Doctrine of God – Page 9 – Christ the Truth

The New Atheism and the Trinity

GlenNovember 26, 2009Leave a comment

Here's Mike Reeves speaking at a student evangelistic event this week. Sound quality is not great but it is well worth listening to!

It's called "How Atheists Are Right." Mike's arguing that the new atheism rightly rejects the solitary dictator in the sky. Christopher Hitchens regularly complains that theism is totalitarianism. The theist God is with you 24-7, cannot be escaped and can even convict you of thought crime - the very definition of a totalitarian regime.

But, as Mike says, traditional Christianity has always stood against the solitary dictator in the sky. Instead, when we say God we mean a fundamentally different being. We believe in a God who is other-centred love. And as John Lennox put to Christopher Hitchens in a recent debate - My wife is with me morning and evening but I don't call my marriage a totalitarian regime! (Or words to that effect.)

Anyway - for Thawed-out Thursday I thought I'd defrost (and slightly revise) an old post originally called 'So what?'. It discusses the way in which the atheism of the west is linked to the trinitarian theology of the west (or lack of it).

Wherever the inter-Personal nature of God is minimized the 'dictator in the sky' is enthroned. And in those circumstances atheism recommends itself very persuasively. But really the solution is to return to a robustly trinitarian theology. In his talk, Mike does this very winsomely.

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A friend of mine is at Bible college and has been set an essay on trinitarian theology and the difference between east and west. He asked me to clarify the difference between an eastern and a western approach to the trinity and then to answer the crucial question: So what!!

Now first of all I'll lay out some broad brush-strokes. Here's a crude but still useful way of discussing our theological method. As Theodore De Regnon has famously put it: In the west theologians begin with the One and work towards the Three. In the east, theologians begin with the Three and work towards the One.

Now that might be completely false historically. My point is not to defend this as a reading of the theological traditions. I'm just wanting to use these definitions of 'east' and 'west' as labels to help the discussion along. But let's make sure we understand the proposition first.

De Regnon is saying that typically, the west begins with the One God and then tries to figure where Three-ness fits in. The east begins with the Three Persons and then figures out how the Three are One.

Now... once again, this is a sweeping generalisation but when I use the labels 'western' or 'eastern' to describe the approach to trinitarian theology, that's what I'm talking about. And I grant that in what follows I am caricaturing positions. No theologian in the 'west' is as bad as I'm saying. But plenty, plenty, plenty, of your average western Church-goers are far worse. Far worse!

And I'm not wanting to get into an argument about whether 'Augustine was a lot more nuanced/ Cappodocian/ economy-driven, etc, etc'. For the sake of argument, let me grant every 'yes, but...' which an Augustine supporter may wish to raise about Augustine's own theology. But let's step back and examine a trend in western Christianity that bears the stamp of his influence. And let's admit that if Augustine doesn't fit the caricature, there are millions descended from him who do.

I should also say that there are basic things about eastern trinitarianism with which I disagree. But on the simple point of our theological method I believe we should begin with the Three and discuss God's Oneness in that light.

And here's why.

If you're eastern you say: "I've met this guy Jesus and He introduces me to His Father and sends His Spirit." And then, having met the Three Persons in the gospel, you ask, 'What kind of one-ness do these three Persons share?' And because you think in this way you can conclude: "These three Persons are one because they are united in love."

So you go to John 17 and you see Jesus saying He wants His followers to be one the same way He and the Father are one. And then you say "Aha! The one-ness of the church is loving unity, therefore it stands to reason that the one-ness of Father and Son is loving unity." And then you remember 1 John 4 and you say with joy: How is God one? God is love! God is a loving community of Three Persons.

And this means that the greatest thing in all reality is love (because God is love). And it means that reality is relational. And it means that loving community among disinct people is very important. One-ness for the east is a loving union of particular Persons who don't lose their individuality. Father, Son and Spirit are all different Persons - they are not one because they are identical.

So, using these rough labels, the eastern approach can say: God is three distinct but totally united Persons loving one another. Let me flesh out three implications of this:

1) It means that difference, distinction, community, relationship, mutuality, reciprocity and LOVE are all at the very very centre of who God is. God's identity is not primarily a collection of attributes but a community of love.

