Check out this very nice review of my book. Much thanks for Charles for having posted it!
http://networkedblogs.com/M5aYp
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
The Marriage Debate: Why Christians Lost the Argument Before it Began.
Interesting article here by John Milbank of Radical Orthodoxy fame:
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/04/23/3743531.htm
He makes the point regarding gay marriage that the redefinition of marriage by law ultimately redefines heterosexual relationships in terms of homosexual ones. He also notes that properly speaking, marriage doesn't fit all that well with gay relationships and that homosexuals themselves historically haven't really wanted to get married. Hence, there must be an ulterior motive. Ultimately, Milbank argues, the whole issue is about the divinity of the state. If the secular state can redefine an institution that exists prior to it (and was created by God, I might add), then it means that it possesses an absolute power over human life. Hence, Milbank see the issue has revolving around the deification of the state.
I think the question of the continuing deification of the state in modern life is a interesting one, and I've explored it here: http://jackkilcrease.blogspot.com/2012/07/thomas-hobbes-as-theologian-part-i.html and also here: http://jackkilcrease.blogspot.com/2012/07/law-gospel-and-liberal-tradition-of.html. Ultimately, in terms of winning the argument about traditional marriage (by which I mean both the belief in heterosexual marriage, and also the indissoluble nature of marriage- i.e., no divorces without Jesus' single exception) it is a daunting task for modern Christians. It is a daunting task because even before the debate begins, Christians are faced with the fact that everyone (including Christians themselves) already have a distorted understanding of marriage.
Prior to the modern era, the basic conception of marriage in Judeo-Christian culture was an Order of Creation and an economic relationship. Since all property was tied up in land, and land was owned by families, marriage was a way of ensuring intelligent and rational means of wealth transference and (depending on the status of the family) political alliances. Theologically speaking as well, love was secondary in the definition of marriage. In Luther's commentary on Genesis and in the Catechisms, he understands marriage as an Order of Creation established by God, and definitional of the human self in this age. Here he echoed Jesus in Matthew. Similarly, the RCC understood marriage as both an something rooted in creation, and elevated by the order of grace.
Though I may disagree with this later definition theologically, the commonality between it and the Lutheran one is clear: Marriage is a reality rooted in a legal, creational, and economic relationships. It isn't about the subjective feeling or personal preference of the participants. People in the pre-modern world of course did experience romance and love (it being universally human phenomenon), but such realities only had an incidental relationship to marriage. For perspective on this, read some of the Medieval chivalric romances: The authors actually assume that love and romance are only incidental to marriage, or in very extreme versions, very nearly impossible within marriage.
Things changed in the 19th century. Since Capitalism made wealth transference and generation possible without people handing it down through kinship, western European and American society had to come up with a new rationale for marriage. This rationale was companionship and romance, and marriage therefore was redefined as a public ratification of one's subjective romantic feelings. After this, divorce became more common. Why? Because if one doesn't have the experience of proper companionship with one's spouse the whole relationship isn't serving its function. Hence, why not just move on? Of course there were still legal barriers to divorce, but after the 1960s and no-fault divorce kicked in, rates of divorce went off the charts. Moreover, the theory of companionship marriage also made homosexual marriage thinkable in ways that was never were before (even to homosexual themselves!). Because companionship and romance took over as the rationale for marriage and people of opposite genders can obviously have these experiences as easily as people of the same gender, why not gay marriage?
This is why the gay marriage argument is so powerful in our context, even though at best it's an exercise in the logical fallacy of "begging the question." In other words, what advocates for gay marriage already assume is that homosexual relationships are equivalent to heterosexual relationships, and consequently, denying homosexuals the ability to marry is an act of discrimination. Gay marriage is a a matter of "marriage equality." Nevertheless the question remains: Why can the advocates of gay marriage assume that there is this equivalency and appeal to it? Because they assume that marriage is a public ratification of our subjective feelings about another person- i.e., companionship marriage. Since all heterosexuals in our society already assume this, such an appeal works. If one, for example, believes that marriage is an Order of Creation, and tied to specific heterosexual activities, then the argument doesn't work. Also, if one assumes that marriage ordains certain goods that are tied to the gender diversity of the persons involved and that these goods remain good irrespective of the subjective feeling of the partners, then the argument also falls apart.
But almost no one does, and that's why the gay marriage debate is not winnable for Christians in this society: We've already abandoned the correct understanding of marriage a long time ago. We can't appeal to a model of marriage that even conservative Christians unconsciously don't ascribe to.
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/04/23/3743531.htm
He makes the point regarding gay marriage that the redefinition of marriage by law ultimately redefines heterosexual relationships in terms of homosexual ones. He also notes that properly speaking, marriage doesn't fit all that well with gay relationships and that homosexuals themselves historically haven't really wanted to get married. Hence, there must be an ulterior motive. Ultimately, Milbank argues, the whole issue is about the divinity of the state. If the secular state can redefine an institution that exists prior to it (and was created by God, I might add), then it means that it possesses an absolute power over human life. Hence, Milbank see the issue has revolving around the deification of the state.
I think the question of the continuing deification of the state in modern life is a interesting one, and I've explored it here: http://jackkilcrease.blogspot.com/2012/07/thomas-hobbes-as-theologian-part-i.html and also here: http://jackkilcrease.blogspot.com/2012/07/law-gospel-and-liberal-tradition-of.html. Ultimately, in terms of winning the argument about traditional marriage (by which I mean both the belief in heterosexual marriage, and also the indissoluble nature of marriage- i.e., no divorces without Jesus' single exception) it is a daunting task for modern Christians. It is a daunting task because even before the debate begins, Christians are faced with the fact that everyone (including Christians themselves) already have a distorted understanding of marriage.
