July 2024 - Page 2 of 2 - Jack Kilcrease

July 13, 2024July 15, 2024

God Reconciles All People Objectively and Universally

Christ’s work reconciles God and humanity. This occurs both objectively and subjectively. Moreover, since each person of the Trinity is involved, reconciliation takes on a threefold movement. This threefold movement can be summarized in the distinctive realities of atonement, justification (both objective and subjective), and election.¹ The New Testament distinguishes each aspect of reconciliation from the others, although theologians have often confused them throughout Church history.

The event of atonement constitutes the first movement of reconciliation, or redemption, as already examined in the last section. The movement of atonement proceeds from the Son to the Father. Having received all things from the Father, the Son is capable of returning himself to the Father in the power of the Spirit….

Universal Objective Justification

The second movement of reconciliation is universal and objective justification.² Universal objective justification is the Father’s response to the Son’s payment for the sin of the whole world. The Father declares the whole world forgiven on the basis of the Son’s objective atoning work. Objective atonement and objective justification are therefore distinct and should not be confused with one another: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men” (Rom. 5:18, emphasis added). And “. . . in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them [i.e., justification]” (2 Cor. 5:19, emphasis added).

July 10, 2024July 10, 2024

Gender Wars and the Threat of Subordinationalism

In the second century, biblical teaching about the Trinity very quickly degenerated into the heresy of Subordinationism. The Subordinationist heresy held that the Son and the Spirit are inferior to the Father. Ante-Nicene Fathers held this view partially due to their over reliance on contemporary Platonic metaphysics. Middle Platonists believed that held that any act of self-communication entailed tragic degeneracy. In Middle Platonism, the world of sense was an inferior copy of the forms in the eternal divine mind. Not surprisingly, Christians influenced by Middle Platonism began claiming the Son was an inferior copy of the Father.

Confusing the Economic and Immanent Trinity

Catherine LaCugna suggests that the failure of Ante-Nicene theologians to make a clear distinction between the economic and immanent Trinity might also have contributed to the rise of Subordinationism.¹ For those unfamiliar, the “immanent Trinity” refers to God in himself apart from his missions of creation and redemption. The “economic Trinity” refers to the Trinity as God acts in time in order to redeem humanity in the economy of salvation.² In the immanent Trinity, all persons are co-equal and co-eternal. There is no subordination whatsoever. Each person fully and co-equally embodies the divine substance (Jn. 1:1, Philip. 2:6, Heb. 1:2-3).

Nevertheless, in time, the Son and the Spirit voluntarily take on missions to accomplish the Father’s bidding. Jesus speaks throughout the Gospels of his obedience to the Father and his subordination to the Father (Lk. 22:42, Jn. 4:34, 8:29, 14:31). In time, the Son and the Father also send the Spirit (Lk 24:49, Jn. 14:16).³

July 8, 2024July 9, 2024

The Eucharist as Embodied Gospel

No passage of Scripture ever describes the Lord’s Supper itself as a sacrifice. Neither does the New Testament speak of ministers as priests re-presenting Christ’s work… Moreover, from an evangelical perspective, a sacrificial concept of the Mass problematically makes it into a work, albeit one enabled by grace….

The Lord’s Supper as Sacrifice

Although the Lord’s Supper is not a sacrifice in itself, this does not mean it has no connection with the sacrificial work of Christ. As American Lutheran theologian Charles Porterfield Krauth notes:

The idea of sacrifice under the Old Dispensation sheds light upon the nature of the Lord’s Supper. . . Sacrifice through the portion burnt, is received of God by the element of fire; the portion reserved is partaken of by men, is communicated to them, and received by them. The eating of the portion of the sacrifice, by the offerer, is as real apart of the whole sacred act as the burning of the other part is. Man offers to God; this is sacrifice. God gives back to man; this is sacrament. The oblation, or the thing offered, supplies both sacrifice and sacrament, but with the difference, that under the Old Dispensation God received part and man received part; but under the New, God receives all and gives back all: Jesus Christ, in His own divine person, makes that complete which was narrowed under the Old Covenant by the necessary limitations of mere matter.¹

David Scaer adds that the Lord’s Supper is a sacrifice from God’s perspective, but a sacrament and testament from the perspective of believers. In other words, in the Lord’s Supper, Christ, as part of his priestly ministry, holds up his previously sacrificed Body and Blood to the Father. This intercessory act reminds the Father of the forgiveness of sins won on the cross. God then delivers forgiveness through the testament of the Lord’s Supper to believers.

