangement and progression. The students should be challenged to identify asmany possible valid claims as well as invalid and logically fallacious claims.

c. However,most, if not all, progymnasmata exercises can be used in a logic-stage fashion.For example, the maxim exercises could be turned into a debate of competingmaxims, where the exercises are followed and then a discussion ensues as towhen each maxim seems more applicable than the other.

3. Rhetoric

a. Whenmastery of the progymnasmata has been accomplished, larger writing or speakingassignments should be made that require the progymnasmata categories to be usedin producing a persuasive address.

b. Characterization,Description, Thesis, and Introduction of a Law are the most naturally suitedfor the rhetoric stage because they require the most extensive use ofrhetorical figures, imaginative thinking, and reality-based application ofarguments and claims.

c. Aswith the logic-stage, all of the progymnasmata elements may be used in arhetoric-stage manner. An essay or speech may require the student to use threeor four of the progymnasmata to convey their thought or defend their thesis ina way that is persuasive, beautiful, and engaging on a level both thoughtfuland winsome.

III. Progymnasmata within the Christian program.

1. The progymnasmata are, like rhetoric, built uponobservation of how lived communication functions in culture. One doesn’t needto know what an “antimetabole” is in order to use one: for who doesn’t know thephrase, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”?

2. In the same way that rhetorical figures areuniversal patterns of human communication, so too progymnasmata are imbedded inthe human world. They need not follow the specific patterns of the Greeksystem, but the general concepts and typical patterns of development may befound in any culture across time and place.

3. Therefore they fit within the Christian programof education as an example of God’s natural revelation to man, as much as thetechniques of tiered irrigation or building construction.

4. Moreover, we find the progymnasmata within theScriptures, whether explicitly in the maxims quoted by Paul, or implicitly inthe Biblical writers’ characterizations of historical figures such as Pharaohor Ahab.

IV. What are the desired outcomes of theProgymnasmata?

1. Given the natural progression of the exercisesand their being part of God’s natural revelation, the progymnasmata have atleast three desirable outcomes for our children.

2. First, if used well, they ought to produce moreversatile well-rounded writers, both in terms of style, (through gradualincorporation of rhetorical figures of style) and perspective, andcompositional structure.

3. Second, if used well, they ought to produce moreversatile and well-rounded readers, who have grown attentive to the inescapableselectivity of communication and the various consequences of the choices madein writing or speaking.

4. Third, if used well, they ought to produce afuller sense of God’s grandeur, insofar as children recognize that these skillsare God’s gift to men both good and evil, in the same way that mathematics,physics, or any other part of creation ought to enhance our sense of wonder andthanksgiving for God.

A new look

2011-10-09T21:45:00.003-05:00

Blogger has recently overhauled its interface as well as its options for users. I really like the looks and options of the dynamic interface, even though the options go beyond the applications I use for this blog in particular. Those of you who read or follow my blog, please comment on how you like the new look, and how well it allows you to use the blog.

An Outline of the Theological Concept of Covenant

2011-10-07T19:52:00.000-05:00

Covenantsimply defined is, “A relationship thatGod establishes in trust and guarantees by His Word.”

Somekey aspects to the theological concept of covenant:

1. Being established andguaranteed by God’s Word, it is grounded in and reflects His character andpurpose.

a. Therefore it is irrevocable,as God cannot deny Himself (2 Tim. 2:13; Num. 23:19)

b. Therefore it is gracious andmerciful, as God owes nothing to anyone but Himself (Isa. 48:9-11)

c. Therefore it is just andgood to those with whom God makes it good (Rom. 8:28-30)

2. Being a relationship, it declarespromises for faithfulness (blessing) and for unfaithfulness (cursing)

a. There is blessing forobedience and cursing for disobedience (Deut. 30:11-20)

b. The blessing and cursing isbased upon God’s having chosen a people for Himself (Deut. 32)

c. Being based upon andreflecting God’s character, the requirement for fulfillment is perfectobedience because of God’s great provision for His people.

i. As seen in the Garden ofEden with Adam (Gen. 2:15-17)

ii. As seen in the Land ofCanaan with Abraham (Gen. 17:1-8)

iii. As seen in the Wildernesswith Moses (Deut. 6)

iv. As seen in the City of Zionwith David (2 Sam. 7)

v. As seen in the Temple ofZion with Solomon (1 Ki. 9:1-9)

vi. As seen in the Exile withthe Promised Messiah (Jer. 31)

vii. As seen in the Church withthe Body of Christ (1 John 3:1-3)

3. Having ordained theinadequacy of Adam, the Covenant was made prior to Creation within the Godhead.

a. We know that the promisedseed is Christ Jesus, the Son of God, in whom all are made perfect before Godby faith (Gal. 3:16, 26-29)

b. Christ Jesus is the promisedKing (Messiah) of David, who reigns perpetually in God’s Kingdom. (Matt. 1:1)

c. Disciples are made accordingto the authority given by the Father to the Son, the Son giving glory to theFather, and all bound together by the Spirit (John 17; Matt. 28:18-20)

d. The eternal plan of God thatthe Son should die for the sins of His people was established before thefoundation of the world (Rev. 13:8; Acts 2:23)

4. Being eternal and invisiblein its origin, the covenant is manifested temporally and visibly in signs.

a. The covenant sign marks (is administered to) all who are associatedwith the stipulations of the covenant.

i. Abraham circumcised Isaac,the son of promise, as well as Ishmael (the son of Hagar, the rejected motherand offspring) and all the servants both familial and foreign (Gen. 17; Gal.4:21-31; Rom. 9)

b. The covenant sign isrealized (is established with) inthose who are truly sons, according to God’s choice to adopt a people intoChrist through His death and resurrection.

i. God’s choice is revealed inJacob and Esau as individuals (Rom. 9)

ii. God’s choice is revealed inthe Israelites and Gentiles as peoples (Rom. 10-11; Gal. 3; Col. 2:6-15; Eph.2)

c. The bloody covenant sign(circumcision) foreshadowed the blood sacrifice and has been replaced by theclean covenant sign (baptism), which was foreshadowed in Noah’s deliverance.

i. The circumcision, which wasa removal of the flesh (a cutting off of the corrupted seed), corresponds tobaptism, which is a destruction of the flesh in death (cutting off) of the “oldman” (Col. 2:11-15: Rom. 6:1-14)

ii. Noah’s deliverance was akind of baptism (2 Pet. 3:20-22)

iii. Jesus Christ’s bloodysacrifice atoned for all sin, therefore no more blood is required foracceptance into God’s covenant, but a sprinkling of water symbolizing Christ’sblood shed on behalf of His people (Heb. 10)

d. Even the promise of the landof Canaan is a sign of a greater universal new heavens and new earth. (Heb.11:13-16; 12:18-24)

The Family

2011-08-18T12:20:00.002-05:00

What is family? Family is the communion of individual persons in one consubstantial being, knowing, and doing. By communion is meant an intimate sharing in. By consubstantial[1] is meant a sharing in that is primarily essential rather than voluntary (though it surely entails voluntary willing). By being, knowing, and doing is meant an essential sharing in what one is (shared life), what one discerns is true (shared understanding), and what one acts upon in according with what one is and what one discerns is true (shared work).

Any one aspect of the above definition is not itself sufficient to constitute family. One may be born of a woman, yet she is no mother who is not also consubstantial in knowing and doing with the child. One may consummate a sexual union, but he is no husband who is not also consubstantial in knowing and doing with the woman. These physical consubstantialities are insufficient for the communion necessary for constituting family. To the extent that any of these aspects is lacking, to that extent the ideal or perfect image of family is incomplete. In fact, the shared work of doing is properly derived (as hinted at above) from a share life and shared understanding.

It is even possible to have an ostensibly shared work, when in fact only the external aspects are the same. For example, two fathers train their sons to refrain from lying and to tell the truth. Truth-telling is a shared work. However, these fathers are not thereby necessarily part of a larger family, nor will their sons be so. One father’s ultimate reason (i.e. shared understanding) for the work of truth-telling may be “to honor God, whose work is truth-telling” whereas the other father’s ultimate reason for the work of truth-telling is “to honor myself, to whom I ought always be true.” One may further see that in this scenario the shared life is not the same for the two fathers. The father whose shared understanding is based upon a truth about God has his life constituted in the life of God. The father whose shared understanding is based upon a truth about himself finds his life constituted in himself alone (a solipsistic reality).[2]

The Triune God is family par excellence. There is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the last of whom has often in dogmatic theology been identified as the shared bond of love that is constituted between the Father and the Son in the Father’s begetting of the Son. Regardless of the complexities of the divine nature, and avoiding the risk of drawing specific conclusions concerning the being of each divine person, or their singular triune essence, it is clear that God has chosen to reveal Himself to man as Father and Son and Spirit—each name presupposing the idea of family.

As the image of God, the life of man reflects the life of God as family. The creation of Adam and his placement in the Garden of Eden to tend it constituted the first incomplete act of God in Creation—it was not good that the man should be alone.[3] The individual is decidedly not—at least not singularly—the most basic category of definition. The most basic category of definition is the individual person in communion with another individual person, and when we elaborate on the creation of Eve, the additional aspects of being, knowing, and doing emerge: she is taken from Adam’s side (being),[4] she is given understanding of the same God and His blessings and commandments (knowing), and she is given the responsibility to help the man in his duty of dominion (doing). With Eve by his side, Adam is now no longer alone in the world without an equal, and the fullness of possible relations is complete: God above him, Eve beside him, the animals and plants below him.

Because of the nature of God and His express image, Christ, who is the paradigmatic man, the family is an inescapable and the most basic category of human life. Every man is already son, every woman, daughter. Therefore every man receives and projects (or reflects) the understanding of Father as a prior (and, at least causally, higher) being. Each one of us enters the world thrown into submission to the one by which we have received our capacity for being, knowing, and doing as individual persons with other individual persons. And this is true even while our sin nature naturally inclines us toward autonomy from this dependency (autonomy being the privilege of the triune God alone) into a self-sustaining (solipsistic) life (again, a life reserve for the Triune God alone).

Because we are created as family, our purposes; the teleology of life as men and women in this world and in eternity, is family. Since we are to live in harmony of being, knowing, and doing; and since our sinful nature shuns this purpose, we are in a continual struggle to renew our minds to a proper understanding of our purpose as human beings in communion—consubstantial—with other human beings.[5] God has been gracious enough to provide natural affections within biological fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters for one another in order to encourage us to develop the qualities of communion that are ultimately to be realized in the family of God in Christ—who is the quintessential human husband and child in the quintessential family.[6]

Husbandry is the growing up of what is incomplete into what is complete, and the wife is indispensible in this task as both an object of husbandry and helpmeet in husbandry (since no husband has completed his development into the perfect paradigm of Christ, and no husband is fully equipped to cultivate his children)[7]. Although the Spirit is not per se female, it is interesting to note that it is the Spirit who goes forth from the risen and enthroned Christ to do the work of sanctifying the Bride (the Church) for her wedding at the close of history—not unlike the mother who goes forth unto her children at the direction of her husband to raise them (in one accord with the husband) in the home. Husbandry requires “wifery” for the completion of its task.[8]

Children bear the stamp of dependency more obviously than the other categories, but they also bear the stamp of innocence in that the direction of their cultivation has only just begun—the calluses on an elderly hand cannot easily be removed and reshaped, but one may easily heal or shape the calluses upon a child’s hand.[9] The malleability of the child is precisely the quality God desires in His disciples—a willingness to receive from His hands now the firmer press of His hand, now the gentle touch to direct. At the same time, the maturity of every disciple in not childishness, even in this positive sense, but rather fatherhood—it is a good thing to desire to be an elder or deacon (or older woman who trains younger women), that is, a father in the family of God. While we will always be children of God, we are not intended to remain children toward one another, though we are brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers—mutual relations as well as authority relations.

A parting thought is to realize that to be family is to be as God is, and to shirk family is to deny God. To deny God is to reject love and peace and embrace wrath and enmity. To embrace wrath and enmity is to embrace destruction—to love death. Is it any wonder then, that the 5^th commandment contains the promise that those who honor father and mother shall live long in the land, for in these relations are contained the whole requirements of holiness and harmony in human life? Or, as William Ames, Puritan divine puts it: “And one reason why there is mention only of parents in the fifth commandment is because only domestic society, being clearly natural, is to remain one and the same throughout all ages and nations. It is primary, the fountain and seed bed of all society, and thus the authority of all superiors is at once set forth and mitigated when they are called fathers, 2 Kings 2:12; 5:13; 13:14; Gen. 41:8, 43; 1 Sam. 24:11; 1 Tim. 5:1.” And because our honoring of earthly family directly reflects our understanding of God, to break the 5^th commandment is also to break the 1^st commandment—dishonoring an authority is tantamount to honoring oneself above that authority.

There are many other practical implications to be drawn from the above. Ames does a fine job of doing this in some detail, and I would commend all readers to consult chapter XVII of his Marrow of Divinity to receive the full account. Also, Isaiah 63 shows in particular the extreme lengths to which God is willing to go in order to parent His children and husband His wife. Another is Jeremiah 31, which expresses the same Fatherly love in chastisement and restoration. Let these few examples spark your zeal to find others in order to understand them, work them out, and thereby thrive the life of God.

[1] While the term “consubstantial” has for the most part been identified as a metaphysical attribute, I wish to here use the term, not as a category of being per se, but within each category of philosophy—metaphysics, ethics, epistemology. We cannot, for example, argue that being a family makes us metaphysically or one essence in such a way that destroys individuation—God is one being, but three persons; the family is one being (we might say, a shared life), in many persons.

[2] It is important to note that this equation is concerned with ultimate reasons and not given reasons. It may be perfectly consistent that one’s given reason for truth-telling is to be true to oneself and one’s ultimate reason be that God is truth-telling. The given reason may be subsidiary to the ultimate reason, such that “being truth to oneself” is itself based upon the reason “because God is true to himself,” thereby determining one’s own identity in the identity of God, which completes the chain of reasoning to its ultimate ground in the nature or life of God. As a father reasoning to a son, one can see how vital it is to stress this ultimate understanding, and to evaluate given reasons in light of the ultimate, in order to ensure that one is basing one’s understanding in the right ground of life, that is, God’s life. For example, to teach a son that his truth-telling is about honoring himself without tying that reason to the ultimate reason of honoring God, the father risks the son’s misunderstanding the given reason (honor yourself) as the ultimate reason. Such misunderstanding leads away from a shared life, even if its outward work looks the same.

[3] It is possible that one of God’s reasons for suspending the creation of female as He does is precisely to teach the male that his life is fundamentally as family. This instruction would be especially necessary given that God had probably not revealed himself to the man as Triune. It would only be through his life with the woman that the man would come to understand the life of God. It is not only not good for the man to be alone for the sake of his life in the Garden, but it is also not good for the man to be alone because it inhibits him from understanding and thereby sharing in the life of God. It is only in the communion of man and woman (family) that man or woman understands, and thereby communes in, the life of God.

[4] It is interesting to note that the woman does not receive the spirit of God directly, as the man did. God breathed life into the man, which inspirited (now we see the person of the Spirit in man as the image of God) him into life. Eve receives her spirit directly from the life of man, which has already received his life from the life of God breathed into him. There is a giving that reflects the giving of the Godhead—Father gives to the Son who sends the Spirit to give to Creation, which receives from Spirit to through the Son in return to the Father. Man receives from God, woman receives from man, children receive from man and woman, and children also give back to father and mother in the form of grandchildren (though this is hardly the only possible means of developing the nature of giving and receiving).

[5] The idea of the “universal brotherhood of man” is mistaken only in that it avoids the eternal rift within humanity between the elect and the reprobate. There are two distinct modes of life—unto God’s love and unto God’s wrath, and therefore two separate ways of family. This is reflected in Scripture through the line of Seth and the line of Cain, or more properly, the line of the Christ (the Son of God) and the line of the serpent (Satan).

[6] That our biological family is not the quintessential family is revealed in Christ’s sobering claim that anyone who loves his mother or brother or father or sister more than they love Him shall have no place at His table, that is, in His family. Nevertheless, because the biological family is the natural image of the divine family, our first responsibilities according to the law are to the biological family, for it is the family into which God has placed us to work. It is only by a kind of apostasy or prodigality that the immediate family is removed from one’s chief concern, and even then, as with excommunication, the hope is for eventual restoration and renewal of the shared life, understanding, and work.

[7] God has crafted a natural argument for this reality in that women bear the means of sustaining the child’s physical life through her sides, that is, her breasts.

[8] The truism of motherhood is more readily acknowledged than the truism of wifehood, although this was not always the case, and still persists in the slightly perverted sense of young men needing to “settle down” into marriage in order to fully “grow up.” On the other hand, as I write this essay, there is renewed attention to the necessity of fatherhood, with the parallel subjugated emphasis upon husbandry. Anyone wishing to be a good father ought to recognize that in raising sons and daughters to be good fathers and good mothers, they must also see what it means to be a good husband, for there is properly no father or mother without a marriage of husband and wife.

[9] And let us remember that calluses demonstrate both the extent of work and its precise nature. An illustration: a callused backside bears and bares a lazy bum. To turn the other cheek: the rod well applied leaves no external marks, but is fruit is borne in the heart and bared in the work of the well-disciplined child.

Parallelisms in Scripture

2011-08-10T15:20:00.002-05:00

Stephen Dempster, in his book, Dominion and Dynasty, points out several interesting parallels between the Exodus and Moses, Moses and the Flood, and the Tabernacle and Eden. Here are some of the highlights:

Moses' salvation from the water [the River Nile] echoes backwards and forwards in the text; backwards to the salvation of humanity from the judgment of the flood by Noah (Gen. 6-8), and forwards to the Israelites' future escape from the waters of the Reed Sea (Exod. 14). Significantly, as Fox (1997:253) shows, the figure of Moses, this child born as a type of saviour figure, not only saves Israel but also embodies Israel at times. His rescure from the water prefigures the nation's salvation from the water; his escape after the death of the Egyptian (Exod. 2:11-15) is a prelude to the Israelites' flight after death of many Egyptians (Exod. 12:29-39); his experience of being in the desert for forty years (Exod. 2:21-25) foreshadows the same for Israel (Num. 14:33); his divine encounter before the burning bush (Exod. 3) anticipates Israel before the fire at Sinai (Exod. 19-24). (p. 95)

When viewed against the wider context of the biblical storyline, the subsequent account of the ten plagues is another expression of the battle between the seeds, which culminates in the Passover. Israelite firstborn males are spared while those in Egypt are not. If the Passover is a sacrifice, it is the first one since the act of Abraham in Genesis 22 [offering of Isaac, the firstborn]. Similarly, the Passover rite suggests substitutionary death. A male yearling sheep or goat is slain and its blood spattered on the doorposts and lintels of an Israelite dwelling in order to save the firstborn child from death. (pp. 98-99)

The goal of the journey out of Egypt is to relocate Israel in the land of promise in fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. The pathway through the Canaanite armies in the land of promise will be much like passing through the Reed Sea (Exod. 15:14-16). As the Israelites passed unscathed through a watery gauntlet, they will now pass through a human one [this seems also to be a parallel with the Flood and Tower of Babel, where you have a scattering of waters and a scattering of peoples following one after the other]. (p. 100)

The next chapters depict Moses' ascent of the mountain, where he spends forty days receiving plans for the creation of the tabernacle, which is patterned after a heavenly archetype (Exod. 25-31). There are enough clues in the text to suggest that the tabernacle to be made on earth is also a microcosm of the creation of the world [perhaps even a foreshadowing of New Heavens and Earth?], and its innermost sanctuary a garden of Eden. It takes place in seven actions, with the sixth stressing the installation of two human beings filled with the Spirit of God to implement the making of the structure [footnote: Exod. 25:1; 30:11, 17, 22, 34; 31:1, 12 are the introductions to the seven actions]. The seventh action stresses the importance of Sabbath-keeping and its basis in the creation of the world (Exod. 31:12-18). (p. 102)

As you can see in only a few pages (and I didn't post all of the possible examples) Dempster labors to uncover the many parallel types within the narrative of Scripture (or, in particular, the Old Testament). These parallels are helpful in keeping the unity of the Scriptures in mind, and weaving an overarching theme or plot from which to understand the smaller details of Scripture that often escape our notice or understanding (he has a very good literary explanation for the near death and circumcision of Moses' son in Exod. 4, for example).

Quoting Sailhamer

2011-07-26T09:54:00.004-05:00

"One finds the meaning and message of the Pentateuch not in asking why it was written or how, but in asking what was written as the book itself. The author of the Pentateuch surely had specific reasons or motives for writing the Pentateuch, but those reasons should not be identified with the meaning of the Pentateuch. The meaning of the Pentateuch as intended by its author lies in its 'verbal meaning,' be that the literal, figurative, realistic or spiritual sense."

The Meaning of the Pentateuch, pp. 74-75

Whose historical setting?

2011-07-26T09:41:00.003-05:00

Continuing with Sailhamer, he notes in chapter two of part one of his book, The Meaning of the Pentateuch, that evangelical interpreters of the Bible who desire to inform their understanding of the text by referencing the historical setting or context in which the text is set often make a rather unfortunate blunder in their assumptions about whose historical setting is appropriate for comparison.

Sailhamer's example is the historical setting of Genesis, and in particular, the narrative of the tower of Babel. Evangelicals agree that Moses is the author of the Genesis narratives, and that Abraham was a third millennium B.C. historical figure. Therefore, in interpreting the text concerning Babel in its historical context, they trace the tower of Babel back to structures found in third millennium Ancient Near Eastern culture, the Sumerian ziggurat to be precise. What Sailhamer points out is that this attempt at interpreting the text through its historical context is actually conflating two different historical settings: that of Abraham, the character in the text, and that of Moses, the author writing the narrative. Whose historical setting ought to be prominent in understanding the elements of the story and the point of the story? For Sailhamer, as we might expect for most Evangelicals, is that it is the author's setting that matters, for it is the author's meaning for the author's audience that is the first concern of interpretation. But if that is the case, then third millennium Sumerian ziggurats are probably not the image that Moses is desirous to conjure, since little or no awareness of these structures would be known to him or his audience, and even if such awareness was had, the significance of these structures would be only anecdotal. The question to ask, according to Sailhamer, is not "what is the historical setting of the characters in the story," but "what is the historical setting of the author of the narrative."

A simple point, but one of profound implications when it is abandoned or ignored.

The Composition of the Old Testament

2011-07-21T09:22:00.003-05:00

I've just begun reading John H. Sailhamer's magnum opus entitled, The Meaning of the Pentateuch. In the introduction, he makes a point about the way in which the Tanak (the original compilation and organization of the books of the Old Testament) is a theological, and more specifically, a messianic arrangement and commentary upon the Scriptures. In a very interesting turn of higher critical scholarship for evangelical use, he argues that the late "additions or edits" to Scripture are actually the commentary of later prophets upon former prophets, in the exact fashion that the apostles of the New Testament commented upon the OT Scriptures in light of their fulfillment in Christ.

The clearest example of this is in Deuteronomy 34, which chronicles the death of Moses. Even evangelical readers recognize that Moses probably did not write about his own death before it happened, and so the question is when was this account rendered? Sailhamer proposes that it is at a time when prophesy in Israel had ceased (though we need not follow him in this conclusion to accept his general point), for in 34:10 there is this statement: "But since then there has not arisen in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face" (NKJV). Sailhamer argues that this is later commentary upon the prophecy of Deut. 18:18, which says: "I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and HE shall speak to them all that I command Him." (NKJV). The later prophet is indicating that this Messianic promise has not yet been fulfilled. Indeed, in Acts 3:22-23 Peter preaches that Jesus is the fulfillment of Deut. 18:18, confirming its Messianic character.

The upshot of Sailhamer's proposal is that reading the Old Testament is not fundamentally different from reading the New Testament. What we have is later writers looking back upon older Scriptures and using them to evaluate the Messianic promises in light of the current situation. Thus, Hannah in her prayer to God in receiving Samuel in 1 Sam. 2:1-10 can look toward the anointed king promised in Numbers 24:7 (see Sailhamer, p. 16). Thus the entire canon of Scripture is a continual unfolding of promise, expectation, reflection, and fulfillment, wherein the process is one of continually going back to the Scriptures in order to evaluate the present redemptive and revelatory moment in light of what God has said. With a closed canon, of course, this unfolding is no longer revelatory in the sense of God's Word speaking anew, but it is revelatory in the sense of always understanding our present circumstances in light of the promises, expectations, reflections, and fulfillments of God's redemptive history as set forth in Scripture.