Prior to the modern era, the basic conception of marriage in Judeo-Christian culture was an Order of Creation and an economic relationship. Since all property was tied up in land, and land was owned by families, marriage was a way of ensuring intelligent and rational means of wealth transference and (depending on the status of the family) political alliances. Theologically speaking as well, love was secondary in the definition of marriage. In Luther's commentary on Genesis and in the Catechisms, he understands marriage as an Order of Creation established by God, and definitional of the human self in this age. Here he echoed Jesus in Matthew. Similarly, the RCC understood marriage as both an something rooted in creation, and elevated by the order of grace.
Though I may disagree with this later definition theologically, the commonality between it and the Lutheran one is clear: Marriage is a reality rooted in a legal, creational, and economic relationships. It isn't about the subjective feeling or personal preference of the participants. People in the pre-modern world of course did experience romance and love (it being universally human phenomenon), but such realities only had an incidental relationship to marriage. For perspective on this, read some of the Medieval chivalric romances: The authors actually assume that love and romance are only incidental to marriage, or in very extreme versions, very nearly impossible within marriage.
Things changed in the 19th century. Since Capitalism made wealth transference and generation possible without people handing it down through kinship, western European and American society had to come up with a new rationale for marriage. This rationale was companionship and romance, and marriage therefore was redefined as a public ratification of one's subjective romantic feelings. After this, divorce became more common. Why? Because if one doesn't have the experience of proper companionship with one's spouse the whole relationship isn't serving its function. Hence, why not just move on? Of course there were still legal barriers to divorce, but after the 1960s and no-fault divorce kicked in, rates of divorce went off the charts. Moreover, the theory of companionship marriage also made homosexual marriage thinkable in ways that was never were before (even to homosexual themselves!). Because companionship and romance took over as the rationale for marriage and people of opposite genders can obviously have these experiences as easily as people of the same gender, why not gay marriage?
This is why the gay marriage argument is so powerful in our context, even though at best it's an exercise in the logical fallacy of "begging the question." In other words, what advocates for gay marriage already assume is that homosexual relationships are equivalent to heterosexual relationships, and consequently, denying homosexuals the ability to marry is an act of discrimination. Gay marriage is a a matter of "marriage equality." Nevertheless the question remains: Why can the advocates of gay marriage assume that there is this equivalency and appeal to it? Because they assume that marriage is a public ratification of our subjective feelings about another person- i.e., companionship marriage. Since all heterosexuals in our society already assume this, such an appeal works. If one, for example, believes that marriage is an Order of Creation, and tied to specific heterosexual activities, then the argument doesn't work. Also, if one assumes that marriage ordains certain goods that are tied to the gender diversity of the persons involved and that these goods remain good irrespective of the subjective feeling of the partners, then the argument also falls apart.
But almost no one does, and that's why the gay marriage debate is not winnable for Christians in this society: We've already abandoned the correct understanding of marriage a long time ago. We can't appeal to a model of marriage that even conservative Christians unconsciously don't ascribe to.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Radio Interview on KFUO Wednesday May 8th.
In case you didn't know, I'll be on KFUO this afternnoon between 2:30 and 3:30 CST to discuss my book. Click on the link and there is a link to the live stream on the website. Also, if you miss it, there is an archive and you should be able (if you're interested) to listen to it later.
http://www.kfuoam.org/programs/booktalk/
http://www.kfuoam.org/programs/booktalk/
Monday, April 8, 2013
How Aristotelianism problematizes the Communicatio Idiomatum and Justification
In the current issue of Lutheran Quarterly (http://www.lutheranquarterly.com/current-issue.html), there are number of very good articles. One of the more interesting ones is a translation by my old classmate Scott Celsor of a piece written by the elderly Gerhard Ebeling on Luther's view of reality. Initially, I read the article with a great deal of skepticism. Ebeling (along with Wilfred Joest) is in some ways the nadir of existentializing Luther interpretation of the last century. His talk of "relational ontology" is not entirely wrong when applied to Luther's statement about righteousness or justification (there is much textual justification for his claims, no pun intended!). Nevertheless, as Oswald Bayer has pointed out, the mistake of much of Ebeling writings are to put all of eggs in the basket of relationalism. Bayer's piece in The Devil's Whore book, I thought was much more accurate. Bayer claims that Luther's ontology is "regional", namely, he utilizes different ontological schemes for the purposes of giving a coherent explanation of what he finds in the Bible. And for the most part though his default mode is an Ockhamist interpretation of Aristotle, which is basically what Graham White has found in his treatment of Luther's late Christological and Trinitarian disputation in Luther as Nominalist. But I digress.
Anyways, what I found insightful is on pages 67-69 where Ebeling talks about the issue of exchange and union within justification and the communicatio idiomatum. And to simplify things a bit, the point that Ebeling makes here is that when one operates with Aristotelian concept of substance as incommunicable form and matter, it really messes up your understanding of Christology and justification. In a word, there can be no real communicatio idiomatum (that is, only a rhetorical or notional one- not a real one) and no concept of the "happy exchange" or iustitia aliena. In what follows, I'd like to draw out the implication for this from my own thinking through the issue yesterday morning.
In Aristotle's philosophy (adopted in one version or another by western Latin theologians after the 12th or 13th century), all individually existing entities in the world (substances) are made up of form and matter. Form is the inner reality of a thing that makes it what it is. Forms are united with matter and give shape to that matter, moving it from a state of potentially being a particular reality (potency) to fully being that reality (act). The classic example of the unity of form and matter is a statue. The image which shapes the statue is its form. The metal or stone that makes up the statue is its matter.
