Here’s the last paragraph of the essay (booklet):

[T]hus the Christ who symbolizes this idea of man’s virtual omniscience and a God who knows not himself is the projection of would be autonomous human experience: It is the belief in this sort of Christ that leads men to think that they have done justice to God and Christ while in fact they are still under their condemnation and wrath. The Christ of Barth’s theology is a false Christ, a meaningless mirage, and devoid of ability to give sinners any help. But it is the only Christ that men can find if they will not submit their thinking to the obedience of Christ as he speaks in the Scriptures. (p. 29)

• Christianity And Barthianism by Cornelius Van Til

Here’s Van Til in the preface:

[T]he present writer is of the opinion that, for all its verbal similarity to historic Protestantism, Barth’s theology is, in effect, a denial of it. There is,  he believes, in Barth’s view no “transition from wrath to grace” in history. This was the writer’s opinion in 1946 when he published The New Modernism. A careful consideration of Barth’s more recent writings has only established him more firmly in this conviction. (p. vii)

• Maximus The Confessor by Andrew Louth
• Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics by Thomas F. Torrance
• History & Theology in the Fourth Gospel by J. Louis Martyn
• (The Anchor Bible) Galatians: A New Translation With Introduction and Commentary by J. Louis Martyn
• Theological Issues In The Letters Of Paul by J. Louis Martyn
• T F Torrance on Scripture, “Scottish Journal of Theology Volume 65  (2012) –  page 34″ by John Webster (just read today, and is excellent!)

There you have it. I plan on posting some of the stuff from Van Til on Barth. There are plenty of things that are perfect bloggy material provided by his essay (booklet) Barth’s Christology. Van Til continues to be the great defeater of Barthianism for some within the post Reformed orthodox camp today (mostly by those who attend and teach at Westminster Theological Seminary). Even what I know of Barth, which has some depth at this point (relatively speaking), Van Til’s points fall flat (in his little booklet tract against Barth’s Christology). My “e-friend” Darren Sumner recently took Van Til to task here; I wish more folk would pay attention to critiques of Van Til, but instead those who follow Van Til seem to continue to follow the notion that Barth is a demon and not a saint—which ultimately is scary!

. . . A good deal of nonsense is talked about Calvin, as though his system were logical in the sense of being rounded off and complete; and the statement by frequent repetition has become almost a commonplace. In fact his system has not this character at all. It is certainly logical in the sense that the argument moves carefully step by step from one point to the next. But, to do it justice, it must be recognized as including elements not easily (or at all) capable of being harmonised — a complexio oppositorum, as H. Bauke says of it (see J. T. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism, Oxford University Press, New York, 1954, p. 202). Of special relevance to the purpose here is the following example. Pighius objects to Calvin that the dominical command to preach the Gospel universally conflicts with the doctrine of special eleciton (§VIII. I). Calvin’s brief answer to this conundrum is that Christ was ordained for the salvation of the whole world in such a way that only those who hear are saved. The universality of the grace of Christ is symbolised by a promiscuous preaching of the Gospel; the universality of the Mediator is paralleled by the universality of the call to penitence and faith. But at this point the harmony ends; the offer of salvation is made equally to all, but salvation itself is for those who are elect. It is the bare bones of the argument, then, that are exposed, even if the result manifests a certain awkward untidiness. There is no attempt to compel harmony or to systematise by force. That there is a consequent practical difficulty is obvious; and it is one which, whatever Calvin thought of it, was compelling enough to drive his opponents into another camp. The situation for Calvin is not really significantly relieved by what he adds to the argument. The universal offer of the Gospel does indeed have a meaning for those in whose case it is not effective. Quoting St Paul, Calvin says that for them it can only be a “savour of death unto death.” The logicality of the exposition is so far preserved that the universal offer of salvation has at least some effective consequence in all cases. But the parallelism on analysis is found to be specious; the awkward untidiness reappears at a different point. It does not now consist in the fact that the same offer of the Gospel sometimes has and sometimes has an effect commensurable with its nature and with the purpose with which God designed it, and that sometimes, on the other hand, it has a quite opposite effect, incommensurable with its nature and the saving purpose of God — it precipitates death instead of life, destruction in place of salvation. This goes to show that Calvin’s first loyalty is directed, not to formal adherence to abstract logicality, but to the facts of the case and situation as he conceived them, or rather as he conceived the Scriptures to depict them. The logicality of his thought is dedicated not to the formation of a system, but rather to the eliciting of the meaning and the implications of those facts which, as it seemed to him, belong the body of Christian truth. (John Calvin, trans., J.K.S. Reid, “Concerning The Eternal Predestination Of God,” 13-14)

This fits well with Charles Partee’s point on Calvin as a “confessor,” more than a dogmatician; Calvin certainly had a logic and method to his theologising, but it was driven by his ineluctable commitment to say what scripture says — even if coherence remains tenuous. Richard Muller and his followers, and those he follows in the history of post-Reformed orthodoxy, have sought to provide, by and large, the “rounded-offness,” or logical coherence to Calvin’s enthymemic (unstated premises) articulation. It is this crux upon which this school claims to be orthodox, its orthodoxy is proximate to its genealogical lineage to Calvin himself (and of course, Muller and co. also claim that the lineage that ‘orthodoxy’ stems from is broader than Calvin himself, nevertheless, Calvin plays a significant role in this regard, definitionally); or so goes the thinking. Of course this claim remains questionable at best, since enthymeme is by definition “unstated;” the danger with discerning the unstated is that we might “state” where or what Calvin, in this instance, never intended.

Since, if as Reid has stated, the “lack of logicality” is real in Calvin; the door is open for, as stated before, multiform appropriation of Calvin. My contention is not that the “orthodox” don’t have a credible claim on Calvin, instead that their’s is not to be understood as exclusive. The history of “Calvinism” bears witness to this, amen, amen!