2) Because even the Father, Son and Spirit find their identity in relationships we see that relationship is at the heart of personal identity. God is who He is because He is love. God is who He is because of the relationships of Father, Son and Spirit. Therefore I am who I am because of the relationships I share in.

3) Community is hugely important. Even in God, different voices are not silenced by one dominant ruler. Instead different voices contribute to a one-ness that's all about distinct persons working together in love.

On the other hand (using these crude generalisations) the west begins by saying: "we know that God is one. We know that this one God has all sorts of attributes that go with the 'Creator' job description. So God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, impassible, immutable etc etc." Then the west says, "Ok we've got the one God, but now in the gospel we meet these three Persons. So how can the three Persons qualify as this one God?"

The west figures that since the one God is defined by these attributes then the way these Three are One is by sharing in all these same attributes. And so they map these attributes identically onto the three Persons. In this way the distinctions between Persons gets lost. Every difference is blurred into the one God who is defined not by relationships but by attributes (i.e. He's big and clever). Three implications of this:

1) God's identity is primarily a collection of attributes - attributes that are about His distance from creation, His difference to us.

2) If God is who He is because of His attributes - personal identity is essentially about attributes (about being big and clever). Therefore I am who I am because of how big and clever I am.

3) Community is not really that important - there's only one voice and will that counts. Distinctions and difference will get bull-dozed before the all-important one.

Ok, now that I've laid it out like this, hopefully you can see some of the 'so what' significance??

Let me tease it out by discussing the three implications:

Regarding 1): In the west, God has been defined as a collection of attributes that place Him at an infinite distance from us. Now if you go out on the streets and talk to people about whether they're religious, basically (keeping eastern influences out of this) people will say either they do or they don't believe in a distant, uni-personal God who is approximately the 'omni-being' of philosophy. Whether they believe in "God" or don't believe in "God", the "God" they're talking about is the collection of attributes which the western theologian began with before they examined the gospel!

The god that our western culture has either embraced or rejected is not the God of the gospel! Instead the "god" of the pub discussion is pretty much the "one God" that the western theologian began with. And if the bloke in the pub rejects that god - I don't blame him!! And if Christopher Hitchens rejects that god - we don't blame him, right? Because that's not a god who is obviously related to Jesus of Nazareth (or His Spirit or the Father He called 'Abba'). And therefore its not a god who appears to be particularly interested in us - its not a god revealed in gospel love but in philosophical speculation.

Now the cultures shaped by the western church have been shaped by this doctrine of God. When they accepted "God" it was this "God" they accepted. When they rejected him, it was this "God" they rejected.

Atheism has basically been the rejection of this god. People have decided they don't want a distant omni-being over against them and proclaimed his non-existence. And what people like Colin Gunton have asked is, "Would the west have rejected "God" so thoroughly if the "God" they were presented with by the western church was the community of committed love revealed in Jesus?" The answer still might be yes, but at least we'll be discussing the true God when we evangelise!

Regarding 2): The question of personal identity. Well if we go with the west (as I've been defining it), my identity is all about my attributes. I need to build up a CV of my big-ness and clever-ness. That will define me. But if I go with the east then my identity is about my relationships. I am who I am because fundamentally I'm in Christ (and what's more I'm a son, a brother, a husband, etc). When I take this seriously, my western status-anxiety can be relieved in a second. I find liberation from the western drive to prove myself and forge an identity for myself. I am given identity in the relationships I have (primarily my relationship with Christ).

Think also of the abortion debate. What is it that defines whether this foetus has personal identity? Ask a westerner and they'll instinctively answer you in terms of attributes: "This foetus can/can't do X, Y, and Z therefore the foetus can/can't be aborted." But what if the foetus is a person not because of its attributes but because it already stands in relationships of love?

Regarding 3): The point about community. Here's a quote from the website: (https://christthetruth.net/audio/threepersonsunited.htm)

"...what can we learn about relationships and community from The Relationship? In gender relations, in multi-ethnic society, in equal opportunities policies, in the church, in our families - we are constantly confronted by people who have real and important differences and yet people who ought to be treated with equal respect and dignity. How do we appreciate the differences and uphold the equality? If we treat all in exactly the same way, are we not ignoring the valuable distinctives? This ‘melting pot' approach falls foul of oppression-by-assimilation. The incumbent majority always wins out at the cost of the minorities - they either become like the majority or they die. Do we, therefore, treat specific parties differently in an attempt to give them a leg-up? When this happens stereo-types can be re-enforced by ‘special treatment' and work against the value of equality. Furthermore: who defines the appropriate yard-stick of "success" in a culture? Perhaps it is better to abandon the idea of community altogether and accept along with Margaret Thatcher that there is "no such thing as society."

