“Beggars All”: On Abandoning the Progressive and Legalist Mode of Salvation

I don’t think I’ll ever understand the impulse towards perfectionism; not in light of the Gospel, that is. And yet it is rampant, especially as given non-stop expression on “Christian social media” (I’m mostly thinking of X/Twitter). There are always these extremes on a continuum. There are those who think to be anti-legalist is to be progressive and loose to everything. On the other hand, there are those who think to be holy (saved) is to be legalistic to the point that all of what they say about others never applies to them; as if they have perfectly arrived; as if they just are one of the elect and everyone else is reprobate, or at least highly suspect. But both centers stem from the same type of “meism.” As if the human agent is the determiner, on either side, of what is good, and beautiful, and free. This, I take to be, the perfectionist impulse; which really is just a performative mood wherein a person, one way or the other, simply must assert their own self-contrived standing before God and others. Either they assert their “freedom,” or they assert their ”legalism”; both being given ground by the homo incurvatus in se.

We aren’t saved based on being so-called “free” or so-called “constrained by our obedience.” We are justified before God because He who knew no sin assumed our unrighteousness that we might become the righteousness of God in Him; it is because of His poverty that we are made rich in the beautiful garments of righteousness which He has robed us with. All our righteousness is like filthy rags; that doesn’t end once we become Christians. We live, moment-by-moment, afresh anew, by His righteousness for us; by His re-creating for us and in us and with us. We remain simul justus et peccator (‘simultaneously justified and sinner’), as such, we live by His mercy and grace as He always lives to make intercession for us.

Are there standards of righteousness and holiness that we bear witness to as Christians? Yes, but this by the Holy Spirit in Christ in us, and not just against the broken world out there, but the broken world “in here,” in our own fallen and broken hearts. We ought to call out unrighteousness and evil, exposing the darkness with the light of God’s Word, but in so doing we really are only exposing our own wretched hearts, outwith Christ’s heart for us. This ought to at least humiliate us to the point that we remain obedient, even to the death of the cross. And the ground of this obedience is funded by God’s eternal life of humility for us, as He freely chose to become us in the humanity of Jesus Christ (Deus incarnandus). We certainly do have freedom in Christ, but it is a freedom circumscribed by being for God, and not for ourselves. It is a freedom to be holy as He is holy. It is a freedom to bear witness to the world that the Son has set us free, free indeed.

I’m not suggesting that we ought to be looking for some type of balance between being libertine or legalistic. I am suggesting that we abandon that whole paradigm altogether. God’s righteousness in Christ confronts us in the living color of His flesh and blood life for us in Jesus Christ; indeed, as He continuously breathes and hovers over us, from within, by the Holy Spirit. His work is ‘out of nothing’ (ex nihilo), which means that our daily lives are totally contingent upon His Word and Way, and not ours. There is nothing inherent to this world system that supplies us with the sustenance we require to live in the free life that God has brought us into by yoking Himself with us in His freedom for us in Christ. We have a new creation life that comes from outside of us, as an ‘alien life,’ as if manna falling from the heavens in the morning dew each and every day. This freedom, this righteousness we have been given through union with Christ, and thus participants in the triune life Godself, is not a possession of ours, as if a self-possession; we, instead, are a possession of this righteousness’s. This cannot be stressed enough: our lives, as Christians, as human beings, are fully and continuously, moment-by-moment, contingent on God’s Logos. We bring nothing to this arrangement except our dissolute selves, which the Creator, the Sustainer, indeed, the Father in His eternal relationship with the Son, has entered into, in the Son’s assumption of flesh, taking the depth of our fallenness, which He alone can see, into the bones and marrow of His humanity, allowing that to have its final and just result in the human life lived in obedience unto the Father, finally eventuating in death, even death on a cross. We couldn’t and cannot do that. It takes the homoousios Theanthropos (GodMan) to do that for us. And while that event, in itself, is once and for all, it is an event that has ‘perfect tense’ reality insofar that we gain our reality before God, continuously, as events-in-happening, moment-by-moment, through God’s reality for us in His Melchizedekian life as the Son of David, our High Priest, who sits at the right hand of the Father always living to make intercession for those who will inherit His eternal life.

Since our lives are contingent in the above way, we have no space for boasting except in the fact that our God is indeed the living and triune God who has not left us as orphans. This ought to change the way we approach the world, others, and ourselves. We, as Luther was wont to say (paraphrase), “are beggars all.”

Nala’s Salvation: Against Her “Christian” Legalistic Critics

Legalism continues to be rife on the theological interwebs. An OnlyFans porn star (at the top of the “game”) just gave her life to Christ (she grew up as a Baptist pastor’s kid, like me). I watched her whole interview, where she shared her life story and testimony, on the Michael Knowles show (2:20 minutes). She has gotten lots of pushback and skepticism, particularly on the website formerly known as Twitter. There is a high profile (on said website) Jewess who has been saying vile things about this former star. But she’s a Jewess and not a Christian; so, definitionally she wouldn’t understand the nature of God’s grace (at least not yet). But then there have also been “Christians” pushing back at this sister. I want to highlight one of these fellas. Of course, this guy has written a book on “biblical masculinity,” has a podcast on the topic, and unfortunately, has quite a few followers on X and probably other social media platforms. What he says about this young sister makes my blood boil; it is as antiChrist/antiGospel that someone can get (let his message be anathema). Here is part of what he said:

Nala’s entire life has been a lie. She has profited in multi-millions from the twin society-crushing evils of Feminism and the Sexual Revolution. She has led countless men astray for pay, selecting for her profession a task built on values that are explicitly anti-family, anti-Law, and therefore anti-Christ and anti-Logos. She should be revolted at the multi-generational forces that twisted a creature made in God’s image into this demonic mockery of a human female. God didn’t just save her from hell. He saved her from years of her own sin-enslaved wretchedness, which spread virally over the internet touching the lives of potentially millions in exchange for cash. Honorable men with grit under their nails and sweat on their brow and scars on their arms engaged in months of backbreaking labor to make less than she probably did for one weekend’s parade of digital sin. You do not understand the truly cosmos-rending chain of confession, repentance, mercy, grace, and salvation well enough if you think baptism and a few words on camera suffice to expunge the stain on the earth, let alone herself, that she has created. A repentant heart would scrape off all remnants of that clownish makeup to reveal the unadorned face of the woman underneath, as God sees her, and beg the men she exploited for forgiveness. She would stare into the image of the photo below with horror and never wish for one second to be mistaken for that death-cult parasite again. She would decry from the mountaintops the fallenness of the world that allowed and even encouraged her digital prostitution, and tear her garments witnessing the wickedness in her bones and bloodstream that seduced her into this line of “work.” Work which she then relished in perfecting her craft to infernal excellence, I might add. She would strip herself of artificial beauty and clothe herself in modesty then disappear into her husband’s home and hearth, next seen by the public with a small pack of children, and a tearful song of Romans 8:28-29 on her grateful lips. In so doing, she would model the true path home for women. We live in a Christ-hating nation that despises God with every fiber of its being, making a middle-class, single-income household all but impossible as an explicit attack on the institution of the family and especially the role of the father. And suddenly I’m supposed to believe we’re all celebrating a sinner being saved? On the network that just fired a female commentator, in part, for daring to say, “Christ is King”? Please. Candace Owens, who showed at least a flash of true courage, should be furious. Nala has stepped onto the public stage and been thrust into a default position of spiritual leadership, as many celebrities sadly are the moment they whisper the name of Christ to a camera. Thus I criticize her as a leader. “Give her time”? How about instead we bring on a repentant believer who has already had time? I propose Rosaria Butterfield. Maybe Nala should give herself time. Maybe the media should give her time. Maybe the legions of female sinners and their white knight cheerleaders should at this very moment be ushering Nala off the stage forever, for her own good, rather than clapping like seals in the hopes that she’ll legitimize their poorly-discipled, halfhearted repentance for sins. Because she won’t. She literally can’t. Not until Feminism and the Sexual Revolution that produced her (and women like her) are ripped up root and branch from the salted earth of the American family, burned, and the ashes cast into the brook Kidron. (2 Kings 23:6) But that’s not what we really want, is it? Women today desire to be led… but only where they were already planning on going. Others want this to be a “meat sacrificed to idols” moment. 1 Corinthians 8 is the world-befriending Christian’s dog-eared chapter, isn’t it? “It’s not that bad. I’m under grace not law.”[1]