P.S. The theology that Reid brings up in the quote will have to be addressed at a later date, it is substantial.

*Repost: There has been some concern with my post on Matt Chandler’s and John Piper’s ‘two wills in god’ theology. The concern has been driven by a commenter named “Bri,” and another named “Jeremy” (whose comment I deleted, and whom I have banned for the moment from commenting at the blog given his assertions about my status of acting like a believer or not relative to how I responded to Bri … I found his comment to be unnecessary and ad hominen, and not something I am willing to allow at the blog; but he too, like Bri, have argued (rather pragmatically) for a two wills theology. I say pragmatically because both of their rationale is driven by the kind of rationale that John Calvin (according to Reid’s account and Partee’s) bucked in his own approach. In other words, when there is tension in the teaching of Scripture then it is best, by way of method, not to abstract a methodology from that tension and then impose that back upon God; that’s not following a scientific method of theology that takes its cues from what has been Revealed, but instead it is to shape God into our image answering our questions the way we have constructed them. This is why I am reposting this, because it illustrates, at least for Calvin (if Reid and Partee are right, which I think they are) how we just need to live with confessional tension versus scholastic math. **Jeremy, if you’re reading this, reconsider how you want to interact on the blog, and I might reconsider letting you interact here at the blog.

The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campell with Bill Moyers

A book review by Douglas Groothuis

from the Christian Research Journal, Fall, 1989, page 28. The Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Research Journal is Elliot Miller.

A Summary Critique

One of the surprise best sellers of the late 1980s has been The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell (1904-1987). The book takes the shape of a warm, wide-ranging, engaging dialogue with veteran journalist Bill Moyers and is richly illustrated with examples from world mythology and religion.

The Power of Myth is drawn from a series of interviews done in 1985 and 1986 and first shown on public television in 1988, about six months after Campbell’s death. The work serves as a summation of Campbell’s thought as a long-time literature professor at Sarah Lawrence College and a prolific writer on mythology and literature. The eight chapters range over such subjects as the role of mythology in the modern world, the journey inward, the hero’s adventure, and tales of love and marriage.

Campbell’s appeal lies in an encyclopedic grasp of world mythology and religion, winningly presented with a masterful storytelling ability. He was one who, in his own words, “followed his bliss” — and his enthusiasm for the subject can be infectious.

THE POWER OF MYTH

For Campbell, the “power of myth” is the power of metaphor and poetry to capture the imaginations of individuals and societies. Myth supplies a sense of meaning and direction that transcends mundane existence while giving it significance. It has four functions (p. 31): The mystical function discloses the world of mystery and awe, making the universe “a holy picture.” The cosmological function concerns science and the constitution of the universe. The sociological function “supports and validates a certain social order.” Everyone must try to relate to the pedagogic function which tells us “how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances.” America, Campbell believes, has lost its collective ethos and must return to a mythic understanding of life “to bring us into a level of consciousness that is spiritual” (p. 14).

Campbell defends the benefits of myths as literally false but metaphorically true for the broad range of human experience. But certain myths are (at least in part) to be rejected as “out of date,” particularly the personal lawgiver God of Jews and Christians. Biblical cosmology, he thinks, does not “accord with our concept of either the universe or of the dignity of man. It belongs entirely somewhere else” (p. 31).

Campbell’s own mythic commitment is to the “transtheological” notion of an “undefinable, inconceivable mystery, thought of as a power, that is the source and end and supporting ground of all life and being” (Ibid.). He rejects the term “pantheism” because it may retain a residue of the personal God of theism. Campbell repeatedly hammers home this notion of an inefq fable ground of reality: “God is beyond names and forms. Meister Eckhart said that the ultimate and highest leave-taking is leaving God for God, leaving your notion of God for an experience of that which transcends all notions” (p. 49).

Despite such an epistemological veto on our ability to conceive of anything transcendent, Campbell draws on Carl Jung’s theory of a collective unconscious to help explain the common ideas (“archetypes”) that recur in the mythologies of divergent cultures worldwide. “All over the world and at different times of human history, these archetypes, or elementary ideas, have appeared in different costumes. The differences in the costumes are the results of environment and historical conditions” (pp. 51-52).

But not all archetypes are created equal. Campbell singles out the notion of sin as especially pernicious because it stifles human potential. If you confess your sins you make yourself a sinner; if you confess your greatness you make yourself great. The “idea of sin puts you in a servile position throughout your life” (p. 56). He later redefines sin as a lack of knowledge, not as an ethical transgression: “Sin is simply a limiting factor that limits your consciousness and fixes it in an inappropriate condition” (p. 57).

It seems, to steal a phrase from Swami Vivekananda, that the only sin is to call someone a sinner. Campbell believes our challenge is to say, “I know the center, and I know that good and evil are simply temporal aberrations and that, in God’s view, there is no difference” (p. 66). In fact, “in God’s view,” you are “God, not in your ego, but in your deepest being, where you are at one with the nondual transcendent” (p. 211).

The thematic richness of this work could occupy several reviews. This review will consider some of the philosophical, religious, and societal issues it raises.

TRANSCENDENTAL MYSTERY

A salient feature of Campbell’s world view is a pronounced inconsistency, which — unless flushed out — may remain under the wraps of his winsomeness.

According to Campbell, myth opens us to the realm of transcendental mystery where awe and inspiration energize and permeate our beings. But given Campbell’s epistemological veto of any knowledge of the transcendent, we can say nothing concrete of it. It is beyond concepts, names, and thought. It is metaphysically mute. Campbell wants to vindicate myths by saying they are not to be taken concretely, but metaphorically. Yet even metaphors are incorrigibly conceptual; poetry says something. Propositions are pesky things. They are difficult to fumigate. The Hindu myth of a blood-soaked, skull-adorned Mother Kali destroying the world carries the nonmetaphorical meaning that God is as much Destroyer as Creator. That’s the theology of it, even when taken as myth and not history.