Lewis and I on Education and Social Struggle

2011-07-13T19:58:00.003-05:00

Imagine your son coming home from an all boys public school after a long term away. As his father or mother, you are naturally interested to know what's been going on in your son's life. What sort of things has he been learning? What friends has he made? Has he received any recognition or joined any social groups? After talking about a few of these things your son lets slip that he is a Tart. What is a Tart, you say? A Tart is a catamite. The Tart is but one of the categories of young men who had the privilege o public education during C. S. Lewis's time as an adolescent at Wyvern college.

What could be worse that pederasty in public school? Such rampant sexual manipulation is surely the worst conceivable sin an institution of education for young men can tolerate, is it not? Not in the least, says Lewis:

Spiritually speaking, the deadly thing was that school life was a life almost wholly dominated by the social struggle; to get on, to arrive, or, having reached the top, to remain there, was the absorbing preoccupation of adult life as well. . . .And that is why I cannot give pederasty anything like a first place among the evils of the Coll [Wyvern]. People commonly talk as if every other evil were more tolerable than this. But why? Because those of us who do not share the vice feel for it a certain nausea, as we do, say, for necrophily? I think that of very little relevance to moral judgment. Because it produces permanent perversion? But there is very little evidence that it does. The Bloods would have preferred girls to boys if they could have come by them; when, at a later age, girls were obtainable, they probably took them. Is it then on Christian grounds? But how many of those who fulminate on the matter are in fact Christians? And what Christian, in a society so worldly and cruel as that of Wyvern, would pick out the carnal sins for special reprobation? Cruelty is surely more evil than lust and the World at least as dangerous as the Flesh. The real reason for all the pother is, in my opinion, neither Christian nor ethical. We attack this vice not because it is the worst but because it is, by adult standards, the most disreputable and unmentionable, and happens also to be a crime in English law. The World will lead you only to Hell; but sodomy may lead you to jail and create a scandal, and lose you your job. The World, to do it justice, seldom does that.

The cruelty attendent upon the social struggle for significance and achievement (a struggle that, Lewis points out, was not based upon class at all, but upon physical prowess, intellectual prowess, and beauty and personality) was more destructive to the minds of the boys--who by it were either pushed into conformity with a system that glorified vanity while accusing all transgressions as undue vanity, or pushed into defiance of such conformity by developing a sense of priggish arrogance and condescension toward the herd. Ironically, Lewis argues, the very thing some might consider the worst sin of Wyvern was actually one of the few places where the besetting sin of social struggle was mitigated:

If those of us who have known a school like Wyvern dared to speak the truth, we should have to say that pederasty, however great an evil in itself, was, in that time and place, the only foothold or cranny left for certain good things. IT was the only counterpoise to the social struggle; the one oasis (though green only with weeds and moist only with fetid water) in the burning desert of competitive ambition. In his unnatural love affairs, and perhaps only there, the Blood went a little out of himself, forgot for a few hours that he was One of the Most Important People There Are. It softens the picture. A perversion was the only chink left through which something spontaneous and uncalculating could creep in. Plato was right after all. Eros, turned upside down, blackened, distorted, and filthy, still bore the traces of his divinity.

Without getting into Lewis's view of Eros, I think it is safe to say that he would agree that the function of pederasty for easing social struggle was equally weighty for sustaining the loss of fatherly Eros toward these boys. At any rate, It isn't Lewis's controversial (but not really) softening of pederasty that is germane to my interests. So often those who speak about public schools as places of danger because of the violence or sex that goes on there are blind to the far more pervasive and destructive effects of social struggle. It may look different than it did at Lewis's Wyvern, but the pressure to simultaneously "stand out" (be athletic, smart, beautiful, witty, etc.) and conform to the often highly specialized and routinized group norms ("this is how we talk here," "this is how you act here,") produces in children the worst sort of pride--"I matter because I'm like these VIP people," and "I matter because I'm NOT like those VIP people." Instead of identifying talents, which could benefit the community and glorify God, children are taught to use their gifts for self-advancement, manipulation, and even overt coercion.

Not social setting is immune to the tendencies of social struggle (how many churches have split over this very sin??), but it isn't merely hard, but quite implausible to expect any child to avoid corruption when the status quo of social struggle is not only tolerated, but lauded as the very purpose for pursuing public education (as it was in Lewis's day, and as it is still in ours). "Kids need to be socialized!" is one clarion call. The very fact that humans are by nature social beings ensures that socialization will occur--even on a desert island with no fellow humans the solitary individual will adopt social values and obey social norms. The question is what sort of socialization one desires, and all education appoints a standard for producing citizens of a certain ilk, and where that model citizen is not envisioned as the image of Christ, built upon the standards of His Gospel, what God-respecting parent could in good conscience send their child to what is by default a factory for producing antichrists? There is no room for neutrality, and the best one could hope for would be a deveined, disempowered presentation of Christ that puts His sovereign Lordship on par with every other autonomous individual--one more voice in the crowd, take it or leave it.

Many well-meaning Christians wish to consider public education an acceptable option among others; one in which several categories are considered together (quality of curriculum, safety of the children, teacher to student ratio, etc.) and maybe even weighted for importance. Let it be known that such approaches implicitly or otherwise accept that education is an addendum to the spiritual formation and maturation of a child, that information transfer is the only purpose of instruction, and that parental influence is prima facie stronger influences than peer group social pressures. Let it also be known that such approaches implicitly or otherwise accept that Christ's claims to explicit Lordship are not universal, since one can, with no negative loss, learn science, mathematics, physics, history, philosophy (ethics, metaphysics, epistemology) law, politics, art, and even religion without Christ's Sovereign authority recognized or applied through the propositions of His self-revelation in Scripture. Let it be known that the image of Christ into which parents wish their children to grow is made narrow and irrelevant to most of their intellectual and social concerns upon such a view, for the subjects they study and the peers with which they interact need not acknowledge or abide by His sovereign authority and command.

Lest I rail only upon advocates of public education, Lewis's warning is just as applicable to homeschooling families and private (including private Christian) schools. If families and churches can and have imploded in their efforts to honor God as a result of the pressures of social struggle, exchanging intellectual foundations and methods of instruction does not ensure that the exchange is immune to the same vices and dangers. What parent hasn't struggled against the motive to build up a child's image based upon how well the child reflects the parent's own prideful aspirations? What church hasn't struggled against using arbitrary social norms as standards for acceptable or even salutatory membership value and recognition? In other words, if one's goal is to have children grow into the image of Christ, it will take more than an acceptable brand label and rejection of non-brand labels; more than a zealous spirit and puritan work ethic. It will require taking every thought captive to the impeccable and all-sufficient authority of Christ, believing that Scripture may not provide a specific command for every decision, but it nevertheless commands how we are to approach to making every decision, which is simply to say that even decisions of Christian liberty, so frequently appealed to for support in argument, are to be brought into conformity with commands that are binding (for example, one is free to eat four meals in a day, but one is not free to do so gluttonously). A choice of Christian liberty that entails subverting the claims of Christ's Sovereign Lordship over all is not an exercise of liberty, but licentious treason.

Christianity and Education

2011-07-08T10:41:00.002-05:00

I've recently been embroiled in a debate at Tim Challies' website on the topic of public education. The assertion of Challies and most of the other commenters is that the choice of education for Christians is a matter of Christian liberty, the adiaphora discussed by Paul in his letters to the Romans and the Corinthians. One minister argued that Scripture is unclear on the matter of education, and therefore anyone claiming education as adiaphora is not subject to providing justification for the claim's truth. Aside from the fact that he did not establish the previous claim that Scripture is indeed unclear on the matter, in a debate concerning whether or not education is adiaphora, both sides are obligated to at least present a prima facie case. In any case, I posted an argument in propositional form in order to establish the clear position of Scripture for an epistemologically Christian education, which excludes public education in its current form from qualifying as such. I thought it might be of interest to those who read my blog, and so I'm reproducing the argument here. Others interesting in reading the full exchange may go to Challies' blog.

Let me give you a formal argument with which to interact, and with the additional purpose of providing to all who read it that the position is not derived from "questionable deductions and extrapolations" but upon "unambiguous directives" regarding the education of children unto the Lord.

1. Deuteronomy 6 commands parents to disciple their children to know, love, and therefore obey all the commandments of the Lord.
2. 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that all Scripture is useful to make the man of God complete, equipped for every good work.
3. Given that parents are commanded to train their children in godliness, and Scripture is useful for the completion of equipping the godly, it follows that Scripture is all-sufficient for the training of children in godliness. (implication from 1 & 2)
4. Colossians 2:3 tells us that all wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ, therefore it is only through Christ that knowledge and wisdom may be found.
5. Because all Christian thought and life is to be directed toward godliness, and because godliness depends upon knowledge and wisdom, and because knowledge and wisdom are found in Christ, therefore all education that is not grounded upon the knowledge of God and directed toward godliness is antithetical to the law of God. (Implication of 2 & 4)
6. Parents who educate their children apart from the knowledge of God in submission to Christ as the revealer of wisdom and knowledge contradict the revealed truth and commands of Scripture, and therefore stand in disobedience to God. (implication of 3 & 5)
8. Insofar as homeschooling, private schooling, or public schooling depart from grounding education in the knowledge of God in submission to Christ, they too are in disobedience to God. (Implication of 5)
8. All public education is non-Christian by it present definition and purpose, by the very by-laws of the government, and therefore it does not accept the knowledge of God and His law as true or binding upon education.
9. All public school stands in disobedience to God and cannot therefore be an obedient option for Christian parents who wish to train their children in the way God has commanded. (implication from 6 & 8)

Anyone who wishes to argue that Scripture is 1) unclear, 2) silent, or that public school is 3) a choice obedient to Scripture ought to either deny one of the premises above (giving justification for such denial) and/or show the contradiction or other logical error sustained in the argument presented above.

Just because an individual or group of individuals claim that Scripture is silent or unclear does not itself constitute an argument that Scripture is in truth silent or unclear. I maintain that any claim of silence or ambiguity in reference to the education of children is false, according to the argument here presented.

William Ames and Proto R2KT

2011-06-29T11:06:00.004-05:00

There has been a lot of discussion in the past year or two over the resurgence of natural law theory and two-kingdom theology in Reformed theological studies and many folks have spilled ink on whether or not the new proponents of two-kingdom theology, mostly based out of Westminster Seminary in California, are consistent with the two-kingdom theology of Calvin and those following in his stead. Some opponents have dubbed the new two-kingdom position R2KT, or Radical Two Kingdom Theology, because they see in its a radical departure from Calvin's two-kingdom view. Lutheranism is pointed to as a more appropriate modern day identification for these new two-kingdom advocates.

I've recently re-read William Ames' short treatise on the encyclopedia of knowledge, entitled Technometry. William Ames was a Puritan whose influence was great both on the Continent, but especially in the American colonies, where his Marrow of Theology became THE systematic theology text of the New England Puritans. The Technometry is a special treatise for two reasons: 1) It was the last work that Ames sought to complete his system of thought, and 2) as such it stands as Ames' definitive view on the relation and purpose of knowledge as pursued by the liberal arts.

The relevance of Ames to the two-kingdom debate comes in his discussion of the placement of certain topics of study under the more general classifications of art. Ames begins by defining art as "the idea of eupraxia or good action, methodically delineated by universal rules." Eupraxia is, for God, one unique and simple act, but is manifold and divided in the perception of human reason (thesis 15). After several more necessary distinctions, Ames arrives at teleology of the arts, which he identifies as the glory of God (thesis 60). The understanding of the created order was perfect prior to the fall, in which it was made obscure, but is once more rendered clear in the Scriptures (theses 61-62). He goes on to discuss the virtues of pagan writing, and concludes: "With the exception of goodness, the type of things still conveys perfectly enough the remaining principles; but these remaining principles are to be inwardly seen and gathered only by those penetrating by untiring analysis the inner aspects of type" (thesis 66). The upshot of this section is that perception of the principles governing the natural world is possible by investigation of their inherent properties (i.e. their God-given natures), excepting the perception of goodness. This thesis destroys all confidence in the natural law, insofar as the natural law is supposed to perceive what is the good for man before God and within society. Ames continues in his discussion of pagan study of nature and draws several conclusions, one of which is, "that in theology and jurisprudence. . .the opinions of Christians are to be adhered to rather than those of the impious, even when very many" (thesis 76) and clarifies this statement in the next thesis by saying that Plato and Aristotle are good testing grounds, but only in subjection to truth, which he has already annexed to Scripture.

When Ames does get to discussion the liberal arts, he identifies six (dialectic, grammar, rhetoric, theology, mathematics, physics). In discussing theology, it is immediately apparent the great extent to which it governs all the others arts. "Theology alone homogeneously transmits (2) the universal teaching of virtues (i.e., of honesty, law, and equity). Theology alone homogeneously delivers the whole revealed will of God for directing our morals, will, and life. This whole revealed will of God alone is that right reason--if absolute rectitude be looked toward, as it must be looked toward here--in which alone, by the consensus of all who are of sound mind, the norm or rule of honesty, law, and equity (and therefore of virtues) is constituted" (thesis 113). As if this wasn't a clear enough statement that just laws are derived from Scripture, Ames follows in thesis 114 with, "Therefore, although there may be some usefulness and necessity of household economy and politics for jurisprudence, the principal usefulness and necessity is nevertheless theology's. Theology abundantly supplies most distinctly and most perfectly the general rules, the first principles, and all the foundations of law; household economy and politics convey to jurisprudence only some general rules and first principles that have been accommodated to their own uses."

Then Ames moves into an attack on what may be called the proto R2KT advocates. Thesis 115 says, "There is clearly no usefulness and necessity of ethics for jurisprudence. For ethics may properly contain nothing except imperfection, while all the remaining things have been borrowed from theology." Continuing in 116 with refutations of of ethicists:

"Notwithstanding, the pretexts of the ethicists have thus now been often rewoven. The principal pretexts of the ethicists are as follows. (1) They distinguish civil and moral happiness from supernatural and eternal happiness. Nevertheless, (a) supernatural and eternal happiness, considered with respect to the civil and political society in which we live, is civil and moral. (b) That which they call civil and moral (in contradistinction to that which is supernatural) ought not deservedly to be called "natural," that is, that which proceeds from corrupted nature, but rather "above nature," flowing from those vestiges of the integral state that remain through divine grace and have also been established and increased in a certain manner in the wiser pagans. (c) The proper good, the happiness or end of man, is not manifold. (d) That is not true virtue that may not lead man to his end and highest good. (2) They say that the object of theology is the inner man and piety, while the object of ethics is external morals and uprightness (probitatem). Nevertheless, external morals and uprightness are equally the object of theology, which commands external as much as internal obedience, as Keckermann also acknowledges in canon 10, "Concerning the End of Ethics," in General Precognitions of the System of Ethics. Ethics, no less that theology, claims for itself, the reform of man according to the image of God by prescribing the precepts of virtues and by calling away from vices. This is why prudence does not refuse to hear of ruling the will and appetite. (3) They add to that ethical virtues are confined to the limits of this life, while theological virtues are extended to the future life. But first, if something should therefore immediately cease to be theological because it is confined to the limits of this life, many things that are truly theological would cease to be theological, such as the preaching of the Word, the administration of the sacraments, etc. Secondly, they will never be able to prove that any virtue in its essence is about to cease with this life, although in some particular individuals the likenesses of certain virtues may be about to cease. (4) They say that the subject of ethics is the upright, good, and honest man; while the subject of theology is the religious and pious man. That which has been said with respect to the second reason above applies here also. And they respond otherwise with respect to the first part of this assertion when they affirm that ethics teaches to live piously. With respect to the latter part of this assertion, according to Titus 2:12, Paul manifestly says that theology also teaches to live temperately and justly, that is, uprightly and honestly. (5) The difference between ethical and theological virtues is excellently set forth in Matthew 5:20 and also in chapters 6 and 7. Nothing appears in these texts except that, for the sake of virtue, no one ought to propose for himself private usefulness and glory but honesty alone. Likewise, more than has been recognized, that which the ethicists say about their virtues also appears here. For they are unwilling that freedom, riches, honors, and health are regarded by their ethicist only to the extent that they are a help and instrument for exercising more conveniently and more easily the actions of virtue. But if ethics should transmit hypocrisy and pharisaism, of what further mention is made here, who, I ask, will be its auditor? The difference between ethical and theological virtues is excellently set forth secondly according to Romans 1 and 2. Nothing ethical is considered here, unless perhaps they wish the ethicist to communicate the catalogue of vices at the end of the first chapter. But by means of what front? The purpose (scopus) of the apostle elsewhere in these two chapters is to make it clear that all men are transgressors of the divine law and thus deserters of theological virtues."

Ethicists here is referring to those in the church who were followers of Aristotle, the philosopher who put a great deal of emphasis upon politics as the supreme practical science. In other words, Aristotle is the grandfather of natural law theory, and his Christian follows sought to carve out a non-theological realm of ethical principles and norms for directing law and society. To put the cap on Ames' position, one needs only to understand what he means by jurisprudence: "The higher faculties are as follows. . .the juridical, for proclaiming law and administering justice" (thesis 123).

For Ames, as for any consistent Reformed position, the lower faculties of politics, law, medicine, etc. all find their governing principles and purposes in theology, and theology as it is primarily revealed in the Scriptures (containing the truths by which the order of God revealed in creation may be properly discerned).

Baptist Inconsistency

2011-06-20T08:50:00.005-05:00

I had the pleasure of spending a five hour road trip with a Reformed Baptist. As we talked of many things, our differences with regard to the baptism of children arose. Being a paedobaptist, I pointed out to him an inconsistency that helped to change my view from credobaptism when I had been first studying the matter closely. He was, to my surprise, convinced and we spoke of many more examples that supported the basic contention. I thought it might be helpful just to post the basic claim that started the ball rolling. I think one thing that particularly helped our conversation was that we had been listening to Voddie Baucham, a Reformed Baptist who has a very high view of family and of covenantal discipline of children. The stark contrast was made even starker by this background.

I'm going to try and put the argument into a valid form with assumptions laid bare.

1. Being precedes doing.
2. Our being Christian precedes our doing Christianity.
3. God's power alone recreates the being "unbeliever" into the being "Christian" (this is regeneration)
4. Only regenerate beings can do what God commands in willing obedience.
5. The Bible commands elders and fathers to train their children in obedience to God's commands (Deut. 6, 1 Tim. & Titus).
6. The Bible states the God is faithful unto the thousandth generation of children of those who are faithful to His commands (Deut. 7).
7. Given 4-6 children of believing parents must be regarded as Christians in order to consistently fulfill the command of God to disciple them in obedience.

Upon what basis does the father or elder have for believing that his children will be obedient to God's commands? The father or elder is considered disobedient and unfit should his children not obey God's commands, yet it is clear that obedience is only obedience when it comes from the heart, which means a heart that has been made new through regeneration. Since the baptist does not believe that regeneration can occur apart from an understanding, and that the blessings and cursings of the covenant can only be enabled once a profession has been made, there is no basis for the parent of the unbaptized, unprofessing child to expect that their obedience is in accordance with God's commands. Not only is their no basis for expecting genuine obedience, there is no basis for discipleship, since only a regenerate mind can receive the truth of Scripture. In order to be consistent, a Baptist must evangelize, not instruct, and he can only apply the law apart from the gospel promises to his child. But what father who has taught his child to obey his word joyfully expects that the child's joyful obedience to his command is anything but genuine? And is this not obeying the fifth commandment, as a good father is teaching his child to obey, in accordance with Deut. 6? But under the baptist position, all of these efforts are in spite of what the baptist believes his child to be--a fallen, blind, and unregenerate sinner.

While the father cannot know the child's regeneration, he can regard the child as such on the basis of God's stated Word for children of believing parents--a Word that the baptist has rejected the truth of, and cannot claim consistently. The father may raise his child in accordance with Deut. 6 and the elder may be evaluated on the basis of his children's obedience because his children are under the blessings and cursings of the covenant and can be expected to obey from the heart the commands which they are given. And because the paedobaptist has the promise of God that his child shall continue in the obedience in which he is taught, he has a foundation upon which to discipline the child, since God can make known to the child what an unregenerate heart cannot know by definition--namely, that "I am a Christian and must honor my father and mother in the Lord." The baptist child can only be expected to know that "I am an unbeliever and must honor my father and mother by my own standard."

To the extent that baptist elders expect their children to follow in their instruction concerning the Lord's commands in the same way that they expect a newly converted adult to do so, there is also inconsistency. And if the baptist expects the child to obey only superficially, i.e. not from understanding AND willingness, then he is actively training hypocrisy rather than obedience. The only consistently baptist father would treat his child as an unbeliever--continually proclaiming his unbelief and separated status while refraining from the sort of fellowship in which only Christians may participate. Yet what father expects that in raising his child there is not a unity of mind? After all, what is filling the child's mind with propositions to believe and act upon if not the father? What father expects his child to be able to articulate a profession of faith that they believe the father's word is true and should be obeyed? Even Voddie Baucham mentioned a verse in the Old Testament where the daughter's vow to the Lord may be overturned if the father invalidates it--thus the Lord subjects the daughter's vow to the word of the parent, thereby allowing the father to cover the iniquity of the daughter. How else could this be unless children under the headship of the father and mother were sanctified and under the covenant stipulations? What else does Paul mean when saying that a child of even one believing parent is considered holy?

Once one accepts the basic inconsistency of the credobaptist position on this point, one's eyes are opened to see the pervasive assumption regarding the place of children of believing parents in the Covenant of Christ. "Let the little children come unto me," and "Whoever causes the least of these to stumble," are reflective of the ideas laid down in the Old Testament regarding the chosen status of children and the high standard required of parents to be to their children as God is to His children.

What is rhetoric?

2011-06-11T20:43:00.002-05:00

People working in the academic discipline of Rhetoric & Public Affairs occasionally joke about having to explain to their family and friends outside of their profession what it is exactly that they study and or "do." Several answers I've heard are quite straightforward ("I study the history of public address") to those a bit more sophisticated ("I do rhetorical history; I study how speech shapes the progress of cultures and societies") and many variations along the spectrum.

Having studied rhetoric through an undergraduate, masters, and doctorate program (still working on the last) I continue to reflect upon just how "diverse" and sporadic is the field of rhetoric. Many people in the field like it this way, some would prefer more definite boundaries, and others wish for even more diversity and "out of the box" thinking and applications. Of course, for the Christian scholar, there should be a desire and an attempt to integrate rhetoric into its proper relationship to glorifying God.

One of the puritans I've come across in studied for my dissertation sought to relate all of the liberal arts under one overarching philosophy of life, with theology heading them all as the art of living well. Rhetoric was one of the liberal arts, and was defined as the art of speaking ornately, revealing a view of rhetoric as predominantly style, delivery, or eloquence of expression. Dialectic was the art of discoursing well, which essentially meant how to think logically and arrange expression logically. Although some scholar lament taking away from rhetoric the canons of invention, arrangement, and memory (leaving only delivery and style), I think they miss the point of the Ramist approach to the liberal arts, which the Puritans followed (though not always with strict rigidity). It was never Ramus' intent to divorce any one of the liberal arts from the other, but rather to avoid superficial repetitions of content, duplication of methods, and general confusion of terms and their meanings. By streamlining dialectic and rhetoric in the way he did, Ramus was not seeking to take away from rhetoric what was traditionally its own elements, but to organize it in relation to dialectic in such a way that they would operate (with grammar) as true counterparts as Aristotle had originally organized them.

It is true that Ramus and his followers understood dialectic differently than did Aristotle, for while Aristotle distinguished "scientific" discourse (i.e. rigorous logical development from assumed or unquestioned axioms) and "dialectical" discourse (i.e. rigorous logical development from generally believed or well accepted opinions) the Ramist dialectic only sought to consider universal premises that had the status of Aristotle's "scientific" epistemological quality. In other words, opinions had to be argued back to universal and established truths, as opposed to being argued on their own foundations. The perceptive reader will recognize the underlying philosophical assumptions behind these differences. For Aristotle, the epistemological standards were quite different than for Calvinistic Protestants of which Ramus became a convert and whom followed Ramus in his attempts to bring all knowledge and education under the epistemological authority of Christian revelation--the Bible or Word of God and natural revelation as understood through premises set for in that Word.

