Theological Virtues in C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity

A Summary of C.S. Lewis’s perspective on the Theological Virtues (Faith, Hope, Love) in Mere Christianity (Book II, chapters 9-12)

Lewis begins his discussion of Charity with reference to his chapter on Forgiveness, which he calls “a part of Charity” (129). He notes that while man consider charity as “alms,” the giving of money to the poor constitutes only part of Charity. The central quality of Charity Lewis calls, “’Love, in the Christian sense,’” which characterizes a state of the will rather than of the emotions. What we like or do not like are not Charity (though they may aid or detract from Charity). Charity desires the good or happiness of others as much as one’s own, and it must be cultivated through habitual actions that put others first, whether or not one feels like doing so. Loving, like hating, increases itself—the more one does acts of love, the more one finds he does love the object of his loving action; and the more one does acts of hate, the more one finds he does hate object of his hating action.

Lewis defines hope as, “a continual looking forward to the eternal world,” remarking that, perhaps paradoxically, such thinking makes men far more useful in the present world (134). He cites history for examples that show that the most heavenly-minded Christians did the most worldly good. The principle runs this way: “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither” (134). Lewis then anticipates his famous “argument from desire,” by observing how often people have desires beyond what any earthy goods can satisfy. He says there are three possible responses to such desires: 1) The Fool’s Way, 2) The Way of the Disillusioned ‘Sensible Man,’ and 3) The Christian Way. The Fool’s way blames the earthly goods for his dissatisfaction and spends all of his energy moving from one pleasure to the next, always seeking after what nothing he seeks can provide. The Sensible Man’s way denies the longing as false and tries to find contentment in the lesser pleasures earth provides. Whereas the Fool runs up a lengthy account of disappointments, the Sensible Man avoids small disappointments, but still misses out on the true satisfaction Reality affords. The Christian way believes it is man’s nature to desire things beyond this world because he was made for another—the natural desire for otherworldly pleasure is evidence of the reality beyond this life. All of the Scriptural imagery for heaven constitute earthly expressions for the inexpressible treasures of Heaven: music indicates the ecstasy and infinity of Heaven; crows, our share of God’s splendor, power, and joy in Heaven; gold, the timelessness and preciousness of Heaven.

Lewis devotes two chapters to Faith, since there are two senses of the word. The first involves belief, or acceptance of the truth of the doctrines of Christianity. The nature of this acceptance constitutes virtue, because it clings to the truth against the sense, emotions, and moods that make unbelief easier or more comfortable. A man may “have faith” in a surgeon’s skill, yet feel afraid when he must go under the knife. His faith shows itself strong when he chooses to quiet his fear in response to his reason’s acceptance of the truth. Faith then, like Charity, requires habituation—a continual effort at overcoming emotions and moods to the contrary. The second kind of Faith pertains to this habituation, since the revelation of faith, or the strengthening of faith, requires that one battle against temptation. Giving in to temptation does show temptation’s strength, but only through resistance does one test the strength of temptation. Since Jesus alone resisted all temptation, he alone knows temptation’s full strength, and it is only in striving to overcome temptation that we discover that God alone possesses the power to resist, and that He freely provides that power to those who seek it. One cannot know how much one needs faith until one tries to be good and fails, and one only understands how much one’s good depends upon God when one’s failure leads one to confess one’s utter dependence upon God for faith and works. In short, one cannot possess great faith without exhibiting great moral effort, yet one cannot achieve great moral effort without the help of God received by faith.

Athanasius's On the Incarnation, IV

Welcome to the fourth post in the series on Athanasius's On the Incarnation. The first post discussed some of the historical context surrounding Athanasius's work. The second post discussed the context of On the Incarnation in Athanasius's three-fold portrait (or trilogy) of human salvation. The third post looked at Chapter 1, the first five sections of On the Incarnation.

The fourth post will begin covering the text of Chapter 2 of On the Incarnation. The Christian Classics Ethereal Library version of the text is easily accessible, so I'll be using that text for this series of posts. I welcome those interested in an alternative translation and arrangement to seek out John Behr's translation, published by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

I'll summarize each section followed by commentary in italics.

II.6 Athanasius lays out the first half of the first divine dilemma, that God should leave man subject to death and corruption. He says that ignoring man's plight is unworthy of the goodness of God, since it would result in man being brought to nothing, bringing God's purposes to naught. It would be better that man had not been made than to be made in the image of God only to be lost to corruption.

II.7 Then comes the second half of the first divine dilemma, that God should go back on His word concerning the just penalty for man's transgression. He could not relent of His sentence, but neither could repentance suffice, since, though repentance removes the action of sin from the soul, it does not remove the corruption that inheres. Repentance does not restore the incorruption. Only by having the Word, who made all from nothing, suffer in the place of man, could man be remade in the incorruptible image which he had forsaken.

The first two sections present the first dilemma, regarding the plight of man in death and corruption. God, being good, cannot allow what He has made for Himself to be brought to nothing, but God, being just, cannot allow His word to be broken. Thus, in order to fulfill His word as well as His purposes for creation, the Word through which all was made must enter into creation's corruption, satisfying the just penalty in such a way as to bring the corruption through death and into incorruption. The precise way remains to be discussed, but here Athanasius has presented the problem and its only solution.

II.8 The Word of God fills all things that He has made, yet in the Incarnation He enters into creation in a new and unprecedented way, revealing Himself personally through the thing He has made. For what reason? His pity and compassion for man's plight led him to take up a human body, a human nature--not the appearance of a body and nature, but a body such as our own--using a "spotless, stainless virgin, without agency of human father," that is, not made though intercourse and transmission of sin. Yet he took on a body subject to corruption and carried it into death as a substitute for all; offering it to the Father. His death for all abolished death's power over all, and through resurrection He procured the incorruptible life for all. The great exchange of the Word's flesh for human flesh results from God's compassion for man. He is willing to enter into the lowly flesh, and take it through the penalty for sin, death and corruption, that death might be swallowed up in God's own incorruptible life, resulting in life incorruptible for all men.

