The Knowledge of God

Michael Allen

• Verlag: T&T Clark
• Jahr: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780567699404
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Theology & Religion
• Thema: Theology

The Knowledge of God turns to consider the knowledge of God revealed in the Word of God, with several essays addressing the doctrine of God, then the person of Christ, and finally the miracle of the church. Michael Allen shows the exegetical shape of historical and dogmatic reasoning as well as the significance of thinking about these topics in their interrelationships with a range of other Christian themes, not least the doctrine of the living and true God. In each of these topics, the theme of the promise and nature of God's presence (whether in his own life or then in the economy of the incarnation and of the church) proves to be a unifying thread. The gospel is shown to be rooted backward in God's own life and to have consequence forward for the ongoing life of Christ displayed in his church. This volume explores what it means to learn of and come to know God, who has life in himself and then shares his life with us in the coming of his Son and the ongoing presence amidst his body, the church of Christ.

Chapter 1

THE CENTRAL DOGMA: ORDER AND PRINCIPLES OF REFORMED CATHOLICITY

Reformed catholicity can easily appear aesthetic, regarding one’s preference for the antique or the exotic. Perhaps a bit more substantively, reformed catholicity can be identified as a methodological or formal program, a modus operandi for doing theology today. I want to explore its material grounds, however, by reflecting on how Reformed theology relates to the catholic faith. An orienting question might be: What is most distinctive about Reformed theology? The most formatively unique facet of Reformed theology is its doctrine of God, and yet the Reformed doctrine of God must be defined as a non-innovative catholic doctrine of God. How can both statements be true? To crack this nut, I will explore the idea of central dogmas and their recent demise as well as analyze a path toward making sense of the root of Reformed theology in its deeper catholic commitment. The Reformed tradition has taken a catholic doctrine of God and reformed Christian doctrine by applying it more synthetically, that is, more broadly and consistently. By analyzing the center of Reformed theology in the doctrine of God, the principled roots of reformed catholic theological practice can be better appreciated.

The Demise of the Central Dogma

First, we ought to acknowledge the oddity of a Reformed theologian commending the notion of a central dogma today. It was not always an odd claim. Historians of doctrine long spoke of the significance of central dogmas from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Sometimes Lutheranism was identified as a theological movement rooted in the principle of justification by faith alone, and even today analyses of Lutheranism that follow the early-twentieth-century Luther renaissance or the more recent Radical Lutheran tilt will regularly describe justification by faith alone as a discrimen for all theology or of the law-gospel distinction as an epistemic rule for all theologizing.¹ By contrast, modern historians have suggested different central dogmas at the heart of the Reformed tradition. Many in the nineteenth century identified predestination/election as the heart of the Reformed system. Alexander Schweizer was pivotal in this trend, arguing that predestination was a speculative element of the doctrine of God from which the Reformed speculatively deduced other doctrinal claims.² Weber followed suit, and later interpreters in the mid-twentieth century would pair these earlier historiographic approaches with a propensity to identify central dogmas by means of literary placement (e.g., judging the movement of predestination from book 1 to book 3 of Calvin’s Institutes to have architectonic significance).³ In the twentieth century, others turned to union with Christ as a purported central dogma at least of Calvin’s theology, if not of later declensions.⁴

In recent years Richard Muller has challenged this methodology. He has challenged the historiographic claims about early Reformed theological systems and later Reformed Orthodox dogmatics more broadly. He differentiates between deductive derivation of doctrines from some central dogma and causal connections of various topics to God.

Whereas many of the theologies of the seventeenth century follow an a priori or “synthetic” model of exposition, this pattern of discourse does not represent a series of logical deductions of doctrinal topics or arguments one from the other: neither predestination nor any other doctrine serves as a central pivot of system or overarching motif controlling other doctrines. Both in the descriptions of method found in the Reformed orthodox prolegomena and in the subsequent presentation of the topics of theology, what is evident is not a model of deduction from controlling principles but a model in which the topics traditionally elicited in the course of exegesis are lined out in a suitable order or teaching and the doctrine developed by means of the application of a large-scale hermeneutic involving, for the most part the collation and comparison of biblical texts in the light of theological concerns and the use of ancillary tools, including logic and philosophy.⁵

Muller does not herein rebut all such language about centrality or prioritization, but he pushes back strongly upon the notion of a synthetic system which has been deduced from an epistemic principle. He regularly references the existence of a material principle, but he points to the exegetical art as leading where logical deduction might otherwise be purported to play a generative role. His study of the formation of Calvin’s Institutes and its order of teaching (ordo docendi) is no small part of his revision to scholarship in as much as he shows the way in which Romans helped provide a common places (loci communes) guide to the major topics of theology (a lesson learned from his friend Melanchthon).⁶ Far more might be said regarding the details here, but suffice it to say that those engaging early and high Reformed scholastic theology do so with our antennae up regarding the dangers of speculative central dogmas.