All this gal is doing is sharing her testimony. When a person is “born from above” they are born again of an imperishable seed; the seed of Christ’s life blossomed to the right hand of the Father for them/us. This guy, Will Spencer, thinks we need to “wait and see.” Is that what Jesus did with the Samaritan woman at the well; or many other female sinners, inclusive of prostitutes? No, once the re-birth is realized in someone’s heart, they become participant with Christ (participatio Christi), and partakers of the divine and triune being of God. Nobody can separate Nala from Christ, not even her. She’s entered into an indestructible life that is not contingent on her obedience, but Christ’s for her (which in fact is what the Gospel is all about).

This guy, Will, is simply a product of a nomist subculture that has swallowed much of the North American evangelical community whole. It is through the “retrieval” of precisianist and juridical categories, as those are found particularly developed in the Post Reformed orthodox theologies of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, that this legalistic subculture, of the type this Spencer guy is fomenting, has come to have root. And yet, most of these cats aren’t aware of their informing theology. They simply receive it, and run with it. They don’t recognize, critically so, its historical and philosophical beginnings; and as such they simply conflate these mercantilist categories with the biblical Gospel. As a result, we end up with this “wait and see” attitude in regard to having certainty if someone is saved or not. This is absurdum! But this is simply a projection of their own uncertainty and lack of assurance before God. Barth was right when he wrote the following with reference to Calvin’s thinking on assurance of salvation:

How can we have assurance in respect of our own election except by the Word of God? And how can even the Word of God give us assurance on this point if this Word, if this Jesus Christ, is not really the electing God, not the election itself, not our election, but only an elected means whereby the electing God—electing elsewhere and in some other way—executes that which he has decreed concerning those whom He has—elsewhere and in some other way—elected? The fact that Calvin in particular not only did not answer but did not even perceive this question is the decisive objection which we have to bring against his whole doctrine of predestination. The electing God of Calvin is a Deus nudus absconditus.[2]

It is this ill-formed doctrine of election that hangs over all of these legalists’ heads; it’s actually rather tragic. Not only can they not find rest in Christ for them, but then they project that unrest and uncertainty on anyone else who confesses Jesus as Lord; like Nala. If Jesus isn’t both the object and subject of God’s election, then election simply hangs in the balances of the decretum absolutum (absolute decree). And it is this type of election, the type grounded in an unrevealed, secret and arbitrary decree of God, that leaves these types of legalists floundering in their salvation. But, often, such people believe they’ve hit some sort of magical mark in their lives, finding a level of assurance that they indeed are one of the elect of God (because they haven’t sinned in certain ways like they used to; so based on their performance). But they’re still “waiting to see” if other new converts really have come to Christ based upon some subjective and abstract standard of judgment vis-à-vis the performance of said new converts. That’s what this Spencer guy and others are now doing to Nala. Historically this exercise is called experimental predestinarianism, which entails exactly what it says.

I have written more than I intended. Let me leave Will Spencer and his cohorts with a parable of Jesus’. It speaks against the type of performance and legalistically based salvation he unfortunately has been “discipled” into.

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. ² When he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. ³ And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the market place; ⁴ and to those he said, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.’ And so they went. ⁵ Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did the same thing. ⁶ And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing around; and he *said to them, ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day long?’ ⁷ They *said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ He *said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’

⁸ “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard *said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last group to the first.’ ⁹ When those hired about the eleventh hour came, each one received a denarius. ¹⁰ When those hired first came, they thought that they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. ¹¹ When they received it, they grumbled at the landowner, ¹² saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the scorching heat of the day.’ ¹³ But he answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? ¹⁴ Take what is yours and go, but I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. ¹⁵ Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?’ ¹⁶ So the last shall be first, and the first last.” –Matthew 20:1-16

 

[1] Will Spencer | Renaissance Man, accessed on X 04-08-2024.

[2] Karl Barth, CD II/2, 111.

An Athanasian Reformed Reading of John 6:44-45: On Unconditional Election and the Effectual Call

There was a debate, very recently, between Dr. James White and Dr. Leighton Flowers with reference to John 6:44-45. The theological locus under disputation was on the Calvinist doctrines of unconditional election and the effectual call. White argued the positive position, i.e., affirming unconditional election and the effectual call; whilst Flowers argued the negative, i.e., denying unconditional election and the effectual call. For the purposes of this post, I am just going to assume the reader understands the entailments of said doctrines, and cut right to the chase in offering the Athanasian Reformed (AR) (Evangelical Calvinist) reading of John 6:44-45. I believe it is the better more theologically acute way one must exegete John 6:44-45, among many other passages, in light of Christological orthodoxy. In other words, I will suggest (not argue here) that everyone reads the text of Scripture through theological lenses; and since that’s the case, it is best to exegete Scripture from good theological premises, rather than bad ones. I would simply assert here that both White and Flowers, respectively, offer a reading of John 6 that are based on bad theological premises.

Here is the passage in the English translation (NASB95):

⁴⁴ No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. ⁴⁵ It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught of God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me.

White argues that all who are drawn of God will necessarily come to God (so, what he takes to be a prima facie argument for unconditional election vis-à-vis the effectual call). Flowers argues that the drawn ones who come to God are those who have not only heard, but have actively learned from the Father, and through this, said drawn ones freely choose to come to God based on their innate human freedom to do so (he believes the capacity comes, situationally, as people hear the call and learn from God of His way for them; but this based on an ontic capacity built into the human agent to accept or reject the call of God). So, in nuce, we can see how White clearly is thinking from the typical Calvinist emphasis on God’s sovereignty, and how Flowers, respectively, ends up emphasizing the human agents’ intact libertarian freewill to say yes or no to God’s offer of salvation.