Rhetoric does not operate apart from dialectic, but rather in coordination with it--in a way not altogether different from Augustine's approach in On Christian Doctrine. In that treatise, Augustine used the tools of rhetoric as a means for interpreting the Scriptures accurately, and then conveying them or arguing them persuasively and clearly to Christians and non-Christian as required. The Puritans allowed the analytical elements of rhetoric to be considered under the head of dialectic, and kept for rhetoric the attention to style, which Augustine treated in book four of his treatise (completed almost a generation after the first three books had been written). Because the truth is given to be discovered in Scripture, the invention and arrangement aspects of rhetoric from the classical approach are more clearly and narrowly circumscribed. One may, but need not, look to human authorities, beautiful literature, or cultural norms to gather materials for persuasion. One needs only to discern what the Scriptures teach and adapt them appropriate to the consciences of the immediate audience. Style and delivery, even for Aristotle, were more closely linked to the psychological considerations of rhetoric--how does this or that rhythm, this or that metaphor, this or that gesture, etc. touch upon, move, or otherwise impact the consciences of the audience? Arguments obviously have this component as well, but on a much more abstract level--since one's first concern is with discerning the truth, or the logical consistency of claims, prior to consideration of how persuasive an audience will find them.

All this is not to say that the Puritans had the right definition and approach to rhetoric. It is open to debate whether or not their divisions accomplished what they hoped for in terms of integrating the liberal arts under theology, or the authority of Scripture. What is of importance for the present concern is that their general philosophy set the agenda for how rhetoric was to be defined. Nothing profound there. What is more interesting, and what will take more time to tease out (my studies remain incomplete and inconclusive) is to what extent proximate aims or emphases (what some rhetorical scholars have called "exigences" and "constraints" of the situation that requires speech for its resolution) remain consistent with the general philosophy, and to what extent their view of rhetoric is affected by, or affects the whole exchange. Does the classical view of Aristotle--that rhetoric is governed by the historical, changing, particular constraints--outweigh the more dialectical approach of the Puritans and later Calvinists I'm studying?

It is a question that may prove uninteresting and fruitless for the larger dissertation, but it does interest me, and aligns with the normative considerations of how we ought to define what is rhetoric.

Dabney on Evangelical Inducements

2011-04-28T11:57:00.004-05:00

Having found true eloquence to be the soul's virtuous energy exerted through speech, I would remind you that the sermon is a peculiar species of eloquence. Like all other eloquence, it aims always to produce a definite, practical volition in the hearer. This aim is, in the best sense, a worthy one; for the acts it evokes are the spiritual. But its peculiarity is chiefly this, that it applies to the will, the authority of God, the only Lord of the conscience. This alone, I repeat, makes the gospel discourse. Other orators bring to bear upon the understandings of their hearers the force of human testimony and natural reason; they apply to their hearts legitimate secular and moral inducements. The preacher relies alone upon evangelical inducements, and refers every conviction of the reason ultimately to God's testimony. I elaborate this all-important distinction carefully; perhaps my reasons for it are difficult to grasp, because of their simplicity. The end, I repeat, of every oration is to make men do. But the things which the sermon would make men do, are only the things of God. Therefore it must apply to them the authority of God. If your discourse urges the hearer merely with excellent reasons and inducements, natural, ethical, social, legal, political, self-interested, philanthropic, if it does not end by bringing their wills under the direct grasp of a "thus saith the Lord,' it is not a sermon; it has degenerated into a speech.

The emboldened statement is the focus of my interest here, for it implies a presuppositional approach to preaching, namely, that all reasons or testimonies presented to the hearer as support for a claim must ultimately be annexed to or derivative of Scriptural propositions. I am not sure that Dabney has his mind on this point in particular, or that he even recognizes it, for it is possible given the rest of the quote that he separates secular from sacred thinking. However, I suspect that Dabney would acknowledge that even arguments "natural, ethical, social, legal, etc." must be grounded upon Revelation in order to be sustainable for Christian belief and practice, or indeed all sound belief and practice. Whatever the case, the quote is a superb reminder to preachers that whatever arguments or examples they produce in their sermons, they ought to derive them, clothe them, and otherwise immerse them in Biblical presuppositions--and whenever possible, do so by using the Bible's own terms and language.

Federal Vision Summarized

2011-03-08T00:43:00.003-06:00

A friend of mine, Ron DiGiacomo, posted the following summary on the GreenBaggins website. I haven't found a more concise summary of the chief problem of the Federal Vision:

FV is not flawed because it regards the baptized roles as God’s heritage. Rather their error is found in their doctrine of regeneration, which suggests that the non-elect can, for a season, enjoy through water baptism the grace of faith and definitive sanctification prior to falling away. Consequently, FV has no place to ground the assurance of salvation that is available to the regenerate because the system allows for even a reprobate to receive the same measure of regeneration and faith as the elect. (Assurance becomes predicated upon the secret decree of perseverance, which cannot be known being a secret.) All of that stands in stark contrast to the biblical teaching – that the Holy Spirit bears witness only with the true believer’s spirit according to the unambiguous word of promise which states that all who God calls, He justifies and will glorify.

It expresses precisely what I hoped to have expressed in my previous reviews of Leithart's book, The Baptized Body.

Time & Eternity

2011-01-08T18:10:00.001-06:00

Time is the succession of thoughts in the mind of rational, created beings. God, being eternal, does not have a succession of thoughts, but rather His thoughts persist at once in their entirety, or put otherwise, they are immediate. God "interacts" with time insofar as every action of creation (including the succession of men's thoughts) is the result of God's thinking them so. Therefore time is an aspect of the created order and not an aspect of God's essential nature. Therefore time is subject to the will of God, and not God to the nature of time. (HT Aurelius Augustine, Gordon Clark)

The Baptized Body by Peter Leithart

2010-11-05T22:15:00.003-05:00

I originally posted these on another blog as three separate parts, but I'm combining them here as one post.

I’m currently reading Peter Leithart’s book, The Baptized Body. In the opening chapter, there is much to commend. Let me choose three examples.

First, baptism has socio-political implications. In other words, when I am baptized, my allegiances, my citizenship, and my responsibilities as a citizen are fundamentally altered. Baptism doesn’t only affect me, it doesn’t only affect the Church, but it affects the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of this world—and not only eschatologically, but as soon as it occurs.

Second, baptism is a basis for instruction, not an end of instruction. Baptists, who deny infants the rite of baptism, take the view that baptism is something that comes after faith has been demonstrated as the result of instruction into who is the object of that faith (Jesus Christ), His work, and how that work applies to the recipient. But if faith is something that is not only instantaneous, but also progressive, why should the sign be kept from those under the lordship of faith-filled parents? Parents who pass on language expect their children to speak as they speak as they grow into this instruction. Parents who pass on basic household instructions expect children to eventually learn and do what they are told. The symbols used to communicate realities that children are only just learning to understand are not withheld, but rather inform the meaning parents seek to give. Somehow the passing on of the faith becomes radically different from all other instruction, but there is no justification for this dramatic shift. But baptism, as a symbol of the faith in Christ and all that it entails by way of blessings and responsibilities is part of the way a child learns what faith is—it is not the end of instruction, but a basis for it.

Third, sacraments do work and require work. By work I don’t mean that they are “good works” in some forensic sense. Rather, they are participatory rather than entirely introspective or contemplative. The meeting of minds is a central aspect (as I’ve stated in a previous post here), but it is not the only aspect, and the mental aspect is supported by, and even accomplished through the interaction with or participation in the work/effort/action of baptism and communion. Objectively, though not always efficaciously, baptism and communion cleanse the believer of sin, confer upon the believer the rights and privileges of Christ, including the responsibilities of covenant fidelity, and draw the believer into communion with Christ and His Body. We can say objectively, because that is what God has purposed the signs to signify, and how He has instructed us to regard them and those partaking of them. That some will partake powerlessly, faithlessly, subversively does not invalidate the sign or its meaning—for a general purpose need not entail a universal application (I can say, “My class is full of good students,” even while there are a few who are “bad students.” The fullness does not imply totality in each particular, but generality across the class).

Despite these excellent points, there are unfortunately stinkers too. Two points in particular stick out. One is relatively minor, but is cropping up as a pattern (in three readings of Leithart now)—I don’t like the way Leithart discards long-standing terminology on the basis of contemporary misuses or misunderstandings. Provocation is not always perceptive. The other quibble is more grievous, and is based in poor definition, and poor attention to logical implication.

First is the disjunction between means and ends. Leithart avoids the term “ends,” but it seems apparent from his description and examples that what he opposes to means are the things means are supposed to be getting us toward, helping to accomplish, etc. He says, for example, “Is the sentence ‘food is a means of nourishment’ any more precise than ‘food nourishes’?” or “Is sex a ‘means of making love’ or is it ‘making love’?” He supposes that these sentences are tautologies, which they are, but then he takes the additional step of arguing that this invalidates the precision of “means” as a term of description: “In each case, sticking ‘means’ into the sentence gives the impression of insight and precision, but without much payoff.” But just because one may omit the word in several cases of expression does not imply that it loses precision in all cases of expression.

Suppose I confess the faith to an unbeliever, and as a result of my confession the unbeliever repents and believes. By Leithart’s logic, saying, “My confession saved this unbeliever” is as precise as saying, “My confession was a means of saving this unbeliever.” The first is true, but confusing insofar as it leaves unexpressed the other means that were necessary for the event to have been accomplished. By including “means” I communicate that more than my confession contributed to the unbeliever’s salvation. And this is precisely the type of precision that the Westminster Confession is aiming at in using the phrase “means of grace.” There are several means of grace—ways in which God graces us—none of which in itself is the sum and total of God’s particular grace to His people. Baptism graces. Communion graces. The Word graces. And all of these by God’s determination and power. The emphasis upon “means” is to point back to the “primary cause” who confers, and who also does not confer.

This fact on non-conference is another reason why “means” language is more precise. Every time one has sex, “lovemaking” is not only objectively portrayed, but subjectively accomplished, if we take the terms to be identical. Water is a bit more fluid (pardon the pun) for it can wash effectively or ineffectively based on how it is applied. Baptism and Communion are objective rites, but they do not confer in and of themselves what they signify (which Leithart acknowledges). Thus, God must act through them, in them, or by them, but “them” not apart from Him. The reprobate who has “bad faith” (though by all appearances he has faith) lacks the new birth wrought by God. This is so by definition, for God does not confer his favor (grace) upon, does not commune with, does not look upon with love the one determined by wrath or hatred from eternity. The appearance of faith is no different than an alien’s appearance of citizenship, or the imposter’s appearance of belonging. Now this is the first chapter, so perhaps Leithart will bring the discussion back around, but as it stands in this section, I don’t see how ridding ourselves of “means” language affords us greater clarity.

I’ve probably spent too much effort to explain what could be said in one sentence: the problem is not with the term “means of grace,” but with the misunderstanding of what it identifies or what is its definition. Leithart wants new terms (or old terms that find new usage), which seems good so long as we don’t discard terms that are still full of use, despite their misuse or misunderstanding.

The second objection I have is Leithart's explanation of God's relation to time.

He begins, “For some, however, God’s transcendence of time effectively cancels out any real interaction or involvement that God might have with creatures in time. Because God has determined and knows that some person will be reprobate, He cannot really, sincerely favor that reprobate in time. Because God has scripted history and fixed the course of events, God never really reacts to our actions. When the Bible says, ‘God changed His mind,’ it is mere anthropomorphism. This is not a satisfying answer. The Bible says God changed His mind, and the Bible is true (Exod. 32:14; Jer. 26:19; Amos 7:3,6). The Bible also says God does not change His mind, and that is also true (1 Sam. 15:29). We should try to affirm both equally well, and not allow one biblical truth to cancel another. Any time our theology makes it difficult or impossible to say what Scripture says, our theology must be mistaken.”

One small note, but important note: God hasn’t determined and known that some person “will be” reprobate, but rather God determines and knows that a person “is” reprobate. One doesn’t become elect or reprobate at some point in history, but is elect or reprobate from eternity, and is revealed before (displayed in front of or toward) creation as elect or reprobate in the Last Day. This is a subtle, but all important distinction, because insofar as we want to have eternal election—God choosing to place his love on certain men prior to and apart from any condition in those men—then we also by implication affirm eternal reprobation (whether supralapsarian or sublapsarian in order). You don’t get one without the other, and therefore all men for all of time are categorized in one of these two ways, never to be confused or alternated.

Second, let’s recognize that in tackling one of the most difficult philosophical topics (time) in addition to the part time plays in one of the most difficult theological topics (God’s relation to time) Leithart fails to define his terms—and not just in this quotation, but anywhere in the section. What is time? What is “changelessness?” We get lots of description, some propositions and supporting claims, but no definitions. It is impossible to resolve the relation of God’s immutability and time without knowing what exactly immutability and time are! Leithart promptly goes to the Bible, which is the right move, but instead of clarifying a single meaning, he identifies two mutually exclusive meanings and says we must have both! God cannot be glorified in logical contradictions, no matter how “mysterious” we want to proclaim them to be. Open that door and we can do all sorts of gymnastics upon the same basis: The Bible says that God’s eyes roam to and fro over the earth; the Bible also says that God is a spirit, which means He has no body; well, the Bible says God has eyes, and God has not eyes, so we must affirm both! Clearly this is absurd, and no one resolves anthropomorphisms of this nature by arguing that “somehow” God has and also has not body parts.

We needn’t resort to affirming contradictions anyhow. The word Leithart identifies as “change” is nacham, and means to repent, regret, be sorry, comfort, console oneself, or be comforted. The key idea here has to do with how God is positioned toward His people. In 1 Sam. 15:29 God is rejecting Saul, and Samuel wants Saul to be clear that God is beyond persuading, i.e. there is no repentance that can bring about restoration—God is not like men, who will be comforted by your efforts to appease him. In Exod. 32:14 Moses is interceding with God to spare the people for His name’s sake. Clearly this is in line with God’s eternal desire, and so here God accepts the mediation of Moses, for it is for God’s purposes to relent from destroying Israel. Has God “changed His mind” or was it that He never intended to wipe Israel off the face of the earth in the first place? Just because the language is put into dramatic form doesn’t imply that we toss out what the Bible elsewhere affirms about God’s eternal willing. Resolving the issue doesn’t require affirming the contradiction, nor does it require a definition of God’s relation to time wherein God is undergoing some change within Himself toward the people whom He is addressing or being addressed. We don’t even need to attempt to distinguish reprobation and election in these passages, but only that God is disposed to impose or relent of wrath on the basis of intercession actual or potential. That God exacts the consequences of sin at one time and does not exact them at another does not entail that God is changing His mind, or changing anything regarding His dispositions toward those upon whom the consequences fall.

So when Leithart wants us to accept that God changes, but does not change his mind and attempts to support this claim by explaining how God is both “active” and “responsive” in Creation, he isn’t giving us any logically sound definition of time and change upon which to evaluate his claims. Leithart simply does not define what is response or responsiveness. His affirmation that God passes judgment is not proof that God is responsive, for we can identify judgments of God that are not responsive at all, since they precede the existence of the things to which He would be responding—i.e. when God judges men elect or reprobate prior to creating them, he is not responding to something they have done, but is imposing judgment actively, determinately, without response. Leithart affirms that “God does all things according to the council of His will (Eph. 1:11), and yet God also responds to, reacts to, and passes judgment on things that He Himself has performed. He responds to prayers with showers of blessings. He responds to rebellion with flaming wrath. He mourns over the city and the people that refuse to receive Him. God, the changeless God, is a responsive God.” But this isn’t proof of Leithart’s claim, but mere assertion. We can just as easily assert that these judgments and consequences aren’t something God is “doing” in time, but are the entailment of what He “has done” from eternity—namely, decided that at time T, X would occur to Y on the basis of A. There is no compelling demonstration for Leithart’s claim, but insofar as we accept election and reprobation from eternity we prima facie affirm that God does judge, evaluate, and act from eternity in ways that humans experience in time, without the entailment of God somehow changing something about Himself or His doing in time.

Which brings us to the problem of time itself. Augustine defined time as a quality of created things, thus God’s “entry” into time can only be truly expressed in Christ’s human nature in the Incarnation. God’s actions are not “in time,” but rather human experience of God’s acts is durative rather than immediate. If Leithart wants to disagree with Augustine, then he needs to put forth a definition of time. Instead Leithart says, “God is changeless, but we must define changelessness the way the Bible does and in a way consistent with our Trinitarian convictions. We must be careful not to fill the word ‘changeless’ with whatever content we think is appropriate. For instance, one might argue: God is changeless; any action is change; therefore, God doesn’t really act. When the Bible says He acts, it’s speaking ‘anthropomorphically.’ But that’s not the way the Bible defines ‘changelessness.’ Obviously God does act, and all the time; He works from the beginning until now, Jesus says. We can’t conclude from God’s changelessness that God is motionless. In short, we should affirm both sides of this apparent contradiction between God’s changelessness and His responsiveness.” But how can we affirm what has not been defined or identified? What are changelessness and responsiveness? Descriptions of Biblical events aren’t definitions of these terms. Leithart admonishes us to avoid importing our own meaning to a word, but then instead of giving us a Biblical meaning to use, he simply says it is obvious from the descriptions offered by the Bible.

I would think that Dr. Leithart would know that a description is not the same as a definition. Saying, “this object is hard, sharp edged, and gray” does not a rock define. Nor is saying, “God changes His mind, and God does not change His mind” a definition of God’s changelessness and “responsiveness.” It describes two statements made about God from Scripture, but does not distinguish their meaning or their difference from each other. Leithart’s primary problem is that he takes a change in man’s nature or temporal status to indicate a change in God’s relationship to man: “In short, God has planned everything, but part of what He’s planned is a change in His relationship with us. This is not only explicit in various passages of Scripture, where it is said that God changed His mind [a statement Leithart has asserted, but not proven, as my counter-explanation above has demonstrated], but it is evident from the very nature of the gospel. What can we say about a man who is a rogue apostate, living in flagrant disobedience to God, preying on every attractive woman he meets, backbiting his business associates and cheating his business competition? Are we justified in saying that he is the object of God’s wrath? Certainly. What if he converts? Has God’s attitude toward him changed? Certainly. He has moved from wrath to grace; before God regarded him in Adam, but now He regards him in Christ. God had not shown favor; then He does show favor. That’s what conversion means.”

This is terrible theology. It takes what we observe—a man’s transition from death to life—and identifies it as a change in God’s evaluation. But Scripture affirms that God chose us in Christ from before the foundation of the world, which means God has regarded us in Christ while we were sinners. God does not view the elect who have not yet been converted as reprobate, nor is He disposed toward them in wrath. They are called children of wrath because that is the realm in which they are still living, but that isn’t how God regards them, for otherwise it could not be said that He has elected them in Christ from eternity. They are only “in Adam” insofar as their nature has not yet been changed, but from God’s determination, from His evaluation of them (which, by the way, is always from the view of the individual’s end—glorification or condemnation) is from the nature He shall grant them upon conversion. What Leithart has done is taken the classical Arminian view of God’s relationship toward men in salvation and generalized it out to God’s relation to time. For the Arminian, God responds to what He has planned from eternity because He is dependent upon the free will of the individual to accomplish the plan. Leithart avoids the LFW problem, but keeps the dependency of God to be disposed one way or another on the basis of the temporal conditions of the individuals He has created. The Creator is rendered a passive agent. I don’t take this to be what Liethart believes himself to be saying, but rather I affirm it as an implication of what he has said. It is sloppy thinking, and the saddest part is that he doesn’t need it in order to support the arguments regarding the objective aspects of the Covenant identified in my previous post.

Musings on Federal Vision

2010-11-05T22:12:00.001-05:00

Musings on Federal Vision

Below is a review of two articles articulating the basics of Federal Vision. The first article is a short one by Peter Leithart, which also has two other short articles that go along with it. The other two articles deal with an "identity" crisis and the question of who gets to defined what "Reformed" is, neither of which are really what I'm concerned about specifically. The other article is a lengthy one, and I've only interacted with the part that deals with articulating what is Federal Vision. The rest of the article I may get to, but for now I'm sticking with the basics of the viewpoint.

http://www.federal-vision.com/?page_id=28

Leithart: Systems & sub-systems

1. The issue of time & eternity. Leithart recognizes that God’s eternality and determination imply that God knows the reprobate as such throughout the existence of the reprobate’s life regardless of what sort of circumstances occur within the reprobate’s life, such as a confession of faith, brief evidences of fruit, etc. Yet his qualifications of “hear and believe the gospel for a time,” “really taste the Spirit and the powers of the age to come,” and “real, if rocky, relationship with God in Christ” are left undefined. In what sense can it be said truly that God shows “grace” to the reprobate? Is it really grace, for example, when God provides the reprobate with a taste of His Word such that the reprobate attempts to abide in God’s commandments and so reaps the blessings of the positive consequences of godly behavior—is this grace when we consider that the reprobate’s ultimate rejection of these “graces” means an increase in the outpouring of God’s wrath upon him? Any attempt to put aside the eschatological implications or significance of every aspect of an individual’s existence is not only narrow-sighted, but denies the very point Leithart would grant—that God is determining the ends from the beginning. If God has chosen to categorically hate from eternity those whom He reprobates, then even the apparent blessings of the earthly life of the reprobate are expressions of God’s wrath upon the reprobate in the form of stored up wrath. To argue that this “temporal” view is reprobation “sung in a different key” is actually a “colorful” way of affirming the contradiction that God is gracious and wrathful toward the ones He hates—it is a denial (by implication) of the eternality of God’s dispositions toward men.

2. Leithart says that the “register” of the doctrine of man is different between FV and the Alternative Reformed View (henceforth ARV) while the doctrine itself is the same. The ARV’s “substance” view is opposed to the FV’s “radically relational” view. The problem with this dichotomy is that it can easily be rendered false by a simple proposition. Leithart says that “a substance view would say that human beings are what they are because of God’s purposes and acts,” which in itself does not imply what he says next: “But even there, the person’s connections with other humans does not significantly affect or determine who or what he is.” If God’s purposes and acts determine what is man, then are not God’s “purposes and acts” of placing a man in “radical relation” to other men an expression rather than a denial of the “substance” view as Leithart described it initially? Why should we set up a dichotomy between God’s purposes and actions in the abstract and God’s instantiation of those purposes and acts in history through the various relations of life? I think we can recognize in Leithart’s false dichotomy many contemporary Reformed thinkers, or even contemporary Reformed congregants, but that is not to fault the doctrines themselves, but those who have misunderstood and therefore misapplied them. What is needed is not a new understanding or significance of baptism and communion, but rather an understanding that is consistent with what is already recognized as true—as opposed to the oft-contradictory beliefs and practices of modern Presbyterians (to use an easy example) that do not operate faithfully to the more abstract doctrines, which they affirm. The problem, it seems to me, is not in the formulation of doctrine, but in the understanding of doctrine.

3. I agree with Leithart on the ultimate futility of a natural/supernatural distinction, for it seems to imply that there exists a category in which the supernatural (God) is inactive, which is impossible. However, it is important to recognize that there is a difference in how God acts within redemptive history. Distinctions between God’s special activity and His sustaining activity—distinctions within the economy of God’s activity in history—are necessary and helpful. This is especially true when we consider “grace” in its normal soteriological sense, as opposed to the broad sense in which Leithart seems to wish to use it. If we take “grace” so broadly as to include ALL of God’s activity in Creation with no distinctions, then we have divested grace of all meaning and made it synonymous with all of God’s activity toward man. But this is untenable when we recognize that God acts from a disposition of wrath toward the reprobate and a disposition of love (and therefore grace) toward the elect.

Minich: Within the Bounds of Orthodoxy

1. The Objectivity of God’s Covenant People. We run into the same problem that Leithart exhibits in Minich’s explanation of the FV view of Covenant. If God is eternal and His dispositions are unchanging, then asserts a contradiction to declare that God “loves” or “unites to Himself” to those whom He ultimately “hates” and “divides from Himself.” If we are going to affirm that God’s covenant is only for the elect, and the elect are only those chosen from before the foundation of the world, then the validity of the covenant can only be identified with the elect. Yet this does not imply that there is no sense in which the reprobate may enter into covenant with God, nor that the term “elect” may be applied in different and broader sense (Israel was an “elect” nation, without all its members being “elect” for justification from eternity). The very fact that God holds the nations accountable to the Law is evidence that all men owe God something by law, and the covenant (though not exhaustively defined by legal terms) is essentially a forensic agreement.

