April 2022 – Athanasian Reformed (2024)

Personal eschatology isn’t a term you hear used every day, but it is, indeed, terminology used, technically, in eschatology classes, at least in conservative circles, whether that be in bible colleges or seminaries, rather frequently. For my ecclesiology/eschatology class, in undergrad, this was the first time I heard such terminology. Personal eschatology, if you hadn’t guessed it, or if you’re unaware, has to do with a person’s death, and the subsequent translation into the heavenly abode (on the positive side). Often, and mostly, when people in the churches refer to eschatology they generally have collective eschatology in mind; rarely, in such discussions, is personal eschatology on their mind. And yet personal eschatology is the most predominant form of eschatology currently being realized, at least in the transmigratory sense.

Being brought into the presence of the Lord, realizing ones’ mortality, only to be swallowed up by immortality (or mortality realized), is a second-by-second global reality. According to the World Death Clock, 1.8 persons are dying every second worldwide; 56,000,000 persons die every year. Far from the suspended middle, or agnostic waywardness people live their lives from on a daily basis, in regard to the things of God in particular, the realization of God’s reality is being realized en masse, by millions upon millions of people on an annual and second-by-second basis.

Personally, as I reflect on these things, it is rather mind-boggling. The scale of the Kingdom of God in Christ is massive, and this is only with reference to the ‘very good’ of humanity. There are, of course, unseen, ineffable, inarticulable, inexpressible realities regarding the bigness of God, as that finds co-inherence in the perichoretic relations of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the world, the eternal life, the Christian is being translated into second-by-second all across the globe.

Inversely, those who leave this world outside of Jesus Christ, that is as subjectively and personally experienced through saving faith in Him, is equally ineffable. People, en masse, are exiting this life only to be confronted with the fact that life as they knew it really wasn’t life after all; that is, if they attempted to live lives now as an existential construction of their own making and assertion. Unfortunately, as Jesus taught, this is the broadway, this is the side of ‘personal eschatology’ that most people in the world are experiencing on an ongoing basis. There is this type of ‘transfer’ from this life to the next, even as the next, one way or the other, impinges on this life, that is the ongoing reality whether we consciously think about it or not. As I write this, country and western star, Naomi Judd just died today. She, with so many others, one way or the other, were finally confronted with the reality of God as God. She, and they, finally can no longer escape the fact that they are not God (and I have no idea what Judd’s standing before the Lord was). For the Christian, we relish the fact that God is God; for the non-Christian, they, by definition, relish the thought that they are God of their own self-imagined/constructed universes—universes based on their ‘word’ rather than God’s Logos. But this, again, is where personal eschatology terminates: all of us, one way or the other, will have this personal moment in time that finally gives way to the eternal reality of time, as time is surely conditioned and given its context by the eternality of the triune God.

I simply wanted to register some thoughts on this typically unspoken theology of personal eschatology. It is the most vernacular of theology that the person is faced with on a day-to-day basis; viz. our own mortality vis-à-vis God’s ineffable immortality, as we come to stand before Him.

Martin Luther, as I have referred to previously, was indeed anti-Aristotelian, particularly with reference to Aristotle’s anthropology as that effused throughout his Nicomachean Ethics. Indeed, Luther makes his disgust toward Aristotle’s Ethics, and thus, anthropology, very clear in his theological protestations, as he nailed those, just a month prior to his 95 theses, to the Wittenberg door. This was the real reason for Luther’s reformation, as my former professor and mentor, Dr Ron Frost, has so clearly argued. Luther saw Pelagian wickedness in Aristotle’s anthropology, and of course insofar as Aquinas appropriated Aristotle’s Ethics, among other things, this compelled Luther to post his Disputation Against Scholastic Theology contra the Papacy. When you read his DAST it is clear that Luther sees the anthropology forwarded by Aristotle as a corrosive agitant vis-à-vis an orthodox, and thus biblical understanding of salvation. Here is the aspect where Luther makes clear, in 1517, what he thinks about Aristotle’s impact upon the Papal doctrina:

40. We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds but, having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds. This in opposition to the philosophers.
41. Virtually the entireEthicsof Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace. This is in opposition to the scholastics.
42. It is an error to maintain that Aristotle’s statement concerning happiness does not contradict Catholic doctrine. This is in opposition to the doctrine on morals.
43. It is an error to say that no man can become a theologian without Aristotle. This is in opposition to common opinion.
44. Indeed, no one can become a theologian unless he becomes one without Aristotle.
45. To state that a theologian who is not a logician is a monstrous heretic–this is a monstrous and heretical statement. This is in opposition to common opinion.
46. In vain does one fashion a logic of faith, a substitution brought about without regard for limit and measure. This is in opposition to the new dialecticians.
47. No syllogistic form is valid when applied to divine terms. This is in opposition to the Cardinal [Peter of Ailly].
48. Nevertheless it does not for that reason follow that the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity contradicts syllogistic forms. This is in opposition to the same new dialecticians and to the Cardinal.
49. If a syllogistic form of reasoning holds in divine matters, then a doctrine of the trinity is demonstrable and not the object of faith.
50. Briefly, the whole Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light. This is in opposition to the scholastics.
51. It is very doubtful whether the Latins comprehended the correct meaning of Aristotle.
52. It would have been better for the church if Porphyry with his universals had not been born for the use of theologians.
53. Even the more useful definitions of Aristotle seem to beg the question.[1]

This poses a problem, especially to those desirous of retrieving Post Reformed orthodox theology for the renewal of the 21^st evangelical and Protestant churches. David Sytsma has recently argued that the later Luther came to find Aristotle’s Ethics useful, at least in some way, but that even if he didn’t (which he didn’t, in the main) Luther is really of no consequence to the development of Protestant theology; that Luther’s impulses were not necessary for the flowering of a latterly developed Protestant orthodoxy. Indeed, Sytsma wants to recast the foundation for the development of Protestant orthodoxy at the feet of Luther’s codifier, Philip Melanchthon. Sytsma writes:

Despite Luther’s early polemic against Aristotle, he did not altogether reject the usefulness of the Nicomachean Ethics. Just as Melanchthon had joined Luther in his initial critique of Aristotle, there are indications that the influence went the other way as well. In his later years, after Melanchthon had reintroduced Aristotle’s ethics at Wittenberg, Luther expressed remarkable appreciation for Aristotle’s text. In 1543, Luther said that although philosophers such as Cicero and Aristotle do not teach “how I can be free from sins, death, and hell,” they nonetheless wrote excellently on ethics: “Cicero wrote and taught excellently about virtues, prudence, temperance, and the rest. Aristotle similarly also [wrote and taught] excellently and very learnedly about ethics. Indeed, the books of both are very useful and of the highest necessity for the conduct of this life.” (Luther 1930: 608) Luther also appropriated Aristotle’s concept of equity (epieikeia) from book V of the Nicomachean Ethics as a consistent part of his theology (Kim 2011: 91-98; Gehrke 2014; Arnold 1999). In his Lectures on Genesis wrote that “peace and love are the moderator and administrator of all virtues and laws, as Aristotle beautifully says about epieikeia in the fifth book of his Ethics” (Luther 1960: 340; Kim 2011: 94). Alongside his praise for Aristotle’s concept of epieikeia, Luther even affirmed Aristotle’s concept of virtue as a mean between extremes:

Aristotle deals with these matters in a very fine way when he writes about geometrical proportion and epieikeia…. The law must be kept, but in such a way that the government has in its hand a geometrical proportion, or a middle course and epieikeia. For virtue is a quality that revolves about a middle course, as a wise man will determine. (Luther 1966a: 174; Gehrke 2014: 90)

Such remarks indicate that while Luther initially objected to perceived theological abuse of Aristotle’s ethics, he came to accept its usefulness in certain respects (Gerrish 1962: 34-35). Whether or not this is the case, however, Luther’s own views are not definitive for the larger history of Protestantism, for his early anti-Aristotelian polemic was not taken too seriously by later ethicists at Protestant universities, who on this matter “looked for guidance from Melanchthon rather than Luther” (Svensson 2020: 189).[2]

It is interesting as we read Sytsma what becomes rather apparent is the type of hedging, he is engaging in throughout his treatment. The way we know he is hedging is the way he concludes: viz. that Luther’s thinking is ultimately of no consequence towards the later development of Protestant orthodoxy. I say he is hedging because you can sense a level of ‘spin’ in regard to the way Sytsma is attempting to present Luther vis-à-vis Aristotle. There is no doubt that Luther appreciated certain aspects of Aristotle’s ability to communicate with a level of technical precision and clarity that would make any communicator and teacher swoon. But there is scant evidence to suggest that Luther ever recanted of what he intentionally wrote contra Aristotle’s Ethics in his Disputation Against Scholastic Theology. For Luther the whole premise of his reformational work was bounded by his slavish commitment to what came to be his seminal and paradigmatic moment; his realization of sola fide, ‘Faith Alone!’ Aristotle’s anthropology was diametrically opposed to this reality, insofar that his notion that humanity had a capacity within itself to be virtuous through habituation in the virtues, ran counter to Luther’s commitment to the Bondage of the Will. When you read the whole of Luther’s DAST, this becomes the clear target of his protesting, and thus reformational identity. To attempt to soften this, in regard to Luther’s “later” stance towards Aristotle, is to play fast and loose with the historical Luther in context; Sytsma should know better. He does, in the end, know better, and knows he must admit that Luther’s reformational impulses run counter to the type of ‘Christian Aristotelianism’ (see Muller) that he is attempting to recover for a 21^st century Protestant revival of orthodoxy.