"Well what can the Trinity teach us? At the heart of reality lies a Community of different but equal Persons who have their own identities constituted by their mutual interdependence. They work together as One. There definitely is such a thing as society. Person-hood can never be considered individualistically but is made up of relationships on which we depend. Within The Community, the Persons freely submit to one another in roles of subordination while never losing their equal status. They do submit to differences in treatment and in function - but they maintain a definite equality of being and uphold one another in bonds of unconditional love. Here is a Community on which to model our own."

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I think Mike's talk is the most brilliant example of how this approach pays off in evangelism. Do listen to it.

Self-giving is absolute reality

GlenNovember 17, 2009Leave a comment

[I]n self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm of all creation and of all being. For the Eternal Word gives Himself in mortal sacrifice; and that not only on Calvary. For when He was crucified on Calvary He did that in the wild weather of His outlying provinces what He had done at home in glory and gladness. From before the foundation of the world, Christ surrenders begotten Deity back to begetting Deity, in obedience. And as the Son glorifies the Father, so also the Father glorifies the Son. ...From the highest to the lowest, self exists to be abdicated and, by that abdication, becomes the more truly self, to be thereupon yet the more abdicated, and so forever. This is not a... law which we can escape... What is outside the system of self-giving is... simply and solely Hell... that fierce imprisonment in the self... Self-giving is absolute reality.

C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain, ch 10, p157

Read it and weep.

Great links

GlenNovember 16, 2009Leave a comment

I know I still have a couple of posts on the Piper quote to write. I'll get to that...

Have you noticed the recent addition to my sidebar? You can read some recommended posts I've found helpful or at least provocative.

They all seem to be by Peter Leithart. How did that happen? Simple. He writes far and away the most interesting stuff. And it makes me wonder what the rest of us are playing at...

Anyway - of particular interest to me recently has been his blogging on Athanasius and especially how we must conceive of the divine attributes in thoroughly Trinitarian ways. (e.g. here or here on 'the dependent God')

Athanasius argued that the Son was and is the Wisdom of the Father eternally so, such that the Father without the Son would not be wise. Athanasius is so sure of this logic that he uses it as an argument against the Arians. The argument goes like this - The Son is the Wisdom of the Father, the Father has never been without wisdom, therefore the Son is eternal. Good argument huh?

But do you see the assumptions? It does not assume that each Person has each attribute 'in Himself' considered apart from the Others. Rather they possess each attribute because they possess each other.

Leithart puts it like this:

Does the Father have wisdom “in Himself”? Yes, because the Wisdom that is the Son dwells in Him by the Spirit. Does the Father possess His being “in Himself”? Yes, because the Son is the fullness of His deity, and the Son indwells Him through the Spirit. Vice versa: Does the Son have wisdom considered in Himself? Yes, because what is “in Himself” is the fact that the Father dwells in Him in the Spirit, so that His existence “in Himself” is His existence as the Son indwelt by the Father.

And so on.

This allows us to speak of Father and Son distinctly; it also makes it clear that the Father is not Himself except as He has and is indwelt by His Son, nor is the Son Himself except as He has and is indwelt the Father.

Halden picks up on these thoughts in this stimulating post on Trinity and attributes.

It's stuff I tried to argue a while back in these two diagrams

Another brilliant Leithart post is here on Gethsemane - Christ crushed that the oil of His anointing Spirit might spread to the world.

And you can't beat the Old Adam doing what he does best here - offering the gospel in all its beautiful and stark freedom.

Avoiding a fourth [Thawed out Thursday]

GlenNovember 13, 2009February 21, 2015Leave a comment

No (good) trinitarian theologian wants to have a fourth thing - a divine substance considered apart from the Three Persons. But it's important to be aware that this error (effectively having a quaternity) has two versions. There is a vulgar quaternity and a more insidious one.