Now for ordinary realities we find in the world, one could of course do much worse for an ontological scheme. When applied to things theological, a number of difficulties arise. The chief problem is that realities in the Aristotelian metaphysic are in a fundamental sense incommunicable. Allow me to explain further.
Since all entities in the world are made up of form and matter, there is an iron law of identity (found particularly in Aristotle's logic). No reality can communicate itself to another reality without becoming part of it in some sense. If I eat a banana, the banana is broken down and is assumed into my matter, and informed by my form. Moreover, a substance can take on new qualities (called "accidents"), but accidents adhere in a substance. For example, one has a bucket of red paint, which is a substance. Now the red paint is painted onto a wall. The redness and the paint are in a sense assumed into the substance of the wall, but they are no longer separate entities. Hence, as Aristotle states in his logic, no two substances can subsist together at the same time. One must replace another or be absorbed into it.
Although of course different realities in the world cannot communicate with one another in the sense of participation, they can nonetheless share qualities. The red paint shares its quality of redness with the wall that has been painted. Similarly, the act of knowing means that a copy of a particular object in the world is imprinted on the intellect. The passive intellect filters out the accidental qualities, while the active intellect identifies the form of the reality. In doing this, the form of the reality is pressed in and imprinted on the mind. The form itself is not in the intellect, but an impression of it is. The form has communicated itself to the mind by making the mind similar to the object observed. The same thing can be seen in the self-communication of form to matter. Matter is imprinted with the reality of the form, without being transmuted into form.
In summary: for Aristotelianism, the possibilities of ontological self-communication are extremely limited. They are limited to the following: 1. One entity composed of form and matter replaces or absorbs another entity composed of form and matter. 2. One entity imprints itself on another entity, and makes the qualities of that entity similar to itself. In both cases, there is no genuine self-communication, or participation of one reality in another.
Now this all seems very abstract, but let's apply these assumptions to the theology and see what we get. In the Middle Ages, the most obvious result of this ontological scheme is the doctrine of Transubstantiation. In other words, if there is a real presence, and two substances can't be present at the same time (bread and wine and body and blood), then logically one must replace the other. The innovation in this regard is quite easily documentable in the Middle Ages. The Patristic understandings of the Lord's Supper worked on the analogy of the Incarnation. This is one of the reasons why many of the Ante-Nicene Fathers adopted the view that consecration was effected by calling on the Holy Spirit (epiclesis). The Holy Spirit (in a sense) "incarnated" the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine, just like it had worked the original Incarnation! Self-communication was possible for the older tradition (body and blood through bread and wine), whereas the adoption of some version of Aristotelianism made it more difficult to maintain made it more difficult to maintain in the Middle Ages.
When turning to the communicatio idiomatum and justification, the effects become even more obvious. The two natures can be united with one another in a single person, but they cannot communicate with one another in any meaningful sense. If the divine nature communicated its glory to the human nature, then according the scheme of form and matter, the form of the divine nature would inform the form and matter of the human nature. The result would be the absorption of the human nature into the divine (in some sense). Hence, the communicatio idiomatum for Aquinas and most of the rest of the medieval theologians is largely notional or rhetorical. Likewise, to make up for the deficit of the communicated divine glory (found in the formulation of the Greek Church Fathers), the medieval theologians (Aquinas in particular) argued that the human nature was replete with divinely created gifts that imprinted God's moral qualities on the human Jesus (this idea made its reappearance with the Reformed scholastic in the notion of "communicable and incommunicable divine attributes"). Since righteousness and goodness are qualities that inhere in a subject (God) they can only be transmitted through imprinting on, or creating a copy of themselves in the other (Christ's humanity)- not in a real self-communication or participation (i.e., like the genus majestaticum of later Lutheranism!).
As Schleiermacher rightly points out in his schematization of the four natural heresies, what a person says about the relationship between the two natures in Christ will usually (but not always) determine how you understand the saving relationship between God and humanity. And so, if entities are not really communicable to one another except by imprinting a copy or a similar quality to another substance, this utterly destroys any possible of a "happy exchange" between Christ and the believer, or any notion of iustitia aliena. Christ's righteousness could never be transmitted to the believer because righteousness as a quality adheres in him as a subject and cannot be transferred to another subject without becoming a part of that subject. Therefore, the only way that Christ's righteousness could be communicated would be for it to be imprinted or copied into another subject through the giving of a series of capacities or qualities. Hence, as can be observed, the understanding of the possibilities of communication between the divine nature and human natures in the form of created gifts of grace is reproduced in the Thomistic/Roman Catholic understanding of justification. The created gifts of grace or infused capacities imprinted into human nature through baptism are merited by Christ and are given to believers. Such righteousness is not alien righteousness, but represents real qualities and capacities that inhere in the believer as a subject. They make a person like Christ and therefore capable of pleasing God as Christ does.
By contrast, Luther abandons this whole schema for the biblical understanding of God. The God of the Bible is a self-communicating and relational God. God's righteousness is his right relationship with himself and with human beings (the actual meaning of the Hebrew word "Tzedek" is right relationship). Hence, it is intrinsically covenantal and relational. Righteousness is not a quality, but a relationship. God is righteous in that he fulfills his covenant promises both to enforce death on those who violate the law, and to give life and save through the gospel (i.e., the content of the Abrahamic and Sinaitic covenants!). And because righteousness is a relationship, and not a quality, it can be shared. A relationship can be shared, a quality can adhere in two subjects, but it cannot be shared. My wife and I both have brown hair, but it is not the same brown hair! By contrast, we share a common marriage, and live out of that common relationship which we possess with one another. And hence, when the Bible talks about Gods' covenant righteousness, it uses the image of God as the bridegroom and the people of God as his bride.