II.9 The exchange of the Incarnate Word's life for man's life is sufficient because of the value of the divine life united in the body. The exchange of the Incarnate Word's life for man's life is complete because the incorruption of the divine life ensures that the body cannot remain in death, but must enter into new life in resurrection. Man possesses solidarity in their common nature, which the Word entered into when He took up flesh, and through the flesh He took up influenced all men by that same commonality of nature. Athanasius compares this to a King who takes up his dwelling in a city, simultaneously ennobling it and preventing it from molestation from evildoers. The analogy of the King's taking up residence in the city must have resonated with Athanasius's audience, not only for its truth, but perhaps even more in contrast to failed kingships that promised the same, yet could not deliver. The affirmation of man's common nature here is striking, since, as yet, Athanasius makes no distinctions between men who appropriate the life of Christ and those who remain in their corruption in Adam. Rather, the exchange apparently affirms the universality of the Incarnate Word's work throughout Creation. Whereas before death reigned in power, now the power of death is swallowed up in life. Whereas before there was only darkness, now the whole earth is swathed in the light of the Son. 

II.10 Again Athanasius highlights the goodness of God as the source of salvation, and he uses the analogy of kingship. The king who founds a city protects rather than neglects it; much more then shall God protect the race of men who are His own. He cites Scripture to show his fidelity to God's Word on the matter and to reinforce the Incarnation as the only proper solution to the problem of death and corruption: the sacrifice of the Word's own body put an end to death and made a new way into life through the resurrection. The divine dilemma regarding death and corruption is solved! Here Athanasius closes his argument with appropriate proofs from Scripture indicating what he has heretofore claimed; that the Word must become man in order to bring man out of death and into life. 

Having resolved the first divine dilemma, the next chapter will see Athanasius solving the second, which regards the loss of knowledge due to man's transgression.

Athanasius's On the Incarnation III

Welcome to the third post in the series on Athanasius's On the Incarnation. The first post discussed some of the historical context surrounding Athanasius's work. The second post discussed the context of On the Incarnation in Athanasius's three-fold portrait (or trilogy) of human salvation.

The third post will begin covering the text of On the Incarnation. The Christian Classics Ethereal Library version of the text is easily accessible, so I'll be using that text for this series of posts. I welcome those interested in an alternative translation and arrangement to seek out John Behr's translation, published by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

I'll summarize each section followed by commentary in italics.

1.1 Athanasius refers to his first treatise, Contra Gentes, and summarizes his main points against idolatry and for the divinity of the "Word of the Father." He then articulates his plan for the present work, which is to treat the Incarnation of the Word. He states that the sole cause of the Son of God's taking on human flesh is twofold: the love of humankind and the goodness of the Father. Moreover, it is only fitting that the Word of the Father by which the world was made should be the same agent for the salvation of the world. Already in the introduction Athanasius places an antithesis between the wisdom of God and the religion of the Jews and of the Gentiles. That which the Jews reject and the Greeks mock God shows to be fitting and good. The paradoxical nature of God's revelation of Himself to man (what man considers impossible, God shows possible, etc.) arises from man's flight from knowledge and being rather than from the nature of things as God has made them.

1.2 Athanasius refutes three false views of Creation: Epicurean, Platonic, and Gnostic. The Epicureans deny any Mind to order the universe, but assert that all things are self-originated by chance. If no Mind exists to distinguish one thing from another, then the universe would bear no distinctions, but would be a mass of uniformity. The universe has distinction, therefore a Mind lies behind it, and that mind is God. The Platonists believe matter is pre-existent and that God makes the world from this uncreated material. If matter is uncreated, then God is limited in what He can do by the nature of the matter, thus making God subject to something other than Himself, and only a craftsman rather than Creator. God is not subject to any other than Himself, thus He created from nothing (rather than formed from what was already there) the matter from which things are made. Gnostics believe an Artificer other than God the Father created all things. Yet Scripture clearly declares (in places like Matt. 19:4-6 and John 1:3) that the Father creates and nothing is, but that which God created. Athanasisus's refutations are directed against two heathen views and one heretical view. The heathen views (Epicureans and Platonists) he refutes through reason: discerning the necessity of a rational first cause for rationally organized things (Epicurean view), and the aseity of God, that is, God independence of anything not Himself (Platonic view). The Gnostics represent heresy, since Athanasius reasons from Scripture rather than reason to refute their error.

1.3. Athanasius provides a true account of Creation. God, the infinite, created finite things out of nothing (non-existence) through the agency of the Word, as Genesis, The Shepherd of Hermas, and Hebrews declare. God created out of His own goodness; a goodness which did not begrudge the good of existence to non-existent things. Man, God made in His own image, reasonable as God is reasonable, yet in limited degree. Reason gave to man choice of will (to follow or forsake God), which God tested by placing man in paradise (place) with a prohibition (law). Forsaking obedience and immortality man chose disobedience and death--a remaining state of death and corruption. Here Athanasius succinctly serves the orthodox Christian doctrine of Creation and the Fall. Of special note is Athanasius's emphasis on God reason for creating--not His love (though that is true as well), but His goodness. Aristotle considered magnanimity (greatness of soul) to be the crowning virtue of man, and whether or not Athanasius is playing upon this Greek idea, the connection seems suitable. The greatness of God's goodness leads Him to create, that His goodness might be made manifest in and to the things which He makes. Also notable is man's likeness to God--man possesses a share in the being of God through his rational/volitional mind, though his creatureliness limits man's expression of this divine quality. Finally, Athanasius sets up the problem which will result in two divine dilemmas--man's sin has plunged him into death, not just the act of dying, but the state of death and corruption that characterizes even his life in the body.

1.4 Athanasius explains that Creation must be discussed since man's loss of his original state is the cause of the Incarnation of the Word--the love of God caused Him to take up human form for the salvation of man into His initial purpose--uninterrupted, incorruptible communion with God. Man did not remain in the state of Adam's corruption simply, but progressed into greater corruption, which is a return to his original state of non-existence. Not only did man give up the life of God, descending back toward nothingness, but also the knowledge of God by which he participates in communion with, in life with, God. This is what evil is--(the return to) non-being. Only through contemplation of God does man preserve his likeness to God--the turning away from God is both metaphysical (being to non-being) and epistemological (knowledge to ignorance). Athanasius infers this from The Wisdom of Solomon 6:18, "The keeping of His laws is the assurance of incorruption." Athanasius moves from establishing the context of the divine dilemma to providing some definition to the reality of death and its effects upon man. Note especially the intimate relation between being and knowledge. Athanasius appears to place emphasis on knowing as the means to being, indeed, as the foundation of being--to remain in God one must contemplate Him, and so the turning away from the knowledge of God is a divestiture of the life man possesses in God alone. Surely the notion of idolatry undergirds this expression, since in man's giving himself to material things, to idols, he loses his contact with divinity. Note as well the intimacy between knowledge and obedience--contemplation of God includes the meditation upon and keeping of His law.

1.5 Athanasius elaborates on man in his state of innocence--subject to corruption, but shielded by his union with the Word--from which he fell due to the work of Satan and his own choice. From this point of departure Athanasius narrates the decline of man into greater corruption. He finishes by quoting Paul's same litany of corruption in Romans 1. The most significant addition in this section comes from Athanasius's acknowledgment that man depended upon "the grace of their union with the Word" of God in order to remain incorrupt--even in paradise--since man's nature was subject to corruption. Also significant is man's insatiable lust for corruption after the Fall. Athanasius makes apparent man's incapacity to curtail his appetite for evil left to himself.

That wraps up Chapter 1: Creation and the Fall. The next post will examine Chapter 2: The Divine Dilemma and its Solution in the Incarnation.

Athanasius's On the Incarnation II

Welcome to the second post in the series on Athanasius's On the Incarnation. The first post discussed some of the historical context surrounding Athanasius's work. In this second post, I'll briefly set On the Incarnation in its place within Athanasisus's trilogy on human salvation. I'm drawing mainly from John Behr's introduction to the St. Vladimir's Seminary Press edition of On the Incarnation.

It is undisputed that On the Incarnation is the continuation of Athanasius's earlier treatise Contra Gentes (Against the Heathen). Athanasius refers to this work in the preface of On the Incarnation. In Contra Gentes Athanasius sets out to refute idolatry, the overwhelming religious competitor of his day, and demonstrate the reasonableness of the Christian faith. Having done this, On the Incarnation sets out to show how God solves the problem of death, on the one hand, and the problem of human ignorance of God, on the other. The incarnation of God dissolves two divine dilemmas:

The Divine Dilemma of Death: since through sin death has entered the world and laid claim to man,
1. Either God must abandon man to death, showing Himself weak or uncaring for His creation,
2. Or God must disregard His own law, which was that disobedience of the creature would result in death and ongoing corruption.

The Divine Dilemma of Knowledge: since through sin man has turned away from the divine to materials things and lost the knowledge of God,
1. Either God must abandon man to ignorance, showing Himself weak of uncaring for His creation,
2. Or God must reveal himself through the material things to which man has turned, thus breaking His law against idolatry.

The incarnation dissolves both dilemmas, since the God-man's entrance into death fulfills the demands of death such that all humanity may escape; and through his coming as God-man men come to know him as a true man, yet through his divine works that he draws men's mind back to what is truly Divine.

Thus, the two works represent Athanasius's defeat of the idolatry that stands opposed to the Gospel and his articulation of salvation proclaimed by the Gospel.

So what forms the third work, and what is its place in relation to the two? Behr makes the point that Athanasius's Life of Antony, the biographical sketch of the desert ascetic, demonstrates the effects of the work of the incarnation articulated in On the Incarnation in the life of the Church through the life of Antony as a model for imitation. Throughout Life of Antony Athanasius shows that all of Antony's efforts--his renunciation of material goods, his seeking battle with demonic powers in the isolated realms where they dwell, his struggles against the temptations of the flesh, the world, and Satan (or lusts of the eyes, lusts of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life)--are made successful through the work of Christ in Antony. In particular, it is through Christ's conquest of death and corruption in the flesh that has made it possible for men to overcome the corruption of the flesh until death brings them into new life. The general movement of Life of Antony goes from intense solitary preparation for Antony to an outpouring of the fruits of the Spirit's work in his life in the lives of those who come to visit him. Moreover, through the intense suffering of affliction at the hands of Satan and his demons, Antony comes through with greater health and mastery over his body--and all of this Antony attributes to the power of Christ.

Thus, Contra Gentes demonstrates the vanity of idolatry, On the Incarnation demonstrates the hope of humanity, and Life of Antony demonstrates the faith upon which the Church progresses toward the culmination of the eschaton.

In the next post we'll look at Chapter 1 of On the Incarnation.

Athanasius's On the Incarnation I

After a few months of inactivity, I'm ready to jump back in with a writing project. I'd like to attempt blogging through Athanasius's, On the Incarnation, while I am teaching it to my eighth grade class. I'll begin with a post discussing the historical situation in which the book was written, and then a second post will place On the Incarnation within the corpus of Athanasius's writings. Subsequent posts will deal with each chapter of the work.

Just for classroom context, I've spent the first half of the year walking my students through the New Testament and the Early Church, using the Bible; Eusebius's, Church History; and several other primary texts. The main topics included how the Gospels and Acts write history and presents the person of Jesus; how Eusebius writes history and presents the narrative of the Church from a relatively peaceful obscurity through persecution and into an ascendant peace with Constantine. That brings us to Athanasius, whose book, On the Incarnation, both presents the orthodox understanding of salvation as well as the orthodox view of the Son of God in contradistinction to Arius. In order to prepare the students for the doctrinal context of the book, we discussed the Arian controversy as it played out between the first two ecumenical councils. We did this relying upon David Bentley Hart's chapter from, The Story of Christianity, entitled, "One God in Three Persons: The Earliest Church Councils." What follows is a summary of Hart's discussion.

