Richard Muller‘s Christ and the Decree is an historical account of the development of theological thought from the Reformation through to the Post-Reformation, more precisely, of Christology and Predestination from Calvin to Perkins. I’m reading this with a bunch of good fellas from college during the holidays, and hoping to summarise my findings here! Sorry if it’s a little boring, it really just helps me process my thoughts!
In Christ and the Decree, Muller notices a tendency to for some modern (and now outdated) scholarship to grant Calvin a Christological focus, but deny the post-reformers a similar Christological focus. In other words, Calvin was Christocentric, and the post-Reformers were overtly mesmerized by the decree which grounds predestination. Or even, as some have oversimplified: Calvin vs. the Calvinists (see Paul Helm’s rebuttal here). As a historical theologian, Muller argues, that this is far too grand an assertion, and that the issues at hand are much more nuanced than the neo-orthodox school, or R.T. Kendall would like to imagine. The question is not whether Calvin is a scriptural theologian, and those Calvinists who came after him were speculative theologians, but what of Calvin’s thought was changed and improved within the context of key post-Calvinian theologians.
The introductory chapter of the book lays out the history of Reformation and Post-Reformation interpretation, by bringing attention to the reader the tendency of some scholars to search for a ‘central dogma’ in the thought of the Post-Reformation; a zeitgeist as it were.
So Muller maps out his course of action as twofold: 1) conduct an exposition of predestination and Christology in early Reformed orthodoxy, and 2) analyse their relationship to each other with respect to the soteriological matrix of the reformation theologian. In other words, the task is comparative dogmatics.
The first chapter concerns the theology of the great John Calvin. Because God is, among other attributes, infinite, omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, and man is finite, and limited in knowledge, presence and power, Calvin asserts that man needs a mediator to bridge the gulf of creator and creature – this is Christ who is both infinite and finite; omniscient and limited, omnipresent and local, omnipotent and humanly-empowered. Thus, Calvin writes of Christ:
“Here is something marvellous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin’s womb, to go about earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning.” (Institutes, II.xiii.4)
This is what has been coined the extra Calvinisticum: finitum non capax infiniti (the finite cannot grasp the infinite). Therefore, we do not comprehend the divinity of the Son, but only its revelation in the flesh. This is important for Calvin because it means that we cannot seek to apprehend God apart from Christ, yet on the other hand, we cannot comprehend the hidden mind of God (e.g., comprehending predestination) because He is infinite.
With Calvin’s Christology, we see that he begins not with the hypostatic union of two natures in one person, but with the Anselmic need for a God-man to rescue us from our sins. This is interesting, because it means for Calvin, Christ as mediator is determinative of his person. Moreover, for Calvin, the proper ground for Christology is Christ-as-mediator, in other words: Soteriology. This is neither a ‘Christology from above’ nor a ‘Christology from below,’ but Christ-as-Mediator.
For Calvin, the 3-fold office of Christ’s work (Prophet, Priest and King) is determinative of the person of Christ; the unity of Christ’s person is bound to the unity of Christ’s work. Thus, the focus of the act of mediation is divine-human person, rather than the flesh assumed by the divine person. One of the implications of this for Calvin, is that a limiting factor of Soteriology is Christ’s work of intercession. The ascended Christ turns the Father’s gaze away from our sins and towards His righteousness, which means that in Calvin’s thought, and as per Romans 8:32-34, the extent of the atonement is coextensive with the scope of who Christ intercedes for.
In this chapter, Muller summarises the three points of contact between Christology and Predestination in Calvin:
- The definition of election is “in Christ”
- Predestination is only known in Christ
- Christ is the author of election as is the Father.
And to finish, Muller summarises: “And just as his person, the agency, the center, and ultimately the content of revelation points back from the historical to the eternal trinitarian identity of God, so does his office as mediator, itself the fulfillment of the threefold mediation of the Old Covenant, point back from itself as medius, as midpoint, to the saving decree which he effects in the elect.” (p38).
I found this chapter quite a challenging read, but one which really spurred on a whole lot of thought. Calvin’s functional Christology is fascinating, and really shed some more light on how he, and perhaps the reformers I’ll discover in the coming weeks, defined the atonement. Moreover, it demonstrates that far from being speculative, the decree of predestination and its execution in time do not have a speculative bent in Calvinian theology. Soteriology is the focus, and Christ is at the center.
… But neither were the Calvinists … Who is a Calvinist anyway…? argues 
This looks fantastic! From 