And so, as Luther puts it in Freedom of a Christian, in God's supreme act of loyalty to his promises, he shares his own righteousness with human beings (i.e., "the righteousness of/from God", Romans 1:17) and in exchange receives their real unrighteousness into himself (i.e., the "happy exchange"). Christ does this by taking on and sharing the wrong relationship that unbelieving and fallen human beings have with the Father, and giving them his own right relationship to him. And justification as the happy exchange is rooted in a real and not merely notional concept of the communicatio idiomatum. The divine person in becoming human incorporates within itself the death and suffering the human nature through the communication of actions. The human nature receives within itself the self-communication of all the divine glory, so that by the divine power present within it, it may by its redeeming and creative actions work salvation. Therefore, just as there can be a real exchange of realities in the Incarnation, there can be a real exchange of sin and righteousness in the happy exchange.
Anyways, what I found insightful is on pages 67-69 where Ebeling talks about the issue of exchange and union within justification and the communicatio idiomatum. And to simplify things a bit, the point that Ebeling makes here is that when one operates with Aristotelian concept of substance as incommunicable form and matter, it really messes up your understanding of Christology and justification. In a word, there can be no real communicatio idiomatum (that is, only a rhetorical or notional one- not a real one) and no concept of the "happy exchange" or iustitia aliena. In what follows, I'd like to draw out the implication for this from my own thinking through the issue yesterday morning.
In Aristotle's philosophy (adopted in one version or another by western Latin theologians after the 12th or 13th century), all individually existing entities in the world (substances) are made up of form and matter. Form is the inner reality of a thing that makes it what it is. Forms are united with matter and give shape to that matter, moving it from a state of potentially being a particular reality (potency) to fully being that reality (act). The classic example of the unity of form and matter is a statue. The image which shapes the statue is its form. The metal or stone that makes up the statue is its matter.
Now for ordinary realities we find in the world, one could of course do much worse for an ontological scheme. When applied to things theological, a number of difficulties arise. The chief problem is that realities in the Aristotelian metaphysic are in a fundamental sense incommunicable. Allow me to explain further.
Since all entities in the world are made up of form and matter, there is an iron law of identity (found particularly in Aristotle's logic). No reality can communicate itself to another reality without becoming part of it in some sense. If I eat a banana, the banana is broken down and is assumed into my matter, and informed by my form. Moreover, a substance can take on new qualities (called "accidents"), but accidents adhere in a substance. For example, one has a bucket of red paint, which is a substance. Now the red paint is painted onto a wall. The redness and the paint are in a sense assumed into the substance of the wall, but they are no longer separate entities. Hence, as Aristotle states in his logic, no two substances can subsist together at the same time. One must replace another or be absorbed into it.
Although of course different realities in the world cannot communicate with one another in the sense of participation, they can nonetheless share qualities. The red paint shares its quality of redness with the wall that has been painted. Similarly, the act of knowing means that a copy of a particular object in the world is imprinted on the intellect. The passive intellect filters out the accidental qualities, while the active intellect identifies the form of the reality. In doing this, the form of the reality is pressed in and imprinted on the mind. The form itself is not in the intellect, but an impression of it is. The form has communicated itself to the mind by making the mind similar to the object observed. The same thing can be seen in the self-communication of form to matter. Matter is imprinted with the reality of the form, without being transmuted into form.
In summary: for Aristotelianism, the possibilities of ontological self-communication are extremely limited. They are limited to the following: 1. One entity composed of form and matter replaces or absorbs another entity composed of form and matter. 2. One entity imprints itself on another entity, and makes the qualities of that entity similar to itself. In both cases, there is no genuine self-communication, or participation of one reality in another.
Now this all seems very abstract, but let's apply these assumptions to the theology and see what we get. In the Middle Ages, the most obvious result of this ontological scheme is the doctrine of Transubstantiation. In other words, if there is a real presence, and two substances can't be present at the same time (bread and wine and body and blood), then logically one must replace the other. The innovation in this regard is quite easily documentable in the Middle Ages. The Patristic understandings of the Lord's Supper worked on the analogy of the Incarnation. This is one of the reasons why many of the Ante-Nicene Fathers adopted the view that consecration was effected by calling on the Holy Spirit (epiclesis). The Holy Spirit (in a sense) "incarnated" the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine, just like it had worked the original Incarnation! Self-communication was possible for the older tradition (body and blood through bread and wine), whereas the adoption of some version of Aristotelianism made it more difficult to maintain made it more difficult to maintain in the Middle Ages.
When turning to the communicatio idiomatum and justification, the effects become even more obvious. The two natures can be united with one another in a single person, but they cannot communicate with one another in any meaningful sense. If the divine nature communicated its glory to the human nature, then according the scheme of form and matter, the form of the divine nature would inform the form and matter of the human nature. The result would be the absorption of the human nature into the divine (in some sense). Hence, the communicatio idiomatum for Aquinas and most of the rest of the medieval theologians is largely notional or rhetorical. Likewise, to make up for the deficit of the communicated divine glory (found in the formulation of the Greek Church Fathers), the medieval theologians (Aquinas in particular) argued that the human nature was replete with divinely created gifts that imprinted God's moral qualities on the human Jesus (this idea made its reappearance with the Reformed scholastic in the notion of "communicable and incommunicable divine attributes"). Since righteousness and goodness are qualities that inhere in a subject (God) they can only be transmitted through imprinting on, or creating a copy of themselves in the other (Christ's humanity)- not in a real self-communication or participation (i.e., like the genus majestaticum of later Lutheranism!).