Admitting this lays me open to the charge of reducing “covenant” to the same category as “law”—a charge I leveled against Leithart with regard to the term “grace.” The distinction comes in recognizing that covenant also bears a special meaning—and this is where the FV debate really has merit (no pun intended) in raising the question of how Christians who are ultimately reprobate are to be understood within the blessings and cursings of the Covenant of Christ. I think it is helpful to use the analogy of the Law here. Just as all men are obligated to obey God’s Law, not all men are made capable of obedience. What makes a man capable of obedience? As Augustine affirmed, taking his cue from Paul, who took his cue from the OT, it is only by God’s providing the grace to obey that anyone is made able to obey. This grace is given in the vital union with Christ and the gift of the Spirit—a grace that is grounded in individual’s eternal union with Christ on the basis of God’s election of the individual from eternity. So the grounds are from eternity, applied in time through the new birth, and made complete in glorification at the end of the Age.

More distinctions are required, for how is it that some can “taste of the heavenly gift and share in the Holy Spirit” and yet be reprobate? I don’t think that the author of Hebrews is declaring anything other than the objective aspects of being in the community of Christ’s Body and in the presence of His Word in Scripture and the Sacraments. The participation in these tangible marks of Christianity do not necessitate that God has indeed graced the individual as one elect unto Christ from eternity. Yet they are experiences of God’s more explicit self-revelation, just as the Israelites having been given the Law was a special experience not afforded to the Gentile nations. Note well that when Jesus tells his disciples how to identify truth from error in the Church, he does not point to baptism and the covenant meal, but rather to fruit in keeping with repentance. If by apostasy Minich is including not only denials of doctrine but also rejection of the law in the believer’s practice, then perhaps we are in more agreement than disagreement on this point. Still, one must be careful not to overrealize the signs of the Covenant (baptism and communion) as though they confer God’s eternal favor to all who profess to take them by faith. The Church must treat such professions as genuine, and any ecclesiology that tries to identify subjective realities is usurping the authority of the Spirit, but to make the signs identical to what they signify is to both undermine their nature as signs and to involve God in a contradiction in his dispositions toward men. The issue in this section may be the fact that the way terms were defined in the Reformers has shifted dramatically in the present—this makes sense as the present age struggles mightily with making categorical distinctions. The objective nature of the Covenant is where I find the most helpful aspects of the FV, but it is also where one must be the most careful in explaining one’s terms, for just as when evangelicals used the term “salvation” to mean the definitive act of regeneration, whereas the Reformers included justification and sanctification under the same term, so too many Reformed folks today limit the term “election” and “union with Christ” to the indwelling of God’s Spirit unto life, rather than in the fuller sense of the observable or objective standing of those in Covenant with Christ by profession and/or household baptism.

2. The sacraments. Again, I am very sympathetic to the FV position with regard to the purpose and significance of the sacraments. Baptism is a mark of citizenship in the Kingdom of God, which means that—objectively speaking—one has been freed of one type of legal debt (slavery to sin) to be placed under a new legal debt (slavery to Christ). How am I to know that I am a Christian? Why, because I have been marked by the brand of the King in baptism! It is a call to be what you have been called out to be. That many will ultimately prove imposters is no threat to either the sign or the promise of God, for the promise of God is general not universal, or, it does not extend to every particular individual within a category. That God saves the remnant of Israel is proof that His promise is yes and amen, notwithstanding the fact that His promise is stated generally to “all Israel.” So too the promise of God “to the nations.” God saves all nations generally, not all nations universally. God’s promise is to you and your children and to all who are far off generally, but not universally. The Christian can be confident that God’s promises are for his children, while not shirking the normative means by which God has commanded in order to call our His children from death to life. But if one is to acknowledge and even emphasize the objective nature of the sacraments, then one must also doubly emphasize the evidence of fruit in the life of the believer—for this will be the confirmation that one is abiding in the reality that the signs (baptism and communion) are signifying.

3. The Unity of God’s Gracious Covenant. Minich’s opposition of legal and personal or relational has the odor of false dichotomy. Modern connotations of law are essentially negative and impersonal, but there is no cause to reject the identification of love and law. Rather, the Scripture affirms that love is revealed in law, and law is fulfilled by love. David loved God’s law because he recognized that God’s law is an expression of God’s love for His people. Calvin’s recognition and emphasis upon the primary use of the Law as a guiding light for the believer in the pursuit of godliness is sorely ignored in modern theology. Reconstructionism is, in my opinion, the best understanding of the Law as it relates to God and to man—it is God’s expression of the nature of His relationship to man, and His expectations for how man is to love God. Christ willingly, joyfully submitted to the Father’s commands because these commands were the bonds of love. We all inherently recognize the necessity of boundaries for our relationships because boundaries define what is safe or unsafe, just or unjust, loving or unloving, in how we express ourselves and interact with one another. Boundaries are laws. Thus, to say that the Covenant is legal, but also personal is really bordering on tautology.

Law is pervasive, for law is really the means for defining what relationship exists. The FV gets it right, though, in recognizing that there is no merit in human fidelity to God’s commands. We can speak of Christ meriting favor with God by His fidelity, but even this obscures the fact that Christ’s obedience was really nothing more or less Christ’s being what He was by nature: one with God. We must recognize that although Adam was created “perfect” in the sense that he was sinless and made according to God’s design, this does not mean that Adam was complete in the sense of his being the full expression of the image of God. Christ is the express image of God, and Adam was but the prototype to the real paradigm. Adam is incomplete because he is made positionally righteous, but not ontologically righteous—Adam is not created in sin, but created with the capacity for sinning. Christ is not only born sinless, but is ontologically incapable of sinning by virtue of His being God, who is sinless by nature, and not simply by status. If we take merit to mean simply that there is an entitlement to blessing by virtue of having met the law’s demands we have no problems. The problems arise when we try to identify from when the power to obey arises. Clearly the power to obey must come either by an inherent nature, or by imposition from an external nature. Human nature is not empowered to obey apart from the imposition of God’s own nature—for God alone is incapable of sinning. Thus only the God-man is a human nature inherently empowered to obey. When we have been glorified, we will be partakers of the divine nature completely (this is the best meaning for what the Church Fathers said when they said man’s purpose was “divinization”), whereas now we are partakers partly in the payout, and partly in trust—we await the redemption of our bodies.

4. Christ-centeredness of the Gospel. I don’t see anything particularly different in this section from the previous ones concerning the objectivity of the Covenant and the sacraments. One’s justification is manifest in the fruit one exhibits. If there is not fruit, then one has not been justified. This does not imply that the fruit is what confers justification, but rather that fruit is the necessary consequence of justification. Again, this is a classical Reformed distinction. Where I differ from both FV and most ARV proponents is in my view of justification as eternal. Justification is an act of God, accomplished only by God, and categorized as a disposition of God (God disposes Himself toward me in love in election, and thereby disposes Himself to me in grace and mercy in Christ, which requires God to dispose Himself to me as one who is just—for God will not unite Himself to evil). The legal fact of justification for the elect is eternal, for our inclusion as heirs with Christ is eternal. The historical fact of justification is at the cross, where Jesus pays the penalty for sins, bears the wrath of God to satisfy His righteousness or justice, and secure for the believer the application of soteriological benefits when God calls him forth from death to life in regeneration. Faith, as the instrument of justification, is entirely passive and publishes the declaration of justification to the conscience of the believer, by which he may subsequently publish to the world by confession that “I too am a partaker in the cross of Christ, which secures my righteousness before God.” The believer cannot declare “I am justified because my faith has apprehended” without the object of faith being also asserted, “that is, apprehended that my debt was paid to God by Christ’s propitiation on the cross.” God has already justified the believer in Christ, which is temporally prior to the believer’s apprehension by faith, just as God’s legal decision to punish Christ and so justify us was made in Christ’s agreement to suffer for the elect in eternity—hence the Scripture’s affirmation that Christ was crucified from before the foundation of the world. A friend of mine distinguishes the two aspects of justification as “objective” (eternal justification) and “subjective” (justification as it is apprehended by faith). This same friend says that we are justified by faith alone because we have been given faith by justification alone.

5. Speaking God’s words to God’s people. I find little value in the distinction of the “phenomenological” language of the Scripture and the “language of abstraction.” Scripture speaks in concrete and abstract terms, and the old standard recognition of anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms as God’s condescension to human incapacities is much preferable. The point about theological formulations being limited by their historical context OUGHT to be obvious to anyone who has had a conversation with one person in one situation only to have a conversation on the same matter with someone else in a different situation be quite distinct, while expressing something quite identical in meaning. Unfortunately people don’t like to think contextually and they’d rather just affirm what someone else has said before doing the work of translation into a new situation. Again, the analogy of Law is helpful. Theology is a science for determining universal truths or principles concerning God, Man, and their relations, yet application of general principles is accommodated to the specifics or particulars that alternate or differ from one point in time to another. The command, “thou shalt not commit murder” implied in Ancient Israel that Israelites build fences on their roofs, for people hanging out on roofs needed to be protected from the harm of falling. Insofar as a culture no longer walks about on rooftops for social interaction, they don’t need that application of the law anymore, but will need another—another that Israelites may not have needed. So too some emphases of theology find a different or more acute application during one period and place in time than another, but the truth of the principle remains unchanged. Living “trinitarianly” in downtown metropolis will have different practices than in rural Prairieville, but they’ll both have the same principles. The point is that God’s words to God’s people are flexible and fixed: flexible in the sense that their expression may look different in one time and place than another (Israel describes God as a shepherd, which meant a whole lot more than just tending sheep in the Ancient world, though today that is about all it means), but the principles or “abstract” meanings are what must remain fixed as the expressions are adjusted to new contexts.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I’m continuing to familiarize myself with ideas, while seeking to avoid falling into the inconsistencies that crop up in how different people express themselves differently. I welcome any corrections, corroborations, or general comments. My biggest problem with FV, as far as I’ve been able to discern its arguments, is in its attempt to attribute grace and union with Christ to the reprobate. It is folly to argue that God can give grace (love) in time to those He hates from eternity, or unite Himself in time to what He has disunited Himself to from eternity. These sort of things pit God against Himself, and add nothing by way of clarity to the relationship between the elect and reprobate within the Church. On the human level, a union with Christ applied to both elect and reprobate alike destroys the possibility of the assurance of salvation for the elect—the doctrine of perseverance is undercut. If the elect are united to Christ and the reprobate are united to Christ, then upon what are the elect able to base their assurance that they are Christ’s truly, and not falsely? The Scriptures are clear that we may know the hope that is within us is certain—that God is our God who loves us eternally, died for us, and will bring us home to Him through all the pains and toils of this present life. Without an assurance of these truths for ourselves, then God’s promise does little to free our consciences of His wrath toward us.

Biblical Progymnasmata V & VI - Refutation & Confirmation

2010-06-16T20:43:00.001-05:00

I'm treating exercises five and six together because they are very closely related.

Aphthonius defines refutation as, "an overturning of some matter at hand" and confirmation as, "the corroboration of some matter at hand." He states that when refuting or confirming one should not choose a subject that "is neither very clear nor what is altogether impossible, but what holds a middle ground." In refutation one "should first state the false claim of those who advance it, then add an exposition of the subject and use these headings: first, that it is unclear and incredible, in addition that it is impossible and illogical and inappropriate, and finally adding that it is inexpedient." In confirmation one "should use arguments opposed to those of refutation and first mention the good repute of the claimant, then, in turn, provide an exposition, and use the opposite headings: clear instead of unclear, credible instead of incredible, and possible instead of impossible and logical instead of illogical and appropriate instead of inappropriate and expedient instead of inexpedient." Of both refutation and confirmation Aphthonius tells us, "includes all the power of the art" or rhetoric.

There are a variety of ways to go about using these exercises from a Biblical basis. The best way is to take a proposition, narrative, law, or some other aspect of Scripture and to argue on both sides of its assertion or truthfulness. Although others may find it inappropriate to engage in arguments against Biblical truths, I think it can be a healthy exercise for Christians for several reasons. First, it teaches the student to discover what argument are available both in support of Scripture and against it. The best way to uphold the truth of Scripture is to know what objections others are likely to raise against it. Second, in apologetic encounters the Christian will not be facing a sympathetic opponent, and so engaging in a debate on both sides prepares the Christian to face opposition without being unprepared or taken aback by opposition. Third, it teaches the Christian that the truth is not self-evident to all, but requires an exposition and defense against alternative viewpoints. Fourth, it is perfectly reasonable for the instructor to clarify to the student that the arguing against Scripture is a hypothetical exercise rather than an earnest means of taking God's Word to heart. Fifth, just as light is more conspicuous in the midst of darkness, the truth can be seen more clearly in the midst of many falsehoods. Although this truism does not hold for those who stand in rebellion to God's Word by their sinful nature, it is normative for those who abide in the Spirit and have the illumination of the Teacher, Jesus Christ, within them.

Examples:

Refutation - What is stated about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not probable.

(The False Claim) It is impious to attack a sacred text, yet what is not in accord with the light of reason is itself an impious stain upon humanity, and any sacred word that would turn the mind to irrational and impossible conclusions is not worthy of the virtue and integrity required for human flourishing. How is it rational to suppose then that when all those whom we observe dying, whose bodies decay and turn to dust, that one man should die and yet be raised again to life in a body that is not subject to decay, and moreover exhibits capabilities that no ordinary body possesses? Surely the sober minded and cautious soul will not assent in haste to what is fantastic, however desirable such fantasy may be.

(Exposition) The prophet Jesus, the Gospels and Epistles teach, was crucified, dead, and buried in a grave that was covered by a stone, and guarded by soldiers. For three days his body remained in the tomb until an angel appeared and rolled the stone away. At the same time did Jesus walk from the grave in a body that was not decayed in any way, yet bore the marks of his wounds, and exhibited the ability to pass through walls as if it were a spirit rather than a body. The credibility of these claims is corroborated by several eye-witnesses, and the additional claim that those opposed to Jesus sought to cover up the reality of this resurrection to life by claiming his body was stolen by his disciples.

But why should we accept the testimony of these supposed eye-witnesses whose affinity for their departed leader no doubt left them embittered to those who had taken his life? Surely it is more probable that the testimony of those who killed Jesus is more reliable, for it accords with common experience, the testimony of history, and what the most learned authorities have speculated upon with regard to the state of the soul after death.

First, our common experience shows that persons who die (and truly expire, rather than swoon) have their soul depart never to return to their bodies. When bodies have been exposed to the elements, or dug up from their earthly graves, moreover, the evidence of their decay is readily evident by all of our sensations--the smells and sights being the most distant; yet by means of touch, and even more scientific experimentation it has never been the case that any bodies have been resurrected or renewed from their death and decay.

Second, the testimony of history, although it may bear a few cases here and there, is overwhelmingly against the possibility of resurrection from the dead. Those few stories of resurrection have never been convincingly supported by evidence that the caution of reason recommends, nor have the common masses of people put much trust in stories, even when it might be suited to their own interests or highest wishes.

Third, the learned authorities, though disagreeing on the particular destiny of the soul, are universally agreed that whether the soul is destroyed or departs into the One, or returns to the earth again it never returns to the body from whence it departed. Just as the crab whose girth prevents it from returning to the external shell that was once its home, so too the soul which outgrows this life does not return to the corrupted shell that it inhabited before.

Thus we find that, however desirable it may be to believe in the resurrection of the dead to renewed bodies of incredible powers, there is no clarity to the testimony, nor possibility to its support, nor can right reason find it worthy whether by common experience, the testimony of history, or the learning of the wise. Let us not consider it blasphemy then to discard the testimony of sacred texts altogether, bur neither let us assent to claims that are better suited for children or poets, or others less concerned with what is wise and expedient.

Confirmation - What is stated about the resurrection of Jesus is probable.

Anyone who would deny the testimony of Scripture sets out to refute not the words of men, but the very knowledge of God, in whom, through whom, and to whom all things exist, subsist, and persist. What is more foolish to doubt: the light of human reason dimmed as it is by the frailty of human error, or the light of truth which was given by the breath of God Himself? Though all men should become liars by their claims, God remains true. Therefore it is our present task to demonstrate that the testimony of Scripture to the resurrection of Jesus is not merely probably, but as certain as any claim can be.

Let us first begin by noting the special nature of the man of whom it is said, "he rose again." The testimony of his character is not simply that he was a prophet, but that he was God's own prophet. We read in the sacred histories that the prophets of God were often empowered to do miraculous and uncommon feats, at which the world marveled. But more than this, Jesus was the Son of God, greater than any prophet of God, and appointed for the singular task of redeeming humanity from its corruption and error. The full testimony of Scripture bears this out not only in the shadows and promises, which God gave to the Israelites, of which the apostle to the Hebrews relates, but more clearly in the narratives of the life of Jesus and his work on earth during his life. The miracles that Jesus accomplished (among which was the raising of Lazarus from death to life) and the wisdom that he displayed does not make it incredible to believe that God should raise him from the dead.

As for those who would reject the testimony of Scripture altogether, let us introduce an objection to their claims built upon the three-fold pillars of common sense, historical testimony, and the wisdom of men.

First, although common sense is quite often reliable for common occurrences, it is quite obvious from the nature of the word itself that uncommon occurrences will appear foolish to a sense that considers only what is common to be reliable. Is it not taught amongst the rhetoricians and orators that when one is defending the smaller man accused of attacking the larger man, when the facts are true, to nevertheless argue that the smaller man would never prevail against the larger, nor even attempt to try, for it goes against our common sense? Nor does it take a great deal of thought to find other examples where what is not commonly thought to be true nonetheless finds occurrence in patterns more frequent that human attention is capable of finding. It is the dullness of our memories and the limitations of our observance that leads us to miss even those things which are common, and which we call uncommon, merely because of our own incapacity! Rather than trusting in this pillar, we rather see it unfit for supporting our assent.

Second, the testimony of history might be dismissed upon the argument that it is no more than the record of common sense applied to the courses of life that appeared significant to the authors of history. But even if we consider history to be more acute than common sense, the very fact that it records testimony of resurrection should give us reason to consider it more probably than our opponent would have us believe. The Scriptures themselves, when considered as history, tell of Elijah's raising of a child, and of Jesus' raising of Lazarus. Still other accounts, though they be doubted, show that the testimony of history cannot be considered a formidable grounds for denying the unique resurrection of Jesus.

Third, the wisdom of men is so far from being comparable to the revelation of God that we might as well compare it to the buzzing of flies or babbling of infants. But since there are many who do not consider such ground established, let us answer the philosophers. We shall ignore those who consider the soul destroyed in death, or that no soul exists, for they argue not only against revelation, but also against the very inclinations of human nature towards itself, death and what lies beyond death in hope. This is not to say that these things are themselves proof of immortality, yet they are so commonly assented to that the burden of proof lies not upon us, but upon them to make their case credible. Those that think the soul depart never to return to the body introduce so gross a distinction between body and soul that we must wonder at how this design could enter their mind at all--indeed how even their mind and body could cohere at all! Since they have not adequately proven that the relationship between body and soul is one of prison to prisoner, why should we think it more probable than the relation of house to occupant? Just as an occupant may leave his home for a period of time, why should not the soul have separation from the body with no possibility of return? And though we witness the decay of those bodies in which the soul has departed, why should we doubt that when the God who made these bodies is unable or unwilling to refurnish them when he wishes for the soul to inhabit again the property which he appointed for them at the first?

Yet let us not stray too far afield from our present consideration, for whatever may be the general estate of man, we can only know such when we consider the purpose for which man was made, and it is evident to all pious observers that only the testimony of the Maker Himself is suitable grounds for determining what purpose creation is intended to serve. For if there is no purpose at all, we have no cause to consider the debate worth consideration whatsoever, for whether one be convinced of resurrection, or not, there is no purpose for which it matter beyond the expiration of air into the atmosphere. Yet when we consider that God made man so that he might worship and glorify God forever, it was necessary that God should redeem a portion of man to fulfill this purpose though man had forsaken this destiny through the rejection of God's purpose at his initiation into the world.

Therefore let none be dismayed by the pillars of common sense, the testimony of history, or the wisdom of men, for they cannot stand in and of themselves apart from the very foundation of God, who has made men whose minds seek the common, who directs history according to His special design, and who illumines man's mind to know whatsoever may be known, though man is often led astray by his rebellious designs. And let us believe that the resurrection of Jesus is not only probable, but true, and that it has established the pattern for all humanity, be they resurrected unto life abundant, or unto torment unending.

Summary & Use:

Although the examples above lack the polish of careful editing, one can nevertheless see the potential for fruitful survey of the various arguments that may be leveled for or against a given Biblical claim. Not only do these exercises provide a rich storehouse of commonplaces for the student to have ready to use to defend the truth of God's Word, but it also prepares the Christian to be prepared for the sort of arguments leveled by unbelievers against the faith. It is not enough to know what to teach, for one must be able to anticipate and reply to objections (however weak or strong) offered by those whom God is both drawing unto Himself and condemning in their unrepentance. Moreover the competitive spirit which hypothetical debate fosters can ensure that those participating do not settle for straw arguments that may be easily dispatched--for who wants to be exposed as ignorant, weak, or incapable in front of one's peers? Therefore those debating as opponents of Scripture will be forced to not only find the most formidable claims of unbelievers, but also find those Biblically sound refutations for those same claims.

Conclusion:

I have shown how one may proceed to argue for and against a claim drawn from Scripture. One is not limited to a doctrinal claim such as the resurrection, but could also attack and defend the historicity of a Biblical narrative, the application of a Biblical law, or even the interpretation of a given passage of Scripture. There are few limitations and many possibilities for development, which is why it is said by Aphthonius that the whole art of rhetoric may be displayed in these exercises.

Biblical Progymnasmata IV - Maxim

2010-06-07T20:53:00.000-05:00

After a bit of a delay, here is the fourth entry of the Biblical Progymnasmata, the Maxim.

Aphthonius tells us of the maxim, "a summary statement, in declarative sentences, urging or dissuading something. Some maxims are protreptic [recommending], some apotreptic [dissuading], some declarative; and some are simple, some compound, some credible, some true, some hyperbolic."

His examples include:

"One should be kind to a visiting stranger, but send him on his way when he wants to go" (protreptic)
"A man who is a counselor should not sleep all the night" (apotreptic)
"There is need of money, and without it nothing needful can be done" (declarative)
"One omen is best, to fight for one's country" (simple)
"Many rulers are not good; let there be one ruler" (compound)
"Each man is as those he likes to be with" (credible)
"It is not possible for anyone to lead a life without suffering" (true)
"Earth nourishes nothing feebler than man" (hyperbolic)

As with the Chreia, the maxim are treated by various topics of invention or amplification, including praise, paraphrase, cause, contrary, comparison, example, testimony, and epilogue. The key difference between a chreia and a maxim, at least for Aphthonius, was that a chreia was attributable to a specific person, in order to be treated with a pointed view toward that person, whereas the maxim was not attributed, and could be treated more generally as a truism.

Examples:

The book of Proverbs is a compendium of maxims in many ways, and can be mined richly for its contents. But just to prove that we aren't limited to Proverbs, here are some examples from Ecclesiastes:

Eccl. 9:9 - "Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun." (protreptic)

Eccl. 7:9 - "Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools." (apotreptic)

Eccl. 7:19 - "Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city." (declarative)

Eccl. 12:13 - "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." (simple)

Eccl. 8:2-3 - "I say: Keep the king's command, because of God's oath to him. Be not hasty to go from his presence." (compound)

Eccl. 4:9 - "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil." (credible)

Eccl. 10:10 - "If the iron is blunt, and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed." (true)

Eccl. 12:12 - "Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh." (hyperbolic)

Explanation:

The explanations for each maxim depend upon the context in which they are given, as well as whatever generalization that context bears. The second example (Eccl. 7:9), to take but one, comes in the context of a comparison between wisdom and folly. Therefore, the verse is recommending a way of wisdom over and against a way of folly. The verse is a truism, which means it has universal application for all individuals, but is not necessarily true in each and every individual circumstance. Maxims provide a storehouse of wisdom, which, when applied correctly, are a precise arrow to hit one's target in speaking or writing about a particular matter. One could imagine, for example, bringing home a very challenging point of admonition to a congregation, and then following it up with the maxim from Eccl. 7:9 to rebuke any spirit of anger that might arise from speaking the admonition. This point of amplification doubles the attack upon foolishness and curbs the attention of the listeners away from their self-justification toward a more humble consideration (that is, supposing it doesn't incur the opposite affect of doubling their anger!).