Campbell himself enthusiastically disregards his epistemological veto by issuing many conceptual statements about that which (supposedly) transcends concepts entirely. He affirms that the ground of all forms is impersonal, not personal. This assumes definite knowledge of the ontology (i.e., mode of being) of divinity. He sees this impersonal source of all being as beyond ethical categories, so we must say Yes to all of life, no matter how degraded. Yet this too assumes definite knowledge of the character of the transcendent as amoral, not moral. The transcendent is also “nondual” as opposed to dual or triune. All myths, he affirms, point to an invisible world beyond the world of visible form. Further, “we are all manifestations of Buddha consciousness, or Christ consciousness, only we don’t know it” (p. 57). (We are, then, not conscious of our divine consciousness.) Again, specific propositions are affirmed, and in quite nonmetaphorical language. Campbell’s “transcendental silence” has a habit of speaking out. The explicit epistemological veto is overridden by an implicit theology that welcomes pantheism and filters out theism. Despite his statement that “the person who thinks he has found the ultimate truth is wrong” (p. 55), Campbell repeatedly and dogmatically asserts the ultimate truth of an impersonal and amoral divinity.

Campbell also rejects the idea of God as “Absolutely Other” because, he says, we can have no relationship with that in which we do not participate. Yet, how we — as personal and morally responsible beings — can conceptualize or experience a religious relationship with an impersonal and amoral ground of the univq erse is less than clear.

LITERALISM ON TRIAL

Campbell is ever at odds with a religious literalism which reifies mythic themes into concrete facts. He refers to the biblical creation story that teaches an actual beginning of the universe as “artificialism” and chides Bill Moyers for considering the resurrection of Christ in historic terms. He says such a view “is a mistake in reading the symbol”; it is to read “the words in terms of prose instead of in terms of poetry,” and to read “the metaphor in terms of the denotation instead of the connotation” (p. 57). In fact, Jesus’ ascension into heaven, metaphorically interpreted, means that “he has gone inward — not into outer space but into inward space, to…the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within” (p. 56).

Given this method of interpretation, Campbell much prefers Gnosticism over orthodoxy. He quotes favorably from The Gospel of Thomas where Jesus is portrayed as teaching that “he who drinks from my mouth will become as I am,” and properly notes that “this is blasphemy in the normal way of Christian thinking” (p. 57).

Campbell’s approach to mythology has the appearance of profundity. He uses it profitably to construct interpretations of a vast body of literature. He likens mistaking a metaphor for its reference to eating a menu instead of the meal. Yet when Campbell addresses biblical materials, such as the Gospels or Acts (which were written as history, not poetry or visionary literature), it becomes painfully evident that his metaphoric interpretation is forced at best. Certainly, the significance of the ascension of Christ for Christians is not exhausted by spatial location, yet the physical reference is intrinsic to the significance that Christ is not bound to earth. He has ascended to the “right hand” (this phrase, of course, is metaphoric) of the Father where He now reigns. Campbell may not believe the Ascension to be literally true, but the apostles did and the church still does. A more judicious reading would note that a miraculous truth claim is being made, to be either accepted or rejected — not reinterpreted by a mythical hermeneutic. Instead of eating the menu, Campbell misreads it and fancies a meal never mentioned.

The classic Christian text on the historicity of the resurrection of Christ is Paul’s insistence to the Corinthian church that if Christ be not raised, Christian faith is in vain (1 Cor. 15:14). Moreover, if the Resurrection is factually false, apostolic preaching is futile and misrepresents God, Christians are left in their sin, departed Christians have perished, and Christians are of all people most pitiful (vv. 15-19). Paul had no mere mythic symbol in mind here. Neither would the early Christians have died martyrs’ deaths for metaphors. The apostle Peter, in his second epistle (1:16), went so far as to say that “we did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”

Campbell is pleased with diverse mythic expressions so long as they refer only to the unknowable transcendent. But he strongly rejects the concept of a fallen creation in need of external redemption made known through an historically grounded revelation from a personal God. He expresses amazement at the Hebraic commandment “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Such militant monotheism curtails the mythic imagination. Campbell chokes on the hard historicity of Christianity, and is not comfortable until he recasts it in metaphorical terms.

MYTH BECOME FACT

Yet evangelicals need not entirely dismiss Campbell’s mythic concerns. Christian writers like C. S. Lewis have argued that the world’s mythologies present a dim imitation of the redemption made historical through Christ. Mythologies worldwide speak of lost innocence, cosmic conflict, and redemption. In this sense the mythic dimension can be seen as part of general revelation, not in itself salvific, but pointing beyond itself to what Lewis in God in the Dock called “myth become fact:” “The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens — at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by debatable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to an historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate.”

Campbell largely dismisses the historicity of Christianity by saying we don’t know much about Jesus, given we only have “four contradictory texts that purport to tell us what he said and did” (p. 211). He adds that, despite these supposed contradictions, we know “approximately what Jesus said” (p. 211). If Campbell would have taken seriously the idea of a basic historical record of Jesus’ words, he might have been less inclined to recast Christianity in mythic terms. The wealth of historical material provided by the Gospels, while not without some complexities, reveals a concern for historical accuracy and integrity, (see, e.g. Luke’s prologue).

MYTHOLOGY AND PUBLIC LIFE

How would this mythic world view describe public life? He expresses concern that hollow rationalism and literalistic religion are inadequate to meet modern needs. Although he doesn’t develop a social philosophy, we can infer some clues.