The vulgar one looks like this:

Here is the "shamrock" trinity - three bits growing out of an underlying stuff. In practice this is, roughly, how many unthinkingly view the trinity. Such a vulgar quaternity is rightly rejected by theologians. It can be seen immediately that the 'Godness of God' is considered at a completely different level to the three Persons in their roles and relations. What makes God God is fundamentally impersonal attributes that may be expressed in the Persons but not constituted by their mutual inter-play. So we can safely reject this version of things.

But I find that many theologians, having rejected the vulgar quaternity, congratulate themselves prematurely. There is also the insidious quaternity to be dealt with. There is another way of having a fourth...

Fundamentally this error consists in conceiving of the one God separately to a consideration of the three Persons in communion. Recently I read a theologian say "God is both one and three - both a person and a community." This is an example of the insidious quaternity. One-ness and Three-ness are laid side by side to uphold a belief in the equal ultimacy of one and three. Yet the one-ness of God is conceived of as a uni-personal one-ness - that is, it is separately considered to the multi-personal three-ness. One and Three were not mutually interpreting truths but instead the 'one God' is thought of in non-communal (that is, non trinitarian) terms.

This is the approach taken by by so many doctrine of God text books where De Deo Uno (on the One God) is addressed prior to De Deo Trino (on the Trinity). Yet, unless the two section are integrated at the deepest levels then there is grave danger of a fourth thing - i.e. "God plus Trinity" or "God apart from Trinity."

When this theological method is followed, often (not always but most times) section one unfolds such that the Three Person'd interplay takes no meaningful part in the discussions of the attributes. Yet, typically, these attributes are asserted to be the virtue by which God is God. On this view it is still possible to discuss the 'Godness of God' without reference to the perichoretic life of the Three. Here One-ness and Three-ness are considered to be non-competing perspectives on the same God. This effectively means that it is possible to speak in non-triune terms about the living God. 'God', then, is not the same thing as 'the Three Persons united in love'.

This is also a quaternity. Just a more insidious one.

And the only way I can see to avoid this fourth thing is to side with the Cappodocians: God's being consists without remainder in the Three Person'd perichoresis .

The one-ness of God is not a simple divine essence but the very unity of the Three. The being of God is not an underlying substance (contra the vulgar quaternity). But nor is it a separately conceived essence (contra the insidious quaternity). Rather God's being is the very communion by which the Three are One.

Trinity is not a perspective on the one God. Rather the only God there is is trinity. And the only way to conceive of Him is in triune terms. 'God' is 'Trinity'. Unless this strict identity is maintained a fourth enters in.

Thus we must never conceive of the one God in any other terms than trinitarian ones. (Re-write the text-books!). God's being is in His communion (to use Zizioulas's phrase). His One-ness is in His communion. And (let's not forget) His Three-ness is in His communion - the Three are only who they are in this eternal perichoresis. To put it another way: God is love.

This is a re-working of an older post on One-ness and Three-ness.

God’s Glory In John’s Gospel

GlenNovember 7, 2009August 17, 2017Leave a comment

Jesus insists He will not glorify Himself, but His Father glorifies Him (John 8:50,54). Glory is other-centred - even for God.

John 13:31 - "Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified IN HIM."

Let's think about the 'Now'. The Now is the cross. The cross glorifies God. This truth has two aspects, both of which need to be held together:

The cross glorifies GOD.

and

THE CROSS glorifies God.

The first is important, and we'll unpack its trinitarian character below. But too easily we can trumpet the first without realizing the radical truth latent in the second affirmation. The cross glorifies God. God is glorified in His gracious, self-motivated, self-sacrificial, saving action. Where the Son is lifted up in ignominy, in weakness, in apparent folly - there God is glorified. What kind of God is glorified by this? What is His glory, if this is it? It can be nothing other than His incredible self-giving.

What else to say...

The Father is glorified in the Son and the Son in the Father (17:1-4). This is an eternal, intra-trinitarian truth. But it also flows out via the incarnate Son and through His work.

This eternal glory is displayed at the cross. (17:5,24)

It doesn't stand behind the cross, it IS the cross.

The cross is not a bridge or stepping stone to something else called glory. The cross is the display of God's eternal glory. Whatever Jesus brings us into at the cross, it is the eternal glory of God.