Why does this historical matter, matter, though? It matters because the truth matters, for one thing. Beyond that, at a material theological level it matters because as Protestants we want to be committed to, indeed, a faith alone mode as our evangelical identity. Luther’s protest was contra a system of soteriology that saw grace as a substance presented through the liturgy of the Holy Roman Catholic See. He understood that the only Mediator between God and man, was the Man, Christ Jesus. As such, to attempt to sneak a concept of grace back into the Protestant theological matrix that is funded by an Aristotelian anthropology dead-set against this type of immediate mediation between God and humanity through Christ Jesus, is to undercut the whole premise of what it originally meant to Protestant. If Sytsma and the whole machine he works within desires to think grace and salvation in the terms provided for by Aristotle, then do what so many Presbyterians, and the like have done in recent years, and swim the river Tiber; but don’t pretend to call yourselves ‘Protestant’ simply because the Post Reformed orthodox almost immediately fell right back into the communal waters of the Papal font. So-called Post Reformed orthodoxy is an anachronism constructed in order to identify the development of Protestant Reformed (and even Lutheran) orthodoxy that took place in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. But according to the Protestant ‘Scripture Principle’ Protestants don’t operate with a magisterium of the sort that Sytsma et al. are attempting to set this period of Protestant doctrinal development up as. We don’t allow nostalgia of a Western European development, even if it is ostensibly “Protestant” to allow it to call us into siren soundings, and blind us to what is actually at stake in regard to Protestant, and more importantly, biblical doctrina. And yet I would contend this is exactly what Sytsma and his whole company have been drawn to.

Luther would be rolling in his grave if he knew what happened to the Protestant churches. But no matter, as Sytsma would say to Luther: “[your] views are not definitive for the larger history of Protestantism. . . .”

[1] William Roach, Martin Luther’s 1517 Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, accessed 04-26-2022.

[2] David S. Sytsma, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Protestantism, accessed 04-26-2022, 2-3.

What is it about the decretum absolutum (absolute decree i.e., predestination in determinist mode) that sinks the classical Calvinist understanding of a doctrine of God in a God-world relation? It’s that it operates from an instrumentalist understanding of the Son’s relationship to the Father; it ruptures the eternal bond between the Father to the Son by the Spirit as the Son incarnates and becomes human. Under such conditions the work of Jesus is no longer essential to the being of the Son (and thus the Father), as such He simply becomes so much a demi-urge carrying out the dictates of an ad hoc decree (also not essential to God’s eternally triune being); meeting the conditions of the covenant of works/grace (having been ordered by the pactum salutis); and thus, an organ of God, but not God in se.

When the classical Calvinist system is placed under Christological scrutiny, through the analogy of the incarnation, it fails, radically so. Its centraldogma of predestination, in a God-world relation, as noted, reduces to, at best, a Ebionite christology, wherein the Logos ensarkos (‘Word enfleshed’) is ripped from the womb of the Father, thrown asunder among the heathen humanity, becoming the denarii by which the Father purchases the ‘elect’ from the ravages of the fallen world. When the works of Jesus are separated from the person of Jesus (think the Patristic an/ -enhypostasis), and this is what happens under the decretal system of Federal theology, or Westminsterian Calvinism, the Son in Christ simply becomes an elevated human, an adopted appendage who has been given the status of purchasing power in the stock market of the Father’s economy.

People living under the weight of the classical Calvinist schemata need to really think, and research deeply in regard to these above charges. Attempt to see if what I am asserting (and somewhat arguing) be so. Think through the logic and implications of the incarnation; think from the ground and grammar of the triune life of God. If after scrutinizing thusly, and you still believe classical Calvinist theo-logic holds up under the pressure of a strict adherence to God’s Self-revelation/exegesis in Jesus Christ, I will pray for you. Let me know if you need prayer.

There is a difference between being a theologian for the Church catholic (and even the local church), and being a PhD in theology. The former is driven, compelled by a love of Christ; often, the latter is driven by the love of men, of their approval. The PhD in theology is more concerned with publishing for the CV than it is with proclaiming for the people. The theologian may or may not have formal theological education, and even if they do have it, they only see said education as an instrumentalist gain in order to better edify the Church. The PhD sees education, and their “proven chops,” as their identity in the world; and now that world largely consists of social media wherein the whole world can potentially see the glimmering PhD. The theologian for the Church is overwhelmed by, ensconced in the reality of who the triune God is; so much so, that the praise of others becomes rather petty and meaningless. The theologian for the Church is more interested in pointing away from themselves, and to Christ, than they are in pointing to their publications, and various teaching and presentation experiences, as deposited on their CVs (which can be found at academia [dot] com. Theologians do what they do because they care about the welfare and growth of the Church, as we all attain to the unity of the faith; for them ‘to die is gain,’ but it is more profitable for others if they stay, only insofar, from their perspective, if they are able to point others to Jesus Christ. For the PhD in theology, to stay is the Church’s gain simply because the Church has ‘them’ in its presence; the PhD is its own end, a hom*o incurvatus in se, as it were.