First, Campbell’s ethical evaluations remain unrelated to any enduring moral order. He states: “The final secret of myth [is] to teach you how to penetrate the labyrinth of life in such a way that its spiritual values come through” (p. 115). The sociological function of myth is to validate a given social order. Yet these spiritual values are relative to various cultures and historical epochs. Myths are all “true” but some must be adapted to modern needs and realities. Campbell deems unecological the Christian cosmology of the earth as separate from God, and instead opts for a not-yet-fully-developed “planetary mythology” that resacralizes the universe along Buddhist lines.

Given such cosmic amoralism — God as beyond morality — it remains to be seen how any judgment or mythical imperative could be ethically binding or normative. The Good is not based on God’s unchanging moral character as a personal being; it is not knowable through His self-disclosure. The transcendent is ineffable and therefore morally as well as metaphysically mute. Any mythic recommendation for people or society is simply an inexplicable archetypal upsurge of the ultimately unknown and unknowable. Campbell’s advocacy of a “planetary mythology” is mere vision with no vindication of its value.

Second, Campbell’s ethics are further eroded by a tendency toward monism, so often tied to pantheism. In explaining the heroic deed of a policeman to save a man attempting suicide, Campbell invokes Schopenhauer’s notion that “you and that other are one, that you are two aspects of the one life, and that your apparent separateness is but an effect of the way we experience forms under the conditions of space and time. Our true reality is in our identity and unity with all life” (p. 110). But if the subject-object distinction is not ultimately real, the very idea of self-giving or self-sacrifice must itself be sacrificed on the monistic altar. Any action could be justified in terms of cosmic selfism. If all is one, how could we violate others’ rights? Social ethics would be rendered sociological solitaire.

Third, the monistic model is at odds with Campbell’s praise of the West’s positive emphasis on the individual’s worth and freedom. Individualism (in the positive sense of the dignity of individuals) can only be praised if one adopts an (nonmonistic) ontology of actual, singular entities (humans and otherwise) and a corresponding ethic that respects the right of individual expression. Individualism historically has not fared well in nations such as India where monism monitors morality.

Fourth, although Campbell has many harsh words for Christian theism — which has served as the foundation for so many Western individual liberties — he reserves judgment on extreme tribal practices such as head-hunting and initiations requiring sexual debauchery and even human sacrifice. He sees these ritual acts simply as enacted mythologies vital to cultural life.

Fifth, in a telltale passage, Campbell contrasts the ancient religion of the Goddess with that of the Bible: “You get a totally different civilization and a totally different way of living according to whether your myth presents nature as fallen or whether nature is in itself a manifestation of divinity, and the spirit is the revelation of the divinity that is inherent in nature” (p. 99). Campbell clearly chooses the latter and says that “one of the glorious things about Goddess religions” is that “the world is the body of the Goddess, divine in itself, and divinity isn’t ruling over a fallen nature.” This, in fact, seems to be Campbell’s model for society: a social order uninhibited by any supernatural authority or by any recognition of pervasive human fallibility and moral aberration.

Sixth, unlike the historic American ideal, Campbell’s mythic world view allows for no appeal to “inalienable rights” granted to all by their creator. That would be too literalistic and absolutistic. Nor could there be violations of human dignity because we have no law above the sociologically functioning mythologies that inspire social order. Instead of a universal Law above human law we simply have the ineffable — in the collective unconsciousness — below the mythological manifestations.

MYTHIC PLURALISM

It might appear at first that Campbell’s mythic permissiveness (no one mythic understanding is ultimately true) would serve as a solid platform for pluralism. At one point he says that mythologies are like individual software; if yours works, don’t change it. But the classical liberal (not the modern, relativistic liberal) understanding of pluralism is deeper and wider. It assumes truth has nothing to fear from a plurality of perspectives; it can compete with and triumph over error in “the marketplace of ideas” by virtue of its own merit. Western liberty of expression is premised on the right to be right and the right to be wrong and be proven wrong through dialogue, debate, and discussion. Mythic pluralism assumes no truth to be discovered, debated, or discussed. The merit of any mythology is not its objective veracity but its subjective pull and social power. Mythic pluralism endorses a relativism that ignores the possibility of uncovering the absolute, the universal, or the objective. If the software works, keep it — just so long as you delete any religious literalism.

Campbell may not have countenanced it, but it may befall him to become a posthumous prophet for New Age sentiments. Although more of an academic than a popularizer, his world view is in basic agreement with New Age celebrities like Shirley MacLaine, Werner Erhard, and John Denver. All is one; god is an impersonal and amoral force in which we participate; supernatural revelation and redemption are not needed. Campbell’s erudition and sophisticated manner may attract those who are less impressed by the metaphysical glitz of a Shirley MacLaine, the rank superstition of “crystal consciousness,” or the cosmic hype of the “Harmonic Convergence.”

Campbell is correct: the power of myth in its various functions is potent and pervasive. Human beings need a comprehensive world view capable of undergirding and integrating individual and social values, engaging the imagination, activating the intellect, and energizing the will. Yet it must also be true. Campbell abandoned what he confessed he could not understand — “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” — and affirmed gods many and lords many. One can only hope his readers will harken to the words of another person conversant with the power of myth, G. K. Chesterton. He said in “The Unfinished Temple,” “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” [Copyright 1994 by the Christian Research Institute]click here for original source.

Thomas Forsyth Torrance

For those of you who don’t know by now, TFT has dramatically changed my theological life; he has done so more than any other single theologian I can think of. He is the perfect combination of Traditional and Modern theology, that for me strikes just the right balance. He’s not quite as radical as Barth, but much more radical than Calvin, for example; something of a via media between these other two impactful theologians (who I also appreciate, but not like TFT). Anyway, enjoy.