As Schleiermacher rightly points out in his schematization of the four natural heresies, what a person says about the relationship between the two natures in Christ will usually (but not always) determine how you understand the saving relationship between God and humanity. And so, if entities are not really communicable to one another except by imprinting a copy or a similar quality to another substance, this utterly destroys any possible of a "happy exchange" between Christ and the believer, or any notion of iustitia aliena. Christ's righteousness could never be transmitted to the believer because righteousness as a quality adheres in him as a subject and cannot be transferred to another subject without becoming a part of that subject. Therefore, the only way that Christ's righteousness could be communicated would be for it to be imprinted or copied into another subject through the giving of a series of capacities or qualities. Hence, as can be observed, the understanding of the possibilities of communication between the divine nature and human natures in the form of created gifts of grace is reproduced in the Thomistic/Roman Catholic understanding of justification. The created gifts of grace or infused capacities imprinted into human nature through baptism are merited by Christ and are given to believers. Such righteousness is not alien righteousness, but represents real qualities and capacities that inhere in the believer as a subject. They make a person like Christ and therefore capable of pleasing God as Christ does.
By contrast, Luther abandons this whole schema for the biblical understanding of God. The God of the Bible is a self-communicating and relational God. God's righteousness is his right relationship with himself and with human beings (the actual meaning of the Hebrew word "Tzedek" is right relationship). Hence, it is intrinsically covenantal and relational. Righteousness is not a quality, but a relationship. God is righteous in that he fulfills his covenant promises both to enforce death on those who violate the law, and to give life and save through the gospel (i.e., the content of the Abrahamic and Sinaitic covenants!). And because righteousness is a relationship, and not a quality, it can be shared. A relationship can be shared, a quality can adhere in two subjects, but it cannot be shared. My wife and I both have brown hair, but it is not the same brown hair! By contrast, we share a common marriage, and live out of that common relationship which we possess with one another. And hence, when the Bible talks about Gods' covenant righteousness, it uses the image of God as the bridegroom and the people of God as his bride.
And so, as Luther puts it in Freedom of a Christian, in God's supreme act of loyalty to his promises, he shares his own righteousness with human beings (i.e., "the righteousness of/from God", Romans 1:17) and in exchange receives their real unrighteousness into himself (i.e., the "happy exchange"). Christ does this by taking on and sharing the wrong relationship that unbelieving and fallen human beings have with the Father, and giving them his own right relationship to him. And justification as the happy exchange is rooted in a real and not merely notional concept of the communicatio idiomatum. The divine person in becoming human incorporates within itself the death and suffering the human nature through the communication of actions. The human nature receives within itself the self-communication of all the divine glory, so that by the divine power present within it, it may by its redeeming and creative actions work salvation. Therefore, just as there can be a real exchange of realities in the Incarnation, there can be a real exchange of sin and righteousness in the happy exchange.
Monday, April 1, 2013
New Blog
I am starting a new blog devoted to my book, The Self-Donation of God: A Contemporary Lutheran approach to Christ and His Benefits.
It can be found here: http://selfdonationofgod.blogspot.com/
It can be found here: http://selfdonationofgod.blogspot.com/
Friday, March 29, 2013
Book Published: The Self-Donation of God
Many of you have been waiting for my book for a while. You can now order it here:
https://wipfandstock.com/store/The_SelfDonation_of_God_A_Contemporary_Lutheran_approach_to_Christ_and_His_Benefits
To answer a FAQ: No, this is not my dissertation (though it has a similar title). It is systematic Lutheran Christology which I have been working on for the last 3 years. Many thanks to Rev. John T. Pless and Dr. Mark Mattes for endorsing it. Also, many thanks to Rev. Dr. David Scaer for writing the preface!
https://wipfandstock.com/store/The_SelfDonation_of_God_A_Contemporary_Lutheran_approach_to_Christ_and_His_Benefits
To answer a FAQ: No, this is not my dissertation (though it has a similar title). It is systematic Lutheran Christology which I have been working on for the last 3 years. Many thanks to Rev. John T. Pless and Dr. Mark Mattes for endorsing it. Also, many thanks to Rev. Dr. David Scaer for writing the preface!
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Eternal Law, Natural Law, and Erlangen: A Brief Response to Robert C. Baker.
It has been brought to my attention that my name has come up in a discussion between Rev. Robert C. Baker and a number of other individuals. This discussion can be found here:
http://www.lutherquest.org/cgi-bin/discus40/discus.cgi
Go to "Is legalism antinomianism."
Rev. Baker made a series of unusual claims that I would like to address here. Baker has made a number of inaccurate claims about me and my position in the past, and I have largely ignored them, but I think it's finally important to address him directly.
1. A discussion arose regarding my interpretation of Gerhard Forde and my criticisms of him. One contributor said that he couldn't spend the money to read my dissertation. Here is an article of mine on the subject that you can read online (in fact, I refine much of the argument in the dissertation in them) and also my public presentation on the subject which is now a CTQ article (which you will soon be able to read online):
http://www.ctsfw.net/media/pdfs/KilcreaseFordesDoctrineOfTheLaw.pdf
http://media.ctsfw.edu/3690
2. Rev. Baker asserts: "Of course, Dr. Kilcrease has never demonstrated that I do not understand Gerhard Forde, his context, or how or in what way I imputed false ideas to him, or even what those false ideas were."
Well, but I believe I have.