Herman Bavinck on the Root of Calvinism

Amidst the decades of scholars searching for the center, in Paul and the canon and, yes, also in Reformed dogmatics, we find the theological witness of Herman Bavinck. In 1894 Bavinck contributed an essay entitled “The Future of Calvinism” to the Presbyterian & Reformed Review. To address what future might await this tradition, he was impelled to define and to root that tradition in something deeper than religious ephemera and more substantive than even its most superstar luminaries. So he said this:

The root principle of this Calvinism is the confession of God’s absolute sovereignty. Not one special attribute of God, for instance His love or justice, His holiness or equity, but God Himself as such in the unity of all His attributes and perfection of His entire Being is the point of departure for the thinking and acting of the Calvinist. From this root principle everything that is specifically Reformed may be derived and explained. It was this that led to the sharp distinction between what is God’s and creature’s, to belief in the sole authority of the Holy Scriptures, in the all-sufficiency of Christ and His word, in the omnipotence of the work of grace. Hence also the sharp distinction between the divine and human in the Person and the two natures of Christ, between the external internal call, between the sign and the matter signified in the sacrament. From this source likewise sprang the doctrine of the absolute dependence of the creature, as it is expressed in the Calvinistic confessions in regard to providence, foreordination, election, the inability of man. By this principle also the Calvinist was led to the use of that through-going consistent theological method, which distinguishes him from Romanist and other Protestant theologians.

Bavinck speaks here of “God Himself as such” as a “point of departure for the thinking and acting of the Calvinist.” He speaks “not [of] one special attribute of God, for instance His love or justice, His holiness or equity, but [of] God Himself as such in the unity of all His attributes and perfection of His entire Being [a]s the point of departure for the thinking and acting of the Calvinist.” The simple fullness of the triune God is the root of Calvinist or Reformed faith and practice. He terms this a “point of departure” and says also that “from this root principle everything that is specifically Reformed may be derived and explained.” God as such is the ontological principle of all Reformed faith and practice.

Lest we think it wrong-footed enough to search for a center to one’s theology, we may be alarmed to hear Bavinck pressing still farther. He relates this “root principle” to more than merely a doctrinal system:

Not only in the whole range of his theology, but also outside of this, in every sphere of life and science, his effort aims at the recognition and maintenance of God as God over against all creatures. In the work of creation and regeneration, in sin and grace, in Adam and Christ, in the Church and the sacraments, it is in each case God who reveals and upholds His sovereignty and leads it to triumph notwithstanding all disregard and resistance. There is something heroic and grand and imposing in this Calvinistic conception. Viewed in its light the whole course of history becomes a gigantic contest, in which God carries through His sovereignty, and makes it, like a mountain stream, overcome all resistance in the end, bringing the creature to a willing or unwilling, but in either case unqualified, recognition of His divine glory. From all things are, and accordingly they all return to Him. He is God and remains God now and forever; Jehovah, the Being, the one that was and is and that is to come.

Observe that “every sphere” functions as space and time for recognizing and maintaining “God as God over against all creatures.” The fullness of the Creator–creature distinction echoes into each sphere.

A skeptic might understandably ask if this kind of God-centered focus does not fall short of giving a vibrant account of humanity and creation more broadly in its integrity, much less as bearing dignity and agential responsibility. Bavinck imagines such an objection and seeks to cut it off at its knees.

For this reason the Calvinist in all things recurs upon God, and does not rest satisfied before he has traced back everything to the sovereign good-pleasure of God as its ultimate and deepest cause. He never loses himself in the appearance of things, but penetrates to their realities. Behind the phenomena he searches for the noumena, the things that are not seen, from which the things visible have been born. He does not take his stand in the midst of history, but out of time ascends into the heights of eternity. History is naught but the gradual unfolding of what to God is an eternal present. For his heart, his thinking, his life, the Calvinist cannot find rest in these terrestrial things, the sphere of what is becoming, changing, forever passing by. From the process of salvation he therefore recurs upon the decree of salvation, from history to the idea. He does not remain in the outer court of the temple, but seeks to enter into the innermost sanctuary.⁷