II

This is my second installment (well third really) on Matt Chandler’s and John Piper’s ‘two-wills in God theology’. My last post on this sought to introduce us to the way that John Piper, in particular, and Chandler otherwise, understand a concept that they both articulate as ‘The TwoWills of God’. I registered my concern in that last post about where this approach leads, because of where it comes from; and because of what it implies about God’s nature, and how he relates to his creation (us) in what has been called salvation history. This post will briefly sketch the aspect of where  two wills in God theology came from; my next and last post in this mini-series will detail what the implications are of this approach (for Christology, soteriology [study of salvation], etc.), and in this detailing I will offer what I think is a corrective—which of course is what we advocate for as Evangelical Calvinists.

The history of two-wills in God theology can be seen given definition through the thought processes of a medieval theologian named William of Ockham. He believed, in a nutshell, that God was one way in eternity (God’s so called ‘absolute will’), and another way in time-space salvation history (God’s so called ‘ordained will’). What this does is introduce a wedge between the God of eternity and the God of spacio-temporal time; meaning that the God we see revealed in Jesus Christ could potentially be different than the God behind Jesus back up in eternity (understand that I am speaking in oversimplified ways and rather crudely)—or, there is no necessary link between how God acts in eternity, and how God acts in time. The result of this is to place a rupture into the very being of God. Here is how Steven Ozment summarizes Ockham’s view (and he also quotes a bit of Ockham for us); we will quote this at some length:

Ockham’s reputation as a revolutionary theological thinker has resulted from the extremes to which he went to establish the contingent character of churches, priests, sacraments, and habits of grace. He drew on two traditional sources. The first was Augustine’s teaching that the church on earth was permixta, that is, that some who appear to be saints may not be, and some who appear not to be saints may in fact be so, for what is primary and crucial in salvation is never present grace and righteousness, but the gift of perseverance, which God gives only the elect known to him. Ockham’s second source was the distinction between the absolute and ordained powers of God, the most basic of Ockham’s theological tools. Ockham understood this critical distinction as follows:

Sometimes we mean by God’s power those things which he does according to laws he himself has ordained and instituted. These things he is said to do by ordained power [de potential ordinata]. But sometimes God’s power is taken to mean his ability to do anything that does not involve a contradiction, regardless of whether or not he has ordained that he would do it. For God can do many things that he does not choose to do. . . . The things he is said to be able to do by his absolute power [de potential absoluta]. [Quodlibeta VI, q. 1, cited by Dettloff, Die Entwicklung der Akzeptations- unde Verdienstlehre, p. 282, and Courtenay, “Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion,” p. 40.]

Ockham seemed to delight in demonstrating the contingency of God’s ordained power—what God had actually chosen to do in time—by contrasting it with his absolute power, the infinite possibilities open to him in eternity. According to his absolute power, God could have chosen to save people in ways that seem absurd and even blasphemous. For example, he could have incarnated himself in a stone or an ass rather than in a man, or could have required that he be hated rather than loved as the condition of salvation. . . .[1]

In order to keep this brief enough I will not elaborate too much, but let me give some reasons why I think this is important to know; and also for whom I am presenting this in the main:

1)      I am introducing this for folks who have never had a Reformation Theology class in seminary, for example. So this is intended to provide exposure for all of those who have been unexposed heretofore.

2)      My hope is that because of said exposure, the reader will understand that there is something more going on when they hear Piper and Chandler articulate two wills in God theology. In other words, the way that both Piper and Chandler present this, to the uninformed; the parishioner will walk away thinking that what Chandler just said about two wills in God is simply Gospel biblical truth without reservation or anyway to critically consider this. So my goal is rather minimal by reproducing Ozment’s thought for you; my goal is simply to alert the attentive reader and thinker that there is something more than ‘biblical truth’ going on in the in-formation of Piper’s and Chandler’s view on this particular topic.

3)      I want the read to understand that there is a particular problem associated with thinking in these kind of Nominalist ways (which is what the philosophy is called that Ockham articulates) about the nature of God. As I noted earlier, it creates a potential schism (indeed necessary) between the God of eternity and the God of time revealed in Jesus Christ; so as my favorite theologian says (along with Barth before him), we end up ‘with a god behind the back of Jesus’ who is not necessarily the same God we see revealed in Jesus (so when Jesus says in John 14 that ‘when you see me you see the Father’, that may or may not be true according to the implications and logic associated with a two-wills in God theology).

Conclusion

My next and final post in this series will expand on the problems associated with this approach; elaborating upon my parenthetical point in point three in the aforementioned. I will notice how this approach, which is purported by both Piper and Chandler to resolve some apparent tensions in scripture; instead exacerbate things in scripture by undercutting the most important point and touchstone we work from as Christians—that is what has been called a Theology Proper or Doctrine of God. If we get this point wrong—e.g. who God is—then the rest of our theological thinking and biblical interpreting will be found to be built on sandy beaches and not the rocky jetty that will stand under the most tumultuous theological storm waves one could fathom.