A. Forde, according to Baker, is very heavily influenced by the Erlangen school of theology. This is false. He is influenced by a particular member of the Erlangen school through the filter of Gustav Aulen- namely Johannes von Hofmann. Also, this is largely limited to his view of atonement. Forde's view of the law (which Baker is interested in) has nothing to do with the Erlangen school and largely has other sources in Swedish and Finnish Lutheran thinkers. This is all in my articles and dissertation.
B. According to Baker Forde rejects natural law. This is his main assertion in his contribution to Lutherans and Natural Law (which incidentally he consulted with me about). Since Baker was trained by Roman Catholics at Creighton University (where he receive an MA in Healthcare Ethics), he has become extremely enthusiastic for the notion of natural law as a sort of cure-all for our present cultural nihilism (as indeed many RCs are!).
The claim that Forde rejects natural law is also false. In fact, when I mentioned to a number of Fordites last Fall that Baker interprets Forde this way they laughed out loud. Forde strongly upholds the idea of natural law and its corollary the doctrine of the orders of creation. As I point out in my critique of Forde (this is in the last section of the Law article, on third use of the law) that's the problem. Because Forde came of age in the 1950s, where American society was formed by Judeo-Christian ethics, he assumed that people in using their reason would logically come to the conclusions of Judeo-Christian ethics. This proved to be incorrect, and so, Forde by upholding the natural law alone as the guide to Christian activities in the world allows too much to fallen human reason. Revelation needs to clarify God's law and what actions humans should take.
Since the human mind is distorted by sin, it will only come partially to the right conclusions regarding the natural law. Humans have a conscience and they can also look at the structures of nature to see God's will, but both of these things have been corrupted by sin. Hence, God needs to reveal his will to humans and clarify what his law actually is. Recognizing this, Luther made a shift in his thinking over the 1520s. When he wrote "How Christians Should Regard Moses" he put all of his eggs in the basket of natural law which human being could simply rationally read off nature. Later, in the Antinomian Disputations, he states that God revealed the law to Moses, and if he did, then it shows that human beings need the law to be clarified to them via divine revelation.
Lastly, Baker claims elsewhere that the Erlangen school rejected natural law. Again, this is quite false. Exactly the opposite was true. In fact, this is part of the reason they were criticized by Barth. Against Erlangen, Barth extended his attack first made against Brunner and natural theology in Nein! As Barth observes in CD 3.4, that the that the claim that the Christian can know God's will on the basis of the orders of creation and the natural (something taught by Erlangen and Lutheran social ethics in general) could lead to (and he believed it had!) the understanding that these orders were independent of God and therefore autonomous. For Barth, the Lutheran doctrine of natural law and orders of creation meant that creatures could go about there business without the revelation of God and his law. This would ultimately lead to Nazism and other deifications of the state.
3. Baker quotes me:
"In the same place, Dr. Kilcrease further says, "God has set human nature up so that men and women naturally interact with one another according to set drives and when one works against these drives stuff goes haywire and much evil results. Hence, even secular people when they want to get along in the world must obey God to a certain degree. Similarly, those who want to reject God's order entirely have to protect themselves against that order through artificial means (such as the reliance on others to clean up the messes created by their behavior!)."
So, according to Dr. Kilcrease, God's eternal will is God's order and natural human interaction or drives.
Of course, this is an impossibility. God's eternal will is neither God's creational orders, or human "drives," whatever those are."
As usual, Rev. Baker does not say outright what he's trying to insinuate. But the gist of this is that he is accusing me of rejecting lex aeterna or the eternal law.
There are a couple of things that are rather ironic here. First, is that he later (on the same page) insinuates that I reject the natural after having quoted this passage in which I am arguing in favor of the natural law. My point here in this passage is that the law of God is written so deeply into nature that even when human beings sinfully distort nature, they can never actually fully escape the law. In terms of civil righteousness, they must actually obey God's law somewhat just to get along with life.
Secondly, affirming that created things even after sin partially reflect God's eternal legal will does not negate that God has an eternal legal will. Why would it? Again, I fully affirm the eternity of the law as God's will and, in fact, I argue for it at some length in the CTQ article. Baker has publicly claimed to have read the CTQ article and seen my presentation at Ft. Wayne. So the question is: Was he being dishonest when he said that he read my article, or, was he intentionally being dishonest about my position on the natural and eternal law? It must be one or the other!
Thirdly, part of Baker's difficulty is that he assumes that non-exclusive statement are somehow exclusive. Case-in-point is the quotation from him above. For Baker, it would seem that if I affirm that God's law is reflected and worked through the created order of things, then I must somehow reject that God has his eternal legal will. Obviously that doesn't make any sense and is false (if he considers this false, how is it that he buys into natural law theory?). One actually presupposes the other: If God has an eternal will, creation obvious reflects it! Similarly, when I stated in an earlier e-mail exchange between us that the essence of the law was God's eternal will, but that he "office of the law" (Luther's term) was anything in creation that threatened or accused, he objected on similar grounds. I pointed out that this claim was based on a statement of Luther's in the Antinomian Disputations, but it was confessionally binding on us since it was quoted in the Formula of Concord! The conversation ended there. Nevertheless, the statement is perfectly coherent. Because we are sinners, we subject to wrath in this life through the medium of the created order. Why? Because we are out of accordance with the eternal will of God that the cosmos is ruled on the basis of!
4. Lastly, Baker writes:
"Franz, you've presented, pretty much, the traditional understanding of the atonement post Anselm. Which was rejected by theologians of the Erlangen School. And Gerhard Forde. Because they didn't like this Jewish God stuff, appeasing God's anger through human blood thingy."