Can we begin to grasp this? The cross and eternity, eternity and the cross - Jesus wants us to hold these things together somehow.

The glory of God is not simply locked up in eternity - not simply an impenetrable family secret between Father and Son. It's not a banqueting hall replete in itself and Christ crucified is merely the door into it. Christ crucified and the bride He would thereby win is at the heart of it. The bride is certainly in by grace and not by nature - yet it is God's glory to include us in His eternal life.

John 17:10 - Jesus speaks of His church and says, "I am glorified in them." (KJV)

Again we need to hold onto both sides of this:

JESUS is glorified in the church

and

Jesus is glorified IN THE CHURCH

Wow. Just as the Father is glorified in the Son, the Son is glorified in His people.

Wrap your head around that one! The eternal Christ is glorified in His Church.

Now obviously glory is not a something we give to Jesus. As He says:

"I do not receive glory from men." (John 5:41)

We've got nothing to offer in the glory stakes. So then, how is Christ glorified in His church. It must be because His glory simply is to give Himself to us in incarnation, cross and exaltation. In this way He is glorified. Because His grace is His glory.

We therefore participate in the divine glory. How? By receiving it. (John 5:44).

And so we find ourselves on the receiving end of God's glory, which IS His trinitarian life overflowing in creation, salvation and judgement.

But not only does this glory spread out from Father to Son and Son to Church, such glory is meant to draw in the whole world:

"I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." (John 17:23)

So then:

God's glory is the cross.

It is other-centred.

It is ecstatic ('ek' - out of; 'stasis' - where you stand) and eccentric (out of the centre).

It overflows to include us.

We do not add to it but it is His glory to make us part of it!

Theo-centric? 10

GlenOctober 30, 2009August 17, 201710 Comments

What does it mean to be "theo-centric"? It's a fine aim - it's the only aim really for Christians. But here are some things to think about when someone urges us to be God-centred...

First we should ask: Which God are we talking about?

The person who cries 'God-centred' the loudest is not necessarily the most biblical. (Nor is the person who cries 'biblical', but that's another story). The absolutely key question is what kind of God is central to our thinking. And that question is not resolved in the slightest by saying He's central. In fact to say that 'God' is central to our theology is basically a tautology.

As Simone Weil says:

"No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. Consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol."

We're all God-centred. The question is, which God?

I have little patience for theologians or bloggers who claim a superiority because they are 'God-centred'. Often it's accompanied by the accusation that their opponent is 'Man-centred'. (And one of these days I'll write a post about how they're both wrong - we should be 'God-Man (i.e. Christ)-centred'). But really, in Simone Weil's sense, we're all 'God'-centred. What we really have to do is sort out who this God is who is central to our thinking.

But let's note well: the fact that our theology should be (and, in a sense, always is!) utterly consumed by and radically focussed upon God, in no sense tells you whether God Himself is consumed by and focussed upon Himself. Those are two entirely separate questions.

One is about our theological method, the other is about the 'theos' who, of necessity, stands at the centre of it.

Of course we should have our hearts and minds fixed on the living God, and of course if we fixed our ultimate affections elsewhere that would be idolatry. Ok, great. What bemuses me is the claim that God Himself must fix His affections on Himself lest He be an idolater too. Do you see how theo-centrism as a theological method gets confused with theo-centrism as a doctrine of God? And that gets confused with theo-centrism as God's doctrine of God!

More dangerously, do you see how such a method is in fact anthropocentric? It's an argument that says 'We would be idolaters to set our affections on lesser beings, so God must be an idolater if He did that.' It's a theology from below. And yet I find it on the lips of the very people who want to accuse all around them of man-centredness.

So let's be clear - everyone is already God-centred in their theology. The real issue is what kind of God we're talking about. And the question of theo-centric method does not at all settle the question of God's own being. While we must be theo-centric, we have to admit that God Himself is higher than the 'musts' that apply to us. The theologian who says God "must" love Himself higher than the creature has actually followed a logic that is less than God-centred.

We do not by nature know the kind of being that God is. And we cannot reason it out from the basis of how we find life as creatures. To tell a person that 'God' must be at the centre of their thinking will not tell them anything really. God cannot be assumed from the outset, He must be revealed.