Summary & Use:

As with the Chreia, we also have the various amplifications of the maxim that we can use to develop its point. Let's use the last example (Eccl. 12:12):

Praise: The Teacher gives us wise instruction to consider the pain of education. While we know that learning is a great benefit, it is true that of the endless books to be read there are but few worthy of our efforts, and those efforts are made strenuous by the fact that it shall never be different.

Paraphrase: For what is it that the Teacher teaches us but that we shall never see the end of human opining, nor yet the immortality of banal writings, so we must suffer our flesh to decay if we are to seek out wisdom by study.

Cause: Consider for yourself: what else could be the reason for endless publication and the consternation that it brings but the folly of men whose mouths gape and whose pens prattle their tireless drivel? There is no respite for the wise, who are but few when set amongst fools.

Contrary: Yet those who find wisdom, find also that the pains of study are never so bitter as the pains of ignorance and folly; for a fool may stumble a thousand times into the same hole, but the wise one, once perceiving a matter, shall never mistake it for masquerading errors.

Comparison: And is our Teacher's word not familiar to what he says elsewhere, "For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow" (Eccl. 1:18)? Indeed, knowledge comes by toil, produces pain, and loses many a fool as a friend who might be of some slight comfort would we abide in ignorance. So it is that the weariness of study is compounded by the afflictions of knowledge, yet still so much less afflicting to the soul than ignorance.

Example: For consider Christ, who though He knew His destiny was to die at the hands of men who did not even understand the grievous nature of their sin, and though He knew that His best would desert Him and deny Him, and though He knew that His would be a life of affliction and a death of immeasurable wrath--yet His wisdom taught Him to consider all these things as joyful because of the end that they would accomplish for Himself and those whom He loves.

Testimony: And this is true and in conformity to what our Teacher instructs, for he finishes his own lesson with its end: "The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil," so that we are assured that whatever pain we have for righteousness' sake is not without its eventual reward.

Epilogue: Therefore let us not speak falsely of the toils of study, nor the weariness it brings, as though knowledge and learning were always pleasant and cheerful; but let us learn from the Teacher for the keenness of his wisdom, and hope to emulate in ourselves something of its likeness.

Conclusion:

The maxim is very much like the chreia, although it tends to be separated by its generality of purpose and its lack of attribution. Like the chreia, maxims are useful for amplification, and may be treated in a number of ways to accomplish that end. Also in like fashion to the chreia, we should not shun extra-biblical maxims that are in harmony with its teachings, but make the most of what may be familiar to our audience, while remaining fidelitous to God's commands.

Biblical Progymnasmata III - Chreia

2010-05-14T20:51:00.000-05:00

We come to our third exercise in Biblical progymnasmata, the chreia. Here is what Aphthonius says,

"Chreia (khreia) is a brief recollection, referring to some person in a pointed way. It is called a chreia because it is useful (khreiodes). Some chreias are verbal, some active, some mixed. One that makes the utility clear by what is said is verbal; for example, Plato said the twigs of virtue grow by sweat and toil. An active chreia is one signifying something done; for example, when Pythagoras was asked how long is the life of men, he hid himself after appearing briefly, making his appearance a measure of life. A mixed chreia consists of both a saying and an action; for example, when Diogenes saw an undisciplined youth he struck his pedagogue, saying, "Why do you teach him such things?"

He then goes on to elaborate on the different treatments the chreia can take:

"This is the division of the chreia, and you should elaborate it with the following headings: praise, paraphrase, cause, contrary, comparison, example, testimony of the ancients, brief epilogue."

Aelius Theon considers the treatments of the chreia a bit differently, but we'll stick with Aphthonius for simplicity's sake. Chreias are very similar to maxims, but differ in several respects, which I'll point out when we get to maxims. For now it is best to understand that a maxim can be a chreia, but not all maxims are chreias. The chief distinction of the chreia is its usefulness as an application for life.

Example: Proverbs 26:4-5

"Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.
Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes."

Explanation:

This pair of verses form a riddle clothed in paradoxical expression. How can one answer and not answer a fool? It would be self-contradictory if the pair was intended to indicate the same thing in the same manner, but it doesn't. The first phrase intends that we not answer the fool according to the fool's own manner of understanding and expression--in other words, don't use the same assumptions and manner that a fool does. In apologetics, this would mean not granting the fool the assumption that God must be proven before He can be accepted as true. The second phrase intends that we answer the fool by pointing out his folly, in order that he not remain confident in his self-estimation. In apologetics, this would mean demonstrating the folly of the fool's assumptions and/or manner of reasoning. Thus, the saying has great import for life because it recommends in a very memorable expression how we are to engage with those who deny God by their words and actions--which is the Biblical definition of foolishness.

Summary & Use:

The treatments of a chreia in the progymnasmata are different inventions: different ways of inserting the chreia into a larger speech in order to lend credibility, garner praise, or highlight some idea, or add support to an argument. Aphthonius takes the several treatments and combines them into one example following the order: praise, paraphrase, cause, contrary, comparison, example, testimony, epilogue. Here is what our present example might look like given the same order.

Praise: It is just that Solomon is praised as the wisest of all men, for his facility with words is excelled only by his acuity of thought. His recorded sayings as as numerous as they are illustrious, and we would do well to consider each of them with keenness like unto themselves.

Paraphrase: Don't play the fool, he says, unless we wish to be foolish ourselves, but rather make play of the fool, in order that his foolishness be made evident to even himself.

Cause: It is a fearful responsibility to possess the truth, but it ought to cause men more fear to be in want of the truth. It is because of this twofold nature that truth-bearers must be ever ready to neither forsake the truth, nor let it be trampled upon by the slack-jawed ignorant--for the former is to become a semblance of ignorance, which is a betrayal of the truth, and the latter is to allow ignorance to be paraded as truth, which is also a betrayal of the truth. Therefore we see the truth-telling is both manner and means: its clothing must be both well-fit and visibly displayed.

Contrary: For if the fool is answered in foolishness, what can be the outcome but like for like? And if the fool is left to boast in his folly, what can come of it but compounded corruption? Therefore we must forsake neither the silencing of the folly within ourselves prior to our speaking, nor in our neighbor who speaks folly in his haste or ignorance.

Comparison: For it would be as though a father wished to correct his son's childishness in pitching a fit by engaging in a fit himself, or otherwise allowing the son to pitch his fit and feel no sting of guilt or remorse for having succumb to such madness.

Example: Consider Paul, who did not count it above himself to speak to the learned Greeks upon the Areopagus, nor below himself to teach them of their own ignorance. Yet in speaking of their religious beliefs, he neither failed to point out their ignorance of the One True God, nor did he speak to them by adopting their own philosophy, but openly proclaimed the resurrection of the dead, which to their ears was nonsensical.

Testimony: In doing likewise we agree with Elijah's words from the top of Carmel to the people of Israel:
"How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him," for what Elijah demands of Israel Solomon demands of us: to flee foolish duplicity and speak singularly on behalf of the truth.

Epilogue: Now then ought we seek obedience to Solomon's words and thereby fulfill what he also says: "Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles."

Conclusion:

The chreia are quite versatile for amplification of the teaching they contain. Nor should we necessarily limit our search for them to the Scriptures, but ought also include the pious sayings of our forefathers in the faith. For example, Augustine's famous theme of the Confessions: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." Although I didn't do so here, the New Testament also makes great use of Old Testament references in ways that resemble the chreia, or at least are easily adaptable into chreia.

Biblical Progymnasmata II - Narrative

2010-05-06T21:16:00.000-05:00

I'm continuing my series on Biblical Progymnasmata. Our second entry is narrative, which is already well-recognized as a central genre of the Bible. We'll focus on how Biblical narrative can be used in its own right, as well as how the Progymnasmata teaches how to craft narratives from narratives.

On narratives, Aphthonius states:

"Narrative is an exposition of an action that has happened or as though it had happened. Narrative differs from narration as a piece of poetry differs from a poem. The Iliad as a whole is a poem, the making of the arms of Achilles a poetry.

Some narrative is dramatic, some historical, some political. Imagined narrative is dramatic; narrative giving an account of early events is historical; what orators use in their contests is political. There are six attributes of narrative: the person who acted, the thing done, the time at which, the place in which, the manner how, and the cause for which it was done.

The virtues of narrative are four: clarity, brevity, persuasiveness, and hellenism [i.e. purity of Greek]."

Before getting into examples and explanations, I want to provide a bit of preface. Although narrative is the second stage of progymnasmata, it is quite difficult if a proper method of use is not followed. It is much harder to craft an original narrative, and harder still when the narrative is left without a specific purpose or aim for its being given. Thus, narrative should be done with existing narratives from Scripture, which are then manipulated according to several methods: summarization, reversals of order in retelling (Aelius Theon identifies five ways of doing this), alternating direct and indirect syntax, using various types of expression (asking questions, making inquiry, expressing doubt, making a command, expressing a wish, expressing an oath, crafting a dialogue, stating facts, omitting conjunctions, or expressing a maxim, interweaving several narratives, including refutation and proof, as an extended example, or even as a myth--all things Aelius Theon names). Thus, while it is supposedly an easier step than later stages of the progymnasmata, it is clear that a lot of time and development can be spent on narrative.

Example I: Acts 7:2-53 - Stephen's speech before the Jewish council.

Explanation:

Stephen's speech might be classified as an historical narrative because it recounts the past, but it is probably better labeled as a political speech because it is aimed at making an argument before the council, rather than simply relating events in a more general way. Stephen's speech is a short summary of God's salvation history leading up to the Messiah and the rejection of Him by the Jews. Beginning with Abraham, Stephen retells the history of Israel through the episodes of God's preservation through faithful prophets and kings in the face of opposition from within Israel itself. He saves the provocative statement to the end, for it is likely that his narrative would not have been controversial had he not linked the rebeliousness of the Jews toward God and His prophets to the present-day leadership of Israel. The narrative provides the student with ample material for using the various methods above for manipulating the narrative for a specific audience--just as Stephen chose to recount the sweeping narrative of the Old Testament according to his apologetic and polemical purpose before the council. It would probably be good to have several other narrative accounts of God's salvation history, which are quite numerous throughout the Old and New Testaments. Here are several others large enough for comparison and manipulation: for a more metaphorical account, Ezekiel 16 is good, albeit graphic for younger children; Psalms 105 and 106 are excellent; Isaiah 42 has a more abstract example, and Isaiah 49 has a future-oriented example.

Summary & Use:

Biblical narrative occurs on several levels. Some narratives aim to recount Israel's history with a special focus on representing God's faithfulness in the midst of an unfaithful people, or in the face of threats to God's promises. Other narratives are more specifically aimed to instruct the faithful to remember God's promises, or to condemn the reprobate for their faithlessness. Biblical narratives in general can be useful in several ways: they teach us content that can be memorized, internalized, and remembered in times where our faith is tested; they show us how the Biblical writers themselves crafted narratives for specific occasions and intentions; they allow us opportunities to adapt the narratives for specific purposes we might have in preaching a sermon, witnessing God's faithfulness to an unbeliever, or instructing each other in the promises and commandments of God. For young children, using the Psalms or speeches in Acts by Peter and Stephen can be used as foundational instruction in God's historical purposes. As they grow older, the ethical tone of promise/curse can be heightened through exercises with Ezekiel 16 or the Major and Minor Prophets.

Conclusion:

Although it is only the second stage of the Progymnasmata, narrative exercises can be quite elaborate and varied. They are simple because adaptation of an existing story is easier than developing something intuitively or for argumentation. However, as students become more proficient in the use of various methods of adaptation, assignments should be advanced to have the student adapt their narratives for a specific aim (exhortation, apologetic, reproof, etc.). Narrative is also in the second stage because besides being an exercise that stands alone, it can also form a part of later exercises, such as refutation and confirmation. Thus the student who masters the adaptation of Biblical narratives will have a solid grounding in the flow of Biblical history and God's plan of salvation in order that specific doctrines learned during the later stages of Progymnasmata remain connected to their applications in God's Church throughout history.

Biblical Progymnasmata I - Fable

2010-05-04T23:08:00.002-05:00

I'm beginning a new series of posts on the Progymnasmata. The Progymnasmata are "preliminary exercises," which the ancient Greeks developed as teaching tools for students preparing to become orators. These exercises were a series of incremental stages beginning with the most basic and easy to understand elements (i.e. fable) and progressing up to longer, and more complex elements (i.e. introduction of a law). The Progymnasmata were a part of Greek and Roman education, as well as classical education in the Christian empires up through the 19th century in some places. The content that comprise the elements were drawn from classical literature, but the model is really an application of universal forms of linguistic expression, so almost any literature can be found with one or more of the elements. Biblical literature has all of them, and since I'm a proponent of exercises that actually teach something useful and true, I think the progymnasmata ought to be updated with Biblical examples. So I'll be following the Progymnasmata of Aphthonius the Sophist, using Biblical examples with explanation and possible applications as well. Let's make like Israel and Augustine and plunder the Egyptians!

On fables, Aphthonius states, "Fable originated with poets but has come to be used also by orators for the sake of the moral. Fable is a fictive statement, imaging truth. It is called Sybaritic and Cicilian and Cyprian, varying its names with its inventors, but calling it Aesopic has largely prevailed because Aesop composed fables best of all. Some fables are rational, some ethical, some mixed; rational when a human being is imagined as doing something, ethical when representing the character of irrational animals, mixed when made up of both, irrational and rational. When the moral for which the fable has been assigned is stated first, you will call it a promythion, when added at the end an epimythion."

Example 1: Mark 4:30-32

And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like g a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

Explanation:

Mark 4:30-32 is a promythion, for the "moral" or application of the fable is declared from the beginning: "With what can we compare the kingdom of God." We have an ethical fable, for though the Kingdom of God is comprised of people, it is really an abstract (i.e. spiritual) idea, here represented through the organic metaphor of the mustard seed. The kingdom of God begins small, with only a few disciples, but shall eventually grow into a Kingdom of vast proportions, as the tiny mustard seed becomes the much larger tree. Not only shall the Kingdom grow large, it shall be a boon to all who come under its sway, which is explained in the phrase, "that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade." Thus the Kingdom begins small and has small impact in the world, but it grows large and has great impact in the world. Here is the ethical teaching of the fable.

Example 2: Ezekiel 17:22-24

Thus says the Lord God: “I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and will set it out. I will break off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar. And under it will dwell every kind of bird; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest. And all the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord; I bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it.”

Explanation:

Ezekiel 17:22-24 is also a promythion, for the entire chapter up to these verses contains a double-sided parable previously stated and applied as a two-fold prophecy. The above verses are one side of the parable/prophecy. It is also an ethical fable, again describing the Kingdom of God and using an organic metaphor. In fact, we see Mark 4 as a direct allusion to Ezekiel 17, for it uses the same language of birds dwelling under the branches of the tree. The application is also similar: the twig that is small and insignificant shall become a tree that is large and has great impact in the world, for many will come to rest under its power and sway. An additional teaching is added: that all the "trees" of the field shall recognize God as Lord of all, faithful to His Word in bringing down the "high tree" and raising up the "low tree," dry up the "green tree," and make the "dry tree" flourish. Here the "high tree," the "green tree," and the "trees of the field" are all the other kingdoms, or rather all those under the "kingdom of this world" or the "Kingdom of Satan." God will crush His enemies and restore His Kingdom and its people to ascendency and right worship. The other additional teaching is the seal of assurance: "I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it." This teaches us that whatever inadequacies we see in the people of God, God Himself accomplishes in them all that He wills to do.

Summary:

We have seen two Biblical examples of the progymnasmata category of "fable," which is a fictional image of the truth; a teaching tool to represent a genuine aspect of reality. In these examples, the reality being taught is that the Kingdom of God, though starting out insignificant, shall ultimately become triumphant in the world and become a boon to all who come under its influence. This truth is grounded in the character and promise of God, which cannot be broken, delayed, or otherwise thwarted; and which provides the assurance and impetus for God's people to be about His work despite all circumstances and appearances positive or negative in our limited estimations.

Use:

The use of these "fables" can occur in a sermon whenever the text brings to bear any discussion of the Kingdom of God. They serve as a reminder to God's people that He is faithful to His Word, and that His Word tells us that His Kingdom shall prevail over His enemies, and become a blessing for all the earth. It is also a reminder to God's enemies that no measure of present victory shall be enough to vanquish the Lord of Hosts, who is patient to bring in all who are His, and who will by no means relinquish His justice for those who are unrepentant. Another use of these particular fables is to teach the people of God humility. It is not their piety, nor their righteous efforts that shall accomplish the fulfillment of God's Kingdom. Rather, it is God's own power, His chosen means, His chosen time, and His Wisdom that shall make it so. There is great comfort to be had in knowing that the power to do all the will of God rests with God Himself, and it is great encouragement to seek obedience to God's expressed commands, for it is elsewhere taught that through our obedience (which God Himself provides to us by His Spirit in Christ Jesus, our Teacher) God shall bring about His Kingdom's reign. Beyond the sermon, in the home, the fables are a reminder to the child to put his confidence in the Lord God and His Word; and it reminds the parents that they are dependent upon God for all that He requires of them, and it teaches them both patience to see that what must begin insignificantly may become triumphant by degrees--the teaching of the organic metaphors here supported by another (this time rational) fable of the gardener or vinedresser.

Conclusion:

We can see the great opportunity that the "fable" provides for young children as well as young Christians who can easily grasp the meaning of the fable and may enjoy its presentation in simple narrative form. We need not rely upon Aesop to entertain and instruct our own, for God has given us, through the Greeks, a model well-suited to the treasures God has hidden in His revelation to us. Up next: Narrative.

Law & Liberty

2010-04-01T23:11:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted from my xanga blog:

I just finished reading R.J. Rushdoony's book, Law & Liberty. The book is a translation/transposition of radio addresses that Rushdoony gave during 1966-67. In many ways, his conclusions were ahead of his time, which is evidence of two things: 1) the enduring fixity of human nature, 2) the resultant need to know the past.

Two verses continually popped up in Rushdoony's analysis. One was Proverbs 8:36, which reads in the ESV "but he who fails to find me [Wisdom] injures himself; all who hate me love death. The other was Psalm 127:1, which reads in the ESV, "Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain." One might venture to say, upon these two texts the whole of Law & Liberty is built.

Consider the parallel implications. Those who renounce the wisdom of God, which Paul tells us in 1 Cori. 1:24 is Christ, do violence unto themselves and all those who become dependent upon them. Because they have rejected the Christ of God, the resurrection and the life (John 11:25), they pursue and even exalt death (Rom. 1:28-32). The epistemologically self-aware Christian must therefore recognize that any claims that do not trace their origin to God's Word, any claim that is not explicitly stated or deducible from God's commandments, can only and ever lead to self-destruction. This is true regardless of the expressed or hoped for, or ostensibly well-intended efforts of those whose work is constructed upon unbelieving presuppositions. The humanist who desires for the poor man to be well-fed and sheltered will nevertheless ultimately drive the poor man into slavery, destitution, and destruction because his methods and his means will be built upon principles derived from his autonomous sense of justice, rather than upon God's justice.

If one doubts this claim, he needs only to consider the parallel verse of Psalm 127:1. Unless God labors upon our behalf, all of our labors shall be in vain, for God is the owner of all Creation, and thus all Creation is subject to His bidding or determination. The short-term supposed gains of the evil man are the lament of the Psalmist in Psalm 73, yet when he comes into the presence of God in His sanctuary, he is reminded that God's justice, though often delayed, shall be made full--whether filled up by His mercy in the pouring out of His wrath upon our substitute Jesus Christ; or filled up upon the rebellious who refuse to bow the knee to the King of Kings. The Christian who sees the fruits of the wicked shall discern that whereas the appearance is all of glory, the substance is all of destruction--for God awaits the time, the right time, when He shall recompense all evil and make manifest the greatness of His mercy (Rom. 9:22-23). Thus, the epistemologically self-conscious Christian shall ever strive to direct his decisions according to God's expressed commands, not vainly pitting law against gospel--for we know that all our righteousness is in Christ, our legal representative--but rather walking blamelessly in the law, for even our missteps are washed clean by Christ's service to God on our behalf. Therefore we are freed from the condemnation of sin, in order that--in order that!--we may walk in obedience to God's Law (Rom. 6), expressed so elegantly, so comprehensively, so coherently in the two testaments of Scripture.

Those who wish to allow unbelieving men the optimistic hope of rightly interpreting the natural law fail to recognize the implications of the two verses at the head of the present exposition. Without God's wisdom, no structure can be maintained. Without God's wisdom, all pathways lead to destruction. Now natural law is said, by some, to be manifest to all men, as though God's general revelation is sufficient to teach men how they ought to live. However, the fact that Paul calls all unregenerate men dead in their trespasses and hostile to God, by what natural means will they seek to interpret the natural law in such a way that is pleasing to God? Rather, we should expect that unregenerate man's use of natural law will be consistent with his ontological perversion--original sin--which has already corrupted the image of God in man--his moral uprightness and intellectual understanding of and assent to God's Word. Therefore the natural law can only be used for the glory of God and the good of men when it is used upon the basis of God's revelation--a basis that all unregenerate men, by definition, reject in toto, for they reject the God who has delivered it and placed the seal of His Spirit upon it.

We must therefore never forget the stark antithesis that persists between belief and unbelief, which are the only two systems of thought or worldviews that Scripture declares to exist. Because there is but one Master, and because one can only serve God or one's own standard, there is no third choice between submission to God's authority or pursuit of one's own autonomy. All the various complications of the many thousands of individual philosophies of all unbelievers through all of time amount to nothing more than the simple rejection of God's commandments. All of the various Christian beliefs, if they remain Christian, are fundamentally committed (however consistently or inconsistently) with the desire to obey God's expressed commands.

Therefore, if we would see Christianity spread amongst our nations, if we would see Christianity thrive in our churches, if we would see Christianity perpetuated in our homes, we must dedicate our thinking to follow no further than where God Himself has directed it: to Christ, who is alone the Wisdom of God, and to His Law, which His Word alone commands. Therein lies the simple plan of reformation and revival. Therein lies the marching orders for the spread of Christ's Kingdom. Therein lies the joy for all of life: be it in times of flourishing faithfulness, or be it in times of widespread apostasy. Consider Christ this evening, on the eve of His own Great Suffering, that He counted it joy to do this and nothing else: the will of His Father in Heaven.

Calvin's Keys

2010-03-08T23:47:00.004-06:00

I'm working my way through a very interesting book on Calvin's exegesis called The School of God, written by Raymond Blacketer; a man who is apparently a student of Richard Muller. Like Muller, Blacketer pays close attention to Calvin's rhetorical education and in particular to how Calvin allowed that training to aid him in interpreting the Scriptures. In doing so, Calvin was following in a long train of Bible expositors tracing back to the early Church, and most famously Augustine.

One of the key ideas from classical rhetoric that Calvin and most of the other Reformers employed was the notion of commonplaces. Commonplaces are topics upon which, or around which collections of arguments or disputes collect and serve as a stockpile from which the orator can draw to make a persuasive case for some or another proposition. It was Melanchthon who brought the idea of commonplaces into the writing of Christian doctrine in his Loci Communes. Interesting, as we learn from Muller's book, The Unaccommodated Calvin, Melanchthon drew out his commonplaces from Scripture itself. Not Scripture as a whole, but rather Paul's epistle to the Romans, which follows the following topical order:

1. Sin
2. Law
3. Grace
4. The people of God and the call of the Gentiles
5. Predestination
6. Good works
7. Civil authority
8. Christian liberty
9. The problem of offense or scandal

These topics become one of the organizational structure by which Calvin organizes his Institutes in the 1539 edition onward (the original 1536 edition follows a catechism method adapted from Luther's Small Catechism). Thus, following Paul, Calvin and other Reformers used these commonplaces as interpretive keys to unlocking the major teachings of the Bible. They would organize the content, or testimony of Scripture under these heads in order the the preachers and teachers of the Church would know the overarching theological themes of Scripture.

It is also in Muller that we find Calvin's pedagogical division of labor. He did not attempt to write a comprehensive exposition of Scripture in his Institutes. Rather, in the interests of brevity, he sought to use the Institutes as a treatment of the common topics with some measure of disputation, but without a lengthy exegesis of Scripture. The Commentaries would be where Calvin would avoid delving into the disputed passages or common topics of doctrine, but would follow closely the thought of the Biblical writer, only occasionally delving into doctrinal extensions or disputations. In the sermons Calvin would depart from his attempts at brevity and engage in lengthy amplifications of his text in the form of direct applications to the congregation. He generally avoided disputation, and where he avoided numerous cross-referencing in the Commentaries, he indulged in them heavily in the sermons.