A couple of misunderstanding and distortions here. First, Franz states "Jesus offered up his life to the penal justice of God to propitiate his wrath." This was the position of Luther and Protestant orthodoxy, but it was not the position of Anselm. Anselm taught that Christ's death wasn't punishment, but meritorious. Merit counteracts the human debt of sin, it doesn't satisfy wrath. So, Jesus did not take upon himself the sins of the world, but offered himself up in a supreme act of merit. To use Lutheran terminology (first proposed by Flacius) here: for Anselm there is an active righteousness in the cross, but no passive righteousness. Also, Anselm didn't believe that substitution was necessary to satisfy the wrath of God, but rather because God's infinite honor was violated. Big difference. For Anselm, God doesn't have wrath, it's just a metaphor for when God does things which seem wrathful to humans.
Secondly, although von Hofmann rejected penal substitution, his colleagues at Erlangen did not and in fact attacked him for it (BTW, although von Hofmann did think that substitution made God into a cosmic jerk, it didn't have anything to do (at least overtly) with anti-Semitism- as Baker insinuates). As problematic as Thomasius' teaching about kenosis was, he was correct that von Hofmann's view of atonement distorted justification. Theodosius Harnack and Thomasius actually wrote a short piece against von Hofmann for this very reason. In the 20th century, both Elert and Althaus upheld penal substitution. Althaus has a long section in his Theology of Martin Luther book where he attacks Aulen for his view of Luther's atonement theology (which closely mirrored von Hofmann's!). Elert states repeatedly in his Law and Gospel, The Christian Ethos, and The Christian Faith books that he believes in penal substitition. In my dissertation, I summarize Elert's teaching on this point in the third chapter.
One more thing concerning the former point: Baker is clearly aware of this, because I pointed this all out to him about a year and a half ago on a FB thread. In order to prove to me that Elert rejected penal substitution, he quoted me a passage in which Elert explicitly stated that Christ died as a substitute under God's wrath. So, much like he insinuated that I did not believe in the natural law, by quoting a passage from my writing where I affirm my belief in natural law, he claimed that Elert rejects substitution by quoting him upholding it. So, that he would repeat this false claim again after I demonstrated to him that it was false (in fact, self-evidently false from a quotation he himself was using!) is deeply odd.
http://www.lutherquest.org/cgi-bin/discus40/discus.cgi
Go to "Is legalism antinomianism."
Rev. Baker made a series of unusual claims that I would like to address here. Baker has made a number of inaccurate claims about me and my position in the past, and I have largely ignored them, but I think it's finally important to address him directly.
1. A discussion arose regarding my interpretation of Gerhard Forde and my criticisms of him. One contributor said that he couldn't spend the money to read my dissertation. Here is an article of mine on the subject that you can read online (in fact, I refine much of the argument in the dissertation in them) and also my public presentation on the subject which is now a CTQ article (which you will soon be able to read online):
http://www.ctsfw.net/media/pdfs/KilcreaseFordesDoctrineOfTheLaw.pdf
http://media.ctsfw.edu/3690
2. Rev. Baker asserts: "Of course, Dr. Kilcrease has never demonstrated that I do not understand Gerhard Forde, his context, or how or in what way I imputed false ideas to him, or even what those false ideas were."
Well, but I believe I have.
A. Forde, according to Baker, is very heavily influenced by the Erlangen school of theology. This is false. He is influenced by a particular member of the Erlangen school through the filter of Gustav Aulen- namely Johannes von Hofmann. Also, this is largely limited to his view of atonement. Forde's view of the law (which Baker is interested in) has nothing to do with the Erlangen school and largely has other sources in Swedish and Finnish Lutheran thinkers. This is all in my articles and dissertation.
B. According to Baker Forde rejects natural law. This is his main assertion in his contribution to Lutherans and Natural Law (which incidentally he consulted with me about). Since Baker was trained by Roman Catholics at Creighton University (where he receive an MA in Healthcare Ethics), he has become extremely enthusiastic for the notion of natural law as a sort of cure-all for our present cultural nihilism (as indeed many RCs are!).
The claim that Forde rejects natural law is also false. In fact, when I mentioned to a number of Fordites last Fall that Baker interprets Forde this way they laughed out loud. Forde strongly upholds the idea of natural law and its corollary the doctrine of the orders of creation. As I point out in my critique of Forde (this is in the last section of the Law article, on third use of the law) that's the problem. Because Forde came of age in the 1950s, where American society was formed by Judeo-Christian ethics, he assumed that people in using their reason would logically come to the conclusions of Judeo-Christian ethics. This proved to be incorrect, and so, Forde by upholding the natural law alone as the guide to Christian activities in the world allows too much to fallen human reason. Revelation needs to clarify God's law and what actions humans should take.
Since the human mind is distorted by sin, it will only come partially to the right conclusions regarding the natural law. Humans have a conscience and they can also look at the structures of nature to see God's will, but both of these things have been corrupted by sin. Hence, God needs to reveal his will to humans and clarify what his law actually is. Recognizing this, Luther made a shift in his thinking over the 1520s. When he wrote "How Christians Should Regard Moses" he put all of his eggs in the basket of natural law which human being could simply rationally read off nature. Later, in the Antinomian Disputations, he states that God revealed the law to Moses, and if he did, then it shows that human beings need the law to be clarified to them via divine revelation.