However, there remain substantial differences between Roman Catholic teaching regarding the sacrifice of the mass and Lutheran doctrine. A key difference is that for Lutherans Christ himself is the active agent of the Lord’s Supper, rather than a priest acting in persona Christi. Moreover, according to Lutheran teaching, communicants passively receive the promise in the Lord’s Supper. Reception directly into the mouth clearly confesses this belief. In post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism, however, communicants actively enter into and participate in Christ’s self-offering to the Father. Instead, Lutherans, with Scripture, affirm the Lord’s Supper as a visible word of promise received by passive faith and not a grace-enabled work.

July 6, 2024July 7, 2024

Our High Priest and Suffering Servant Delivers Your Not Guilty Verdict Now

Christ’s Priestly Office

The New Testament repeatedly makes clear that Jesus is not only the kingly Davidic Messiah, but also the supreme High Priest. In this regard, Jesus’s self-understanding and the witness of the New Testament authors stand in both continuity and tension with the expectations of Second Temple Jews. On the one hand, belief in a singular priestly Messiah, or a priestly Messiah who would complement the work of the kingly Messiah, was very widespread in the first century. Indeed, as Crispin Fletcher-Louis has noted, when a messianic claimant insisted he was the Davidic Messiah, he would often find supportive a priest to claim he was the priestly Messiah.¹

Jesus and the New Testament affirm a kingly and priestly role for the Messiah and unite both offices into a single person. Seen in this light, the Epistle to the Hebrews might be characterized as an important confessional document of the early Church. Crucially, Hebrews contrasts Christian messianic belief with the belief of some Jews in multiple Messiahs.

The New Testament authors witness to Jesus’s messianic self-understanding. In so doing, they develop Jesus’s king-priest office using the prophecies and motifs found in three key Old Testament figures: the Melchizedekian priest-king of Psalm 110, the Servant of so-called Deutro-Isaiah, and the Danielic Son of Man.

July 1, 2024July 2, 2024

Christ’s Substantial Presence in the Eucharist According to Scripture

The Augsburg Confession affirms the ancient and medieval consensus of the catholic Church that Christ’s flesh and blood are substantially present in the Eucharist: “Of the Supper of the Lord they teach that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat the Supper of the Lord; and they reject those that teach otherwise.”¹ This avowal of the substantial presence of Christ’s flesh and blood in the Lord’s Supper was integral to the Lutheran Reformation from the beginning. In On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Martin Luther criticized the practice of communion in one kind (i.e., the pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic practice of withholding the cup from the laity), transubstantiation, and the idea of the Mass as a sacrifice for the living and the dead. Nevertheless, unlike most other reformers, Luther very clearly confessed the real presence based on canonical and evangelical principles. Since the real presence was overwhelmingly the catholic consensus of the Church from its inception, the catholic principle also applies to this theological question.

Martin Luther, *The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics*, 1526 (AE 36:329ff.) – image: St. John Lutheran Church, Wheaton, IL

Paul’s Affirmation of the Substantial Presence

First, with regard to the canonical principle, the New Testament straight forwardly affirms the substantial presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. As Luther tirelessly emphasized, the words of institution themselves (“this is my body . . . this is my blood”) do not admit a metaphorical interpretation. The words of institution are a promise regarding the sacramental elements set before the Christian. Moreover, they are also deed-words that accomplish the consecration so that the bread and wine become vehicles conveying the true body and blood of Jesus to all recipients.