The Athanasian Reformed alternative sees the eternal Son of God, as both the electing God and elected (archetypal) human for all of humanity. So, we can affirm unconditional election and the effectual call, but only under radically reified terms. So, for the AR, we maintain that what does the necessary work here, theologically, is a robust affirmation of a doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ (which is really just the Chalcedonian and Nicene understanding of the homoousious; i.e., that Jesus is both fully God and fully human in His singular person as the Christ). In this sense, the eternal Logos is both ‘unconditionally elect’ and ‘effectually called’ insofar that He freely chooses to become us that we might become Him by the grace of adoption (think of II Cor. 8:9 and the mirifica commutatio ‘wonderful exchange’). In this frame, Christ, God’s personal grace for the world, from within the triune Life, as the mediator between God and humanity, as our High Priest, enters into the sinful reprobate status all of humanity is born into; putting it to death at the cross; and rising anew as God’s humanity for the world, the second and greater Adam, the ‘firstborn from the dead,’ God’s ‘firstfruits,’ whereby humanity, in Christ’s humanity, the only genuine humanity coram Deo (before God) has been truly humanized in and from the humanizing humanity of Jesus Christ. As He, in His vicarious humanity said Yes to the Father for us, we by a correspondence of His faith, by the same Spirit’s breath now have the freedom of God to say yes and amen to God, acknowledging all that God has provided for us in His salvation for all of humanity (which is first His humanity for us).

So, for the AR, total depravity/total inability, to use those terms, is indeed a real problem for a humanity incurved upon itself (homo incurvatus in se). But what is different for AR is that on the one hand grace isn’t an abstract quality given to the elect, like created grace is, as maintained by the classical Calvinists (like White); on the other hand, grace, and being unilaterally placed into God’s grace is a necessity if fallen humanity is going to have the capacity to indeed seek God and receive His salvation for them. Further, contra the Arminian, or Flowers’ so-called provisionism, fallen humanity, again, is in need of God’s unilateral movement of placing us into His re-created and elect life in Christ, if in fact we are going to be able to speak of a genuine human freedom. So, against the Provisionists, AR maintains that in order to be truly human before God, that is to have genuine human freedom for God, that that must first be provided for all of humanity in and through God’s disruptive gracious humanity as that penetrates our dead humanity, giving us a new and real human life in His.

Hence, God’s unconditional election is inclusive of all of humanity, since the only humanity to be assumed in the incarnation was the fallen humanity. Jesus was “effectually called” (and I put that in quotes because AR does not affirm the Aristotelian causal theory that classical Calvinists do), freely coming for us, taking all of humanity with Him, as the second Adam, to the right hand of the Father. Why all of humanity does not finally affirm God’s election for us in Christ, seeing that all of the conditions for salvation have already been fully actualized in God’s humanity for the world, remains an aspect of the surd-like and inscrutable mystery of sin. All are elect in Christ, but not all finally come. We know why people do come, but sin keeps us in the dark in regard to why some don’t ultimately repent and acknowledge what God has already done, provided, and actualized for them in the real humanity of Christ.

In closing, with reference to John 6 and its grammar: verse 44 says, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” Here, the doubly consubstantial life of Jesus, who is both the eternal Son, who is fully God, and who is also fully human, is theologically present in this clause. That is to say, in the analogy of the incarnation, the ‘Me’ and the ‘Father’ (insofar as the person and works of God are indivisible) are in reference to God’s life, and at the same time, in reference to God’s life of salvation actualized for the world in the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ. Theologically the “draws him,” with reference to the ‘him,’ remains in the singular, insofar that the [hu]man who was first drawn of God, was God’s particular humanity for the world in Jesus Christ. He will indeed be “raised up on the last day” whereby every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord; and all of humanity, all of those who have repented, out of Christ’s repentance for us, will be exalted in consummate form with Him as the new creations we have become as participants in Christ’s new and resurrected humanity for us.

In a canonical way it is fitting then to close this post with reference to another Apostle, Paul:

May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? ³ Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? ⁴ Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. ⁵ For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, ⁶ knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; ⁷ for he who has died is freed from sin. -Romans 6:1-7

What we have been referring to as election and the vicarious humanity of Christ also finds biblical reference to Paul’s theological motif of ‘in Christ’ theology. It is really a doctrine of union with Christ that we are concerned with, and what is the entailment of a proper doctrine of pre-destination and election; insofar that what salvation involves first involves God’s choice to be for us in the humanity of Jesus Christ. And this free election of God’s becomes what we grammatically call the hypostatic union wherein God and humanity are united as God becomes humanity that we might become partakers of the divine nature in and through the person of Jesus Christ. But you see then how this involves a doctrine of unio cum Christo (union with Christ).

The Christ, as God’s Unconditionally Elect Human for the World

Christ’s atonement is limited to Christ’s vicarious humanity for the world. As the ‘firstborn from the dead’ He is the second and greater Adam, wherein all of humanity, from Christ’s elect humanity, comes to have the capacity, in echo of Christ’s Yes and Amen for us, to say Yes and Amen by the Spirit, to the Father. Christ is God’s unconditionally elect human for the world, and it is in His humanity that we come to have the capacity to truly be human; insofar that the entailments of what it means to be genuinely human is to be in right and reconciled relationship with the triune God. ‘In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.’ It is for those who are spiritually in union with Christ (not just carnally or objectively) that God’s election for the world in Christ becomes fully realized and actualized; and this, because it has first been fully realized and actualized in the vicarious humanity, the vicarious repentance, the vicarious faith of Christ pro nobis (for us). See the Koine Greek pistis Christou and the subjective genitive for further exegetical support.

Countering the Abstract Faith of Augustine and Pelagius with the Concrete Faith of Christ

An abstract notion of saving faith, based on an abstract, or even undefined doctrine of election, always must attempt to make itself concrete. It must seek a way to fill in the gap created by a notion of faith wherein the believer believes out of an idea of faith that is seemingly inherent to them, or individually gifted to THEM.

The antidote to this abstract notion of faith is to come to understand that people believe or trust out of Christ’s vicarious faith for us. It is by His poverty for us that we have become rich; that we can become rich; by saying Yes and Amen in echo of his Yes and Amen that He is for us in the bosom of the Father. In this scenario the believer doesn’t have to figure out a way to make “their salvation” concrete; they don’t have to figure out a way for salvation to be a more sure word for them. The fact that God incarnated for all of humanity by assuming our humanity for Himself reveals the fact that God has already decided to save humanity in His humanity for us in Jesus Christ. This isn’t to suggest that there are a bunch of anonymous Christians running around out there, we must still acknowledge that He alone is salvation for us; but the way that has been forged is through Christ’s humanity penetrating into the depths of our humanity; putting it to death; raising anew as the new humanity before God, with God. When He raised, He raised us with Him. He provided humanity with the possibility to say Yes to God, whereas prior to His Self-penetration into our lives through incarnation, we had no capacity to say Yes to God. We were born dead in our trespasses and sins. Those sins only allowed for us to love ourselves; to have an inward curvature of the heart; to operate in a sphere of competing loves that all are cored by a basket of self-loves. We were trapped with no way out of our feckless statuses as sinners. But Christ, God’s Good News for the world has made a way for us; indeed, as He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life for the world, for us.