An exception to the division of labor occurs in Blacketer's analysis of Calvin's Harmony of Moses. Here Calvin arranges the materials of the last four books of the Pentateuch into an order more conducive to both doctrinal exposition and chronological narrative. The interpretive key for the harmony is the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, which Calvin considers to be Scripture's own commonplaces for the doctrines and laws set forth in the Pentateuch. The Decalogue is a summary statement of God's Law from which all the ceremonial and civil laws of the Pentateuch are derived or deduced. Calvin goes to great lengths to categorize the laws according to their ceremonial or civic (or both) nature, commenting on the extent to which they are abrogated in the work of Christ, or by the limits of the historical context of Ancient Israel.

Blacketer points out that Calvin's Commentary in the Harmony does not follow the proposed brevity that Calvin claimed for himself. Blacketer's argument is that Calvin did not intend to use the doctrinal insights for a new edition of the Institutes, and so he saw fit to include them within the Commentary itself, despite having chastised Bucer for doing that very thing. Although this explanation seems plausible, it may also be necessary to consider the nature of the Harmony as such. Calvin is not merely attempting to follow the thought of Moses, but to improve upon its organization for the purposes of pedagogy for the Church. In such a case, Calvin is working both as Commentator AND as Expositor of the fundamental doctrines set forth by the text (i.e., the function of the Institutes). Calvin's Harmony may be more than a harmonizing the Pentateuch--it may also be harmonizing Commentary with the System of doctrine set forth in the commonplaces.

In any case, what is quite clear from Muller and Blacketer's scholarship is that the modern divide between systematic and biblical theology is foreign to the sixteenth century context. Such bifurcations, if there were even hints of them, are not matters of strict division of content, but rather a conscious division of labor suited to the pedagogical ease and needs of unlearned pastors and teachers in the Church. Calvin did not derive his dogmatics apart from his exegetical work in preparing commentaries and sermons for his congregation. Indeed, it was only because Calvin was constantly studying the Scriptures to exposit them for the congregation and for the future pastors and teachers that Calvin arrived at his dogmatic conclusions.

Finally, and the most important application to be taken, we should recognize that reading Scripture is of very little profit apart from understanding the doctrine that the Scripture displays. A corollary to understanding doctrine is that there must be a proper organization, method, or order of thought by which we can discern what Scripture teaches. For Calvin, the right order of teaching came via the classical rhetorical idea of commonplaces, which he saw applied by the Holy Spirit through Paul's ordering of the epistle to the Romans, and through Moses's development of the Law by means of the Ten Commandments. We should remember that rhetoric, like logic, though it was developed by the Ancient Greeks, is not inimical to Scripture, but is rather revealed in its pages to be the very means by which the Holy Spirit has chosen to reveal His thought to us. In that sense we may be humbled by God's choice to enlighten pagan minds to teach His holy saints about Himself. We may, like Augustine says, plunder the riches of Egypt to our profit, and to the glory of God.

Cross posting: The End of a Thing Determines its Beginning

2010-02-26T08:21:00.003-06:00

The following is a combination of two posts I did for another blog, which is where I do most of my musings and book logs.

The phrase that heads this current post seems counter-intuitive in our present age. How can something's end determine its beginning, see as how the beginning precedes it in time? It is such temporally determined thinking that prevents us from considering how it is that God works in the world, how it is that He makes good what is evil, how it is that we must see all things now are, though they have not yet been brought to pass in history.

From all eternity, in order to glorify Himself to the uttermost, God did determine to choose unto Himself an elect people to give unto His Son, with whom the mutual agreement was made to unite this people unto the Son, in an immaculate display of God's perfection. As God is both merciful and just, as He is both gracious and wrathful, He decided it most pleasing to choose some upon whom His love He would place and some upon whom His wrath He would place, not according to any condition foreseen in these objects, but because of His own desire to magnify Himself did the God of Heaven make unto Himself objects of mercy and objects of wrath. Here is the first decree, the last to be revealed in history--for we do not yet see all who it shall be that God has confirmed as His people, or denied as rebellious.

Given that God did choose to elect unto Himself a people to Love by His grace and mercy and a people to Hate by His justice and wrath, God did determine to apply the benefits of His Son, by the Holy Spirit's power, upon those who He would make unto Himself in love. The righteousness, holiness, goodness, long-suffering, peacefulness, and all the other communicable attributes of God He did decree to apply to the elect in Christ according to His electing love for them. To those whom He had determined to reprobate God withheld the merits of Christ by union with Him, instead passing them over in their unloved state. Here we see in history the calling out of God's people through regeneration, whereby they are delivered from the curse of sin and raised unto life, which they now live for God until He shall bring history to its end.

Given that God did decree to apply the benefits of Christ to the elect, and to deny them unto the reprobate, it was necessary to determine how it would come about that Christ's benefits would be applied to the elect. This salvation was to be according to the Law, which God decreed should be that standard according to which all men should be subject, and according to which they would be reconciled to God through the incarnation, obedient life, substitutionary death, and life-giving resurrection of the God-man Jesus Christ. The apparatus of God's salvation is seen in history in the life and work of Jesus Christ, the Messiah of the elect, prophesied from the earliest ages and revealed at the appointed time.

Given that God did decree to bring about the salvation of the elect through the incarnation and work of the Son in history, it was necessary for Him to determine how it would be that men should come under the penalty of wrath and the need for redemption. Therefore God decreed that all men should fall under the penalty of lawbreaking in their federal representative, Adam. By this Fall the whole of Creation would be separated from the love of God and be subject to the effects of God's wrath, including the curse upon the earth, and upon the subsequent generations of men propagated by natural generation. The means of bringing all men under the need of redemption was accomplished in history in the disobedience of Adam in the Garden of Eden, wherein he did take the forbidden fruit to the dishonor of God's commandment to him.

Given that God did decree to bring about the Fall of men in order that the means of salvation in Christ might be provided, and the merits of Christ be applied to those whom God had chosen to elect in Him for His own glory, God did decree to create the world and all that is it in, including the federal head Adam in whom all humanity consists under the law and according to natural generation. The Creation of the world was the first act of history, and the last intention of God necessary to bring about His utmost glory.

The consistency of logical progression of God's thought is the perfect reverse reflection of their temporal accomplishment. Understanding the character of God's thought as such, we are called to consider our own lives and every event in them as determined by the ends for which God is doing all things--His own glory, and the brining to maturation all those elect who are the image of Christ, Who is the image of God, who has manifest His glory in just this way, and no other.

When, therefore, there is evil, let us praise the name of the Lord and work according to His express commands. When, therefore, there is good, let us praise the name of the Lord and work according to His express commands. When, therefore, there is doubt concerning what is our destiny upon this earth, let us praise the name of the Lord and look into His perfect Law and find all that we are in Christ, and all that we shall do in His name and by His power for the restoration of all things to the great glory of our God, Father, Savior, King.

I'm going to add a followup to the last post. There, I concluded that:

"The consistency of logical progression of God's thought is the perfect reverse reflection of their temporal accomplishment. Understanding the character of God's thought as such, we are called to consider our own lives and every event in them as determined by the ends for which God is doing all things--His own glory, and the bringing to maturation all those elect who are the image of Christ, Who is the image of God, who has manifest His glory in just this way, and no other."

I'm sure a few of you read the previous post, blanched at its abstract character, and pulled away thinking, "but what has such considerations of 'logical' order have to do with how I live in the world?"

A perfectly valid question. Consider the fact that if you are one of God's elect, there is no moment in the history of your life, beginning to end, when God has not considered you in light of His loving purposes. That means that every circumstance, every sin, every success or failure: every single aspect of your existence is characterized by the love of God. Each sin, for example, brings not condemnation, but the opportunity for greater illumination and subsequent obedience. "Are we not then to lament our sins?" May it never be! That all things work to our good does not entail that all things we experience are praiseworthy! The breaking of God's law is indeed a lamentable offense, yet because the elect has been accepted in Christ from eternity, his standing before God is as a son, and not as an enemy. What father would give a snake when the son asked for an egg? God conditions us by degrees into His very likeness, the express image of God that is Christ Jesus. Thus, every destination has its journey, and every step of that journey is characterized by the direction determined by that destination. God is the governor, guide, and goad--how could we, his sons and daughters, come out otherwise than He desires, if we are indeed His children?

I often hear Christians complaining of how great is their sin, how manifestly difficult it is for them to master, and how wonderful it will be when we are free from sin in heaven. While all of these considerations are true in one sense, they are profoundly misleading in another. Has not our sin been placed upon an even greater Savior? Has not our flesh been crucified, and our life that we now live, lived in the power of God Himself, the Holy Spirit? Has not the power of sin and death been buried with Christ in His death, in order that we may walk unencumbered by the sins that so easily beset us? We children of God, every one of us, struggle in our sin to the extent that we fail to understand our identity--we are not our own individual self, but we are the complex identity of Christ-in-us-and-we-in-Him. The commandments to be of one mind so often given in relation to our brothers and sisters in Christ is because we are first of all made of one mind with Christ Himself. We have the mind of Christ - 1 Cor. 2:16.

A further corollary consideration to our being identified completely with Christ is that we must know what it means to be Christ upon the earth. If Christ is our Head, and we His Body, then the sense of the analogy would indicate that the Head will use the Body to accomplish His will in the earth. But what standard has been given, or what orders been issued, that we may know not only who we are, but what we are to be about? Jesus Christ came to be about the will of His Father, and while we are not privy to the same tasks in every respect (which of us would profess to propitiate the wrath of God for the elect!?!?), we nonetheless are given in Christ a model of our true humanity. Christ fulfilled the Law by following the Law in every respect. Love God. Love your neighbor. Two very simple commands within which are contained the limitless directives for Christians in every age and in every circumstance. Yet there are those who claim that the Bible does not speak to every consideration. God has indeed been silent on a great many truths, but those are expressly concerning Himself and His particular reasons for what He does. What we must choose in each choice is profoundly determined by Scripture in every aspect. Even legitimate matters of Christian liberty are characterized by the requirements of the first word: they must be Christian; they must glorify God as Christ glorified God in every way.

But further, who can be so foolish as to think that the Eternal God of Heaven would leave us groping for direction in those affairs that bear the most direct impact upon what we shall learn and how we shall live!? I am speaking of our decisions about how to educate our children. I am speaking about our decisions about how to use our money. I am speaking about our decisions about how best to use our "free time." The modern Church has so circumscribed the Law of God, if it has not thrown it out entire, that it cannot be said to be about much of anything concerning the Kingdom of God Almighty. We not only fail in knowing who we are, but in knowing how who we are impacts how we live, and not by some generalized platitudinous clichés tossed from our pulpits and in our parishes (where they still exist!). What use is the "power" of the "Gospel" when we know not what or how such "power" is to be used or what "good news" is to be spoken? What does it mean to "press the Kingdom" into our lives, really? How exactly is it that "seeing and savoring the beauty of Christ," works itself out, day to day?

The most basic implication is that we must know God's Law, Christ's Law, and find out how to apply it where we are now. For example, it is not enough that one should avoid lying to one's neighbor in order to fulfill the commandment against bearing false witness. One must also do all in one's power to protect the good name of one's neighbor. Do you gossip? Do you criticize on the basis of preference rather than principle? Do you not only wish no ill, but also wish the best for those around you? And no, the best doesn't always entail avoiding confrontation and being polite, for the best is to be free from sin and to honor God. If you see a brother sinning, we are to point him to God's Word for encouragement to repent, even as we must be prepared, with soft hearts, to accept the rebuke of a brother when confronted upon our sin - Hebrews 3:12-13.

But you will fail if you forsake the fact that your righteousness is not accomplished by your obedience to the Law, but rather, your obedience to the Law is accomplished because Christ's righteousness has been applied to your account! The end of the thing determines its beginning. You obey because you have been bought, you were not bought because you obey. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, "Dogs bark because they are dogs, not because they bark." It is in the nature of the Christian to grow in obedience, because his life is Christ's life within, living out God's particular purpose for that individual life in the grand drama of His glory. If you aren't doing Christianity well, go think about what it means to be in Christ. Perhaps God will illuminate your mind to the knowledge of His Son, and thereby call you forth as son or daughter of the living God.

Calvin, Calvin, and more Calvin

2010-01-23T19:25:00.003-06:00

I'm presently working on the first chapter of my dissertation in Rhetoric, the topic of which is Calvinist rhetoric. I'm beginning with none other than Calvin himself, or really, those who have written about Calvin and his rhetoric. Since I don't know Latin well enough to read or translate, I am at the mercy of commentators, which means my observations are limited by those I rely upon.

Here are the book-length sources I've read so far:
1. Breen, Quirinius (1931). John Calvin: A Study in French Humanism.
2. Hall, Basil (1967). John Calvin: Humanist and Theologian.
3. Higman, Francis (1967). The Style of John Calvin in His French Polemical Treatises.
4. Bouwsma, William (1987). Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait.
5. Zachman, Randall (2006). John Calvin as Teacher, Pastor, and Theologian. (I've not quite completed this one yet)
6. Gordon, Bruce (2009). Calvin.

It is no mystery that Calvin is a polarizing figure. Some consider him the most blessed man of the Reformation, while others consider him to be the worst thing to happen to Christianity. Some consider him a true humanist and lover of men, others a spiteful persecutor of heretics. That he can be so polarizing owes something to Calvin's commitment to clarity and unwavering fidelity to what he considered to be God's incontrovertible Truth. Such clarity draws and divides men, garners their delight and derision.

Of the above mentioned books, the first is a technical study that focuses particularly on Calvin's education. Breen draws a relatively favorable treatment of Calvin as a keen humanist amongst a generation of humanists in France under whom Calvin studied. He minimizes to a great degree Calvin's "sudden conversion," cited in the preface to his commentary on the Psalms, and for the most part underplays Calvin's role as Reformer to his role as a literary contributor to French language and 16th-century "Latinity." Calvin was the most outstanding exemplar of French language use and development, second only, if at all, to the initiator of French humanism, Guillaume Budé. In his Latin, he was skilled in the style of "lucid brevity," which sought to bring home a key point in short, clear, and forceful expression. Breen probably gives too much weight to Calvin's humanism and too little weight to his Protestantism.

Basil Hall's treatment of Calvin is the shortest and most general. He tries mainly to differentiate Calvin from later "Calvinists" who he deems more systematic, more dogmatic, and more narrow in their theological positions. Hall's point is well taken, for Calvin is largely developing his theology through continual study of God's Word and expositing it through his commentaries and sermons, which were written after his first edition of the Institutes, and served him in his later editions of that same volume. Many doctrines Calvin sought to aim at ecumenically amenable positions: for example, he wished to accomodate himself with Zwingli and the Lutherans with regard to Communion (the goal of uniting these parties was never realized), and Calvin's view of Church polity was more flexible than later Scottish theologians, for examples.

Higman's study is the most technical, and included a great deal of French quotations that I could not read. Still, his insights into Calvin's style was quite enlightening, but have to be understood in the right context. Calvin's French was suited to the uneducated, so it made us of local idioms as well as eschewing learned references to Latin authors who would have been largely unread by his target audience. His rhetoric was also distinguished by a more stark hierarchy and dichotomy. For example, Calvin saved his most colorful and bombastic language for his criticisms of opponents, his most clear and plain style for the exposition of true doctrine, and an elevated and elegant style for his calls to contemplate the worth of Christ and His Kingdom. The sharp dichotomy could be seen in his casting opponents in the worst of light while making his own positions appear the most common sense. It was not that Calvin could not, or even would not, argue more acutely, but rather than his audience required a rhetorical argument moreso than a dialectical one.

Bouwsma's book was the most disappointing, despite it copious quotations of Calvin's works. Bouwsma's portrait of Calvin is of a man whose internal anxieties drove him to produce his theology in an age characterized by great anxiety. Calvin is both extremely unassured and extremely self-assured, creating a self-contradictory and dichotomous personality for Calvin. While Bouwsma's use of quotations is extensive, his interpretations rely upon tenuous psychological assumptions about both Calvin and the age of Calvin, and his interpretations of Calvin's imagery may read more into the man than the rhetorical effect of such imagery.

Zachman and Gordon have been by far the most enjoyable and well-developed books. Zachman's book, which I have not yet finished, is a collection of journal articles he has gathered together and edited--all of which treat Calvin's theology in terms of his audience and his convictions concerning the nature of theological offices and responsibilities. What results is an excellent exposition of how Calvin probably saw his own work in relation to those to whom he was writing. The Institutes, a work first intended for lay audience, became an introduction into the doctrine of the Church universal for teachers and pastors who would lead their congregations. The Commentaries were less abstract and universal than the Institutes, but were still intended to prepare pastors and teachers to faithfully teach and exhort their congregations by laying open the mind of the Biblical writers in their historical-grammatical and theological contexts. Finally, the sermons were aimed at congregants who needed both sound doctrine and a healthy dose of direct application to the circumstances they faced in their everyday lives. Hence they are less learned, but also longer in their verbiage than the commentaries, allowing Calvin to expend a good amount of energy apply the text to the lives of individuals. Calvin is not simply a theologian spinning abstract doctrines from an ivory tower. He is rather a man who has an eye to all the various spheres and needs of God's Church--teachers and pastors who need to know true doctrine and how to open God's Word so that individuals can learn from it; and individuals who needed to hear God's Word preached to their daily needs and shortcomings.

Gordon's book is the longest, newest, and most comprehensive. He does a fine job of placing Calvin within his historical context while also drawing out Calvin's unique and lasting contributions. We see Calvin the man as he grew and developed over time as a student of great humanists, a student of great Reformers, and finally a leader of the Reformation himself. Gordon is also very even-handed in treating Calvin's personality, which was both shining and tarnished (as all human personalities are). Perhaps Gordon's most skillful art is in demonstrating the political context and circumstances that Calvin had to maneuver while remaining true to his theological convictions. Calvin could be hard-nosed and unwavering, but he could also go to extreme measures to accomodate himself to those whom he thought could unite the various groups of the Reformation (e.g. the Swiss Protestants and the German Protestants). I grew to appreciate some of the lesser-known (lesser-known to me, that is) figures from the Reformation who had direct impact upon Calvin and His efforts. Calvin's two closest friends, Guillaume Farel and Pierre Viret were contrasts in age and in temperament--and both seemed to balance Calvin's own tendencies. Bucer taught Calvin how to shepherd in the Church; Bullinger was a faithful, though at times frustrating, collaborator; Melanchthon was Calvin's theological inspiration in many ways, particularly in terms of theological method; Luther was perhaps the key to Calvin's conversion; Beza was Calvin's Timothy; and there were many others, including lesser known lights who studied under Calvin and took the Gospel back into the France that Calvin had chosen to flee in exile.

After I finish Zachman's book I'm going to pick up Muller's book, The Unaccommodated Calvin (2000), which Zachman and Gordon use quite a bit in their treatments. All in all I'm getting a good understanding of Calvin's humanity, his theology, and most importantly for the dissertation, Calvin's rhetoric, which was quite remarkable in its skill and learning.

Plato & Augustine on Knowledge

2010-01-08T20:51:00.006-06:00

I've been reading and rereading some Plato recently for a paper I'm scheduled to present in May on the rhetoric of Augustine's De Magistro.

De Magistro is a dialogue between Augustine and his young son. Its main topic is singular, yet the discussion covers several important topics. The main topic is teaching/learning and asks the question of whether or not anyone can teach someone else, and, conversely, whether we can learn anything from someone else. The reason Plato is important is because he brings up the same question in his dialogue entitled, Meno.

Plato and Augustine both conclude that, insofar as knowledge is concerned, we do not learn from others. Plato thinks we learn from ourselves, that is, from our eternal soul's own recollection of forgotten truth. Augustine concludes that it is Christ Himself who illuminates our minds to know.

The example in Meno is of a young slave. Socrates asks the slave boy, who has never been taught geometry, to answer a geometrical question. At first the boy gets the answer wrong, but eventually, though Socrates continual questions and drawings in the sand, the boy arrives at the correct answer. Many folks disagree with Plato because they think Socrates is teaching the boy by means of his verbal cues, or leading questions. However, Augustine's dialogue shows why this is not the case.

For Augustine, the discussion turns on the nature of signs. How can one teach another about something which the other does not know? If he does not know it, how can he come to know out of his ignorance? And if he does know it, how can he be taught what he already knows? One example is that of walking. If one is standing still, one might be able to teach another what is walking by taking a few steps, say ten. However, the observer might mistakenly conclude that walking is precisely the taking of ten steps, rather than the measured motion of striding with the legs. Alternatively, if both people are already walking, one cannot demonstrate to the other what walking is, because he is already doing it. If he walks faster, the observer may conclude that "hurrying" is the same thing as walking, although the two actions are distinct.

We could use signs to demonstrate what is walking. We could, for example, use words to provide a definition. But, since the signs themselves have no direct relationship to the thing itself (the letters w-a-l-k-i-n-g are not part of what actually is walking), the person cannot come to know walking simply by virtue of the signs. Rather, he must know what walking is in order for the signs to be intelligible.

So if a demonstration does not convey knowledge, and signs, in themselves, cannot convey knowledge, how is knowledge conveyed? One answer, provided several hundred years after Augustine, is referred to as Occasionalism. It has several interpretations, but the idea is basically that all instances where learning occurs (that "ah ha!" moment that comes in circumstances where we see a demonstration or hear a definition given) are simply the occasions that God decrees that we come to know X truth. Malebranche was the noted founder of Occasionalism, which he formulated as an solution to Descartes' mind/body dualism. Jonathan Edwards is also sometimes associated with occasionalism.

However, one need not be an occasionalist in order to accept Augustine's conclusion. To argue that Christ is the only Teacher who illuminates all minds to know the truth is not to argue for a specific method by which Christ accomplishes this fact. The simplest view may be occasionalism, however. It certainly does remove all pretense of human autonomy in the realm of knowledge!

For the Christian, it also harmonizes well with the basic truths of God's nature as eternal. To be eternal and rational is by definition to be omniscient, since anything that thinks and is eternal has thought every truth. That God knows all truth and thinks all truth is simply to acknowledge that truth is the sole possession of God. When men arrive at truth, there is a temptation to take pride in its acquisition. Contemporary belief even argues that we create our own truths. In a previous age, most men thought that a proper understanding of truth is that it is discovered. The keenest insight for the Christian, however, is that all truth is revealed, for it is not simply "out there" waiting to be discovered, but is the possession of God--a possession which God must give according to His good pleasure to whom He will, at what point in time that He will.

That an unbeliever would come upon something true should surprise us no more than that a believer may be deceived by falsehood. God has His own agenda for revealing the Truth, and He often humbles the elect and condemns the reprobate by withholding and revealing knowledge respectively. It is humbling to the elect, for he is driven to realize his complete dependency upon God for all that he must know. It is condemning to the reprobate, because no matter how much truth God reveals to him, saving knowledge remains undisclosed, and his rebellious beliefs only make him, in his understanding of any truth, more culpable before the God who possesses and discloses that truth.

Refuting Bahnsen's Refutation of Clark: Excursus 1

2009-12-14T22:41:00.007-06:00

I've been having a back-and-forth debate with a visitor regarding the first post I made concerning Bahsen's criticism of Clark. I'm going to take a post to handle the main contention and also provide an example of where Bahnsen engages in a contradiction (or at least a very poor reading) of his criticisms of Clark. My visitor's words will be italicized.

The issue is the context of the statements Bahnsen quotes.

You state, "I deal expressly with the immediate surrounding context of Clark's quotes. Read a bit further into the critique before passing final judgment on this point." "This point" is the quote from Clark that Bahnsen claims is a departure from Van Tillian-presuppositional apologetics. I read your second post and you do not continue discussing it. I will read through the rest of the posts to see if you deal with it in detail.

I will grant my visitor's point that in the quoted text Clark's approach is a departure from Van Til's presuppositionalism. But in granting that, I mean to emphasize that the departure is, I believe, superficial. More on that below.

Now you did provide more context in you last comment to me. You say, "Of course they aren't presuppositional in the sense of presenting a positive argument. But that is irrelevant because the entire point is that Clark is performing an internal critique of opposing views, which requires the arguer to adopt the principle of the opponent to demonstrate the contradiction: Modus tollens. As your second question alludes, Clark is, in every one of the quotes that Bahnsen criticizes, performing internal critiques."