Is earning a PhD in theology necessarily bad? No, that isn’t what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that there is often an attitude that attends to the culture within which, and for which the PhD is earned; and this, even if the PhD holder asserts otherwise. In this case ‘their fruits’ (especially as revealed online) are known by the whole wide world, and they, in fact, like it this way. The PhD in theology often hides behind a mode or mood of self-deprecation and a type of self-asserted sagacity; indeed, this mode itself only illustrates a certain type of learned attitude that it takes to survive, and thrive in the world of the guild. Theologians for the Church don’t concern themselves with what the peers think so much. They might look over now and again and find it curious that some in the guild find their “theologizing” to be interesting, but ultimately, they don’t find their identity in that. The theologian for the Church doesn’t see that identity, as being a ‘theologian for the Church’ as a lasting or even meaningful identification in itself. The theologian for the Church is rather consumed with the reality that God in Christ is King, and they His ambassadors for the world. The theologian for the Church understands that rigor and depth of reflection, depth of study are highly important attributes and characteristics of what it means to be a theologian, but they only and strictly see these characteristics as a means to magnify Jesus. To magnify Jesus, that ‘He might increase, and they decrease,’ is the mode that the theologian for the Church lives for; indeed, they understand that the raison d’etre for the Church, as for all of reality, is the name of Jesus Christ. The theologian for the Church isn’t interested in commiserating with others for the purposes of self-acclamation, and the magnification of their “brilliant ideas” about Jesus; the theologian for the Church is simply interested in magnifying Jesus by pointing to His works as the basis and poetry for all the good works that are accomplished in His name, by participation with Him, to the magnification of the Father.

But because of the simul justus et peccator (simultaneity of being both justified and sinner) these realities often can, and do, overlap. Nevertheless, in my experience theologians for the Church and PhDs in theology (in the guild) are often distinguishable by some of the factors we have been noticing in this post. These factors, in the Pauline sense, at that final day of ‘believer’s judgment’ (cf. I Cor 3.15ff), are the very factors that will either result in straw, being burned up, or precious stones as lasting testaments of God’s active grace in the life of the individual. These are sobering factors.

Jesus is both the object and subject of God’s salvation for the world, for us. It is from this ground, from the realization that we are participants with Christ’s vicarious humanity, that we come to have the same type of safe and secure relationship with the triune God that the Son has always already had with the Father by the Spirit for all eternity. The emphasis is upon unio cum Christo (‘union with Christ’), as the ground of our daily Christian existences as Christian people in the world. Most Christians in the West, unfortunately, still struggle under what TF Torrance identifies as the ‘Latin heresy.’ He associates this dualistic heresy with the neo-Platonic theology of Augustine. It is Augustine’s formative impact, according to TFT, that has led the Latin church to think a God-world relation from within a competitive frame.

Conversely, within a classical Calvinist or Reformed frame, but within almost all Westerly understood Protestant and Catholic frames of soteriology, people think of themselves apart from God’s vicarious life for them in the humanity of Jesus Christ. In other words, they think in terms of the ‘elect’ and ‘reprobate,’ this holds true for both Catholics and Protestants. There is an inherent dualism between grace and nature built into this type of Latin theology such that, at best, God is thought of as the ‘perfector of nature’ rather than the protological ground of nature, and as this ground is given externalization in His life of covenantal grace as He has elected that to be His mode of life for the world in the humanity of Jesus Christ. When people think this way, as if our lives are not “essential” (by God’s free election for that to be so) to God’s life, to God’s life of Immanuel, ‘God with us,’ then there is this type of individualist separation between God and humanity, such that individual humans are always attempting to attach themselves to God; whether that be through a demonstration of ‘good works,’ through the Mass and reception of the sacraments, through church attendance, and church service, so on and so forth. This competitive type of relationship with God results in an unnecessary anxiety for people, even if they don’t identify it as such. They are constantly seeking ways to shore up this gap between themselves and God. They will construct apparatus like decrees, primary and secondary causation, freewill inherent to the human agent, so on and so forth, in order to bring some sort of dénouement to this sense of abstraction from God’s life.