Reading the Prodigal Son Story as an Illustration of a Familial Rather than Legal Relationship

Here at Athanasian Reformed we often talk about soteriology; indeed, as a nexus interlinked with a whole host of other theological loci, within a theological taxis (order). I was once again reminded by someone on X/Twitter that not everyone thinks these matters through the inner-theological reality present within the warp and woof of Holy Scripture; they simply skim the outer-textual-top and think they have somehow penetrated the marrow therein. But as is the case, the biblical marrow is only gotten at when the reader understands the Bible’s res (reality): i.e., Jesus Christ. When Scripture is “exegeted” through a Ramist place logic, logico-deductive schemata (as TF Torrance refers to Ramism), the purported exegete ends up with a text that thinks in abstraction, and out of a disordered order vis-à-vis its triune givenness as that has been provided for by God’s Self-exegesis/interpretation of Himself in Jesus Christ (cf. I John 1:18). As TF Torrance rightly notes (paraphrase): the context of the text of Holy Scripture is Jesus Christ. Since this is the case (without elaborating on what that entails), to read Scripture from within a center in yourself, as law-based, Augustinian based readings tend to do, is to disregard the clear Dominical teaching that Jesus Himself is God’s center for us; and it is within this relational/dialogical center wherein Scripture comes to have contextual-canonical referent and meaning.

Here is the post, on X/Twitter that reminded me of how important it is to have a properly formed, genuinely Christian biblical hermeneutic:

Romans 4:5 the verse abused by unemployed salvationists who think it means u can be ungodly have faith & never have works & be saved satan loves fooling ppl who want to cling to their flesh bcuz they can’t discern scripture talking about how the old covenant law can’t save [sic]

This Xr’s handle is @ osasisHERESY (i.e., once saved always saved is heresy). I’m simply snagging this guy’s assertion, about salvation, because it serves exemplary for how many many people think salvation (at least as that gets expressed online, and even in the literature). As my original tag, as I retweeted his post noted: “Doesn’t understand God’s Grace. He has separated the Person of grace from the works of grace, and placed the works of grace on us rather than Christ. Historically this is known as moralistic Pelagianism.” This poster’s thinking is really a subset of a larger soteriological frame that Latin (Western) Christianity has inherited, at pervasive levels; whether that be Catholic or Protestant iterations.

What I want to do with the rest of this post is use Luke 15, and the famous Dominical teaching, therein, on the prodigal son. I want to offer two different frames, and show how those frames, as the interpretive lenses, respectively, bear on an exegetical conclusion relative to the topic at hand. That is: “when someone is genuinely born again of an imperishable seed, is it possible to then lose this imperishable seed (as our poster on X asserts is the case)?” Depending on what the frame is, that is used to read the prodigal son story, will lead to variant theological-exegetical conclusions. As will become evident, what I am doing with Luke 15 ends up being something like a theological thought experiment; with the intention of illustrating how a broader understanding of soteriological theory is working within the canonical text of Holy Scripture. That is to say, I am not attempting to maximally prove from our passage that a so-called ‘once-saved-always-saved’ frame is indeed the frame present within a reading of Luke 15. Instead, more minimally, I am using the prodigal son narrative to suggestively illustrate what a law-based reading of salvation looks like juxtaposed with what I will call a familial (which could also be called filial or marital, by way of other biblical analogies/realities). The Christologically conditioned hermeneutic I am attempting to illustrate, through engagement with Luke 15, comes from a depth dimensional or deeper engagement with the context of the text of Holy Scripture, as that is provided for by the Christ. That is the aim of my post: to suggestively illustrate, at a theological level, that if the so-called prodigal son was in a work-release program set by his judge (father), then a so-called once-saved-always-saved frame (which our X poster calls “hyper grace”) would indeed, end up being sorely deficient and errant. But if the frame is understood, even as the immediate context provides for, as a familial relationship, as a father-son relationship seemingly gone awry, then the way we read this will end up illustrating how salvation, in the Bible, should be understood, indeed, as a familial relationship wherein the relationship can never be lost (it is biological, of a supranatural level, as it were—i.e., based on the shed blood of Immanuel’s veins; we as his adopted brothers and sisters).

 

The Text: Luke 15.11–32, The Prodigal Son

¹¹ And He said, “A man had two sons. ¹² The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.’ So he divided his wealth between them. ¹³ And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living. ¹⁴ Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished. ¹⁵ So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. ¹⁶ And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him. ¹⁷ But when he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger! ¹⁸ I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men.”’ ²⁰ So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. ²¹ And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ ²² But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; ²³ and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; ²⁴ for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’ And they began to celebrate.

²⁵ “Now his older son was in the field, and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ And he summoned one of the servants and began inquiring what these things could be. ²⁷ And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound.’ ²⁸ But he became angry and was not willing to go in; and his father came out and began pleading with him. ²⁹ But he answered and said to his father, ‘Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends; ³⁰ but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.’ ³¹ And he said to him, ‘Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost and has been found.’”

 

Law-Frame Reading

Let’s think our passage through a Law-Frame rather than a Familial-Frame. The Law-Frame is the frame our Xr is using to arrive at the conclusion that someone can “lose their salvation.” The Law-Frame reading of Luke 15 would set the father-son relationship up as a judge-subject-criminal relationship. The son-subject in this frame would have run away from the legal jurisdiction of his judge, and from there engage in further perverse and potentially even criminal (law-breaking) behavior. As the son-subject ran out of resources, he would attempt to go back to his judge-father seeking mercy from the court; seeking permission back into the welfare system that he had available to him prior to his criminal fleeing. But since the judge isn’t the subject’s father, there is no necessary (biological-familial) relationship present; as such a merciful, even gracious relationship is not present, leaving the subject at the court’s mercy. But the court has no latitude available to it, even it if wanted to merciful, and allow the subject back into the kingdom. The subject, because of disobedience (to stay within the boundary of the judge’s jurisdiction, the kingdom), must prove by his obedience, by his performance, that he is a trustworthy client of the kingdom; bearing fruits showing himself worthy of the conditions set forth by the kingdom and its judge, in order to be provisionally let back into the kingdom. As the subject-son came back from the far country he would have to forever meet the conditions of the kingdom, set-out by the judge, in order to stay in the kingdom; otherwise, he would be cast out of the kingdom, forever, and this based on his lack of obedience and performance before the judge and the suitors he represents in the kingdom. The whole relationship is contingent not on the judge, but on the subject’s-son’s ability and desire to keep the codes of the kingdom. Outwith that type of obedience there is no legal place for the subject to be a son of the kingdom.