I see this as a departure from Bahnsen. In doing an internal critique, Bahnsen would not say something like "Chistianity in particular furnishes a BETTER method than secularism is a POSSIBILITY not to be dismissed." The presupposition that Bahnsen targets in internal critiques is not the unbeliever's adherence to Modus tollens but to his rejection of Scripture as revelation. The non-christian rejection of Scripture undermines logic and reason in totality, not in possibility. Bahnsen is not after contradictions here and there. He is out to show that apart from God there are no contradictions period. There is no modus tollens.

Performing an internal critique of opposing views does not require the arguer to adopt the CONFESSED principle of the opponent. It requires the arguer to confront him with the consequenses of his UNCONFESSED principle: God and His Word.

I think my visitor has created a false disjunction between modus tollens and the confrontation of revelation. Modus tollens, a logical argument that adopts a premise on the basis of demonstrating the absurdity of its implications, does not actually entail the assent to that adopted premise. Indeed, if one assented to the premise while knowingly attempting a modus tollens, one would be setting oneself up for contradiction!

The real difference between Bahnsen and Clark, or even Van Til and Clark, is simply a matter of method, and not of presuppositions. Clark, Van Til, and Bahnsen all presuppose that Scripture is the Word of God and is the only justification for knowledge. Bahsnen presses Clark because of his choice of "possible" or "probable" or other uncertain language, but really the difference is rhetorical rather than substantive. Clark wishes to engage the unbeliever in a discovery, whereas Bahnsen and Van Til wish to provoke their spirit by proclamation.

Clark does not hide his presuppositions from his readers, but he does not assert them with the force of Bahnsen or Van Til. For example, after stating Augustine's position he concludes:

"With the Bible and its theology Augustine's view of history can stand; without that theology Popper's strenuous moral pleading, with which he closes his book, has no foundation." (p. 231 Historiography: Secular and Religious)

Clark here affirms the basic presuppositional argument: apart from Revelation, no foundation for history can be had. While Clark takes 230 pages to reach this statement, it is not inconsistent with his professions of "probability," for in those places he is still canvassing views to indirectly lead his reader through the failures of unbelieving positions (modus tollens, or disjunctive syllogism, which we'll come back to).

Now one may certainly argue that Bahnsen's straightfoward approach is more keen to his liking, and one may even argue that Bahnsen's approach provides more confidence to the believer in his defense of the faith, for it places the critical issue at the forefront. However, to accuse Clark of contradiction is simply fallacious. The language of possibility in a modus tollens does not imply that the arguer is denying what he really wishes to prove. It merely shows that the unbeliever cannot establish what he would like to establish: the impossibility or improbability of Christianity.

Here is the full quote that Bahnsen pulls from Clark's chapter on Augustine (I've emboldened Bahnsen's excised portion):

In Part One the discussion on a few occasions approached, if it did not trespass on, matters of religion. For example, the question whether historians should pronounce moral judgments on great men requires for an affirmative answer an epistemological method of justifying a moral norm. That religion or Christianity in particular furnishes a better method than secularism is a possibility not to be dismissed without discussion.

While Clark is now introducing Christianity into his treatise on historiography, he is still engaging in a disjunctive syllogism, which aims to remove alternatives prior to asserting Christianity as the valid choice. While this is not Van Tillian in nature, it is still presuppositional, for one cannot eliminate on the basis of neutrality, but must have a foundation upon which to argue, which Clark freely admits is Christian Revelation.

On page 264-66 of his book, Bahnsen claims that Clark falls prey to the logical fallacy of asserting the consequent in trying to prove the validity of Christianity, and then, in order to salvage the argument, would have to use a disjunctive syllogism that can only be proven by omniscience, since the disjunction requires EVERY possibility to be dismantled in order to prove only one.

However, in his reply to Arthur Holmes in the edited volume, The Philosophy of Gordon Clark (a chapter Bahnsen cites), Clark expressly details his use of the disjunctive syllogism, and how it comports with his presupposition. First, he explains the usefulness of the disjunctive syllogism (notice the denial of neutrality):

It is the emphasis on system that justifies my use of the "disjunctive syllogism." Since in a logical system all the theorems come from the axioms, and from nowhere else, since indeed the meaning of the theorems depends on the axioms, a particular theorem cannot be found in two different systems. When such a theorem seems to occur, either there is an inconsistency in one or both systems, or the systems overlap--in which case at least one of them is not a universal system. Therefore, the so-called "disjunctive syllogism," the denial of a middle ground, and the principle that "he who is not for us is against us" are logical necessities. (p. 431)

He then goes on to assent to the fact that his disjunctions do not undertake to refute every alternative, but then he argues that many particular alternatives fall under his criticisms of empiricism, because of their basic (and unproven) assertion that physical sensation is a requirement for the possession and/or justification of human knowledge. He follows with more defenses of his disjunctions, then comes to another important presuppositional point:

In my debates with some who deny it, I have maintained that Christians and non-christians have certain "common ground." That is to say, a regenerate and unregenerate person may believe the same proposition [e.g. the sky is blue today]. But this by no means implies that a given proposition can be deduced indifferently from Christian and from secular presuppositions. Hence, the statement [by Holmes] that "We can learn about the form of logical reasoning, therefore, from non-christians philosophers," misses the point. In the case of logic the unacceptability of secular logic becomes clearer than in the case of Aristotle when Dewey brings logic into a more consistent connection with his secularism by denying logic's finality and arguing that the principles of logic, like the principles of grammar, change with use from age to age. Therefore, I should disagree with the idea that we can learn logic from Dewey. The principle involved in my argument is that incompatible axioms [presuppositions] do not imply identical conclusions. If the words sometimes sound similar, the intellectual content is not. (pp. 435-36)

In this quote Clark is denying neutrality, asserting the incoherence of secularist epistemology, and establishing that the Christian system is incompatible with all others. He obviously holds to the Christian system in arguing against all others, and is therefore consistent in accepting it as his presupposition.

There is a great deal more to be gleaned from Clark's reply to Holmes, much of which addresses other objections that Bahnsen makes to Clark. I remain puzzled as to how Bahnsen could have missed the cogency of Clark's replies. A summary may perhaps whet my readers's appetites to investigate further:

1. Bahnsen objects to Clark's use of "autonomous" logic as a means of "validating" Scripture. But Clark replies that Paul uses logic "at least on par with that of Aristotle," and since logic is evinced by Scripture, it is part of God's revelation, and not some autonomous system. In his logic textbook, he gives an example of Paul using an enthymeme (pg. 3), and on pg. 119 he identifies several logical forms found in Scripture:

For example, Romans 4:2 is an enthymematic hypothetical destructive syllogism. Romans 5:13 is a hypothetical constructive syllogism. 1 Corinthians 15:15-18 is a sorites.

If Paul uses logical forms, and Paul is inspired by the Holy Spirit, then we know for certain that God exhibits a logical mind. How then can logic be atheistic or autonomous when used to evidence the consistency of God's Word? Note well that I used the word "evidence" and not "prove." I've discussed in another post already where Clark openly asserts that Christianity is only "proven" by a change of mind in the individual brought about by the Holy Spirit.

So Bahnsen falsely accuses Clark of asserting the consequent, for Bahnsen's alleged reproduction of Clark (1. If the hypothesis of Christianity is true, then X. 2. X is the case. 3. Therefore, Christianity is true) is not Clark position at all. The second readjusted disjunctive syllogism that Bahnsen attempts to undermine also falls flat because Clark's use of the disjunction is not a denial of Christian presuppositionalism, but is rather built upon it. So far, argues Clark, in the history of philosophy there have only been four basic epistemologies offered: 1. Rationalism, 2. Empiricism, 3. Irrationalism and 4. Revelation. His disjunction does not treat all individual manifestations of these views, but rather he does complete a disjunction of the broad categories of rationalism, empiricism, and irrationalism. The burden of proof is upon individual views to establish epistemologies that do not fall under the three broad categories Clark destroys. Merely asserting alternatives is not enough (as Clark's rejoinder to Holmes also labors to show).

To conclude, Clark was every bit as much a presuppositionalist as Van Til or Bahnsen ever were in their commitment to the Revelation of Christ, God's Word inscripturated. The major distinction comes in the direct vs. indirect method of exposing the folly of unbelief. Bahnsen and Van Til are direct, whereas Clark is indirect. And actually, in his doctrinal writings, Clark is much more explicit and direct.

Refuting Bahnsen's Refutation of Clark pt. 7

2009-11-17T21:56:00.001-06:00

I’m going to pass over most of the next section in Bahnsen’s critique, because it falls prey to the same arguments in the previous post. However, to add a measure of continuity without too much redundancy, I’ll venture a few remarks.

Bahnsen argues, “We really must query, however, why it is necessary to test the Bible for consistency rather than presupposing it, since the revelation is from the God of truth Himself. Scripture should be used as the canon of consistency for all thoughts of men rather than being itself at the mercy of the creature’s critical faculty” (p. 152). He then quotes Clark to the effect that the intellect is the primary aspect of man.

First of all, Bahnsen provides an incomplete disjunction. It is not true that in presupposing the truth of Scripture one cannot also test its consistency with regard to areas where its claims are borne out. Recall that Clark’s tests involve applying the Scripture to problems in politics, history, ethics, etc. to evidence how consistently it handles these questions where other views do not. It is precisely because Clark presupposes Scripture as the source and justification of knowledge that he is able to make such applications validly. Imagine if Bahnsen’s reply to every non-Christian’s rejection of Scripture’s claims with regard to history or politics was simply that “Scripture is true, therefore what it states or implies about politics is true.” The even if the unbeliever were to grant the Christian his assumption of Scripture’s truth, he would still want to know (as would any Christian, for that matter) how the Scriptures answer the questions of politics or history. Without “testing” or evidencing the knowledge Scripture reveals on these subjects, how can one lay the ground for persuasion to occur by the “ordinary means” the Holy Spirit uses to convince the unbeliever?

Bahnsen concludes the section, “When self-evident rational principles are elevated to sit in judgment over God’s revelation, that revelation is bound to lose its authoritative character in deference to man’s unquestionable use of logic. Instead of faith in God’s Word leading to understanding of reason and science, understanding is taken to lead to faith (thereby abandoning the Augustinian dictum)” (p. 153).

Clark never asserts nor implies that the laws of logic are self-evident, nor that they can be abstracted or externalized from God Himself or His revelation. He explicitly states that the laws of logic (or at least the law of contradiction) are deduced from Scripture, the place where God has revealed the truth, or knowledge. It is not man’s “unquestionable use” of logic, but rather an unquestionable necessity of logic as revealed in Scripture that serves as the formal test for all arguments. Note that as a formal test it must presuppose a substantive truth upon which the tests may proceed. Clark has provided that presupposition: the Bible is the Word of God. Logic is verified by the axiom, not vice versa. But since unbelievers reject the axiom, but not logic, Clark uses the ostensible common ground to undermine their contradictory unbelief—just as Bahnsen does to Stein!

The next section has a few more terribly sophomoric misrepresentations and further blatant misreading of Clark. The first two paragraphs seem to have forgotten that Clark has already acknowledged that Scripture is the source of knowledge, and that the axiom of Scripture is the basis for Clark’s system. Given that presupposition, Bahnsen must, to be charitable, allow Clark’s stated presupposition to define his terms unless it becomes obvious that Clark’s definitions do not stem from his presupposition. When Clark talks about truth as necessary, eternal, immaterial and universal, why does Bahnsen assume that Clark argues this from an autonomous or self-evident position? What the unbeliever knows, yet suppresses, is that their knowledge comes from God, because only God reveals knowledge, and only God possesses truth independently.

Bahnsen argues that Clark somehow denies this, and is seeking to prove the existence of God by his description of the identity of truth with God’s mind. Yet only two pages prior, Clark states:

The “proof” of God’s existence, which is not at all a logical demonstration, results from showing that consistency is maintained by viewing all things as dependent upon God. . . .Though the existence and nature of God are not subject to formal demonstration, yet if Christian theism is true [and Clark has already stated that it this his presupposition], there is no mystery in the fact that all human minds use the same categories. . .

Clark is not seeking to prove God’s existence on the basis of proving that truth exists. Rather, Clark is saying that the proof that truth exists is evidence that his presupposition is correct. Evidence, not formal demonstration. Evidence supported upon and only upon the axiom of Scripture, and not upon autonomous, self-evident verification.

Thus, when Bahnsen asserts, “The very notion of proving God’s existence is inherently misguided; God alone is adequate to witness to Himself,” (p. 154) we must reply, “where has Clark attempted to prove God’s existence?” Clark has given evidence that God has revealed Himself and that His revelation is true, but the giving of evidence is not an attempt at a demonstrative proof, as Clark himself acknowledges. Rather, it is an expression of the strength of the presupposition, just as Bahnsen’s opening chapters were expressions of the strength of the presupposition, rather than an attempt to demonstrate that the presupposition is true.

Refuting Bahnsen's Refutation of Clark pt. 6

2009-11-17T20:48:00.003-06:00

Let me begin with a misunderstanding that Bahnsen makes of Clark’s use of the laws of logic as proof of Christianity. Here is the quote:

The question of truth is prior, says Clark, for “unless the Bible is true, there is not much use in discussing inspiration.” Here Clark commits himself to the traditional non-presuppositional apologetic which attempts to work up to an acceptance of the nature of Scripture by proving it to the unregenerate man, who, it is wrongly assumed, can correctly interpret nature on his own unbelieving principles. (p. 149)

It is unclear to me why Bahnsen shifts ground from the priority of truth to the interpretation of nature. Clark’s point is simply that truth is logically prior to inspiration. If inspiration could be false, what would be its benefit with regard to knowledge? A Christian who believes the Bible is the Word of God needs only to construct a deductive argument from Scripture that it is inspired by God to settle the dispute. But the unbeliever, who denies that the Bible is true, will simply deny that premise and reject the entire proof of inspiration. That the unbeliever is wrong does little for the apologist. Thus, the apologist has two options: 1) destroy the unbeliever’s own assumptions in order that they have no ground for criticism and then assert the truth of Scripture, or 2) produce the transcendental argument and then prove it by destroying the unbeliever’s own assumptions. Neither approach requires the apologist to consider the unbeliever capable of interpreting nature—only that the unbeliever can follow the logical progression of an argument!

Bahnsen is incorrectly reading Clark as if Clark is using logic as the first principle in a formal demonstration as opposed to using it as evidence to support his presupposition. On the next page Bahnsen produces several quotes by which he interprets Clark as subjecting the truth of Scripture to rational demonstration. Yet in the first quotation, Clark does not say that knowledge is a voluntary (or autonomous) choice, but rather, belief (a psychological aspect) is. Can Bahnsen deny that our beliefs are not voluntary? To do so would be to destroy all liberty of the will, and thus all moral accountability. Clark isn’t specifying an epistemological criterion in the quote, but rather a fact of human psychology. One must belief something, and that belief is based upon some indemonstrable postulate.

The second quote simply argues that the indemonstrable postulate is tested by its success in producing a coherent and self-consistent system. Bahnsen inserts a parenthesis emphasizing that Clark means “verification” rather than “demonstration,” but this is a confusing manner of interpretation. First of all, “demonstration” in Clark’s use means logical demonstration, which would constitute knowledge when the premises are true. But by “testing” Clark does not mean that one proves as certain (demonstratively), because the assumption or presupposition of Scripture is admittedly indemonstrable (Clark admits as much on the very page Bahnsen quotes). Rather, by test, Clark means how the axiom or presupposition is evidenced, or shown to be sufficient in the questions of life. This is nothing other than the thinking of God’s thoughts after him that every Christian (and non-Christian, for that matter) is commanded to do. If we simply stopped at the assumption that the Bible is God’s Word and did not trace out the necessary implications in all areas of life, what good would the presupposition be?

Bahnsen also mistakenly argues that because Clark admits revelation is a postulate, therefore its epistemological validity can be tested by autonomous reason. But Bahnsen has not read Clark closely enough, for in Wheaton Lecture III, from which Bahnsen pulls his quote, Clark explicitly states that the presupposition (axiom) is that Scripture is God’s Word, and therefore is itself knowledge: “The postulate of verbal revelation is an epistemological success because the revelation itself is knowledge” (p. 93-94 in The Philosophy of Gordon Clark). Further down the page, Clark defines exactly what he means by “testing” the postulate: “Therefore the test of revelation as a postulate is not in epistemology, where it obviously succeeds in providing knowledge, but in its ability to support some general theories in other areas of intellectual interest” (p. 94). Clark isn’t seeking to “prove” that Scripture is true, or that it is God’s Word, but rather that it does what other theories cannot do: give meaningful answers to life’s basic and most important questions.

As an added bonus, we might point out that Bahsen looks over another significant quote on p. 94 of the Wheaton Lecture III from which he pulls his quote. Clark says, “It may be difficult or even impossible to deduce from Scripture an enumeration of the a priori categories other than the law of contradiction” (p. 94). How can Bahnsen, with a straight face, argue that Clark submits Scripture or God to an external, higher test of logic when Clark admits that the law of contradiction is itself deduced from Scripture as the source of knowledge? Logic itself is an aspect of the presupposition or axiom, and not an exterior test by which it is judged to be true.

Refuting Bahnsen's Refutation of Clark pt. 5

2009-11-17T20:00:00.001-06:00

Bahnsen’s next major heading is entitled “The Priority of Logic and the Testing of God’s Word.” He argues that Clark does not presuppose the truth of God’s Word, but rather subjects it to the tests of logical validity. If this is true, then Clark is guilty of infecting his system with an autonomous premise.

However, two things should be kept in mind when evaluating Clark on the laws of logic. First, Clark considers the laws of logic to be the structure of God’s thought, that is, an aspect of the Divine essence, nature, being, or definition. Thus, in subjecting anything to the laws of logic, we are subjecting it to the standard God Himself possesses. Bahnsen himself must tacitly agree with this conclusion, for in his debate with Gordon Stein, Bahnsen argues that the laws of logic are abstract, universal, and invariant—they are not subject to change and they are always valid, which is to say, they are eternal laws of thought. What else can be abstract, eternal, and immutable but that which God is in or by Himself? Therefore, when Bahnsen criticizes Clark for subjecting God’s Word to the laws of logic, as though Clark were setting up an eternal principle outside of God, Bahnsen has not understood Clark’s position, or, having understood it, has not directly refuted it.

The second thing that must be kept in mind is that Clark is not using the laws of logic as a demonstrative proof that Scripture is God’s Word, but rather he is using the laws of logic as evidence that his presupposition is sound. Recall the quote from my last entry: “Logical consistency, therefore, is evidence of inspiration; but it is not demonstration.” Logical consistency is confirmation that God’s Word is true, it is not proof, for only the Holy Spirit demonstrates to the believer that the Bible is God’s Word.

Before addressing particular quotations by Bahnsen, I want to remark on a point that my friend Ron DiGiacomo has made that is a valid criticism of Clark. Nowhere in Clark’s writings have I found (and I have read most of Clark’s works, and all of his major works), nor has Ron found, where Clark explicitly argues that the unbeliever must presuppose the truth of the Triune God in order for his thinking to proceed with maximal warrant. In order to use the laws of logic, for example, one must presuppose the God of Scripture. Van Til and Bahnsen have made this argument explicit whereas Clark has used only the internal critique (the disjunctive syllogism) as his method. In this way Clark provides less for the believer’s confidence than does Bahnsen or Van Til, although I believe that Clark’s approach (the internal critique) must precede the transcendental argument (all knowledge presupposes the truth of Christianity) in a debate, for the ground must be cleared of confusion before a positive foundation may be found acceptable, generally speaking.

With these two considerations in mind, I will turn in the next post to the first subsection of Bahnsen’s criticisms of Clark’s use of logic.

Refuting Bahnsen's refutation of Clark pt. 4

2009-11-08T21:22:00.004-06:00

In the same section, Bahnsen articulates that Clark (unwittingly?) manipulates the doctrine of God’s nature in dealing with natural revelation. He quotes from an article entitled “Revealed Religion” (my copy of the article is in Clark’s book, God’s Hammer), which says:

[T]his amount of power, great as it is, cannot be omnipotence. Beyond the amount we observe, there can always be more. (p. 15 in Bahnsen citation, p. 92 in God’s Hammer)

It is in analyzing this quote that Bahnsen makes the very error he warns us of in his earlier chapters—not distinguishing between epistemic and metaphysical coincidence. Clark’s point in the quote is that the argument for God’s omnipotence cannot be established upon non-revelational observation, or natural theology. Bahnsen again mistakes Clark’s expression for a positive statement of his own view, when in fact Clark is (again) engaging in a destructive critique of his opposition. His point is merely that the observation of nature does not form, in and of itself, sufficient warrant for beliefs about God. Clark isn’t denying that the unbeliever possesses, innately, knowledge of God. Rather, the innate knowledge of God is not arrived at by bare observation! In fact, only a few paragraphs below the quotation, Clark uses Romans 1:20 and 2:15 to affirm the innate knowledge of God as a kind of natural knowledge (but a natural knowledge not established upon bare observation, or tabula rasa empiricism):

Though dim and restricted, this natural knowledge of God is not to be denied. Romans 1:20 may not guarantee the validity of the theistic proofs (Clark’s point in the quote Bahnsen pulls), but it plainly asserts some knowledge of God derived from “the things that are made.” Romans 2:15 shows a minimal a priori knowledge of moral principles. On such natural knowledge human responsibility depends. . . .Yet this natural knowledge is minimal in extent and practically useless in communicating the way of salvation. (p. 92-93 in God’s Hammer)

If Bahnsen had simply read a bit earlier in Clark’s article, he would not have said, “It is hard to know how we should take Clark’s comment.” Clark says, only a page back:

[S]omeone may claim that the creation of the planets and stars is evidence of omnipotence. This claim, however, must be disallowed—not because creation would be insufficient evidence of omnipotence, but because we have no empirical evidence of creation. We do indeed see the stars, but we did not see God create them. (p. 91 in God’s Hammer)

Clark’s point isn’t that the heavens fail to declare the glory of God or God's omnipotence. Rather, it is that the heavens declare the glory of God, man knows that God is omnipotent, but neither of these conclusions can be known apart from the innate knowledge God has placed in man’s mind. And the only place where we are told that such innate knowledge exists is in the revealed Word of God. Thus, without revelation, the arguments from natural theology are logically unsound. Let me repeat it once more: Bahnsen fails to distinguish when Clark is performing a reductio ad absurdum and when Clark is making positive arguments upon the presupposition of God’s Word.

Now before leaving this entry, there is a very important quote that Bahnsen moves to next, and which he also blatantly ignores another quotation that will undermine many of his later criticisms of Clark. These later criticisms involve accusing Clark of making the validity of Scripture subject to logical analysis, rather than logical analysis being subordinate to the authority of Scripture. Notice, however, the following quotation, which includes quite a bit more than Bahsen does in his excerpting:

The more consistent unbelief is, the less can agreement be obtained. So long as the unbeliever is inconsistent, we can force him to make a choice. If he inconsistently admires Jesus Christ or the Bible, while at the same time he denies plenary and verbal inspiration, we can by logic insist that he accept both—or neither. But we cannot by logic prevent him from choosing neither and denying a common premise. It follows that in logical theory there is no proposition on which a consistent believer and a consistent unbeliever can agree. Therefore the doctrine of inspiration, like every other Christian doctrine, cannot be demonstrated to the satisfaction of a clear-thinking unbeliever.

If, nonetheless, it can be shown that the Bible—in spite of having been written by more than thirty-five authors over a period of fifteen hundred years—is logically consistent, then the unbeliever would have to regard it as a most remarkable accident. It seems more likely that a single superintending mind could produce this result than that it just happened accidentally. Logical consistency, therefore, is evidence of inspiration; but it is not demonstration. Strange accidents do indeed occur, and no proof is forthcoming that the Bible is not such an accident. Unlikely, perhaps, but still possible.

How then may an unbeliever be brought to admit the inspiration of Scripture? Or, for it is the same question, how did “I” come to accept inspiration? (p. 15-16 in God’s Hammer)

Note carefully that this quotation appears in a section titled, “The Proof of Inspiration” followed directly after the quotation by a new section titled, “The Testimony of the Holy Spirit.” It is in that section where Clark affirms the presppositional nature of God's revelation, and where appears a previously quoted remark that Bahnsen approves of ("Rather, because God is sovereign, God's authority can be taken only on God's authority" p. 19 in God's Hammer). Clark is not asserting that the Bible is possibly and accident upon his own presupposition, but is parroting what the consistent unbeliever’s position would have to be if he maintained his unbelief. Not only is it obvious to see that Clark is explaining the unbeliever’s position, but it is also obvious that Clark does not place logic or logical consistency above Scripture. The difference between evidence and demonstration confirms Clark’s recognition that one must presuppose the truth of Scripture in order to demonstrate the truth of Scripture.