The fact that all the gods of human religion are self-centred means nothing. The fact that we are called to be 'God-centred' means nothing for God's own life and being. It neither means that God should be centred on us, nor on Himself. The question of His own being is the key question and it can only be resolved as God reveals Himself.

He loves us because He loves us

GlenOctober 29, 2009Leave a comment

I wasn't a huge fan of this paragraph quoted on Tony's blog (as my comment makes clear).

But I love this one:

Thomas Manton, from a sermon on John 3:16

“Love is at the bottom of all. We may give a reason of other things, but we cannot give a reason of his love, God showed his wisdom, power, justice, and holiness in our redemption by Christ. If you ask why he made so much ado about a worthless creature, raised out of the dust of the ground at first, and had now disordered himself, and could be of no use to him? We have an answer at hand, Because he loved us. If you continue to ask, But why did he love us? We have no other answer but because he loved us; for beyond the first rise of things we cannot go. And the same reason is given by Moses, Deuteronomy 7:7–8: ‘The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people, for ye were the fewest of all people; but because the Lord loved you…’ That is, in short, he loved you because he loved you. All came from his free and undeserved mercy; higher we cannot go in seeking after the causes of what is done for our salvation.”

–Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, 2:340–341.

Huh?

That's what I'm talkin about.

Glory is not… 38

GlenOctober 28, 200938 Comments

Glory is not a something that God gets. Glory is the display of who God is.

And this display, shining out from Christ and Him crucified, reveals the overflowing plenitude of God's being as Giver.

Glory is not what lies behind the cross (the cross considered as a veil or mere stepping-stone). God's glory is this self-giving cross.

It's not 'the Giver gets the glory.' It's - 'God's glory is His giving'

Glory is not what God gets. God's grace is His glory.

Nicene Trinitarianism (a re-post, slightly reworked)

GlenOctober 22, 2009Leave a comment

The trinity is a very old doctrine. See The Trinitarian Old Testament for just how old.

But the council of Nicea gave us certain terminology that is accepted by both East and West. The creed that came from it (and here I refer to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed of 381) is basic to all Christian churches. Yet its doctrine of God is a particular one - one that is sometimes unwittingly (sometimes wittingly) side-lined, ignored or opposed.

The first thing to notice is Nicea's doctrine of 'the one God.' To the untrained eye, it looks like it doesn't have one. It simply says 'We believe in one God' and then immediately goes on to speak of 'the Father Almighty', 'one Lord Jesus Christ' and 'the Holy Spirit'. In this it follows Paul in 1 Corinthians 8:6

"For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live."

The one God and the one Lord are the Father and the Son. It is not the case that the one God is the omni-being of philosophical theism and the Persons are sub-species of this divine stuff. No. Nicea gives absolutely no definition of the one God except to unfold His being in the description of the Three.

No doubt many later theologians would have loved to have travelled back in time to Nicea and inserted a lengthy treatise on the 'omnis' somewhere between "I believe in God..." and "...the Father Almighty". But Nicea doesn't go there. There's not even a footnote between the two. The one God is the Father Almighty, to Whom is joined the Lord Jesus Christ in the unity of the Spirit who is the Lord, the Giver of life. Athanasius and co. will not let you force a breach between a description of the One and the Three. To describe the One is to unfold the Three.

And what does Nicea tell us about the ousia (being) of this triune God? Again a typical western theologian may be disappointed. The only reference in the creed to this 'ousia' is that controversial phrase 'homo-ousios'. Jesus, the Son, is 'homo-ousion tw patri' (of one being with the Father). Please note, the creed does not give us a prior definition of 'ousia' which is then mapped onto the three Persons. (See these diagrams). Instead we infer what the 'ousia' is from the fact that Father and Son are 'homo-ousios'.

Jesus, in all His difference from the Father - i.e. born of a virgin, crucified, buried, raised, ascended - is still homo-ousios with the Father. In His difference He is divine. And in His divinity He is 'God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made." Even in His divinity He is 'ek tes ousia tw patri' (out of the being of the Father). There are important differences between Father and Son that are not papered over but rather affirmed by, and included in, the homo-ousios.

The homo-ousios does not denote three-fold repetition but rather, in TF Torrance's words:

"The Father/Son relationship falls within the one being of God.” (Trinitarian Faith, p119).