Familial-Frame Reading/Judge judged

This frame requires less development, since it is the immediate frame and context of our passage in Luke 15. The father-son relationship is the frame. The son has all the resources of the father available by pure virtue of him being his father’s son. He doesn’t have to perform for them, there is no obedience required of him, he simply has these resources (to one degree or another) available to him as one who was born into his father’s family. This is most clearly evidenced by the fact that when the son chooses to rebel, and be disobedient and “squanderous” with his father’s resources (and freedoms), that the son, no matter what kingdom he is apparently living in, remains the father’s son. When the son realizes what a fool he’s been he simply goes back to his father, seeking his father’s mercy. But remember, the whole time, the whole season, he remained the father’s son; not because of who the son had chosen to become, outside the normal expectations of the family, but based on the seed of the father that remained in the son, no matter how the son performed or “dis-performed.” When the son came back to the father, the father welcomed him back as if a son from the dead. All that mattered to the father was that his son was alive, and had come home from his disobedience. None of this was based on legal conditions being met, but instead on the fact that the son was simply the son of the father by birth. Within that relationship there was nothing thicker than the blood that bonded the son and the father together, not even the son’s disobedience.

How much more then is the blood thicker than any of our disobediences that might attempt to dis-bond us from our heavenly Father? The Son’s blood, is indeed of the imperishable seed, from the indestructible life of the triune life for the world in Jesus Christ. Within God’s covenant of grace, He is first and foremost our Father; indeed, on analogy, as He was and is the Father of Israel; indeed, and Jesus ultimately being the consummate Israel of God. We are so thoroughly entwined in the life of God, at the point of His conception for us in Christ, that the idea of being dis-bonded from him, based on some sort of extra-legal apparatus simply is the possible impossibility. This goes so far to even think that the legal apparatus was enforced, as in our first scenario, and the Son enters even into that relationship, who in fact is the Judge, and becomes the Judge judged for us (as Barth so rightly emphasizes).

Conclusion

As I noted in the beginning of this little post, the appeal to Luke 15 is only a minimalistic exercise. That is to say, I recognize that in fact the actual context of Luke 15 is Jesus referring to the expansiveness of His salvation offer over against the narrowness that the Pharisees and religious leaders of his day were offering. But in an attempt to suggestively illustrate how the Prodigal Son story would have looked much different, if framed from a nomist (law-based) reading of Scripture, I have taken the liberty of reframing it in a way that showed how the story itself would have no legs, no texture within the fabric of the Second Temple Judaic period that Jesus inhabited. So, there was something much deeper than law-keeping, that went beyond the cultic practices that the Pharisees et al. had absolutized and relativized to their Jewry. God’s relationship to the Jew and Gentile alike, according to Jesus, was and is based on the “God who first loved us, that we might love Him.” And because He knew we couldn’t love Him, in and of ourselves, or ever, He forged a way for us by “becoming us that we might become Him” by the grace of adoption; He feigned not to leave us as orphans, but instead, to make us His dearly beloved sons and daughters through the vicarious humanity, and big brother love of Jesus.

My hope is that readers, even antagonistic ones, might see how the frame we read Scripture through is all important. My money is on reading Scripture through its triune reality, given for us in the face of Jesus Christ. In His reality, there is space for disobedience; this, of course, is not the ideal, but it is the reality as we continuously remain simul justus et peccator (simultaneously justified and sinner) in this in-between not yet time.

A final note: to think of salvation as once saved always saved versus not once saved always saved, per se, or vice versa, is to think the frame of salvation from completely non-biblical errant theological premises. Salvation is God for us in Jesus Christ. God is elect for us in the humanity of Jesus Christ. God is the salvation that fills the gap that we never could between us and Him. God is Father of the Son / Son of the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit, and it is this life, this inner reality of the covenant between God and humanity, in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, wherein life eternal is wrought and won for all. We say Yes, as an echo of God’s Yes and Amen for us, who is the Christ. When we are found in Him, we are born again of an imperishable seed, that will endure as long as the Word of God. Indeed, the Word of God is Jesus Christ, and when we come into His life, as He first came into ours, it is in this combine of life that a person becomes “eternally secure” within the Father’s big hand. Within the Father’s hand it may superficially appear that they/we are falling or have fallen, but that is only the space between the Father’s upper and lower hand; they/we haven’t nor cannot escape His hands; not because of who we are for Him, but because of who He is for us: as Father of the Son / Son of the Father.

Clearly, there are people in the world who profess Christ, but have never become “possessors” (to use an old phrase); that is, who have never become ‘spiritually’ united to Christ. But de jure, when someone genuinely has come into spiritual union with the living God through Christ, there is in fact space for disobedience. This is not the aim, or the ideal, but it is in fact the reality. Any other Gospel other than this is a No-Gospel, based on a Pelagian type of performance and continuity of law-keeping; indeed, all the days of the “performer’s” life. If someone proclaims a Gospel to you that makes the Gospel contingent on you and your performance of the Gospel, then they are proclaiming to you another Gospel; may they be anathema.

Blessed Assurance: Reasoning Away Doubts About Salvation

I thought I would share a little theological exegetical reasoning I engaged in, almost 28 years ago now. This was before I had ever received any formal theological training; read any deep theology books; learned the original biblical languages, so on and so forth. But I had been a Christian since a young child; I had grown up in the home of a spiritually sensitive pastor’s home (my dad); and was around ‘biblicist’ churchy thought my whole life. So, it wasn’t like I had no theological resource, indeed, we operated with what today might be called Free Grace theology.

I was plunged into the depths of anxiety and depression, which was really the way the Lord apocalyptically intervened in my young 20 something life. He got me back on the right path, the path I had erred from after high school. I endured dark dark dark nights of the soul, most of it was deeply spiritual stuff. Part of that was that I went through a time of doubting my salvation. What didn’t help is that I was attending a semi-charismatic church at the time that didn’t offer any critical resource. Indeed, they veered Arminian when it came to thinking about soteriological matters; particularly, as that was focused on ‘keeping or losing salvation.’ This wasn’t what I needed. Even so, the Lord knew what I needed; I needed the concrete of His Word to minister to my bruised reed soul. Here’s how He did that at that point. This was the theological exegetical canonical reasoning the Spirit provided me with during that dark season. It went something like this:

²³ for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God. ²⁴ For,

“All flesh is like grass,
And all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
And the flower falls off,
²⁵ But the word of the Lord endures forever.”