One begins to wonder: could a man of Bahnsen’s considerable intellectual ability have been so careless or obtuse to miss such an obvious conclusion, or was he blinded by his admiration of Van Til to the point of slandering Clark in support of him?

There are several other quotations in the section, but they merely provide further evidence of Bahnsen’s inability or unwillingness to distinguish Clark’s internal critiques from his positive exposition of his own presupposition.

Refuting Bahnsen's refutation of Clark pt. 3

2009-11-08T20:17:00.002-06:00

Bahnsen’s next section is entitled “Possibility vs. Necessity.” In it, he argues that Clark assumes that Christianity is merely probably rather than certain, a possibility rather than a necessity. If this were true, Clark would be giving too much to the unbelieving view, which always reduces to absurdity and meaninglessness in its disbelief.

As before, and what may prove to be a consistent error on Bahnsen’s part, Bahnsen does not read Clark in the charitable manner that he promises. The chief error in Bahnsen’s criticism is the failure to distinguish between Clark’s argumentation from within his opponent’s assumptions, and Clark’s argumentation upon his own presupposition. Clark’s professed methodology is to use the laws of logic to do internal critiques (variously through reductio ad absurdum, argument ad hominem, and modus tollens forms of argument) of his opponents’ positions. In doing so, Clark’s language assumes what his opponents’ would assume in order to demonstrate where they are inconsistent, overestimate their conclusions, or underestimate the Christian position.

Keeping this in mind, let us turn to Bahnsen’s criticisms.

His opening quote from this section is from Clark’s book on Karl Barth. The quote in full says:

A more skeptical view of the amount of truth obtainable by experimentation, with the help of operationalism, might bring the idea of subordination back again within the limits of possibility. The Scripture is a better source than experimentation is for the norms of ethics and politics; perhaps there is some way to bring physics and zoology also under this authority. (p. 68 in the 1963 edition, p. 77 in the 1997 edition I have)

Continuing, Bahnsen pulls a quote from Clark’s book, Religion, Reason, and Revelation:

From a logical standpoint it is equal whether one’s assumptions are philosophical or theological, Christian or not. (p. 8 in the 1961 edition, p. 112 in the 2004 book, Christian Philosophy)

Bahnsen then argues on the basis of these quotes that Clark has “completely dissolved” whatever absolute character the presupposition of God’s Word held.

In the context of the quotation from Karl Barth’s Theological Method, Clark is examining Barth’s own approach to theological study. Clark is exposing how Barth has capitulated to modernism rather than maintaining a consistent Reformed approach. The quotation is simply pointing out that any view more skeptical of the truth of observation than is modernism would allow for the possibility of subordination of the sciences to theology. Following the quote, Clark inquires as to what may be Barth’s view of science, and then Clark articulates the Reformed position, without any qualifications of “possibility.” What Clark is doing is comparing Barth’s view to various others in order to expose what may be accepted as consistent with his own presupposition (and really with Reformed theology) and what is not. Clark is nowhere articulating that his own presupposition is “possible” as opposed to dogmatically absolute. In fact, his language is decidedly assertive:

From any professedly Christian point of view it is difficult to maintain that the cosmos is unordered; and or a Reformed theologian this is about the poorest reply possible. Calvinism strenuously insists upon the eternal all-comprehensive plan of God, in which neither a hair of one’s head nor a dead sparrow lies outside the foreordained order. Equally impossible in Calvinism is the notion that theology is a stopgap, a makeshift, a temporary expedient to be discarded at the first opportunity. (p. 78 in the 1997 edition)

As for the quote from Religion, Reason, and Revelation, Clark is criticizing James Bissett Pratt for attempting to maintain a neutral or presuppositionless definition of religious conversion. Clark’s point isn’t that Christianity and unbelief are on the same footing with respect to the validity of their presupposition. Rather, Clark’s point is simply that all assumptions must begin with some presupposition that biases all further conclusions. Clark, working within Pratt ‘s own view, shows that Pratt’s claims to neutrality or unbias, cannot be so. Consider the sentences that immediately follow Bahnsen’s selected quote:

If it is reprehensible to operate on Christian presuppositions, is it any less so on other presuppositions? The only difference would seem to be that the writer with Christian principles is probably more aware of the fact, while the scientific writer sometimes claims that he has no preconceived notions at all. In other words, Pratt—attempting to avoid the bias of a Christian view of conversion—does not seem to be aware of his own bias in assuming Ardigo’s conversion was a religious conversion and that the essence of religion is the unification of character. (p. 112 in the 2004 edition of Christian Philosophy)

Clark has not made a claim on the basis of his own presupposition, but merely demonstrated from within Pratt’s own position the absurdity of attempting a neutral or unassuming set of principles. Bahnsen does not grasp that Clark’s remarks are given in the context of an internal critique rather than an assertion of points made from his own presupposition. Far from undermining his presupposition, Clark is establishing it through a destructive critique of alternative views.

Refuting Bahnsen's refutation of Clark pt. 2

2009-11-07T23:11:00.002-06:00

Bahnsen’s next criticism comes in the same section, and regards Clark’s treatment of Collingwood (in HS&R) as a representative example of Clark’s failure to consistently uphold Scripture as primary and non-Christian views as thoroughly impossible.

Bahnsen is again simultaneously drawing the line too narrowly, and also missing the import of Clark’s manner. He says that Clark seems to give Collingwood to much credit, because he undertakes only to correct “some” of his views, and says that Collingwood “almost” makes history impossible. Clark’s language is opposed to what Bahnsen thinks is adequate, which would be complete undermining of Collingwood’s position.

However, to be entirely accurate, a complete undermining would require every point of Collingwood’s error to be refuted. Even Bahnsen does not attempt such a level of criticism. But even if Bahnsen means that Clark should always present his apologetic as a complete undermining of the opponent’s position, that conclusion seems to me to be a non-sequitur. Bahnsen has already agreed with several Clark quotes, one of which affirms that unbelievers are not thoroughly consistent in their rebellion, meaning that on some points there is psychological agreement, which forms a point of contact in discoursing with unbelievers. What else is Clark doing in acknowledging Collingwood’s ostensible value while undermining what point shall sufficiently reduce his main theory to absurdity? What Bahnsen sees as an insuperable flaw appears to be rather an application of the psychological or ontological point of contact.

The criteria that Bahnsen appears to be applying to Clark would similarly undermine his own approach to other unbelievers. If Bahnsen wanted to be thoroughgoing in his epistemic criticism of unbelievers, he could not assent to any single proposition they stated because it would rest upon an undisclosed and contradictory presupposition that Bahnsen would be disposed to point out in every case. Yet, when Bahnsen debates with Stein, for example, he does not repeatedly tell Stein that this or that argument is invalid precisely because he does not presuppose God. Rather, he deals with subsequent levels of logical analysis, which set up his larger, or more basic criticism.

Clark’s method is no different with Collingwood. At the close of the chapter from which Bahnsen draws his quote, Clark concludes his criticism with what one would think even Bahnsen would find admirable:

But note well, that if Finley and Collingwood rule out faith and make claims to mathematical certainty, history vanishes. Scientific history, autonomous history, certain history is a chimera. One accepts testimony or he does not. The choice is between faith and nothing. (p. 209 in the 1994 edition)

And because Collingwood’s position necessarily excludes such claims to faith, the critique is a reductio ad absurdum that clears the floor for a sound Christian construction to be built.

The last portion of this section of Bahnsen's critique of Clark addresses the concern that Clark posits the laws of logic prior to Scripture. Since he promises to address this error later in the chapter, I'll wait to deal with it in full. However, as a preliminary remark, I think Bahnsen is creating a false dilemma. Clark's assertions about the laws of logic are talking about their instrumental value for our thinking, but even if Clark were using them as a more basic principle, he would argue that the laws of logic are an expression of God Himself, which we can only know as such from Scripture. Thus, he argues from the laws of logic because he recognizes these as something unbelievers will be willing to engage whereas they would not understand the presupposition of Scripture as valid without having first removed the alternatives the falsely believe to be valid.

The difference between Bahnsen and Clark here is not substantive.

Refuting Bahnsen's refutation of Clark pt. 1

2009-11-07T22:20:00.004-06:00

It has been awhile, but I've finally found a new topic on which to write here. I'm presently reading through a posthumously published book by Greg Bahnsen that came out this year: Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended.

In this book, the 25 year-old Bahnsen undertakes a lengthy refutation of Gordon Clark's apologetic method. As those of you who read this blog may know, I'm an admirer of Clark's contributions. That being said, I'm not very impressed by Bahnsen's criticisms. Since many presuppositional followers of Van Til and Bahnsen will consider this newest work the definitive word on Gordon Clark's method, I wish to do my part to give Clark a fighting chance, since he is no longer alive to defend himself, and his chief defender, John Robbins, has also recently deceased.

In the interest of brevity without the sacrifice of thoroughness, I'm going to treat each quotation one at a time, one per blog post.

The first quote appears on p. 142 of Bahnsen's book, and is from Clark's book, Historiography: Secular and Religious (from here on, HS&R):

That religion or Christianity in particular furnishes a better method than secularism is a possibility not to be dismissed without discussion. (p. 232 in the 1971 edition, p. 213 in the 1994 edition I have)

Bahnsen argues that Clark’s use of the words “better” and “possibility” as incomplete in stating the impossibility of a non-Christian worldview. He also indicts Clark for calling the end of non-Christian systems “human despair,” rather than meaninglessness.

Despite his claim to take a “charitable” reading of his opponents, Bahnsen does not take sufficient care with the manner of expression Clark has chosen in HS&R. The remark occurs at the beginning of Clark’s chapter outlining Augustine’s Christian construction of history. This chapter appears after the first seven chapters (more than half of the book), where Clark has been criticizing unbelieving viewpoints. The second half of the book is not simply an exposition of Clark’s own view, but of several ostensibly religious or Christian views, upon which Clark himself will level criticism. Bahnsen is criticizing Clark for failing to push the issue, whereas Clark’s aim is not to assert his position, but to engage in criticism of incomplete Christian views! The term "Christian" in Clark's usage is more general than Bahnsen's reading would suggest. Clark is not yet promoting his own apologetic position, but preparing the reader to engage several Christian constructions, which he himself will criticize.

As for the remark about despair being somehow a less complete refutation than meaninglessness, Bahnsen is simply splitting hairs. Elsewhere, in A Christian View of Men and Things (from here on, CVMT), Clark repeats in similar language the problem of any non-Christian viewpoint:

The two views [secular and Christian], however, have been sketched, as two pictures in outline. If the secular view is chosen, history has no significance [and without significance, what meaning?]; human hopes and fears are to be swallowed up in oblivion; and all men, good, evil, and indifferent, come to the same end. Anyone who chooses this view must base his life on unyielding despair. (p.57 of the 1998 edition)

Now perhaps Bahnsen prefers to use “meaningless” over “no significance” and “unyielding despair,” but can any reasonable and charitable reading argue that there is a substantial difference in the perceived outcome of the non-Christian view? Meaninglessness and despair appear synonymous rather than antithetical or incompatible.

What is Education?

2009-07-02T10:13:00.002-05:00

I just finished the bulk of Gordon Clark's A Christian Philosophy of Education (I have only the appendixes left to read). This volume of Clark's spends more time than usual addressing political aspects involved in the topic of education, but this is hardly surprising given the two separate times he is writing (1946, 1988). In 1946 the world was able to see just how State-run education could develop into tacit acceptance of totalitarianism, and in 1988 another State controlled nation was on the brink of collapse. During both of these times, certain political perspectives prevalent in our own country were having sway over educational policies at both the state and federal levels. But even without these historical factors, the book remains timeless, because as the maxim Clark quotes says, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

His opening chapter discusses the necessity of worldview for establishing any principles or practices of education. Worldview is an inescapable category, not because one's thought must be coherent (though we should strive for such an ideal), but because thought itself imposes its perspective upon whatever subject matter is directed at contemplating. I may decide I want to eat a burger and fries, but my decision is not made apart from underlying assumptions. Even if my decision is one of pure emotion (I'm so hungry!) it is the underlying beliefs that determine what significant factors will come to mind as I seek to fulfill the urge to satiate myself. Consciousness of worldview is not a necessary component of having a worldview anymore than coherence is a necessary component of worldview.

The assumption of these two factors (consciousness and coherence) lead many folks to reject the idea of worldview on the basis of its philosophical idealism (that is, ideas or the intellect underlies or determines action, rather than irrational or material forces). Yet even the thorough-going materialist has a worldview, for his explanations of experience are based upon the assumption that ideas do not determine human action, but rather chemical and biological reactions do. It is precisely on the basis of the inescapability of worldview that the Christian must be self-conscious of his or her own assumptions, and the implications that follow from them. The less coherent the worldview, the less Christian, for a fundamental assumption of the Christian worldview is that God is eternally omniscient, and therefore His thought thoroughly determines the knowledge of all things whatsoever. Thorough intellectual determinism implies coherence, or system, as Clark puts it.

Clark's second chapter outlines the Christian worldview on the basis of Scripture and in distinction with several outstanding alternatives offered throughout the history of philosophy. The main point of the chapter is to prove how pervasive worldview must be if it is to remain consistent and coherent with God's revelation. To poison the Christian worldview with external presuppositions is to undermine the sum of knowledge that constitutes the system of beliefs that God has given us to know, to contemplate, and to direct our lives upon. The third chapter further clarifies the necessity of a thorough Christian worldview by demonstrating the impossibility alternative worldviews face in explaining the most basic assumptions regarding knowledge (and therefore man, the world, God, and everything).

Chapter four provides what may be the most applicable chapter to the contemporary Christian culture in the United States: No neutrality can be found among worldviews. Superficially, worldviews may arrive at the same conclusions, but they can never arrive there by the same steps of reasoning. Though superficial thinkers may conclude that it is only the conclusion that matters, such a conclusion is not only hasty, but irreverent. If God demands all of our thoughts to be directed toward worship (Clark labors to demonstrate how pervasive "religious" activities are in the Scriptures) then not even the chains of reasoning we follow are quarantined from the commandments of God to love Him and love one another. Beside the commandments given by God, the unbeliever is no more able to maintain neutrality. By rejecting the God of Scripture, all of his knowledge is purposed upon something other than glorifying God.

Even the most basic instruction in arithmetic cannot escape this factor. It may be inconsequential whether an atheist or a devout Christian instructs a child that 2+2=4, but the application of such knowledge, as well as the labor of relating that knowledge to all other knowledge (for Christianity is a system of beliefs, not a disconnected mass of propositions and feelings) demonstrates how opposite is the instruction of each. To the objection that young children need not learn how to apply or relate arithmetic until some later age, we may reply that children enter the world no-less-like adults in their attempts to synthesize and explain the information they receive. Children are already, apart from any instruction, attempting to "put two and two together." This conclusion is necessarily implied by the doctrine of the imago Dei. Because God has made man a reasoning being, and because reasoning follows the laws of logic, and because the laws of logic reveal the systematic nature of knowledge, therefore all knowledge must interrelate. We may be marred by sin and reason mistakenly, but we no-less strive to integrate what knowledge is to be had.

After neutrality, Clark spends a chapter on ethics because it is prerequisite to the development of the practices of education. There is much philosophy in this chapter, which may lead the reader to wonder how exactly it relates to the subject of education. A key thought that helps to remember is that skepticism--the conclusion at which all non-Christian philosophies of necessity arrive--not only destroys our ability to know the truth, but therefore as well our ability to live according to the truth. Since education is not simply instruction of what is, but also of what may be done with what is, only the Christian worldview is adequate to make men holy as well as well-informed. Though humanism's overarching purpose is the improvement of man, its inherent skepticism ensures that it can never maintain that purpose in any definitive manner--all is groping in the dark, or as Scripture states it; the blind leading the blind. So while humanism may affirm the very same conclusions of Christianity, its underlying beliefs destroy all of its ability to accomplish such ends, all the while hating the very philosophy (Christianity) that can ever have success toward the improvement of humanity.

The best chapter in the book, in my opinion, is the sixth, where Clark outlines a Christian philosophy of education in general. He masterfully reduces heretical epistemologies to absurdity and affirms the necessity of intellectualism and the subscription to, use of, and glorifying nature of creeds. Many Christians in the present day are opposed to the intellect and therefore to creeds, because they have imbibed the Kantian doctrine of knowledge that was promulgated into religion by Schleiermacher. Kant believed that God was unknowable because human knowledge could only grasp the finite, temporal objects of knowledge, and because God is infinite and eternal, He is not even an object of knowledge to be known by men. Therefore, since God cannot be known, yet He is, He can be felt. Schleiermacher developed this notion of Kant into a thoroughgoing religion of sentiment. Later authors, such as Kierkegaard, were dissatisfied with intellectual and sentimental Christianity and therefore asserted the will as the primary means of worshipping God. One must do, and do sincerely, if one is to please God. But Clark demonstrates that one cannot do without first knowing something, nor can a feeling such as love be made superior to the feeling of hatred without knowledge, which is intellectual. Those who would wish to make all three equal (emotion, will, and intellect) have no basis upon which to decide whether to follow an emotion rather than suppress it; for all things being equal, none can be used to determine a decision.

Because the intellect directs the human being, the most natural form of expressing one's devotion to the truth is to intellectually reproduce it, summarize it, meditate upon it, and memorize it so as never to lose it or have it fall away from consciousness. Creeds are precisely this sort of worshipful engagement because they seek to make explicitly those truths which are both explicitly and implicitly given by God in His revelation to us. Clark points out the numerous Scriptural passages dealing with the relationship between knowledge, truth, and fellowship with God, but perhaps this one expresses the idea best:

Before the enjoyment or possession of the object, whether it be picture or God, there is desire, love, or volition; afterward there is enjoyment, possession, contemplation. The will is directed toward an end or aim that is future; possession present. Clearly the desire of an end is not the attainment of that end. Now the Scriptures make certain definite characterizations of the end of our endeavor. The Apostle John records the words of Christ in his High Priestly prayer: "This is eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God". . . .The end is something we long for now; it is something we desire. When we come to this final state, we shall desire it to continue, we shall still love to see God face to face. But the act of desiring and the act of seeing are two conceptually distinct acts; the former is the means and the latter, the beatific vision is the end.

Seeing is a metaphor for understanding with our mind what is true, and the chief end of man is to glorify God, which implies a true knowledge of Him, unfettered and unveiled. Here is why the intellect is supreme, because it is God's purpose to be known and thereby glorified. What else then should any and all education be directed at than this chief end?

The last two chapters deal with two subsidiary matters (chapter 7) and an outlook on how Christian education might proceed in practice (chapter 8). There are a few helpful applications to be gleaned here, but which I will refrain from commenting upon in detail. One note of importance for contemporary readers is that Clark sees both the family and the Church as responsible for the education of children, and therefore accepts as valid both family cooperative (parochial) schools as well as church incorporated Christian schools. The practical costs and benefits of either are circumstantial, but both--unlike public schools run by the State--are commanded and sanctioned by Scripture.

It should be evident to all reading this post, and even more so those reading Clark's book, that State-run public education is inherently anti-Christian--even in a Christian State. The tendency of State-run education is to inculcate its own doctrines into the minds of its pupils (Roman Catholicism is explicit in this regard) and a secular State is no less inclined by necessity to this end than is a religious State. Education is the province of the family and the Church, and though the State is duty-bound to protect the rights of families and Churches to instruct their own, this duty does not extend to State-controlled (this includes funding, even funding such as school vouchers) educational programs.

The Insanity of Naturalism

2009-04-21T07:50:00.003-05:00

In two consecutive days my students have brought before me arguments based in thoroughgoing naturalism. Naturalism argues that, because humans are the inevitable result of evolutionary processes, we ought to base our decisions upon what we observe in nature, and not upon any moral code or philosophical idea based in non-natural a priori principles.

The first student made the argument that humanity, like viruses, might be able to solve problems of population control by simple procreation. At least, he argued, procreation doesn't hinder population control. While we can probably agree with my student's conclusion, it would be insanity to agree with his premise. Why, you ask?

In his refutation speech, the same student backed up his argument by an appeal to Aristotle's theory of mimesis. We ought to imitate nature, he said, by learning from the natural processes we observe there, and by applying these processes to human interaction. There are several difficulties here.

First, let's start with definitions. What is a natural process? Or better, what ISN'T a natural process? Remember, naturalism posits that ALL of what we observe stems from evolutionary processes. Even human rationalizations, including moral and philosophical codes, are but the movements of chemicals and the coding of our genes. Can any decision or principle of action be considered unnatural under such a definition? But even if we find a non-natural distinction to posit against naturalism, how do we decide which natural processes to imitate? We might choose to imitate viruses, which multiply in seemingly indiscriminate and rampant reproduction. Or perhaps we should imitate other species who choose one mate and remain monogamous throughout their entire life? Or maybe the best model to imitate are those species that use the male to reproduce, and then devour him in order to eliminate unnecessary competition for the future generations?

The other student presented me with an article from the New York Times, which he was assigned to analyze with a model of analysis called Toulmin's model of arguments. The article can be found at this link. The article reports that scientists are questioning the traditional understanding of moral decision-making being based in reason or reflection. Rather, we make moral decisions on the basis of immediate analysis, which is grounded in our emotions. We just know what tastes good. We just know what looks pretty. We make such aesthetic judgments and most of the time we are right. Corrections often come from reflection or from others who talk to us, and this is sometimes good. Scientists are also qualifying Darwin's model of competition to include a more communal aspect of cooperation. Like bees who seek collective existence in hives, so we as humans can cooperate through out emotions and reasons.

One commentor on the newspaper article mentioned that this is old news that goes back as far as Henry James (and John Dewey, we might add). The problem with the view ought to be apparent to any thinking individual, but for those who have abandoned reason for emotion, reasons are less apparent. So let's help them out, like a worker bee helps out a drone who has finished his job of fertilization.

First of all, emotions and snap decisions are not always regular in the manner in which the examples given in the article seem to indicate. Sure, most of the time we like the taste of ice cream or blueberries, or whatever it is we like, but such emotions are contingent upon other factors. If we are sick, we may not enjoy the taste of certain foods. If certain foods are rotten or ill-prepared we don't like the taste. The contingency of circumstances and our immediate reactions can tell us nothing about the reasons for those immediate reactions. It is only by our use of reason that we can determine that our taste is influenced by sickness, or the fruit is rotten. If all we had to go on was our immediate reaction, we would like blueberries one day and hate them the next, only to love them again at some other time.

A more damaging problem than taste is moral judgments, which are not (as these scientists wish to prove) based upon immediate emotions. If someone punches us in the face and we choose to restrain our anger and cease from punching back, we have applied reason to our immediate emotion. Our scientists might agree that such a reaction was a positive use of reason. But why? If our immediate emotions are the standard for moral judgment, upon what basis is our reason justified in curbing an immediate emotion? The only standard to which evolutionary naturalism can appeal are the observations of nature, but we've already canvassed a few of the innumerable and contradictory examples provided in nature. How does one decide which to apply in a given case?

Consider the example of bees from the article. True, there is a collective aspect to bees, but in that collective organization, individual sacrifices are made all the time, not to mention that the entire society is organized to work for one purpose--the propagation of the species through servitude to one queen. In other words, a totalitarian society where workers slave away endlessly to provide food for the queen and her offspring (which will become slaves) and her harem of drones (who are executed once they have sevred their sexual purpose). Is this really the sort of collective we want to imitate?

The point is not simply that naturalism is insane, but that it is also impossible. Naturalist, in order to make any normative judgments at all, must assume a point of departure that they cannot justify upon naturalistic principles. The cheat by importing a universal maxim or principle into their system. Van Til would say that they are living upon Christian capital, and so they are, for the Law of God is God's Law after all, and not a law derived from nature apart from God, or from human invention, apart from God, or from anything else, apart from God. God who made men in His image, also implanted upon their hearts an innate knowledge of His law, by which they all judge the world around them to be just or unjust. All the analogies from nature, all the first principles of rationalism, all the snap decisions of thoughtless emoters are based upon an inherent understanding of God's moral law, expressed in the Ten Commandments (now is an appropriate time to get your Bible and read the Ten Commandments, The Sermon on the Mount, and Romans 1).

The next time someone wants to argue from nature or evolution, tell them that you agree so long as you get to be the queen bee in his hive.