Although the Edict of Milan brought an end to official persecution of Christians, it opened the opportunity for Christians to discuss their own understanding of Jesus Christ, in particular, His relationship to God the Father and to the Holy Spirit. There are three groups of Christians, other than the orthodox, Hart mentions as vying for their understanding of the Son's identity:

1. "Modalists" held that there is only One God who manifests at different times as "Father," "Son," or "Holy Spirit;" these being "modes" of the One God's singularity.

2. "Adoptionists" held that Christ had been a man who had been "adopted" into divine Sonship by the Father.

3. "Subordinationists" held that the Father alone is God in the fullest sense, the Son being a lesser expression of God, and the Spirit being a lesser expression of the Son.

Subordinationists were particularly concentrated in Alexandria, in part, perhaps, due to the fact that Jews and Pagans also held subordinationist views of God. Philo argued that the Logos, "Son of God," through whom the world was created, served as an intermediary between God and the world. Platonists held that the ultimate divine principle (the One) was so utterly transcendent of the world that all other things exist only through an order of lesser, derivative divine principles. Origen of Alexandria was the most influential early Christian thinker of his day, and his thought, though distinct from these Jewish and Platonist views, nevertheless shared some assumptions about the idea of transcendence and mediation; and he was a subordinationist.

It was in this Alexandrian context that Arius's own views developed and exceeded subordinationists. While Origen denied that the Father and Son we coequal, he nevertheless considered them coeternal. Arius went further, denying both coequality and coeternality to the Son, arguing that "If the Father begat the Son, the one that was begotten has a beginning of existence and from this it is evident that there was a time when the Son was not" (Hart quotes this from Socrates Scholasticus's The Eccelsiastical History). Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria during the time of Arius's arguments, expelled him Alexandria and from his position as presbyter there in 321. Arius published his views and even put them into popular song in 323.

By 324 Constantine had conquered Licinius, the last of his rivals, and brought stability to the empire. Having taken up Christianity as a stabilizing religion for the empire, he could not allow the dissension within the Church to continue. When Arius and Alexander could not be reconciled, Constantine called for a universal council of bishops to convene and determine the position of the Church on the relation of the Son of God to the Father. The First Council of Nicaea convened in 325 and included Arius, Alexander, and the young Athanasius (deacon to Alexander) attended in addition to three hundred or so bishops, most of whom came from the Eastern churches. Arius's doctrines were condemned, and only six bishops (included Arius) refused to accept the orthodox formula set forth in the Nicene Creed. The formula included a term foreign to Scripture, homoousios (consubstantial), which means "of the same substance," to describe the relation of the Son and Father. Though the idea reflects Scriptural descriptions of the Father, Son, and Spirit, it would be the source of ongoing strife.

Despite the unifying purpose of the First Council of Nicaea, the Church continued in controversy over the identity of the Son of God; and even Constantine was persuaded to become Arian by several prominent women in his household. Until the First Council of Constantinople in 381, where the final version of the Nicene Creed was formulated, bishops like Athanasius contended for Nicene orthodoxy over and against the majority who were Arians; often being exiled when Arian emperors came to power, or restored when Nicene emperors came to power. During the aftermath two groups articulated alternatives to Nicene orthodoxy:

1. "Homoeans" held that the Son is "of similar substance" (homoiousios) with the Father.

2. "Anomoeans" held that the Son is altogether unlike the Father.

It turned out to be the anomeans, in the figure of Eunomius, who came to represent the most prominent opposition to Nicene orthodoxy in the generation after 325. Athanasius did not live to see the final stroke fall upon the Arian heresy and its correlates--a threefold stroke struck by the Cappadocian fathers: St. Basil of Caesarea, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and St. Gregory of Nyssa. Hart notes that their complex defense of Nicene orthodoxy could be faithfully reduced to a simple series of propositions that were central to salvation in the life of the Early Church (represented also in Athanasius's On the Incarnation): "if it is the Son who joins us to the Father, and only God can join us to God, then the Son is God; and if, in the sacraments of the Church and the life of faith, it is the Spirit who joins us to the Father, and only God can join us to God, then the Spirit too must be God."

The debates all turned on the nature of human salvation--what it took for man to be reconciled with God--and, in the end, only God-Man--fully God, fully Man--could reconcile all men to the Father and restore all Creation to incorruption.

In the next post we'll look at how On the Incarnation provides the cornerstone for Athanasius's three-fold portrait of human salvation.

The Glory of the Earthly Body in the Union with the Eternal Godhead

First, an excerpt from John Chrysostom's "Homily on Christmas Morning":

Let that handiwork be forever glorified, which became the cloak of its own Creator. For as in the first creation of flesh, man could not be made before the clay had come into His hand, so neither could this corruptible body be glorified, until it had first become the garment of its Maker.

Chrysostom speaks here of the flesh of man, which the Eternal Son took up in His Incarnation. The Golden Mouthed preacher's words hearken to other words more famously sung on Christmas:

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the Incarnate Deity! Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel.

For all of the splendors of Eden, there remained one gift that God withheld from His stewards: their King. "For as in the first creation of flesh, man could not be made before the clay had come into His hand, so neither could this corruptible body be glorified, until it had first become the garment of its Maker."

The purity in the Garden was innocence whereas the purity of Heaven is glorification. In the Garden was the giddy and light joys of youth. In Heaven is the sober and weighty joys of maturity. In the Garden was the early plucked, sweet wine that cheers the senses with its first splash. In Heaven is the drought-tested, robust wine that satisfies only as its complexity unravels in reflection.