Homoousios “meant that the Son and the Father are equally God within the one being of God.” (ibid, p122)

The homo-ousios upholds the distinction (as well as unity) of Father and Son. Remember that you can't be 'homo' with yourself. And it points us to the fact that the Father is Begettor, the Son Begotten. The Father from Himself, the Son from the Father (even according as He is God, contra Calvin but with Nicea!).

There are genuine differences in Persons that in no way compromise their equality of divinity. There is never a time when the Son is not homo-ousios with the Father nor is there a time when the Son is not begotten of His Father. Therefore there is not an ousia of the Father that could ever be separately conceived and then assigned in equal measure to Father, Son and Spirit. Instead the ousia of God is a mutually constituting communion in which Father, Son and Spirit share. The ousia of the trinity consists in three Persons who are 'homo' with one another. While Nicea does not say explicitly that the 'ousia' is the communion of Persons, it points decidedly in this direction. (See Torrance's 'Trinitarian Faith' for more).

All this is to say that distinctions between Father, Son and Spirit are upheld within the divine nature. The divine nature is not a set of pre-determined attributes which are identically mapped onto the Three. The divine nature is constituted by difference, distinction, mutuality, reciprocity - it is a divine life (a dance even!) not a divine stuff.

Compare this with so much doctrine of God in the west. First an ousia of 'omnis' is determined. The one God is discussed for 600 pages in terms of 'uncreated Creator'. And then we face the Three. What do we then do? Simply give to each Person this CV of attributes and insist that this is what the Nicene homo-ousios demanded! On this understanding all difference, distinction, mutuality and reciprocity is banished from the status of deity. In preference to the lively interplay of Father, Son and Spirit, a 'simple' doctrine of the One is forwarded. And God's own being is conceived of as a stuff not a life.

Think I prefer Nicea!

Calvin on the proper and the accidental office of the gospel 19

GlenOctober 1, 200919 Comments

Last week Dave Kirkman helped me to distinguish between what Luther called God's 'alien work' and His 'proper work'.

Death is the alien work. Life through death is gospel and God's proper work. But it's extremely important not to view death and life as equivalents in God's eyes. One is the alien work, transformed by the proper work of resurrection. This has many implications for theodicy - the study of God's justice in the face of evil. The LORD may indeed kill and make alive, yet He is not so capricious that they are both alike to Him. Rather, they belong together as one redeeming work - the former being the alien, the latter being the proper. (cf Isaiah 28:21)

Anyway, I came across Calvin using a similar distinction between the 'proper' and the 'accidental' office of the gospel. (And again 2 Corinthians 3 was important - just as it was to Luther). Calvin discusses the fact from 2 Corinthians 2:15-16 that the gospel hardens unbelievers. This we know. But we also ought to know that this is not its proper work. It's proper work is as a 'ministry of life' (2 Cor 3:6). How do these relate? The last sentence is fascinating.

The term odor is very emphatic. Such is the influence of the Gospel in both respects, that it either quickens or kills, not merely by its taste, but by its very smell. Whatever it may be, it is never preached in vain, but has invariably an effect, either for life, or for death.” “We are the savor of death unto death. But it is asked, how this accords with the nature of the Gospel, which we shall find him, a little afterwards, calling the ministry of life? (2 Corinthians 3:6.) The answer is easy: The Gospel is preached for salvation: this is what properly belongs to it; but believers alone are partakers of that salvation. In the mean time, its being an occasion of condemnation to unbelievers — that arises from their own fault. Thus Christ came not into the world to condemn the world, (John 3:17,) for what need was there of this, inasmuch as without him we are all condemned? Yet he sends his apostles to bind, as well as to loose, and to retain sins, as well as remit them. (Matthew 18:18; John 20:23.) He is the light of the world, (John 8:12,) but he blinds unbelievers. (John 9:39.) He is a Rock, for a foundation, but he is also to many a stone of stumbling — “Of offense and stumbling.” (Isaiah 8:14.) We must always, therefore, distinguish between the proper office of the Gospel, — “The proper and natural office of the Gospel.” and the accidental one (so to speak) which must be imputed to the depravity of mankind, to which it is owing, that life to them is turned into death.

Calvin on 2 Corinthians 2:15 in his commentary: