Augustine Archives - Jack Kilcrease

October 21, 2024October 21, 2024

The Faithfulness of East and West: Post-Nicaea Rejection of Onto-Theology Part 2

The Eastern Theological Trajectory

The Cappadocians

The writings of the Cappadocian Father St. Gregory of Nyssa illustrate the Eastern theological trajectory. In the mid-Fourth century, Gregory confronted a Neo-Arian theologian named Eunomius.¹ Beyond holding that the Son could not be homoousios with the Father because being “generated” and “not generated” would make God compounded of two realities and not simple,² Eunomius also asserted an extremely crass version of onto-theology.³ According to Eunomius, God was as knowable as any other being and therefore easily intellectually dissected, a point which he based his early criticism of Nicene doctrine upon.⁴ This was also backed up with a strongly univocal conception of language.⁵

In response, Gregory noted that Eunomius was engaged in a category confusion.Being ingenerate and generate was not a property of the divine substance, but rather the persons within the common substance of divinity.⁶ The divine substance and the divine persons were two distinct, yet related realities. The personal relations within God spoke of the “howness” of God and were knowable from the common actions of the persons of the Trinity in the economy of salvation.

Nevertheless, contrary to the claims of Eunomius, the “whatness” of God in the form of the divine substance was unknowable, in this life or even the next.⁷ Hence, it was not part of the system of being, and it was not therefore subject to Eunomius’s logic chopping. In keeping with this view of the divine essence, Gregory of Nyssa composed a mystical text entitled The Life of Moses.

In this work, Moses’ ascension into the darkness of Sinai in Exodus 21 becomes a metaphor for Christian existence. Spiritual progress means an ever-increasing movement into the luminous darkness of the divine life.⁸ In this, Gregory rejects the notion that the soul is capable of ever spiritually beholding the divine essence, and therefore categorically denies what Western theologians have typically called the “beatific vision” (visio beatifica).⁹

June 5, 2024June 5, 2024

For You: Certain Salvation In The Sacraments

The connection between the Word of God and something physical and tangible does not necessarily differentiate the ministry of the Word and the Sacrament for Martin Luther. But perhaps the function of the sacraments in the Christian life does differentiate them. The difficulty in most Protestant accounts of justification is a kind of monism of the auditory Word of God.¹ The believer hears the Word of God and appropriates it by faith. Luther would not disagree with this, but he extends the principle to the sacraments as well. Sacraments are visible promises, and promises must be believed.

Christians retain their sinful nature, which tempts them into unbelief. As a result, when believers rely upon the ministry of the Word of God alone without the complement of the sacraments, doubts about individual appropriation of the gospel can creep in. How does one know with certainty that the divine Word was meant for him or that he has actually received it?

The typical Protestant response has been to attempt to demonstrate faith’s authenticity through supplementary signs of the Spirit’s interior work. The problem is that all these alleged signs of the Spirit’s work can be easily faked, either consciously or unconsciously. By contrast, Luther sees the sacraments as ways of redirecting the sinner away from his own subjective doubt and into the objectivity of the Gospel promise in the tangible means of grace. In one fascinating passage in The Sacrament: Against the Fanatics of 1526, Luther writes:

When I preach his [Christ’s] death, it is in a public sermon in the congregation, in which I am addressing myself to no one individually; who grasp it, grasps it. But when I distribute the sacrament, I designate it for the individual who is receiving it; I give him Christ’s body and blood that he may have forgiveness, obtained through his death and preached in the congregation. This is something more than the congregational sermon; for although the same thing is present in the sermon as in the sacrament, here there is the advantage that it is directed at definite individuals. In the sermon one does not point out or portray any particular person, but in the sacrament it is given to you and to me in particular, so that the sermon comes to be our own. For when I say: “This is the body, which is given for you, this is the blood which is poured out for you for he forgiveness of sins,” I am therefore commemorating him; I proclaim and announce his death. Only it is not done publicly in the congregation but is directed at you alone.²

May 10, 2022May 10, 2022

God’s Truth and Language Games

Although they are both ultimately problematic, Fundamentalism and right-wing Postmodernist theologies are more workable than theological Liberalism because they remain committed to the basic content of the Christian faith. The issue tends to be more how they seek to establish the validity of their epistemic judgments and less at the content of their judgments. Similarly, in the dialectic of antinomianism and legalism, legalism has the advantage of at least acknowledging the existence of the law. This is true even if legalists suffers from the same delusion as antinomians, namely that we can escape the condemnation of the law. Hence, it is not wrong to acknowledge the acceptance of a law of belief (fides quae creditor) as a necessary condition for possessing genuine Christian faith (fides qua creditor). Rather, what is problematic is to see the law and not the promise of grace is the foundation of the divine-human relationship, and therefore the starting point of all our truth claims.

Postmodernism is correct that there is no neutral starting point for our epistemic projects, even if we admit that the frameworks we employ are vulnerable to critique and falsification. Therefore, we begin with the explicitly biblical presupposition that humans are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26). Christians confess that the biblical God is always and eternally the Holy Trinity. God as Trinity is an eternal linguistic agent, who gracious gives of himself in speaking forth the Word and the spiration of the Spirit. Hence, the Christian God is an eternally gracious and responsive God. God gives and responds to himself within the eternal dialogue and self-communication of the divine life.

