Continue reading »]]> Have you ever wondered how Christ was all present, yet located locally in Jesus Christ of Nazareth? Have you ever wondered how Christ continued to uphold the universe yet walk around Jerusalem? Or, how did the fulness of deity dwell bodily in Christ (Col. 2:9)? In other words, how do we uphold the deity and the humanity of Christ?

This is quite a monumental subject, and something which I admit to be quite the learner about.  Yet, I think this doctrine of the Extra Calvinisticum is of crucial importance for Christology.

Usually attributed to John Calvin (by the Lutherans due to the debate on the ‘Real Presence’ in the Lord’s Supper), this is a very important and orthodox doctrine that I’ve been reading about lately.  Basically it states that in the Incarnation, God the Son retained his divine properties such as omnipresence, omniscience and immensity, and therefore Christ was not confined within the limits of a creaturely human. In other words, Christ was not less than divine nor less than human.  Later reformed theologians used the dictum: finitum non capax infinitum (the finite cannot grasp, or exhaust the infinite) to describe this.  The reverse is also true: the infinite God grasps finite human nature in the Incarnation.

One great passage in Calvin where this is explained is here:

“For even if the Word in his immeasurable essence united with the nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that he was confined therein.  Here is something marvelous: 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.13.4

As E. David Willis shows in his excellent study on the Extra Calvinisticum, this doctrine has undeniable orthodox catholicity – so much so, that Willis thinks a better term might be the Extra Catholicum! We find this doctrine in Cyril, Athanasius, Augustine, John of Damascus, Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas and the reformed orthodox in the 16th and 17th centuries.  I’ve listed these quotes and others, here.

One area which this doctrine is helpful is in protecting against kenotic theologies which claim that in the Incarnation, Christ emptied himself of divine properties such as omniscience or omnipresence.  This seems to be a mistaken exegesis of Philippians 2, where the reference to ‘emptying’ is taken to refer to Christ losing particular attributes, rather than referring to the general movement of descent from heaven to earth as a man.  The Extra protects Christ’s divinity by insisting that whilst fully man, Christ nevertheless filled the universe with His presence.  And although His glory was veiled within human flesh, he was still nevertheless utterly glorious as the fully divine second person of the Trinity.  Paul Helm describes this as follows:

“The Logos, as Calvin liked to say, in true Chalcedonian fashion, ‘remains what He was’; what happened was that at the Incarnation, while continuing to exist eternally in the form of God, the logos, in Incarnation, took the form of a servant.”  Calvin’s Ideas, p64.

The other area where the Extra Calvinisticum is very important is with respect to Christ as God’s revelation.  Without a doubt, Christ is the true revelation of God.  He is the true image of God (Col. 1) and the exact imprint of God (Heb. 1).  There is no other way to know the Father except through Him (John 14:6).  Yet, the Extra Calvinisticum supports revelation extra Christ – for instance, Scripture and General Revelation.  In other words, as Muller puts it:

“Christ, the God-man, the center of everything we can say about salvation, is not the center of everything we can say about God, and not even the rule for everything that we can say about the Word in its work of creation, providence and revelation.  The extra-Calvinisticum allows, therefore, both for a genuine revelation of God in nature, accomplished by the Word extra Christum or, as the fathers would have said, the Logos asarkos, and a special revelation of God focused soteriologically upon but not restricted to the person of Christ, the Logos ensarkos.”  Richard Muller, The Barth Legacy: New Athanasius or Origen Redivivus? A Response to T.F. Torrance.

As I see it, the Extra Calvinisticum brings great and helpful benefits to our understanding and love of God.  Firstly, it protects Chalcedonian Christology by preserving the humanity and deity of Christ against kenotic Christologies which empty Christ of His true divinity.  Secondly, it preserves General Revelation by admitting true revelation beyond the flesh of Christ (of course, sadly the unregenerate man suppresses the truth of God’s revelation as per Romans 1).  Thirdly, this brings some sense to the confusions surrounding the term ‘Christocentric.’  It insists upon a Soteriological Christocentrism whereby Christ is the beginning and center of Salvation (which is historically orthodox), yet banishes the idea of a Principial Christocentrism which insists that Christ (not Scripture) is the beginning, ground and center of all doctrine of God (which is not historically orthodox).  The danger of the wrong-headed idea of a Principial Christocentrism, Muller says is that: ”… it becomes a Christological reductionism, a ‘Christmonism,’ as some have labelled it.”  Muller, The Barth Legacy. p691.

All in all, I think that the Extra Calvinisticum is a wonderfully catholic and orthodox doctrine which frees us up from dangerous ideas about God, and allows us to rejoice in the greatness of our divine Saviour’s Incarnation which led to His gracious redemption of us!

Continue reading »]]> In this second section of Richard Muller’s, Christ and the Decree, he investigates three influential reformers who were contemporaries of John Calvin: Bullinger, Musculus, and Vermigli.  Unlike the Lutheran tradition, of whom Martin Luther was the source, the Reformed tradition had many influences apart of John Calvin.  Since this is the case, an investigation into the Reformed doctrines of predestination and Christology ought consider these sources – Muller restricts his analysis to these three.

Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575) was Zwingli’s successor in Zurich and produces three massive theological works: The Decades, The Compendium of Christian Religion, and the Second Helvetic Confession.  Bullinger develops a strong covenant-promise motif through his theology stemming from his exegesis of the protoevangelion of Genesis 3.  Christ becomes the mediator of this covenant of grace and executes the decree.  Bullinger has a functional Christology drawn not from the Anselmic theory as Calvin does, but rather from the historical goal of covenant promises.  With this historical-redemptive emphasis, it is no wonder then, that Bullinger’s doctrine of predestination is set within the soteriological locus of the Second Helvetic Confession.  Since election is executed in Christ, the Mediator, reprobation is outside of Christ and its causal explanation must be passed over in silence.

Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563)  was a highly reputed exegete and theologian who taught theology in Bern and produced commentaries on books of the Bible, and his Loci Communes in 1560.  He emphasised a General Covenant between God and creation, and a Special Covenant between God and the elect, and Christ was the Mediator of the Special Covenant.   So concerned with the historical effecting of God’s salvation was he, that he placed the atonement prior to Christology in his Loci.  He follows Calvin in utilising Anselm when formulating his functional Christology, and points out that Christ is the elect whereby he is the chosen head of the chosen people.  He includes a careful, and scholastic discussion of election and foreknowledge which produces less of a causal rigor than Calvin’s discussion of election.

Peter Martyr Vermigli (1500-1562) was an Oxford lecturer whose work was arranged and published posthumously by Robert Masson in 1576.  Interestingly, Masson arranged Vermigli’s Loci Communes as per Calvin’s 1559 Institutes.  Vermigli’s Christology follows the Reformed functional tradition of not separating the person and work of Christ.  On predestination, Vermigli’s work is completely different in approach to Calvin, but produces the same results.  Vermigli employs scholastic distinctions between absolute necessity (necessitas consequentis) and necessity of consequence (necessitas consequentiae) to differentiate between what we might know as primary and secondary causes.  This distinction produces the main difference between Vermigli and Calvin with the term ‘predestination.’  Because Vermigli accepts what Calvin rejects (a ‘permissive will’ in God), he would apply the term ‘predestination’ to the work of God in the salvation of the elect, and not to the passing over of the reprobate.   This highlights the fact that the concept of a ‘double decree’ in predestination was not simply a 17th century discussion, but an early orthodox one.

Epilogue:

Muller finished this ‘Early Orthodox’ section with an epilogue comparing Calvin to these three contemporaries.  Although there are 4 different approaches here, it is seen that the predestination of individuals is intimated related to Christology.  All four have a functional Christology, Calvin and Musculus share an Anselmic motivation, and Musculus and Bullinger involve a covenant of grace.

What can we learn from all this?

1. Whereas Calvin and Vermigli seem more oriented towards causality than Musculus and Bullinger, there is no motivation to undercut any Christological concerns.   Thus, causal emphasis does not necessarily imply Christologial concern.
2. Vermigli’s distinctions pertaining to God’s will would prove to be more influential than Calvin’s (eg., the uptake of decretive/permissive will).  Also, Vermigli’s infralapsarian position and scholastic distinction would carry more influence.  Thus, other theologians are also crucial to the development of Reformed doctrine.
3. It is to the definition of the doctrine, rather than simply the placement of the doctrine that we must look when examining the causal rigor of the system.   Thus, placement of a doctrine shouldn’t be the only factor of investigation.

Muller finishes the discussion of the early orthodox development of predestination, describing it as follows:

“…the doctrine as expressed by these thinkers was more than simply a scriptural doctrine: it was an Augustinian doctrine, argued as Augustine had argued it, as the divine resolution of the problem of original sin and human inability; and, likewise, it was a doctrine drawn perhaps grudgingly from the schoolmen, argued in the language of the scholastics as a doctrinal issue hedged by definitions of necessity and contingency, primary and secondary causality.”

Continue reading »]]> 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:

1. The definition of election is “in Christ”
2. Predestination is only known in Christ
3. 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.

Continue reading »]]> … But neither were the Calvinists … Who is a Calvinist anyway…? argues Richard Muller in this fascinating article.

As part of the 2009 Calvinpalooza of events, Richard Muller gave this address at Calvin Theological Seminary in the States.

It is an absolutely superb discussion of the following types of things:

• Is it anachronistic to describe Calvin as adhering to TULIP?
• Did Calvin teach Limited Atonement?
• Why have we moved on since the Calvin vs. the Calvinists thesis?
• How do Humanism and Scholasticism relate to Calvin’s teaching?
• What does it really mean that Calvin moved around the locus of Predestination in his Institutes?
• Is anyone really a “Calvinist”?
• Why pitting the 16th and 17th century Reformed theologians is ridiculous.

All these questions and more by arguably the world’s leading Reformation scholar.  Download the PDF!  Here’s a snippet:

“By way of addressing these issues, we should note first and foremost the problem of TULIP itself — an acrostic that has caused much trouble for the Reformed tradition and has contributed greatly to the confusion about Calvin and Calvinism. (I don’t plan to tiptoe through this issue.) It is really quite odd and a-historical to associate a particular document written in the Netherlands in 1618-19 with the whole of Calvinism and then to reduce its meaning to TULIP. Many of you here know that the word is actually “tulp.” “Tulip” isn’t Dutch — sometimes I wonder whether Arminius was just trying to correct someone’s spelling when he was accused of omitting that “i” for irresistible grace. More seriously, there is no historical association between the acrostic TULIP and the Canons of Dort. As far as we know, both the acrostic and the phrase “five points of Calvinism” are of Anglo-American origin and do not date back before the nineteenth century. It is remarkable how quickly bad ideas catch on.”

And if you’re really keen to dig deeper, check out his Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics (picture above – it looks nice on the bookshelf!).  This has proved to be one of my best purchases whilst at college – I’ve found it an invaluable resource for doing a whole bunch of my college assignments!

PS – Just in case you’re wondering, Muller’s argument isn’t a negative neo-orthodox position, but quite a nuanced take on the Reformed tradition.