And this is the word which was preached to you. –I Peter 1:23-25

¹⁷ But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. –I Corinthians 6:17

³¹ What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³² He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? ³³ Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; ³⁴ who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. ³⁵ Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶ Just as it is written,

“For Your sake we are being put to death all day long;
We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. –Romans 8:31-39

²⁸ and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. ²⁹ My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. ³⁰ I and the Father are one.” –John 10:28-30

¹⁷ Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. –II Corinthians 5:17

¹⁴ I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. –Ecclesiastes 3:14

² for the sake of the truth which abides in us and will be with us forever –II John 2

¹⁵ For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” ¹⁶ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷ and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. –Romans 8:15-17

¹⁸ There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. ¹⁹ We love, because He first loved us. –I John 4:18-19

¹¹ And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. ¹² He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.  ¹³ These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. –I John 5:11-13

 ¹³ If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. –II Timothy 2:13

The Holy Spirit had me engage in a disjunctive syllogistic type of reasoning, with the realities of the above passages as the premises. This was before I ever knew about syllogistic or logical reasoning like that; but nonetheless, I had been saturated in Scripture enough to have picked much up of that up through Paul’s reasoning, in particular. So, the reasoning went something like this:

1. You are in Christ, Bobby; a new creation.
2. You are one spirit with Christ, Bobby; in union with Him.
3. You have been born again of an imperishable seed, Bobby.
4. And what the LORD does is forever.
5. And the truth [who is the Christ] abides with you, Bobby, forever.
6. There is no fear in the Spirit, but only a knowledge of God as your Father, Bobby.
7. And if there is fearfulness of God, a fear that He might leave you, Bobby, even if you FEEL like you have left Him at points, this is not God’s perfect love; indeed, Bobby, God has loved you first::the burden is on Him to keep you, and not you. No man, not even yourself, Bobby, can pluck you out of the Father’s big hand. You might feel like you’re falling at points, but that’s only the space between the top of His hand to the bottom.
8. As a result of all of the above, since the LORD is for you, Bobby, nobody can be against you; not even yourself.
9. And even if you FEEL like you’re not “believing enough,” have fallen into sin, the LORD will not deny you Bobby, because you are part of Him now; and He CANNOT deny Himself.
10. And it is because of the work of the Spirit, bearing witness with your spirit, Bobby, that you can know, without a doubt that you always and forever belong to the Lord.
11. So, if all of the above is true, Bobby, then you belong to Jesus forever. There is nothing you or anyone else can do about that.

The above was the type of biblical theological reasoning that was running through my head over and over again, by the Holy Spirit. I found great comfort in this type of reasoning, to the point that whenever the Enemy would attempt, once again, to persecute my soul, I could stand on the more sure Word of prophecy from the Lord, as if bound up in God’s Gordian knot in Jesus Christ. Eventually those types of fears faded away with the wind, as the grass they were; indeed, the Word of the LORD endured, then, as it does now, and will forever.

Maybe you find yourself in these types of troubling waters of the soul. Maybe the “persecutor of the saints” is coming at you with these types of erroneous doubts; doubts that would cause you to look deeper into yourself, rather than higher unto Christ. Maybe the reasonings of the Holy Spirit, the ones He used (and uses) to comfort me, can comfort you. What the above reasonings should indicate, in fact, is that a doctrine of assurance of salvation isn’t really even a biblical category. Once adopted into the family of God, nothing can separate you from the love of Christ; not even yourself; not even sophisticated sounding theological arguments that turn out to be of that serpentine forked tongue doctrine known as semi-Pelagianism. Rest in the Christ. He first loved you that you might love Him. And He became you, He became sin, that we, by the grace of the adoption of His life as the Son for us, might become Him; co-heirs with the One whose life is an indestructible life.

Is it any wonder when I came across the Christ concentrated theology of Thomas Torrance (and Karl Barth) that it resonated with me so deeply? A passage like this from Torrance:

God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualised his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour.” -T. F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, 94.

Later in life I ended up writing a chapter for one of our edited books on a doctrine of assurance of salvation. But even without referring to that style of theologizing, hopefully the type I have shared in this post will serve sufficient for you to find an anchor for your soul in the resurrected and priestly humanity of Jesus Christ.

Luther Against the neo-Thomists and Performance Based Salvations

Performance based theories of salvation continue to plague the evangelical Protestant landscapes. Whether that be funded by a Reformed background (inclusive of Reformed proper, and Arminianism et al.), or Lutheran (either orthodox, and/or mainstream). When people are offered a notion of God wherein He is understood as a juridical God, one who relates to the world through a covenant of works/grace, or other like frameworks, at which point law-keeping sublimates grace into its image, those under this specter live a life of deep angst, always wondering if they are going to finally measure up (or persevere) unto the final reward: eternal life. What a sad state of affairs; this is not what Martin Luther was aiming toward when he protested against the scholastic theology of his Roman day. Luther internalized, unlike many, in fact, the requirements of a preparationist soteriology, wherein he was in a constant state of pilgrimage, striving towards the final merit of salvation; that is through deep introspection, and flagellation of his physical body. He believed God, under the conditions set forth by an Aristotelian-ly conceived notion of God (actus purus), hated him. He thought this because he felt the deep ditch between his own sinfulness up against the Holy God. And within this frame his only hope was to cooperate with God, through the means of grace dispensed by the Holy Roman Catholic church, to the point that he might finally assuage God’s judgment by somehow achieving the righteousness of Jesus Christ. The problem with Luther’s system though, and that of the late medieval/scholastic church, is that there was never a time where this type of assurance of achievement could ever be reached. And so, Luther tormentuously labored under this great weight of despondency and failed effort before the God who hated him (or that’s how Luther felt).

So, when Luther was encouraged by his father in the faith, Johann von Staupitz, to read the New Testament for himself in Greek, Luther was introduced to the strange new world of the Bible/NT (to borrow a phrase from Barth). Here he came to understand that the Christian could only be found righteous before the living God as that person was in participation with, in union with the risen Christ. Luther came to understand that he could do absolutely nothing to achieve this righteousness; that his good works, and self-flagellation could never bring him any closer to eternal life. Because of the breath of Holy Scripture, Luther, over against the scholastic theology of his Augustinianism, came to realize that he could only rest in the grace of God alone, that was stood in by faith alone in Christ alone. Once he was struck with this lightning bolt of revelation, as it were, his fears and anxieties melted away, only to be replaced with a boldness before the living God, the church, and the world; to the point that Luther would stare down the barrel of the Holy Roman gun of the papacy itself.

From a materially theological point of view Luther came to understand that he had to stand up against the Thomist/Aristotelian anthropology and soteriology that had led him, and so many others in the society, into the dregs of the belief that God was angry and hated him and them. Simeon Zahl writes the following with reference to this Luther[an] theological milieu:

More specifically, from Luther onwards Protestants have argued that one of the chief problems with the sort of model articulated in neo-Thomist soteriology is that it is fundamentally overoptimistic about Christian ethical transformation. The Protestant argument against a soteriology focused on the ontological infusion in the Christian of sanctifying grace is that, for all its intellectual elegance and coherence, it simply does not work very well in practice, and certainly not well enough to function as the core dynamic through which salvation comes about. Protestant spirituality is traditionally focused very substantially, especially where salvation is concerned, on what we might call the “rhetoric of passivity.” What I mean by this is the sense that much of the force of the Christian message is precisely its efficacious protest, in and through the work of Christ, against the natural human tendency to freight our day-to-day actions and feelings with soteriological or crypto-soteriological significance. It is just this freighting, basic to the neo-Thomist vision, that Martin Luther found punishing and terrifying rather than inspiring or transformative or productive of meaning.[1]

Precisely because of the retrieval movement underway within, mostly, evangelical Reformed theology, many Christians in the churches, unbeknownst to them, are being hampered by the recovery of the very theological themes that Luther et al. was attempting to thwart with reference to thinking God under the conditions set forth by Thomas Aquinas, and his reception among Post Reformed orthodox theologies.