The Divine Author of Creation set forth so beautiful a beginning that it is difficult to imagine anything more glorious, yet in the strange, uncanny Incarnation He foreshadows to His people something of the greater glory that awaits. Society with the Son of God, Jesus Christ the Incarnate Son, was full of the wonder, joy, and potency that full humanity is destined to become--first in His birth, intermediately in His death, and finally in His resurrection and ascension we see the fullness of man unfurled from the frail immaturity, to the euchatastrophic conquest, and unto full maturity in glorified splendor. The great chiasm of history displays an exalted Adam who becomes lowly Israel who gives way to lowly Jesus who becomes the exalted Christ. And just as in one man all Fell, so in one Man all are raised--the Church, the Bride, the Body is being incorporated even now as God gathers broken vessels of clay and gives them new life, piecing them into the Incarnate Son.

There are many things to despise in the body, even as there are many delights our bodies afford to us. But we who in this age exalt the glories of the body into a grotesque anti-image of the Son of Man, Christians would do well to remember that our bodies were never what they will be, nor can the pleasures of Eden or the foretastes of the present Age comprehend what our bodies will be in their completed union with the Eternal Godhead: Father, Spirit, Son.

Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?”

The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.

The Problem of Identity

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same. ~Plutarch, Theseus

Finite creatures change, yet we are able to identify individuals in duration. What remains the same in the midst of growth or change? What constitutes the identity of any given object? More acutely, what makes any person himself, or herself, that person? This thorny philosophical question has attracted many attempts of solution.

For the Christian, the answer itself is simple, though unravelling the tightly woven knot of the truth is no less complicated than many of the answers offered by non-Christian philosophers. Despite the complications of philosophy, a simple apologetic can be briefly outlined:

1. God is the ground of all Being.
Paul, in his speech before the Athenian council, the Areopagus, claimed that the pagan poet Aratus' idea that "in Zeus we live and move and have our being" is rightly applied to the One True God who has expressed Himself in the man, Jesus Christ, who will judge the world in righteousness. To have one's being in God entails that one's identity is in some way derivative of God's productive activity, and insofar as God governs His productive activity, to that extent does He determine or maintain the identity of what He has made.

2. God is the fount of all knowledge.
The Psalmist, in comparing the wickedness of the wicked to the perfections of God, claims that God is the fountain of life and that in His Light we see light. While both "fountain" and "light" here are metaphors, the connotations are not so wide and various to obscure the likelihood that knowledge is in view. To see is to behold, to behold is to experience the truth of what appears, that is, to know it (at least to some extent). Combined with John's opening in his gospel, the metaphor is even clearer: Christ is the true light that gives light to every man entering the world. Darkness and blindness are opposing metaphors for ignorance, which also reinforce the meaning of "light" as knowledge. Thus, insofar as the identity of a thing, or of a person, depends upon knowledge, to that extent the identity of a thing is derivative of God's knowledge.

3. God is the end of all Being and Knowledge.
Not only is God the ground of being and the fount of knowledge, He is also the end of these things. Again John is our helper, for in Revelation he witnesses several times the declaration that Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. Nor is the phrase left indeterminate. In Revelation 21 Alpha and Omega is set in the context of Christ as the giver of life, which I think extends to the notion of Being quite directly, though I won't defend that assertion here. In 1 John 3:2, John tells us that the children of God are not yet fully known, but that they know that when they see Christ revealed they shall be like him. The Greek verb translated "see" is a metaphor for seeing with the mind, or knowing. Knowledge is transformative, but in a teleological fashion--we become what we are to be by beholding with the mind the completed revelation of Jesus Christ.

To put it narratively, we cannot know our full identity until the protagonist has completed the end of the story, for our identity as human beings are all bound up in his identity as the God-Man. This is certainly true, corporately, but also individually, just as every part of my body has a "story" of its own, the completion of which depends upon how my own volition directs it unto some final end.

To recap, the problem of identity within Christian thought finds resolution in the identity of God as the beginning and end of Being and Knowledge; by the decree of the Father made manifest to us (and all the cosmos) in the person of Jesus Christ, both Son of God and Son of Man, and declared true by the testimony of the Holy Spirit to all the members of His Body, the Church.

The Christian Mind quotation

But whatever the quality of twentieth-century Christians, the Church remains unalterably secure. And no Christian who understands the Church's true nature can talk of the Church being in danger of being engulfed. It is too late for the world to destroy the Church, two thousand years too late. The world had its chance and did its best--and its worst--on Calvary. God answered with a body of men and women against whom the gates of Hell shall not prevail. We have his word for it. And if the gates of Hell shall not prevail, need we worry unduly about the latest secularist estimate of the Church's statistical manpower or the jibes of shallow brains-trust intellectuals who have yet to find their peace? ~Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind, (1963), p. 153. 

Trinitarian Greeting

The opening of Peter's first epistle has a wonderful Trinitarian greeting:

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the pilgrims of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied.

The odd (odd to Gentile ears like mine, anyway) phrase "for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ" is likely a reference to the sealing of the New Covenant, the Old Covenant being sealed with blood by Moses at Sinai (Exodus 24:8):

And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, "This is the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you according to all these words."

Elected by the Father.

Sanctified by the Spirit.

Sprinkled into the Covenant by the Son.

Calvin's prefatory remarks on the Trinity and the Incarnation as the Paradigm of Divine Accommodation

In the opening section of Calvin's chapter on the Trinity (Book 1, chapter 13), he claims that two doctrines set forth in Scripture concerning God's being protect against both the dreams of the vulgar and the subtleties of profane philosophy.

One doctrine is the immensity of God and the other is the spirituality of God. The immensity of God curbs the human mind's natural inclination to measure by our senses, while the spirituality keeps us mindful that God cannot be equated with physical analogies (of which he says more a bit later). It seems as well that the immensity of God prevents human intellect from imagining that it can, by increasing knowledge of God, gain mastery over Him or circumscribe His limits.