As Barth rightly identifies, along with what we might identify as the Athanasian-Cyrilean axis, as TF Torrance does, we ought to think our humanity necessarily from God’s humanity for us. By implication this means that Christ in His humanity believes for us, He repents for us, He dies for us, resurrects for us, ascends for us, mediates as Priest for us, and comes and is coming again for us. The point: We are not thrown back on ourselves in an effort to know, and thus rest in God. God first knew us in Christ, that we might know Him as He has always already known Himself in the eternal Logos, in Jesus Christ. Barth writes:

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2.19) [sic]. The fact that I live in the faith of the Son of God, in my faith in Him, has its basis in the fact that He Himself, the Son of God, first believed for me, and so believed that all that remains for me to do is to let my eyes rest on Him, which really means to let my eyes follow Him. This following is my faith. But the great work of faith has already been done by the One whom I follow in my faith, even before I believe, even if I no longer believe, in such a way that He is always, as Heb. 12.2 puts it, the originator and completer (ἀρχηγὸςκαὶτελειωτής) of our faith, in such a way, therefore, that every beginning and fresh beginning of our faith has its only starting-point in Him, indeed, the only basis of its awakening. It is the only basis, but it is also the overwhelming and compelling basis. It is “he that dwelleth in the secrete place of the most High,” and abides “under the shadow of the Almighty,” who says to the Lord: “My refuge and my fortress: my God, in whom I will trust” (Ps. 91.1f). It is he who believes, he who may believe, and does so. It is he who, believing, stands in the communion of the saints; who has received, receives and will receive the forgiveness of sins; who hastens towards the resurrection of the flesh and eternal life. His faith is the victory which has overcome the world. But that it is this victory does not rest with him, but solely with Him in whom believes, in whose faith he believes. It rests upon the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ—born a man for us, dying for us, risen for us, reigning for us in the glory of God—is also his refuge, his fortress, his God: the secret place in which he dwells; the shadow under which he abides. Yet all the same he may believe, and it is this which makes his faith mighty, immovable and invincible.[1]

Barth rightly underscores the New Testament basis for the Christian’s stance before God. It isn’t something that comes along and perfects a presumably ‘pure nature.’ The new covenant basis for the Christian’s stance before God is, indeed, God’s stance for us in Christ, as the eternal Logos assumes human flesh, a human nature, and, indeed, stands before God in the robes of His eternal and majestic righteousness for us. When this is the case the Christian isn’t left as an orphan wallowing around in their own muck and wonder, striving to find the Holy Ground of God’s life for them somewhere yonder in the vestiges of a nature ostensibly charged with the grandeur of God; a grandeur, that is, that is abstract from God until God arrives and “adds” to it, gives it a perfecting grace such that nature comes into its own before God.

When I enter the fray of the online world, especially the popular theology world, it’s as if they have never imagined the type of theological universe, among the Patristics and others, described for us vis-à-vis the implications of the New Testament realities. I must admit such diatribing becomes exhausting rather quickly. I’d say it’s time for people to move onto meatier things, and abandon things like the ‘Latin heresy,’ and such. We, as Christians, are beholden to think the Christian existence from the analogy of the incarnation; to think life, a God-world relation, a God-human / human-God relation from the hom*oousios person, Jesus Christ. When we do this we elide the trivialities that occupy so much of the so-called theological space in the Christian world, we move past the speculative philosophical constructs invented to supposedly speak intelligibly about the Christian reality, and instead arrive at a place where we are actually thinking after Deus dixit, ‘God has spoken.’

[1] Karl Barth,Church Dogmatics II/2 §37 [541-42] The Doctrine of God: Study Edition(London: T&T Clark, 2009), 48-9.

Alright, here’s the type of re-direction I’m thinking towards in regard to the proposal. Nothing is in concrete yet, just brainstorming. I won’t be sharing the final approved proposal until the dissertation’s completion. But as a career theoblogger, in these early hours of this process, it makes sense for me to share some of my initial ruminations with you all. Bear in mind, none of this is polished; it is off the top; and awaits multiple revisions and reworkings.