All the aforementioned to state: the original Protestant, Martin Luther, had no intention of starting a reformation that would ultimately stillbirth, by collapsing back into the very Thomistic/Aristotelian themes he felt so burdened and tortured by. Luther desired that all would finally be set free from the stringencies provided for by thinking of God in terms of the Big Brain in the Sky, who also happened to be the Great-Law-Giver in the sky, with no grace or mercy for the fallen and bruised reeds of the world. Luther attempted to perform for his salvation, just as the Pharisee, who became an Apostle, Paul was attempting to do under his own distorted understanding of appeasing God through law-keeping (even if the conditions between Luther’s theological times and Paul’s were not exactly parallel).

Christian, if you are feeling like a Luther, beat down by false doctrines of God, undone by performance and law-based understandings of salvation; take heart! The Christ has come to not only declare, but to in fact be the Good News of great joy, of great peace, for the whole world. His is a life of absolute and immediate grace that brings the wayfarers into the heavenly throne room, where the burden is light. Jesus, as Luther came to understand, has already performed God’s salvation for us. The call, in light of this reality, is to simply rest in the finished work and person of God in Jesus Christ; for He is indeed, God’s salvation for you, for me, for the world-wide. When you’re tempted to look inward, know that Christ went inward for us, that we might finally look upward to the very being of our life in God’s being in becoming for us in the concrete humanity of Jesus Christ. Throw off every hindrance that would seek to bog you down in the liable of the devil; and finish, not in the flesh, but in the Spirit who has become for you, through the vicarious humanity of Christ, God’s guarantee of salvation come, and coming again.

[1] Simeon Zahl, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 116 kindle ed.

The Freedom of the Human Before God: Getting Beyond the Usual Debates

What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be free? These are the types of questions that have often plagued the Christian theological dialogue for centuries. Indeed, these theoanthropological loci have been the source of much consternation and division; that is, depending on how disparate Christian thinkers conclude on an answer to these questions. Often, whether in the theological or philosophical realms, answering these questions are reduced to, generally, two disparate tribes: 1) Arminian/Libertarian Free Agency, and 2) Calvinism/Compatibilist Determinism. There are of course other iterations of expression along the continuum that these seemingly two polar opposites are comprised of; but again, and generally speaking, this is what we have seen play out—with reference to our original questions—within the development and history of theological ideas (e.g., Augustine/Pelagius; Luther/Erasmus; Calvin/Pighius et al.)

In contradistinction, Athanasian Reformed theology, after Barth (and Athanasius), elides the seemingly unavoidable binary that the annals of history have been scorched by. We focus on the freedom of God as the only ground from whence any notion of freedom might be construed. The arguments surrounding freewill vis-à-vis human agency, before God, all start with an abstract soteriological question bequeathed to the church by, primarily, St. Augustine. Augustine’s bequeathment comes primarily from his commitment to Neo-Platonism, and how he thought of the relation between the eternal forms and their shadows in temporal history. Without getting into that now, we can only gesture at it for time and space constraints. It is Barth, as already noted, who offers an alternative way to reformulate these questions and answers; not from an abstract lens grounded in various humanity for whom God gave His life alone; but from the concrete humanity of God, as that is given for us in Jesus Christ. When Jesus is the ground from whence all theological questions flow, we are sure to be provided with the answers that God has freely chosen to bequeath upon us by His dearly beloved Son.

In the following passage from Barth, he is describing what, from his christological lights, a genuine human being is comprised by. In a way, without all of the context, when the reader reads this, it might sound like Barth is speaking abstractly about a needed performativity of humanity before God. But know, he is referring to God’s humanity for us in Jesus Christ (and yet, dialectically so).

What can and does happen in the human decision as such is that man offers himself to God. He thanks God. He is responsible before God, i.e., he makes himself a response to the Word of God—no less but also no more than that. He gives what he has, i.e., what he is, and therefore himself. No less than this is required of him. Less than this is not sufficient to constitute true humanity. To offer himself and place himself at the disposal of God—it is to this that he is summoned and for this that he is strengthened and empowered. Doing this, he is established as a human subject, and posits himself as such. Failing to do it, he fails to realise himself as man. For to do this is his only possibility. Offering and disposing himself to go to God and to be obedient to the divine call: “Come,” he pushes open the gate and steps out into freedom. As he does so, he is a creature which transcends the limits of the creature. And in this way he is the human creature. No less than this is required of him. If he did not do this, if he decided differently, he would not be man. But also no more is required of him. It is not required of him that he should make himself into a gift which necessarily satisfies and pleases God. It is required of him rather that he should know himself and will himself on the basis of the fact that he is called by God; that he should affirm himself as the being which sets out on its journey to God and is therefore taking the step of freedom. But it is not required of him that he should place himself at the side of God, or that his action should decide or anticipate this justification before God. He can take the first step, but he cannot ensure that it will successfully lead him to the goal at which he aims. He cannot give mor than he has. It is not within his power to make himself right and acceptable and well-pleasing to his Creator, and therefore worthy of being with Him. This is a matter beyond his control. He cannot impart or attribute it to himself. He cannot ensure that he will come to God merely by setting out to go to Him. Hence his going to God, his responsibility before Him, must be of such a kind as to realise and express his limitation. It must be a pure self-offering. It must be free from any sort of encroachment. It must renounce any suggestion that man’s decision might anticipate the decision which only God can take. Man’s responsibility before God must consist in a self-offering to God which is referred to God’s own decision and dependent upon it. Only when it has this character does it happen that man comes as well as goes to God, so that he himself transcends the limits of the creature and is thus a human creature, real man.[1]

Barth’s claim that to be ‘real man,’ that the creature must transcend his own impotent limits, is functioning as something like a witness. A witness to the reality that what is required of ‘real man’ remains the impossible possibility that really and ultimately can and has only been achieved by the Son of Man for us. The underlying premise to Barth’s inklings on ‘real man’ is clearly in reference to who he takes to be the only real man in all of history: i.e., Jesus Christ.

Getting back to the opening of this article, the reader might be wondering how the aforementioned gets us past the binary that say Calvinism and Arminianism operate from vis-à-vis human agency/freewill in salvation. Barth, rather than starting in abstract people, those who have been “predestined” to be the elect of God, starts with the premise of a concrete person; the Theanthropos (Godman). What this move does is focus our attention on the altitudes God is expecting of [hu]man to genuinely be [hu]man. God has a holy requirement that a genuine humanity will meet in relationship to who God is. Since fallen humanity is unable to reach these heights it is has been required of God, if indeed reconciliation is to obtain between God and humanity, that God provide ‘Himself a lamb.’ It is God’s desire, because of who He is as eternal and triune love, within Himself, that God created to begin with. It is God’s desire to have fellowship and participation with us as counterpoints upon whom He, in His other-processive life, might fellowship and enjoy eternal bliss with. And it has always already been God’s free choice, to be God’s image for us in Jesus Christ (Col. 1.15); indeed, this has always been the goal of original creation in the first place: to elevate us in the humanity of Christ, His image for us, into eternal participation and interpenetration with Him by the grace of adoption. And so in this, He pre-destined Himself to be for us as He elected to be us in the humanity of Jesus Christ, that we might, again by grace, become one spirit with Him (I Cor. 6.17).