The crucial sentence notes that “He never loses himself in the appearance of things, but penetrates to their realities.” By “recurring upon God” in all things, he grants them dignity and integrity rather than relativizing them into irrelevance.⁸ And what image will encapsulate this approach to thinking all things in light of God? Bavinck turns to the temple, telling us that the Calvinist “does not remain in the outer court … but seeks to enter into the innermost sanctuary.” The holy of holies is no less earthy, though it is all the more so for its heavenly significance. Here the image of the temple courts does highlight creaturely integrity: just as the Old Testament recounts the nature of the stores which will be put toward this cultic construction (1 Kgs. 5-6 and 7:13-51), so this metaphor points us toward attending not merely to the glory of God present here but also the human frame within which that glory finds its abode. Bavinck’s suggestion seeks to honor the courts and furnishings of the temple apparatus in its variety and range—noting that there are a number of distinctives to Reformed faith and practice, confession and piety, mission and vocation—while also noting that it is the glory of God that alone makes it the “Most Holy Place.”

Theological Order: Analyzing and Exegeting the Catholic Root and the Reformed Fruit

What more can be said regarding Bavinck’s proposal? I want to consider it analytically and exegetically and then to ask what explanatory power it may have in keeping us alert to the formative significance of not simply catholic theology, but of a distinctively Reformed mode of practicing catholic theology. In the time that remains then, I will analyze his terms, locate them exegetically, and consider the implications his sketch has for construing the posture of reformed catholicity.⁹

First, the terms of his construction merit analysis. Bavinck’s sketch begins with what he calls a “root principle” of Calvinism. I prefer generally to use the term “Reformed” rather than Calvinism, Calvinist, or Calvinian, but we can leave that terminological point to the side for the sake of argument.¹⁰ His language of root is the key facet here. He seems to suggest that “God Himself as such in the unity of all His attributes and perfection of His entire Being is the point of departure for the thinking and acting of the Calvinist.”

While this may well be the root of uniquely Reformed claims, this doctrinal prism is generically catholic. The Reformed have no unique purchase on “the sharp distinction between what is God’s and creature’s.” Calvin did not invent “belief in the sole authority of the Holy Scriptures.” Zwingli was not the sole witness to “the all-sufficiency of Christ and His word.” Dordt was not the lone prophetic cry regarding “the omnipotence of the work of grace.” These claims were prizes of the catholic past, admittedly refracted and developed further in the context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century debates but catholic affirmations nonetheless.

What more can be said about this root, that is, about “God Himself as such”? Bavinck turns to the term “Sovereignty” here to develop it, and that trades on the creedal language of God as “Almighty” (as in “I believe in God the Father Almighty”). Others have used different categories to attest this singularity. Thomas Aquinas would distinguish between uncreated and created being and, thus, between the Creator and all such creatures. He would also employ the language of the term “aseity” to mark out God alone as the one who possesses “life in himself” or, as other biblical and classical texts put it, divine fullness, self-sufficiency, or (especially in a modern register) independence. August Lecerfe calls “the doctrine of the infinity of God the foundation of Calvinism.”¹¹ In recent years, the philosopher Robert Sokolowski sums up such affirmations with his language of “the Christian distinction.”¹² Bavinck will take up the jargon of independence as a more modern rendition of ase...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface: God, Gospel, and the Catholic Church
• Chapter 1 THE CENTRAL DOGMA: ORDER AND PRINCIPLES OF REFORMED CATHOLICITY
• Chapter 2 EXODUS 3 AFTER THE HELLENIZATION THESIS
• Chapter 3 THE BURNING BUSH
• Chapter 4 DIVINE FULLNESS
• Chapter 5 TRINITY: CONTEMPLATIVE AND PRACTICAL WISDOM
• Chapter 6 ETERNAL GENERATION AFTER BARTH
• Chapter 7 CHRIST’S HUMANITY
• Chapter 8 THE OBEDIENCE OF THE ETERNAL SON
• Chapter 9 INTO THE FAMILY OF GOD: COVENANT AND THE GENESIS OF LIFE WITH GOD
• Chapter 10 SOURCES OF THE SELF: THE DISTINCT MAKINGS OF THE CHRISTIAN IDENTITY
• Chapter 11 THE CHURCH AND THE CHURCHES: A DOGMATIC ESSAY ON ECCLESIAL INVISIBILITY
• Chapter 12 THE GOSPEL AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH RECONSIDERED
• Chapter 13 TOTUS CHRISTUS AND PRAYING THE PSALMS
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• Imprint