A Working Proposal and Title for the PhD Dissertation

Title. Thomas F. Torrance’s Christ Concentrated Reformed Theology: As a Constructive Development of Martin Luther’s and John Calvin’s Reformational Theologies in catholic Creedal Relief

Problem and Provisional Thesis. Reformed theology in 21^st century Anglophone countries is largely held to be of a monolithic character, as inherited from the type of Reformed theology promulgated via the Westminster Confession of Faith, and its antecedent theology as developed in the 16^th and 17^th century Post Reformed orthodox expression of the Protestant faith. This tends to lead to the notion that there is a singular voice as the representative of the Reformed faith. But the history itself, as illustrated by magisterial reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin offers an alternative voice to the now dominant voice represented by the Westminsterian Reformed faith. Martin Luther and John Calvin, respectively, had a Christological focus to their theologies, and thus trinitarian grammar, that seemingly was lost as the primary characteristic of the Reformed faith as that was developed in the Post Reformed orthodox theologies, respectively. But Thomas F. Torrance, a Scottish Reformed theologian of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, working largely in an After Barth and self-proclaimed ‘Athanasian’ mode, picks up on the Christological tenor that was present in the theologies of Luther and Calvin, respectively. Torrance offers an alternative development, always already present throughout the development of the Reformed faith, and re-orients Reformed theology back to its ecumenical and Christological roots as that is found in the creedal grammar of the catholic creeds such as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan-Chalcedonian developments present the Church with.

This study will present an alternative reading of Reformed theology as that is given development in the theology of Thomas F. Torrance. It will pay attention to the Christological soundings latent within the theologies of Martin Luther and John Calvin, respectively, and demonstrate how their reformational spirit was corollary with the Patristic spirit as given theological expression in the creedal grammars produced, respectively, in the 4^th and 5^th centuries of the Church catholic. With these considerations in place, this study will demonstrate how Torrance constructively reified Reformed theology within its early and original reformational frame as that was given critical grammar through its commitment to the ‘Chalcedonian faith’ of the Church fathers.

Addendum:I am scratching this entire proposal, and refocusing the entirety of it on a more broadly construed frame. It will still be in the same domain, but the working title will be something like:Thomas F. Torrance’s Christ Concentrated Reformed Theology: An Extension of Martin Luther’s and John Calvin’s Reformational Theologies.The proposal will follow in kind. I will not be sharing further drafts of my proposal or further work here, but of course my blog posts will still operate within the same mood and spirit within which the dissertation itself will be written.

I’m not going to do this all the way through, but here is a very rough draft as I make an initial attempt to spell out my proposal for the dissertation. It is very rough, and I can already see where I will modify things. But this might give you the gist of the direction this dissertation will take. As you can see I am framing it in a way that the work I already have done, and deposited here at the blog will be what helps to fill out these issues as the body of the dissertation takes shape. In other words, the themes that have largely shaped my blog over the years will be the themes that end up shaping this forthcoming dissertation of mine. Anyway, I just wanted to give anyone of my interested readers a chance to see some of my early rough inklings toward the development of this forthcoming work.

A Working PhD Proposal Title: Thomas F. Torrance’s Evangelical Calvinism: A Historical and Constructive Theological Proposal

The Problem: Thomas F. Torrance’s Reformed theology has been challenged in regard to its genuinely Reformed provenance by Richard Muller. Muller claims that Torrance operates from the ‘older theology,’ meaning a “Reformed theology” that thinks After Barth, and the mediating theologians of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. As a result, Muller contends that Torrance’s so-called Reformed theology denies the basic tenets of classical Reformed theology, and displaces those tenets by so reformulating Reformed theology that it becomes non-corollary with its historical antecedents as Muller understands those to be within what he calls ‘Christian Aristotelianism.’ This research study will endeavor to demonstrate that Torrance’s Reformed theology operates within the broad confessional parameters provided for by the historic Reformed faith as that has developed over the last many centuries in the Western European continent. This study will further demonstrate that Muller’s thesis, with particular reference to Torrance’s Reformed theology, misses the mark by attempting to read Reformed theology’s provenance through a reductionistic lens, of which Torrance’s theology serves as one antidote among many that resists Muller’s type of reductionistic reading of the Reformed history, and more to the point, its material theological developments as those have taken shape under the panoply of Reformed theology with its various eddies and tributaries across its total landscape in the Western world.

The Procedure: This study will demonstrate the genuinely Reformed provenance of T. F. Torrance’s theology by offering a biography on Torrance’s birth and development in the Church of Scotland, and its historic antecedents of the early developments of Reformed theology. It will show that Torrance’s Reformed theology operates from a decidedly Scottish iteration and development of Reformed theology, such that Muller’s claims that Torrance’s theology is less than a genuinely Reformed theology are shown to be shortsighted. Conversely, this study will demonstrate the historical lines of development wherein Torrance’s theology, among the ‘older theology,’ as Muller pejoratively refers to it, has a classical Reformed origin story that resists the Mullerian notion of a monolithic understanding of what Reformed orthodoxy entails. This study will show these things by way of comparing and contrasting Muller’s historical reconstruction of the Reformed faith with an alternative reading of the Reformed faith as that developed concurrently with the Westminster confessional faith of the Post Reformed orthodox theologians. Further, this study will attend to a variety of Torrance’s theological loci as that pertains to decidedly Reformed doctrinal currents. These loci will include Torrance’s: 1) Doctrine of God, with particular focus on the Tri-unity of God vis-à-vis the Reformed confessions; 2) Theory of Revelation, as that is related to the Protestant Reformed ‘Scripture Principle’; 3) Theological ontology and epistemology as that is related to God’s decretal relation to the world; 4) Soteriological commitments as those are understood through the dual lenses of Incarnation and Atonement, and its Christ conditioned ground in the vicarious humanity of Christ as Reformed theology; and 5) Eschatology as the Apocalyptic irruption of God’s grace as the first and last word of God’s ‘pre-destination’ to be for the world as understood from within the Reformed frame of sola gratia.