Rather, knowledge of God, so far from enabling man to exert power over the object of knowledge, transforms the man into a fuller, or more perfect iteration of his nature. That is to say, since God has made man as His image, and insofar as Christ is the express image of God, as man grows in his knowledge of God, he also grows up into a more complete image of Christ.

Additionally, Calvin speaks of God's accommodation toward man, particularly in the language of Scripture's descriptions of God. While described as having hands, eyes, fingers, and so on, God is not essentially possessed of any of these physical aspects, but rather these physical descriptions as "lisps" as a nurse to a babe. God accommodates the immensity of His nature to man by describing Himself in  terms of the physical, sensate elements by which man experiences much of his own existence.

One could ask what undergirds the doctrine of accommodation, or rather, whether the language of Scripture is the only relevant aspect of God's accommodation. The response could easily be that it is rather that the language of Scripture is an image of the Greater Accommodation God makes to man in the Incarnation of the Son of God. In making Himself known to man, God became a man, and in so doing has made it possible for man to become like God in a way that otherwise man could not.

It is a topic sometimes (and more frequently today, perhaps) speculated upon, whether Adam, had he not sinned, would have received eternal life, or whether he would have remained under a requirement of perpetual obedience, yet mutable (able to sin). Such speculations, it seems to me, miss the larger point. Adam could not have earned divinity except through union with the divine, and insofar as union with the divine is most fully manifest in the hypostatic union, the Incarnation is essential to the proper raising of man into his full nature. Only by the Eternal Son of God joining Himself to a human nature could human nature reach culmination.

The Grace of Faith and Covenant Children

I recently had the opportunity to discuss a delicate subject with a relative of mine, namely, the status of children of parents who are confessing Christians. My relative is a baptist and devotee of John MacArthur, whose views are neither mainstream baptist, nor reformed baptist; are in some ways Calvinistic in soteriology, but with some important divergences. For example, MacArthur, and my relative, would argue that God has unconditionally elected from eternity all those who will be saved, and yet also argue that God loves all men and offers them salvation. Another oddity is the "age of accountability," which several well-respected theologians have affirmed, including MacArthur, and nineteenth century presbyterian theologian, A.A. Hodge. The "age of accountability" is what my relative advanced in a discussion on the topic of children's status in God's covenant.

My relative asked me what I believed concerning my children's salvation, and I told him that I believed they were saved and possessed full entitlements to the benefits and responsibilities of the covenant according to their age and maturity. He was, being a baptist, hung up on this because he did not believe that children could possess saving faith. Why not? Because he believes that saving faith requires cognitive abilities that children lack. I asked him about invalids and other mentally handicapped people, and he agreed that such could possess saving faith, though he said the elders often had to make a judgment call on whether to admit such into membership and the Table of the Lord's Supper. I assume that he would consider those incapable of understanding to fall into a similar category as children under the supposed, "age of accountability." When I mentioned that I thought my six year old might have a better understanding of the gospel than a recent convert who had lived a life of complete paganism prior to conversion, he said that with such new converts (who had a credible profession) might be asked to demonstrate their profession through the bearing of fruit before being admitted into membership. When I pointed out that this contradicted the principle of a credible profession being all that is required for membership into the covenant, he admitted as much, though it went no further.

We had our conversation cut short, but it has been on my mind ever since. There is a great confusion, it seems to me, among baptists and many presbyterians of our day, as to just what are the varieties of faith, and what is actually required as the Biblical standard for regarding anyone as a member of the Covenant. What follows is my attempt to lay out that standard, and demonstrate why all professing Christians have good reason to consider their children as members and heirs with Christ.

First in order are a few definitions, to which I think MacArthur baptists would agree with historic Calvinism upon.

1. Saving faith is a gift of God not arising from within the individual by his own merit or ability, but wholly supplied by the Holy Spirit in regeneration (Eph. 2:8, WCF 14.1).

2. The exercise of faith requires understanding and assent, which result in trust in the object of faith.

If any objection is to be raised with the above definitions, it would be in the second, where one might quibble that exercise of faith should really be faith itself as well as its exercise. However, I would disagree that faith itself, rather than its exercise, requires understanding, assent, and trust. Why? For faith is something that one may possess without cognitive awareness or exercise of the understanding or will. For example, when one is sleeping, one is not required to understand and assent to propositions concerning Christ in order to maintain his status in the Covenant. Thus, the exercise of faith (which we may call, believing) is distinguished from faith itself as a quality one may possess.

It is this distinction that I believe is the bane of much current theological understanding of faith. By failing to make a distinction between faith and its exercise, one confuses the two to the detriment of both. Chapter 14 of the Westminster Confession of Faith makes this distinction clear, saying, "The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts. . ." The grace of faith provided by the Holy Spirit of Christ is that which enables the elect to believe, but is not itself a belief. It is a condition or quality--in Biblical language it is a new heart, a new creation, a new man.

When we consider faith as the condition or quality that enables the elect to believe, we begin to understand why it is that children and invalids can possess saving faith without necessarily possessing the ability to articulate it verbally, or demonstrate it to the same degree as a normally functioning adult, but rather, according to the measure of faith given to them by God (Rom. 12:3).

Let us consider a common scenario. An infant, which we will assume lacks the ability to exercise understanding, assent, and trust in the Word of God according to the testimony of the Holy Spirit could nonetheless be given a new nature with all the capacity for the exercise of faith when that nature had been grown up into the maturity whereby such understanding, assent, and trust could be exercised. Baptists and some Presbyterians makes the categorical error of equating action with nature, or at least of reversing the proper order and making the action prior to the nature required for such action. Everyone who is not an existentialist recognizes that a dog barks because it is his nature to do so, and they do not think that the dog becomes "that which barks" only when the dog first exhibits the sound of barking. Likewise, those who possess saving faith possess it by the Spirit's gift of a new nature and not by the exhibition of those actions consistent with that nature.