• Egyptian thought was polytheistic and despised by early Jews; what is discussed in the Book of the Dead and elsewhere in Egyptian literature is an afterlife in another world, not a coming back to this one in the same body;
• there is no hint of any direct influence of Egyptian religion per se, in the OT or NT; you will not be finding seminars at the national SBL meeting on how Zoroastrian religion and Egyptian religion explains all we need to know about the origins of Biblical religion; what you can find in the Bible is the deconstruction of other culture’s myths, or better the de-mythologizing of such material;
• George Earnest Wright of Harvard used to stress that Jews were not on the whole a myth-making people; they grounded their stories in history, particularly, salvation history; when they used mythological images (like e.g. the image of the great sea monster Leviathan) they used them in
  historical ways for historical purposes (e.g. Revelation 12);
• the filmmakers have not bothered to consult any expert commentators on the Hebrew or Greek texts of the Bible; they simply cite the King James Version;
• it is based on shabby “research” and actually no historical understanding about Jesus and the origins of Christianity;
• it is partially true that cultures have always personified and anthropomorphized the sun and stars, but it certainly isn’t an explanation for the origins of Hebrew religion, which critiqued sun- and moon-god worship, denied there were multiple deities in the heavens, and ridiculed the notion that stars
  were gods who controlled one’s fate; in the OT you will notice that the sun and moon are seen as controlled by Yahweh;
• when the subject of “sons of God” and the one true God does come up, the phrase in Genesis 6 refers to fallen angels who mate with human women; later in the OT it refers to the king, and finally to the last great king — the messiah; there is nothing whatsoever in any of this that is remotely close to the idea of sun worship, or seeing the sun itself as a deity;
• there is no reason to associate the word “sun” with the word “son,” and simply blending together all ideas about both in antiquity, a syncretistic thinking, is at the heart of this film, and leads to massive distortions of religious history;
• the analysis of Egyptian mythology in the film has very few things right; it gets most of the story of Horus wrong; claims the Horus myth says he was born on Dec 25th, born of a virgin or virginal conception, star in the east, worshipped by kings, was a teacher by 12; this disinformation is refuted by analysis of the proper sources (e.g. see my bibliography below).
• the film is guilty not only of falsely blending together various different religions which developed largely regionally and independently of each other, it falsifies the claims made in the Egyptian myths; ironically it does a disservice to all religions;
• other egregious errors in his presentation of Horus: was not called the lamb of God, was not crucified and resurrected, even in the myth;
• the story of Horus is of course the story of the rebirth of the sun in the east, and is based on the cycles of nature, not on any historical claims at all, unlike the story of Jesus; the Horus story does not include many of the elements the film claims it does;
• it is not true that it was believed that all these deities were born on Dec 25th; in any case the Bible never claims or suggests Jesus was born on such a date;
• Nor is it true that all these stories have basically the same elements and pattern; the film is an equal opportunity distorter of world religions in general;
• the film reads the story of Jesus back into these other mythological stories, and then claims the story of Jesus comes from these other stories; this is bad history and bad religious analysis (also called circular reasoning);
• to my knowledge there is no story that dates from before the time of Jesus that has most of the specific elements listed as distinguishing the Jesus story: virginal conception, crucifixion, and bodily resurrection of a divine Son of God;
• the Hebrews already long since had a religion when they went to Egypt both in the time of Joseph and in the time of Moses; experts in ancient Hebrew religion will tell you (e.g. Ancient Israel by Roland DeVaux) that the differences between a monotheistic or henotheistic religion that is grounded in historical persons and actions, and the Egyptian mythology which is grounded in the cycles of nature, the rising and setting of the sun, the motions of the stars, are considerable;
• see for example the ancient poem in Psalm 8 — the sun, moon, and stars are all seen as the works of God’s fingers, like a child molding things out of playdough; the Biblical God is a God of creation, one who has made all things that exist; in that same psalm we see that human beings are the crown of God’s creation, created in God’s image;
• notice the anti-anthropomorphic theology here: God is not the sun, he does not have a son that is the sun, indeed creation is simply something that the one true God has made; the important part is this desacralizes nature; Nature is not a god or gods, it is not divine (Romans 1:20-25), and neither are human beings as human beings.
• this Judaeo-Christian idea about the world and its creatures is the basis of modern science, which assumes that creation is not God, and therefore is not defiled by inquiry, scientific examination, experiment, etc; the attempt to portray Biblical religion as anti-science, knows neither the origins of Biblical religion nor the origins of modern science;
• the scholarly work on the star in the east, if it is historical, centers on the conjunction of planets, specifically Jupiter and Venus (e.g. the Nativity); it does not center on Sirius, the dog star; Bethlehem certainly does mean the “house of bread” but it has nothing to do with the constellation Virgo, which indeed is short for virgin; it has to do with this region being fertile enough to support both grass and wheat — hence shepherds and farmers (i.e. The “Fertile Crescent” along the Nile); Jesus’ mother’s name is Miryam — from the OT sister of Moses, Miriam. Maria or Mary is simply our anglicized way of referring to that name;
• the attempt to explain the origins of the story of the death and resurrrection of Jesus on the basis of the Winter Solstice and what happens on Dec 22-25 is laughable; the Gospels are clear that Jesus was not in the tomb for three whole days, only parts of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (he rose “on the third day”); if an attempt was made by the Evangelists to conform this to some astrological phenomena or pattern, this is inexplicable;
• there is no association in the NT of either the death or the resurrection of Jesus with the Winter Solstice or what happens then; the story of Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection are not told in light of such thinking at all; indeed the notion of bodily resurrection had long existed in Judaism before the time of Jesus (see e.g. N.T. Wright’s Resurrection of the Son of God), and was not concocted in light of astrology or any other nature religion;
• nature religions are grounded in the cycle of the seasons, and focus on fertility gods; this is very different from religions based on history and revelation or prophecy; the syncretism of the film does not allow that there are different types of world religions, with differing origins;
• the twelve disciples do not represent the 12 constellations of the Zodiac; there was this little entity called the 12 tribes of Israel, going back to Jacob and his 12 sons; those stories in Genesis are not astrological in character at all, but rather are explanations of a historical origins of a people; the 12 disciples are chosen by Jesus (Matthew 10), not because he was a stargazer, but because he was attempting to reform, and indeed re-form Israel;
• the twelve disciples represent the 12 tribes of Israel, and Jesus promised that at the eschaton they will be sitting on 12 thrones, judging those 12 tribes; once more, this is historical and eschatological thinking, not astrological thinking, and the claim that the Bible has more to do with astrology than anything else, can only be called a category mistake;
• clearly the filmmakers have done no work whatsoever in the study of the various genre of Biblical literature which they could have gotten from any standard introduction to the Bible, even those written by agnostics and skeptics;
• the origins of the symbol of the cross is not derived from the cross imposed on the circle of the 12 astrological signs of the Zodiac; consider the most basic ancient zodiac pattern we have, e.g. the floor of the synagogue at Sepphoris; Jews, like every other group of agrarian peoples were interested in the weather and the seasons. Do we find a cross pattern? No. The filmmakers have done no first hand historical work on ancient Zodiac symbols, they have simply believed the pablum imbibed from various out-dated, and inaccurate sources;
• the origin of the symbol of the cross of course derives from the Roman practice of crucifixion, not from some supposed astrological pattern; Jesus died in 30 AD on a cross outside of Jerusalem, a victim of Roman injustice as even the Romans admitted;
• much is made about how in 1 AD a new “age” or astrological cycle begins, after the age of the Ram; however, Jesus was born somewhere between 2-6 BC, not in 1 AD; and we know this because Jesus was born while Herod the Great was still king of the Holy land, and the records are clear that Herod died about 2 BC; ergo: Jesus had to be born before then;
• Jesus’ birth certainly did not usher in the age of Pisces or the fish; the fish symbol comes into Christianity from the gematric value of the Greek word ICHTHUS — with each letter standing for a word, in this case Insous, Christos, Theos, Huios and Soter — Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior.
• Does Moses represent the new age of Ares? Nope. Was the golden calf an attempt to worship Taurus the bull constellation? Probably not. Do Jews blow a ram’s horn because Moses threw his tablets down in disgust at the worship of Taurus and inaugurated the age of  the Ram? I am sure Moses would be surprised to hear it.
• The viewers of such a film in a Jesus-haunted culture which is Biblically illiterate need to check everything carefully (cf. 1 Thess 5:21; 1 Peter 3:15), especially outlandish historical and religious claims.