By paying close attention to these various theological loci, in Torrance’s theology, along with the historical coverage of Torrance’s provenance within the Scottish Reformed church, this study will demonstrate that Muller’s claims of Torrance’s inadequacy as a genuinely Reformed theologian fall flat. This demonstration will not obtain through a negative, or reactionary response to Muller’s claims, but by allowing the positive material developments of Torrance’s theology to demonstrate how it is that his theology falls within the parameters of a broadly construed, confessionally oriented Reformed theology as an iteration of a christologically constructive Reformed imagination.

The Chapters:

You go online in the Reformed space, and you get the same old trope on a doctrine of election and reprobation; you essentially get the L (imited Atonement) of the TULIP served up as the ‘hard teaching’ Gospel truth reality about the way God relates to part of humanity in a God-world relation. I am here to set the record straight once and for all! This is simply not how God has related to the world, and this based on the analogy of the incarnation. We aren’t groping around in the darkness for snipes, but as Christians, instead, we have been given God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ in the incarnation. This is a sui generis (non-analogous) event that itself stands behind all epistemic efforts, at a primordial level, to know God. In other words, to know God is to be reconciled to God; and to be reconciled to God comes unilaterally from God’s free decision of Grace to become human (Deus incarnandus) for us that we might know Him as He has first known us in the Son (the eternal Logos). That said, if knowledge of God is slavishly tagged to God’s becoming for us in Jesus Christ, then to think God, and thus all corollary doctrines, in abstraction from God’s Self-givenness for us is neither safe nor Christian. Based upon this pre-Dogmatic reality we have capacity to move into a discussion on election/reprobation.

Christian Election and Reprobation

If we are to think election/reprobation from within the Chalcedonian frame of the hom*oousion of God’s life as both fully Divine and fully human in the singular person of Jesus Christ, and we follow the Apostle Paul’s teaching that ‘He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him’ (mirifica commutatio ‘wonderful exchange’), then we will think of reprobation as the general human status, post-lapse, that the eternal Logos assumed (assumptio carnis) in the assumption of our ‘fallen-flesh.’ As such, to think the reprobate status from this concrete revealed status of humanity is to think all of humanity, the only type of humanity present in the incarnation, as reprobate. But the force and anhypostatic ground of the enhypostatic person of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, was such that its grandiose power, of the resurrection type, its “election and electing” power as it were, could not be resisted by the reprobate humanity that the Christ assumed. In other words, whilst Christ became fallen humanity, in the assumption of our humanity, the total humanity, or the massa, as Christ put ‘death to death’ (cf. Rom 8.3) in His humanity for us (pro nobis), His elect humanity as the ‘Greater, the Second Adam’ was always already going to win the day. That is to say, the everythingness of God’s triune life as active in God incarnate (Deus incarnatus), as the ground of the person, Jesus Christ, has no rival in the nothingness of the fallen humanity that was assumed in the Son’s enfleshment for the world.

This is the implication of the incarnation when applied to a doctrine of election/reprobation. We necessarily think such locus from God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. Instead of wandering around in the wilderness, as if in exile because of disobedience, we flourish under the fount of God’s Self-knowledge as we have been invited into that in the banqueting table of His Holy and Triune Life. Interesting, isn’t it? This is where a discussion like this, on a topic like this, takes us. Typically, when people enter this fray, whether academic or popular, what is almost immediately bypassed is a consideration of how a properly understood Dogmatic taxis, or order, is necessary to acknowledge prior to downstream material discussions on a soteriological doctrine like election/reprobation represents. In other words, people too quickly gloss past the formal considerations that end up, latterly, informing their material theological conclusions when in fact they are ostensibly “theologizing.” When this type of Ramist, or loci styled schemata is uncritically adopted, when the ‘work of God’ comes to be abstracted, and thus separated from the ‘person of God in Jesus Christ’ we can end up thinking something like a doctrine of election/reprobation as if a procrustean bed; we can imagine a theological system wherein Christology can be thought of in abstraction from soteriology, and vice versa. This is how so-called (as I’ve called it) classical Calvinism and Arminianism has arrived at its conclusions in regard to election/reprobation in a God-world relation.