Very well. One may at this point grant the distinction and admit that infants may possess saving faith, even prior to their ability to exercise it. But, what reason does Scripture give us for believing that the children of Christian parents are given the grace of faith in infancy or even in early childhood, prior to their ability to exhibit any discernible fruit?

Admittedly, this brings us to the definition and nature of God's covenant, and where MacArthur baptists are going to have the greatest difficulty, due to their generally dispensationalist convictions. If the New Covenant is radically different from the Old Covenant, there being almost no continuity between the two, then it is difficult to build a Biblical case, since much of the evidence is rejected from the beginning by virtue of its being applicable only to Old Covenant Ethnic Israel. Thankfully, I think an irrefutable argument refuting the Baptist view of the covenant has already been made elsewhere, by my friend Ron DiGiacomo.

Let me just say that, for Christian parents, the Biblical claim is that the children of those who are faithful to God's covenant are themselves heirs of the covenant (Deut. 7:9). A similar claim of covenant fidelity and inheritance is repeated in the New Testament by the Apostle Peter (Acts 2:39). The consistent portrait of salvation from Abraham to Christ has been familial in nature--there is an understanding that households are one unit and function in solidarity. There are exceptions, but this is the generalization that establishes the rule against which the exceptions would otherwise make no sense.

Having defined the terms and advanced reasons for considering children of believing parents as members of the covenant, I want to close by addressing the age of accountability that come up with some Baptists.

The "age of accountability" is problematic for two reasons. First, it fails to grasp the above distinction between faith and its exercise. Second, it contradicts original sin and the federal headship that is required for Christ's atoning work to apply to the elect.

How does the "age of accountability" violate original sin? First, some theologians who accept the doctrine assert that where there is no knowledge of sin, no sin exists. Again, my friend Ron DiGiacomo demonstrates how this argument rests upon a logical blunder in the exegesis of Romans 1. Second, some consider children to be innocent while still possessing original sin. Unfortunately, in order to maintain that God's grace applies to those possessing original sin, one must either accept that God gives them saving faith (something MacArthur denies), or argue that God extends grace differently to this class of individuals than he does to others. In the second case, in good MacArthur fashion, we must ask, where does the text of Scripture provide evidence of such a distinction? MacArthur only points to two places: 1. David's remarks concerning his son by Bathsheba whom God takes as a payment for David's sin, and 2. the Hebrew word "innocent," as applied to children offered to Molech. He argues that because the word often means legally guiltless, therefore it means that when applied to children. Apart from not being able to find where the Bible refers to children offered to Molech as "innocent," it does not prove that this innocence implies guiltlessness from the wrath of God against sin. The same word applies to the poor and to those who are not guilty before certain legal stipulations in the Mosaic law. At most one could argue that children were exempted from guiltiness under the legal code of Moses, but not of original sin. 

As for David's thoughts concerning his son, the text gives no indication of what was the exact reason David considered his son would be in heaven. In other words, MacArthur and other baptists commit the fallacy of petitio principii, assuming what must be proven, by saying that David is considering the age of accountability. Indeed, David could be assuming the child's salvation upon the basis of the child's covenant status as a child of believing parents!

The Bible does not provide a distinction between children and adults in terms of their guilt under Adam because none exists, rather, all men are guilty in Adam without distinction, whether they sin in the likeness of Adam or not (Rom. 5:14). Indeed, if children we accounted innocent of the imputed sin of Adam until an age of accountability God's justice would seem to require that their lives be spared, for the wages of sin is death, but those who are not held guilty of sin ought not to receive its penalty, unless that penalty is taken by another (i.e. Christ). But if the children who are held guiltless have their sin debt paid for by Christ, in what sense are they not possessors of a regenerate nature, by virtue of Christ's atoning work!?

In short, the Baptist has no true recourse, and the age of accountability is neither stated in Scripture nor consistent with other explicit statements.

There is both comfort and a hard truth here. The comfort is for Christian parents, for they ought to hope in their children's salvation upon the basis of God's promise to them in Christ, and that hope ought to spur them on to train their children in the truths of Scripture in order that the seed of faith might grow strong and bear much fruit as early as possible. The hard truth is that there is no hope offered for children born into sin, whose parents have not placed their hope in Christ alone for salvation. All the more should Christians proclaim the absolute necessity of Christ's atoning work as the one and only means by which men may be saved from the wrath of God that comes upon all sin.

Luther on "grace" and "gift"; with a homily on electing love

Between grace and gift there is this difference. Grace means properly God's favor, or the good-will God bears us, by which He is disposed to give us Christ and to pour into us the Holy Ghost, with His gifts. This is clear from chapter 5 [of Romans], where He speaks of "the grace and gift in Christ." The gifts and the Spirit increase in us every day, though they are not yet perfect, and there remain in us the evil lust and sin that war against the Spirit, as Paul says in Romans 7 and Galatians 5, and the quarrel between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent is foretold in Genesis 3. Nevertheless, grace does so much that we are accounted wholly righteous before God. For His grace is not divided or broken up, as are the gifts, but it takes us entirely into favor, for the sake of Christ our Intercessor and Mediator, and because of that the gifts are begun in us.

What follows is one part appreciation for Luther's quote, and many parts tangential appreciation for something a bit different.

Martin Luther provides a helpful distinction between grace, defined as God's favor, and gift, which is an expression (but not the entire expression) of that same favor. An analogous distinction could be made between Law, defined as God's order, and precept, which is the expression (but not the entire expression) of God's order.

Apart from being an excellent distinction between grace and gift, Luther's quotation provokes an interesting question: How is it that God's grace--the electing grace of which Luther speaks here--how is it that this grace is distributed equally and universally to all saints, whereas God's gifts are distributed unequally and particularly? The answer, I think, exhibits the harmony of unity and diversity, of the One and the Many. Grace is the unifying principle, the One Thing that binds all of God's redemptive activity toward Creation; and gift is the distributive principle, the Many Things that declare in innumerable ways the multi-faceted, varied character of God's redemptive activity toward Creation. The summary term for all of these details concerning grace and gift is Electing Love.