Lastly, Baker claims elsewhere that the Erlangen school rejected natural law. Again, this is quite false. Exactly the opposite was true. In fact, this is part of the reason they were criticized by Barth. Against Erlangen, Barth extended his attack first made against Brunner and natural theology in Nein! As Barth observes in CD 3.4, that the that the claim that the Christian can know God's will on the basis of the orders of creation and the natural (something taught by Erlangen and Lutheran social ethics in general) could lead to (and he believed it had!) the understanding that these orders were independent of God and therefore autonomous. For Barth, the Lutheran doctrine of natural law and orders of creation meant that creatures could go about there business without the revelation of God and his law. This would ultimately lead to Nazism and other deifications of the state.
3. Baker quotes me:
"In the same place, Dr. Kilcrease further says, "God has set human nature up so that men and women naturally interact with one another according to set drives and when one works against these drives stuff goes haywire and much evil results. Hence, even secular people when they want to get along in the world must obey God to a certain degree. Similarly, those who want to reject God's order entirely have to protect themselves against that order through artificial means (such as the reliance on others to clean up the messes created by their behavior!)."
So, according to Dr. Kilcrease, God's eternal will is God's order and natural human interaction or drives.
Of course, this is an impossibility. God's eternal will is neither God's creational orders, or human "drives," whatever those are."
As usual, Rev. Baker does not say outright what he's trying to insinuate. But the gist of this is that he is accusing me of rejecting lex aeterna or the eternal law.
There are a couple of things that are rather ironic here. First, is that he later (on the same page) insinuates that I reject the natural after having quoted this passage in which I am arguing in favor of the natural law. My point here in this passage is that the law of God is written so deeply into nature that even when human beings sinfully distort nature, they can never actually fully escape the law. In terms of civil righteousness, they must actually obey God's law somewhat just to get along with life.
Secondly, affirming that created things even after sin partially reflect God's eternal legal will does not negate that God has an eternal legal will. Why would it? Again, I fully affirm the eternity of the law as God's will and, in fact, I argue for it at some length in the CTQ article. Baker has publicly claimed to have read the CTQ article and seen my presentation at Ft. Wayne. So the question is: Was he being dishonest when he said that he read my article, or, was he intentionally being dishonest about my position on the natural and eternal law? It must be one or the other!
Thirdly, part of Baker's difficulty is that he assumes that non-exclusive statement are somehow exclusive. Case-in-point is the quotation from him above. For Baker, it would seem that if I affirm that God's law is reflected and worked through the created order of things, then I must somehow reject that God has his eternal legal will. Obviously that doesn't make any sense and is false (if he considers this false, how is it that he buys into natural law theory?). One actually presupposes the other: If God has an eternal will, creation obvious reflects it! Similarly, when I stated in an earlier e-mail exchange between us that the essence of the law was God's eternal will, but that he "office of the law" (Luther's term) was anything in creation that threatened or accused, he objected on similar grounds. I pointed out that this claim was based on a statement of Luther's in the Antinomian Disputations, but it was confessionally binding on us since it was quoted in the Formula of Concord! The conversation ended there. Nevertheless, the statement is perfectly coherent. Because we are sinners, we subject to wrath in this life through the medium of the created order. Why? Because we are out of accordance with the eternal will of God that the cosmos is ruled on the basis of!
4. Lastly, Baker writes:
"Franz, you've presented, pretty much, the traditional understanding of the atonement post Anselm. Which was rejected by theologians of the Erlangen School. And Gerhard Forde. Because they didn't like this Jewish God stuff, appeasing God's anger through human blood thingy."
A couple of misunderstanding and distortions here. First, Franz states "Jesus offered up his life to the penal justice of God to propitiate his wrath." This was the position of Luther and Protestant orthodoxy, but it was not the position of Anselm. Anselm taught that Christ's death wasn't punishment, but meritorious. Merit counteracts the human debt of sin, it doesn't satisfy wrath. So, Jesus did not take upon himself the sins of the world, but offered himself up in a supreme act of merit. To use Lutheran terminology (first proposed by Flacius) here: for Anselm there is an active righteousness in the cross, but no passive righteousness. Also, Anselm didn't believe that substitution was necessary to satisfy the wrath of God, but rather because God's infinite honor was violated. Big difference. For Anselm, God doesn't have wrath, it's just a metaphor for when God does things which seem wrathful to humans.
Secondly, although von Hofmann rejected penal substitution, his colleagues at Erlangen did not and in fact attacked him for it (BTW, although von Hofmann did think that substitution made God into a cosmic jerk, it didn't have anything to do (at least overtly) with anti-Semitism- as Baker insinuates). As problematic as Thomasius' teaching about kenosis was, he was correct that von Hofmann's view of atonement distorted justification. Theodosius Harnack and Thomasius actually wrote a short piece against von Hofmann for this very reason. In the 20th century, both Elert and Althaus upheld penal substitution. Althaus has a long section in his Theology of Martin Luther book where he attacks Aulen for his view of Luther's atonement theology (which closely mirrored von Hofmann's!). Elert states repeatedly in his Law and Gospel, The Christian Ethos, and The Christian Faith books that he believes in penal substitition. In my dissertation, I summarize Elert's teaching on this point in the third chapter.
One more thing concerning the former point: Baker is clearly aware of this, because I pointed this all out to him about a year and a half ago on a FB thread. In order to prove to me that Elert rejected penal substitution, he quoted me a passage in which Elert explicitly stated that Christ died as a substitute under God's wrath. So, much like he insinuated that I did not believe in the natural law, by quoting a passage from my writing where I affirm my belief in natural law, he claimed that Elert rejects substitution by quoting him upholding it. So, that he would repeat this false claim again after I demonstrated to him that it was false (in fact, self-evidently false from a quotation he himself was using!) is deeply odd.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