Ben Witherington III is professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M. Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. (see the source I took this from here, this source, just prior to this long quote from Witherington does an excellent job itemizing and indexing how outlandish and shoddy these kinds of claims are by going directly to the texts of the Egyptians themselves, and by referencing actual scholars and Egyptologists in contrast to the apparent shoddy “scholarship” used to promote this film … just like the History Channel does).

I hope my friend will take this to heart; there is actual scholarship available on almost any topic of research. Ones best bet, if the person is really really serious and genuine about Truth; is to go to the best of known scholarship, and quit hanging around fringe and wannabe scholarship. All the seeker will get from that kind of approach is fringe and wannabe information that most certainly will not stand up under any kind of critical scrutiny or evidence.

I asked the same question a bit ago on my Facebook wall, and a friend quoted this about this picture,

‘”That picture! That picture!” cried Muishkin, struck by a sudden idea. “Why, a man’s faith might be ruined by looking at that picture!” “So it is!” said Rogojin, unexpectedly.’ (Dostoevsky, “The Idiot”)

So this picture, painted by Hans Holbein, has been featured by Dostoevsky in his writings. And it is a picture that almost mesmerizes me; not in some sort of mystical sense, but in the sense that it evokes a depth response in me as it signifies the truth of the Christian kergyma. That is, of course, that God became man in Christ; and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. As the Apostle writes:

⁵ Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, ⁷ but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. ⁹ Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, ¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, ¹¹ and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. ~Philippians 2:5-11

And,

⁹ For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. ~II Corinthians 8:9

In the Christian Tradition this is also known as the mirifica commutatio or ‘the wonderful exchange’; and this serves as a central theme for how Evangelical Calvinists think of election-reprobation, viz. through a union with Christ theology.

Anyway, I am preaching a bit (and digressing); so how does this picture strike you? Is it too evocative and brutally scandalous? I know some Christians don’t think we should use images of Christ at all, and so for you (if that’s you), I know the answer to my question already. But I am really curious about how those of you who don’t have as much of an issue with icons like this think of this picture, and my current and recent usage of it for my blog header. It is hard to look at, admittedly for me; but it also conveys something about Christianity that I think has been lost and glossed over about Christianity in at least the American Western church—that is that Christianity and Christ crucified is skandalon or a stumbling block (the matter of my Masters thesis I Corinthians 1:17-25). Jesus is usually not presented in stumbling block kinds of ways today, and I think this picture re-invokes that kind of response. What do you think?

1) My friend contends that all is one (in Hindu Atman is Braman), and thus all is ‘divine’. A related point, to this, is the belief that the One is impersonal.

2) My friend argues that all there is, is IS; and any concept of Ought is totally foreign to him and reality in general.

3) My friend grounds morality in himself (since he is divine and a participant with the rest of “divinity” which is constituted by the universal mode of self-consciousness). Thus, there are no absolute or universal norms for discerning morality or immorality.

4) My friend grounds much of his belief in an experience he had years ago through partaking of mind altering psychedelic substances that induce an altered state of consciousness; in this altered state of consciousness my friend believes that he was released from his time bound normal self into the transcendental universal soul of consciousness or into the One (force or source, which is impersonal—think Star Wars and the ‘force’).

5) My friend believes that Christianity and all religions are simply mythical metaphors that are merely attempting to give expression to the same underlying reality; i.e. that all is one. Consequently, my friend thinks that Jesus was simply an exemplar of a reality that is true of all of us; viz. that all of us are sons or children of god by virtue of our relation to the universal soul of consciousness (or stated another way, we are all god).

6) My friend believes that Christianity and other world religions (like Islam, Judaism, etc.) are simply man-made constructs used to control man; you know, like Marx’ theory that ‘religion is the opiate for the masses’. So my friend operates with surpluses of suspicion when it comes to ‘Religion’ (except his own of course ).

7) As corollary with a couple of the other foregoing points; my friend believes that the belief that we are ‘fallen’ or somehow ‘flawed’ (like as a result of Adam and Eve’s Sin in Genesis 3), is simply another man-made construct to hold humanity down, and deny humanity its fully self-actualized divine “selfness.”