We have access to God's gifts by God's grace, and our access to God's grace is through our union with Christ, who is Himself the Elect Son of God, and the Elect Man of God, from before the foundation of the world.

There is a sense in which there are only two individuals considered in the decree of predestination and election. There is the First Man, Adam, in whom the decree of reprobation is represented (whether or not the individual man, Adam, is elect or reprobate; since Adam's own representation need not remain in himself, though it remains in those who follow from him by natural generation), and the Last Man, Christ, in whom the decree of redemption is represented (whether or not the individual man, Christ, requires redemption, since his own representative status does not depend upon--indeed, rather would be destroyed by--his own possession of the condition of sin).

Now it is quite true that every human being has been decreed unto reprobation or redemption, individually. However, one of the key issues that people have with election is that it occurs apart from any individual's own contribution (we might say, his own merit). How is it, it is asked, that any one person should be redeemed or reprobated apart from consideration of his or her own choices, which make up his or her identity? Must not the individual be free from any compulsion, so that, by one's own choosing, he or she may love the God who gave His Son to redeem man from sin?

The unquestioned assumption in the question is that one's own identity is something determined by one's own choices. This is the Existentialist philosophy of "Existence precedes Essence," or "I am what I do," or "I am that I choose." Rather, we should recognize that an individual's choices are a result of his or her identity, not a cause of it. An empirical examination does not seem to justify this claim, since we often discover that who we thought we were is different than what we think as a result of some choice or action. "I never though I could do X" seems to support the idea that my choices determine what I am. However, our identity is not made up of our self-knowledge, for, as the Apostle John declares, "we do not yet know what we will be" (1 Jn. 3:2). That our choices reveal to us an identity that heretofore was unknown does not prove that choice determines identity, but rather it shows the limitations of human knowledge. We may know ourselves truly, yet not completely--our identity is being shaped, but not by our choices.

What then shapes our individual identities, of which our choices are but partial revelations?

God's omnipotence entails that no power, indeed, not even the power of an individual human will, is constituted or made effectual apart from God's will. What I choose, what you choose, what anyone chooses according to the liberty of our highest affection, depends upon the exertion of God's power entirely. What I choose on the basis of, that is, my identity, rests entirely upon the favorable or disfavorable willing of God. God wills unto one's good, or one's ill, and the choices one makes reveal to himself and the world whether he or she has God's favor or not (though the full revelation of individuals is obscured in large part until the consummation of the Age and the Return of the Son in Judgment).

On what basis then does God constitute Those Favored and Those Unfavored?

Since it is God's will that constitutes these two groups, there is no higher standard to which God could appeal, no standard upon which He could examine whether to choose X for reprobation and Y for redemption. Since no individual human will can act upon from God prior determination of that will, it is by God's will alone that any subsequent will, wills. Therefore God's will alone factors in the equation. The choice, for God, is arbitrary without being capricious. That is, God is free to choose without doing injustice in however He chooses.

Despite the arbitrary nature of God's constituting the reprobate and the redeemed, there is another factor that liberates God from the charge of injustice, or even of unmitigated self-interest. The decree to elect and reprobate is not undirected, but has its end in the honoring of the Eternally Begotten Son. The Eternal Father desires to offer His Eternal Son an inheritance, therefore He elects unto the Son a people for Him to provide for, protect, and to glorify into His own image, just as the Eternal Son is the image of the Eternal Father. The Father is reproducing in giving His Son an inheritance what the Son will reproduce in His that inheritance--an honorable, glorifying imitation, which is the essence of divine love, which is the Holy Spirit (so much more could be said to unravel this seamless garment!).

The glorification of the Son, and consequently of the Father, is such that there must be an Enemy; an Enemy who possesses his own people to become an unholy imitation of his blasphemous nature. Such unholy anti-love is but the antithesis, the contrastive highlighting, of Divine Love. The darker the shadow of Satanic opposition, the brighter the light of the Son's glorification.

The failure to appreciate the beauty of election is not due to any lack of aesthetic sensibility or faculty of recognition--for in nature, in artistic imitation, the use and appreciation for contrast is so universal as to be an unmistakable principle of beauty, even when it is not considered the sum and whole. No painter can achieve plays of light apart from contrasts in darkness. No musician can achieve the heights of a major tone apart from the lows of a minor. There can be no "is" without there also being an "is not."

No, the rejection of God's electing love (which include reprobation) stems from the universal recognition of one's own status as one of the condemned. Each convict rails against the Just Judge, not because the convict can ultimately deny the justice of the verdict, or the power of the Judge to execute the sentence, but rather from the convict's own dissatisfaction that he, the convict, cannot be, himself, the Judge. That motive characterizes the "old man," "the flesh," the child of darkness, the Satanic being--a motive that can only accuse the Maker of All Things of not doing everything according to the command of the Made.

But to those who have been constituted in Christ, and have been realized as such in history (i.e. the Spirit of adoption has testified to their spirit that they are indeed, sons of God with the Son), there is all of joy and marvel at the beauty of God's electing Love--that He would include such lowly and dependent creatures in the glorification of the Most Exalted and Eternal Son! Had God wanted to, it would have been enough for Him to have allowed all humanity to enjoy the few years of pleasure on this most magnificent orb of joyous beauty--even that much would be more than we deserve as His enemies. Yet even the joys of earth were not enough an expression of the Love of Our Great God, who was neither so mean nor so impoverished as to keep even the most self-debasing and rebellious of His creatures from participating, after their own creaturely fashion, in the Divine nature.

Christian, what can you but do than exclaim, "Marvelous! Wonderful! All Too High and Lofty Design! O, Beauty and Love Immeasurable Great! Worthy, Worthy, O Most Worthy God; Holy Father, Holy Son, and Holy Spirit! Amen!"