Conclusion

The moral of the story is this: When election/reprobation is thought slavishly from God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ, when it is thought of in terms of God’s humanity in the Chalcedonian register, what we end up with is something that is in line with what the biblical categories operate from with reference to election/reprobation (as these categories themselves are intended to map onto the biblical categories of ‘those being saved’ ‘those being destroyed’ see I Cor 1.18). What we end up with is the idea that Jesus Christ is both the electing God and elected human, and that by His free choice to become human, by His free choice to take on our ‘poverty’ we come to have the capacity to participate, ontically, in the riches of His elect humanity status as that is actualized in His resurrection from the dead (cf. II Cor 8.9.

Whatever the consequences of adopting this approach to election/reprobation turns out to be, one thing the exegete can rest assured of is that they are thinking in terms of the ecumenical grammar, the ‘creedal grammar’ of the Church catholic. If this is important to the exegete, then wherever this type of ‘Christo-logic’ might lead, said exegete will repentantly follow. Insofar as Jesus thought that the canon of Holy Scripture referred to Him (cf. Jn 5.39), then it behooves the exegete to imagine that their respective repose in the Chalcedonian grammar, constructively received, will present them with solid footing, no matter where that proverbial climb of theological endeavor might lead them. Further, when following Jesus’ lead, as far as thinking the res or ‘reality’ of Holy Scripture, our relative ascription to this or that ‘party theological tribe’ will end up taking second, if not third and fourth seats. In other words, the ‘catholicism’ of Christ’s life requires that a person is willing to think outside (if that’s what ends up happening) of their pet theological demarcations. That is to say, once a person adopts the hermeneutic proposed by the creedal grammar of something like Chalcedon, however that might be constructively received, it is the adoption into this hermeneutical family that said person will be formed by for the rest of their days. If this leads them, in explicit terms, to abandon say something like their beloved classical Calvinism, then so be it. There is no creed but Christ.

Is there salvation for the orangeman and his followers, the American heretics? According to David Bentely Hart there is not, he writes:

For instance, if impoverished and terrified refugees arrive by the thousands at our southern borders, bearing their children with them, driven from their homes in El Salvador and Guatemala and Honduras by monstrous violence and hopeless poverty, much of it the long-unfolding consequence of our own barbaric policies in Central America, and our foul, degenerate, vicious, contemptible, worthless, brutishly stupid sociopath and dropsical orange goblin of a president and the little horde of oleaginous fascists who slithered out of the spiritual sewer by his side react by imprisoning the adult asylum seekers and abducting and caging their children, subjecting all of them to the most abominable psychological torture, degradation, and despair in order to terrify other refugees who might also come seeking shelter here, we need no doubt for a moment that these monsters have thereby truly revealed themselves as damnable and, in fact, already damned. And if a good number of our fellow citizens are aware of these atrocities and continue to lend their support to the fiends who have committed them, we can say with perfect certitude that those citizens have thereby revealed themselves to be—even if they are so deluded and blasphemous as to call themselves Christians—children of the devil, who have chosen the side of the goats rather than the sheep. Of this, Christ has given us firm and delightful assurances.[1]

The irony of the self-proclaimed democractic socialist’s take is too hard to ignore. In his usual pugilistic antics Hart cannot contain himself. While this book was just released, he clearly penned it while Trump was still in office. The irony is that, indeed, Hart’s political antidote to the “fascists” is socialism. The quirk of Hart’s indolence is his inability to take enough self-assessment to recognize that, just maybe, the very atrocities he is noticing have taken shape not just under the supposed orangeman’s reign, but under the combine of all American presidents and leaderships. Indeed, for all of Hart’s ostensible critical intellectual range he often, and easily, falls prey to the indulgences of the flesh when it comes to his own self-political dainties. The most glaring irony of the whole is that Hart is an ardent [Christian] universalist, so even the orangeman and his heretics will eventually be cozied up to Hart’s castle in the heavenly kingdom.

I am no defender of Trump. I think Trump might well be all those things that Hart identifies, except for the fact that Hart seems to get the facts on the ground wrong in regard to the treatment of the massa of humanity fleeing to the land of opportunity. These things are a complex, in regard to the politics. I dare not mention how things are on the ground currently at the border, and under whose watchful eye. But to the point: I simply wanted to note how a theologian of some renown can fall prey to the indulgences of his own sense of “godness,” in regard to the anathematization, damnation of a whole swath of varied (from him) political others. I suppose he is only illustrating the major premise of his book, You Are Gods (unless you’re an orange heretic).

[1] David Bentley Hart, You Are Gods: On Nature And Supernature (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 2022), 45-6.