______________________________

We had other excursions, but in general the above pretty much covers what was on the menu for today. Here were some of my responses to my friend’s points (I will take them in the order I have them listed above):

1) I affirmed for my friend that for the Christian ‘All is not One’, but instead; God is One (and Three, and Three in One), and that we affirm a substantial Creator/creature distinction—such that there can be no confusion or admixture. This is the first point of departure, and probably the most fundamental between my friend and I. Ironically, though, while my friend says that he holds to the unity of all reality, he still maintains that we are seeking to be united with the One; so there is an ontological separation inherent to my friend’s belief system; and I think that this denotes, ultimately, an inconsistency in my friends belief structure about reality.

2) So given the fact that my friend believes that there is nothing beyond what ‘is’, then all forms of dualism, or even a Creator/creature distinction is voided of any reality. Christian theologically this poses a problem since we have teachings that call humanity to be holy as God is holy; which presuppose a distinction between the singular reality (God), and the ‘many’ reality (humanity)—of course there is a way to navigate this in a Christian christological way that avoids a Greek dualism, which is what T.F. Torrance’s articulation of chalcedonian christology and the homoousion help us to do (fodder for another time). Obviously, this represents a massive point of departure between my friend and I.

3) To ground morality in the subjective self is probably one of the most devastatingly weak points in my friend’s position. His way around this was to suggest that we simply follow the ‘Golden rule’ as the normative ground upon which ethical constructs function. But of course when Jesus teaches this he assuming an ethical construct that is grounded in him, as the God-man Theanthropos. My friend suggested that he wouldn’t want to be violated in any particular kind of way, and thus this then should serve as the construct (a situationalist ethic) for all ethics. Of course the problem with this is that, subjectively, we could find various groups of like-minded individuals (like pedophiles, rapists, money launderers, hedonists, etc.), and within their established community of norms, these kinds of things would be acceptable. This is called normative relativism; so the problem is ultimately still present, there are certain universal norms that transcend all personal mores, and it is this kind of ethical construct that my friend’s attempt to counter cannot counter, and thus has no viable response to. We seemed to cut this point of the discussion short for some reason.

4) When my friend had this mind altering experience through psychedelic substances, he said he experienced something that told him that he was divine. My response to that was to explain the Christian concept of the ‘kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light or of the Son of His love’ (Col. 1:13). My point was to alert my friend to the fact that from a Christian perspective he experienced what Paul calls an ‘Angel’ masquerading as light (I Cor. 11); and the way I know this is because this experience told him exactly the same thing that plunged humanity into separation and sin in the first place—that is, that he is divine or god.

5) Upon further clarification my friend explained to me that he thinks myth is just something all cultures use to cope with the absurdity of death (my words)—so this could be mere existentialism, and it is (this is illustrative of how my friend’s viewpoint is New Age, since he appropriates various streams of thought from both Eastern and Western fountainheads). I made clear that Jesus claimed to be the only way, truth, and life. My friend said he believes in Jesus; but I clarified and pointed out that by definition his view of that and the Christian view is sharply distinctive. His belief that Jesus is an exemplar of what it looks like to be enlightened is at odds with the disclosure of what Jesus himself taught in regards to his own self-understanding of the Son of God within a Hebraic understanding of that. This, of course, became another point of heavy departure.

6) The most ironic thing about this point from my friend (that Christianity is a man made religion meant to control humanity)—and it is one of the points we were discussing as we parted ways for the day—is that I am the one, as a Christian, who maintains a Creator/creature distinction. Which means I have the metaphysical material to consistently maintain that Christianity is not man-made since we have a personal God who stands outside of us (extra nos); my friend’s framework of belief does not have this distinction, and thus collapses its concept of god into humanity. So my question to him is; how can you say that my view is man-made? When your view of god is that man is god; while my view necessarily believes that God is not man. I have the resources to maintain a view that is given shape by something other than man; or a belief system that is based upon Divine Revelation. My friend’s view does not have this resource; in fact, of necessity, and definition it is his perspective that requires that his system be man-made since all is one and one is all and the human self is the only divine reality there is.

7) My friend could finally agree to the idea that we are separated from God (or his ‘Force’ or ‘Source’), but he couldn’t agree that man was in need of outside source (from humanity) to break the vicious cycle of self-domination. He still believes that we are divine, and that we can actualize our own ‘salvation’ through becoming conscious of the universal One that envelops all of us.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, I will continue to pray that my friend will finally have eyes to see and ears to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ. It is exceedingly difficult to engage a belief system whose defining feature and hallmark is given shape by the seeming virtue of alogic and contradiction (or cognitive dissonance). When you believe that the word that satan spoke to Eve in the garden is the truth and not the lie, then you are in a position that will never allow you to see that the Christian God is good; because you are God. Chaos ensues from this point onward …

⁴ The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. II Corinthians 4.4 (NIV)

So all I am left to believe is:

¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. Romans 1.16 (NIV)

I am not under the delusion that I can whip my friend into Christianity through winning the ‘intellectual’ arguments (even though I will ); it is the Spirit of God alone who brings a person to the point wherein they can finally say that Jesus is Lord (I Cor. 12.3). But maybe, just maybe the Lord will use my small offering tomorrow to plant seeds (I Cor. 3) that someone else might come along and water (or maybe I’m doing the watering by the Spirit tomorrow); that someone else, finally, will be able to harvest. Anyway, if you remember me and my friend tomorrow between the times of 10am-11:30am (pst); then please pray that the Lord would be present in our time of discussion, and that my friend would finally quit ‘kicking against the goads’, and become a full participant in the life of salvation and grace that Christ has won for all of us in his own life for us! Thanks.