All of the above noted, the reader still might be wondering: “okay, so how does this implicate human freedom in salvation?” In a nutshell, it works off the assumption that there is only one genuine freedom for the human being to truly be free from—God’s, since God alone is free. This is how [hu]man ‘transcends the limits of the creature and is thus a human creature, real man.’ He or she moves within the freedom for God that God is first for us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. Jesus has trailblazed the way for a real humanity, as the firstborn from the dead, to become real humanity; that is rightly related to God, as God has always intended. By the Spirit, the human can now correspondently say Yes and Amen to God, from God’s Yes and Amen for them in the vicarious human agency of Jesus Christ. Our freedom as human beings before God is funded by God’s freedom to be for us; and in this freedom, as we become united to Christ, not just ‘carnally’ but ‘spiritually,’ it is herein whence the human being becomes genuinely human. This is because, following the logic we have been operating with thus far, based on the premises set by Barth, what it means to be really human is to really be resident in the bosom of the Father through participation and union with the Son. We seek God, therefore, because He has first sought us in Christ. He is free to do that, and ironically, by His very freedom, by Him penetrating the ‘unhealed’ of our fallen human natures through the hypostatic unioning in the incarnation, we become participant in His freedom. It is a freedom that only has eyes for the living God. And it is these eyes that portend the entailments of what it genuinely means to be human and free; that is in right and forever relationship with the God who created us just for this very purpose.

More to be said, of course! But hopefully you can start to see, maybe only in a liminal way (but hopefully more!) how this reframing of things, that is through a christological frame, gets us far beyond the usual antics that surround this long and entrenched battle between the saints of old and today.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2 §44 The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 182.

The Free Grace of God Counterposed with a Law Based Grace

How does the Christian know the depth of sin; how does anyone? How does a Christian have knowledge of themselves; how does anyone? According to Scripture we only know the depth of human sin through God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. To think sin, to think humanity even, from any other ground than the ground of God’s Light of Light for the world in Jesus Christ will give us a skewed sense, a perverted perspective on just who we are as fallen humanity. Until we come to the realization and understanding of the depth dimension of our status as fallen creatures, before a Holy God, we will not be able to live life from and in the straight way. We will construct images of God in images of ourselves, and think that we are in fact “good people”; even though Scripture alone tells us, as it attests to Christ, that we are in fact bad people in need of justification before God. The incarnation of God demonstrates, beyond a shadow of doubt, that our personal status as sinners required the Creator of all life to become His creation in the humanity of Christ, and enter into the consequences of what we have brought to pass as sinners—a rupture between the “good life” God had always intended as we lived in “fellowshipped” lives within His triune life. What Christ’s life demonstrates for us, is that what it means to be genuinely human is to be Holy as God is Holy. What Christ’s life does, as He penetrates our lives by His vicarious humanity, is reveal God to, for, in and with us, and through His reconciling work brings us into His capacity to see and know God. And it is from this whence that we as human beings are adopted back into the place God had always already intended for us as counterpoints of His overflowing and superabundant life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love.

Thomas Torrance spells the aforementioned out in the following way:

The human situation as revealed by the breaking in of the kingdom of God in Christ

The vexation and compassion of God in Christ over the distress of humanity

If we are to be true to the witness of the Gospels, the point from which we must begin here is the vexation of the heavenly Father over the condition of his children. God in Christ is burdened with the griefs and pains of men and women. He does not will their hurt or distress or destruction, but on the contrary wills that they shall be made whole, and therefore God allies himself with them against the evil that afflicts them and intervenes as the enemy of all that destroys humanity. That is the primary revelation of man in the light of the kingdom, a revelation that comes from the fact that God the Father looks upon men and women in compassion and vexation as he sees their fears and anxieties, their torments and sorrows and hunger and oppression. That is why the Acts of the Apostles can sum up what it has to say about the ministry of Jesus by the words that he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed with the devil, while the evangelists all show how much Jesus carried upon his spirit the burden of people’s ills and hurts and gave himself to them in healing.

But what vexes and distresses God in Christ is not simply the sickness and pain of humanity but the fact that it is engulfed in an abyss of fearful darkness, too deep for men and women themselves to understand and certainly too deep for them ever to get out of it—a pit of bottomless evil power. Mankind is entangled in sin not wholly of its own making, enmeshed in the toils of a vast evil will quite beyond it; it is chained in terror and is dragged down and down into the poisonous source or pit of evil. It is evil at its ultimate source, evil at its deepest root, in its stronghold, that God has come to attack and destroy.

This revelation of the condition of humanity from the vexation of God is supported and redoubled by the fact that God in Christ acts towards mankind in its helplessness and distress in sheer grace, grace that is utterly free. Nowhere does Jesus accuse the sick of their sins before he stoops to shoulder their weakness (astheneia). The astounding thing is that God does not put responsibility upon them but takes the responsibility on himself. That is the most miraculous thing about the miracles and healings, the fact that God comes among sinners and makes himself responsible for their condition and even takes their sin and culpability upon himself vicariously. But that in turn reveals the ultimate helplessness and hopelessness of man, apart from such a stupendous act of divine grace.[1]

What is most pressing, at least for me, with reference with Torrance’s above writing, is how he emphasizes the role of God’s utterly free grace. That is to say, God doesn’t come as the punisher, but the slain Lamb. He doesn’t condemn the world; He redeems the world in Jesus Christ. This is the Good News: that God in Christ, who, rightly, could in fact condemn us for not being Holy as He is Holy, has entered into our depraved state, and reversed the curse of the whole thing. It is this reversal that the Christian has been redeemed by; and it is this reversal that the Christian, as an ambassador of Christ, has the privilege of declaring to the world that they too have been given freedom in Christ, the very power of God; and that this freedom is grounded in the eternally triune life of the living God.

The above is very different from the juridical gospel being communicated to many in the world; whether that be of the Protestant or Roman flavor. The juridical gospel has Jesus coming to the world as the instrument of an absolute decree, wherein He meets the forensic requirements of salvation for the world so that the elect (out of the world) might finally be loved by God. Do you notice the shift between the latter and the free grace view? God, in the latter view, primarily relates to the world as a brute Creator and Law-giver. Because the Law (Covenant of Works) has been broken God is no longer free to love His good creation; that is, not until the consequences of failing to meet God’s love are paid for. In this account, once God has found a feasible payment plan, He is free to love those he paid the fee for.

Even through this brief sketch of things it ought to be apparent that what is at stake, between these and various other competing theology propers, is the way we think of who God is. It is one thing to understand that without knowledge of God we cannot have knowledge of ourselves (and our sin, so on and so forth). But it is another thing to actually get a doctrine of God right. If we fail at that, we won’t have a real knowledge of ourselves, or the condition of the world around us. These are heavy matters that require prayer and sobriety as we consider them before the living God. Who are you God? If you have seen Me (Jesus), you have seen the Father.

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: the Person and Life of Christ, edited by Robert T. Walker (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2008), 240-41.