February 15, 2021

Melanchthon Falls Into the Augustinian Dilemma

The older Melanchthon took Luther’s doctrine of the sacramentality of the word and reinterpreted it along the lines of the typical sacramentalist trajectory of the Augustinian Dilemma. The Word of God is genuinely sacramental for Melanchthon in that it contains the coming of the Holy Spirit who works faith. Nevertheless, in Melanchthon’s teaching it is at minimum a very strongly implied that the Holy Spirit’s work is dependent on the human will’s consent to cooperate. Hence, in Melanchthon’s later work, grace can be construed as ultimately a possibility that is actualized by human decision. Such a human decision can be called in question regarding its sincerity, thereby returning the sinner to the authenticity of his works (in this case, not external works, but rather a psychological event of conversion). Therefore, the logical implication of the older Melanchthon’s theology of justification is that Luther’s unreflective faith is denied in favor an extremely reflective faith. As we will see, the psychologizing of faith and the implicit call for self-examination as the sincerity of one’s conversion would become a standard feature in many strands of the later Protestant tradition.

From the draft manuscript for Jack D. Kilcrease, Justification by Word (Lexham Press, forthcoming).

February 12, 2021February 12, 2021

Luther vs. Calvin on Justification and Election

Ultimately, those who embrace Luther’s theology find Calvin’s theology of election and justification so problematic because it fails to see that God is present and active in his Word in precisely the manner that he promises to be. Calvin envisions human salvation and reprobation from the perspective of a comprehensive plan in eternity operating above and beyond the external Word. The harmony of this plan can be discerned by looking past God’s words and coverings in order to see the whole of God’s hidden providence.^[1] Since some are saved and others not, God must not mean what he says when he wills the salvation of all who encounter him in the Word. As a result, in Calvin’s theology the external Word may or may not do what it promises. Only those who receive the inner call are truly elect and can see through the external word to God’s unified plan of grace for them as an individual.^[2]

By contrast, Luther sees God as exercising his rule through his Word manifest in and through his created masks. Contrary to the claim of many Calvinists, Luther and the Lutheran tradition do not ultimately make God’s grace ineffective. On the contrary, God’s Word always does precisely what it speaks. However, God’s exercise of his reign is divided between a realm of law and a realm of grace. Those places where God has promised to work death and condemnation inexorably work death and condemnation. By contrast, those who look for God in in the Word and sacraments will infallibly find a grace there that performs what it speaks.

Seen from the perspective of the sacramentality of the Word, the question of the perseverance of the saints is solved not on the basis of a special spiritual gift given to the elect (as in Augustine^[3] and Calvin^[4]), but on the basis on the efficacy of the means of grace external to the believer.^[5] God is always faithful to his Word regarding the means of grace. The grace of the Word and the sacraments will inexorably move one toward the kingdom of heaven, just as a person who gets on a raft in the Mississippi River in Minnesota will inexorably move toward the Gulf of Mexico.^[6]

It could of course be objected that since Luther and the subsequent Lutheran tradition believe that apostasy is possible, one can never be genuinely certain that the divine Word will carry one along to their eschatological destiny. In response, Lutherans have historically observed that God’s promise of grace is objectively true whether or not one believes in it.^[7] As we saw in Luther’s pronouncement regarding objective justification in an earlier chapter,^[8] God’s promise of grace in Christ is more real than one’s refusal to believe it, and therefore remains a valid promise even if one chooses to actively reject it.^[9] Hence, to doubt the Word of the gospel is not to invalidate it, but rather to place one’s self outside of the realm of grace where the Word is operative and effective (i.e., the sphere of the Church and its ministry), and into the realm of wrath and law which inexorably leads to eternal death (Rom. 3:20). Hence, as long as one looks away from one’s present or possible future works and to God’s promise present in sphere of grace, one can always have infallible certainty that the living and active Word of the gospel will perform precisely what it speaks.

[1] See the outline of this approach in the clearest terms in: John Calvin, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, trans. J.K.S. Reid (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1997).

[2] ICR, 3.24.8; Calvin: The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., trans. and ed. John T. McNeill and Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1967), 2:974-5.

[3] Augustine, On the Gift of Perseverance; NPNFa, 5:.

[4] ICR, 3.24.7; Calvin: The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., trans. and ed. John T. McNeill and Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1967), 2:973-4.

[5] See the Lutheran view and critique of the alternatives in: Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, 3 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1951-1953), 3:89-103.

[6] Paulson, Luther’s Outlaw God: Hiddenness, Evil, and Predestination, vol. 1, 57-158.

[7] Pieper, Christian Dogmatics,2:321, 2:347-8, 2:508-12, 2:543.

[8] LW 22:382.

[9] Tom G. A. Hardt, “Justification and Easter: A Study in Subjective and Objective Justification in Lutheran Theology,” in A Lively Legacy: Essays in Honor of Robert Preus, ed. Kurt E. Marquart, John R. Stephenson, Bjarne W. Teigen (Ft. Wayne: Concordia Theological Seminary, 1985), 52-78; Eduard Preuss, The Justification of the Sinner before God, trans. J.A. Friedrich (Ft. Wayne, IN: Lutheran Legacy, 2011), 29-61; Robert Preus, “Objective Justification,” in Doctrine is Life: Robert D. Preus Essays on Justification and the Lutheran Confessions, ed. Klemet Preus (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2006).

From the draft manuscript for Jack D. Kilcrease, Justification by Word (Lexham Press, forthcoming).