ON THE TRINITY AND SELFLESSNESS

Today I received an email from a friend who asked:

Thinking Trinitarian[ly], is not God selfless in regards to the Persons, but not the substance. IOW, does not the Father see the Son and see God, or see the image of His ousia as the Son is His image and love the Son because whatever is of the divine ousia is worthy of love? Thus, the Trinity is oriented teleologically towards itself and selflessly away from the Persons' selves?

I basically answered:

Good question. Here are my thoughts (heavily influenced by Edwardsian ethics):

What is selflessness?

If it is a self having regard for another self without regard for itself, then I think it is impossible for a moral being to be selfless. Here's what I mean.

Morality is valuing what is truly valuable in a degree proportionate to the degree of its value. Another way to speak of morality--indeed the most foundational--is through the concept of love. Love is valuing what is truly valuable in a degree proportionate to the degree of its value. Therefore, if God is moral, if he is love, then he must value himself supremely. The morality of God, the love of God, is expressed eternally as triunity. The love of the Father for the Son is the love of God for himself. And the love of the Son for the Father is the love of God for himself. It is the same divine self-love in both cases. I don't know how to conceive of a love between the persons of God that does not have divine self-love at its root.

For creatures, if we are to be morally upright, if we are to love righteously, then we must love God supremely. But even creaturely love for God is not selfless. Loving God must necessarily entail loving ourselves since we bear his image.

Therefore, morality is fundamentally grounded in self-love, whether that love is ordered properly (i.e. righteousness) or not (i.e. sin). Properly ordered self-love acknowledges love for God as its basis. Improperly ordered self-love trades its true basis, love for God, for another which is idolatry.

CRITIQUING BEN WITHERINGTON'S COMMENTS AGAINST GOD BEING HIS OWN END IN ALL HE DOES (pt. 4)

Continued from part 3 . . .

One commenter asks Dr. Witherington (under this post):

You wrote that "God’s character is essentially other directed self-sacrificial love." I totally agree with that. Even before creation God’s love was other oriented. The intra-Trinitarian love that the Father has for the Son, and the Son for the Father, has always been other oriented. We are told multiple times that the Father loves the son. And it seems that this intra-Trinitarian love is the basis for God’s love for us. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you”. Since the intra-Trinitarian love is other oriented (the Father wants to glorify the Son and the Son wants to obey the Father) and because God is one, is there not a way in which God’s love for the Son is also a self love or a self focus?

How would that relate to God’s love for us? Is there a way in which God’s love for us is related to God’s self love or a self focus?

For God to admit that he is not the center of everything is hard for me to understand. It seems against the very thing that makes him God.

Dr. Witherington responds:

And while we are at it-- the Trinity is certainly not solely self-referential. In particular NT Christology is a clear refutation of this-- Christ came for our benefit and our behalf to rescue us. A by product of that is that God is glorified by such actions-- but the purpose of the coming and the object of the action was not either for God to add to his impressive resume, nor to bump up the praise quotient so God could have more glory.

Overlooking Dr. Witherington's resume building and praise quotient rhetoric, I'm not sure what he means by "solely self-referential." The Calvinist theologians of which I am aware have never asserted that God is solely self-referential. They have asserted that God is ultimately self-referential. If Witherington means to use the phrase solely in a sense distinct from ultimacy, then the point is moot. But if he means it in the same sense, then the fundamental reasoning behind his comment is this:

(1) Ultimate divine self-reference (UDSR) (i.e. God's being his own ultimate end in all he does) precludes him from acting for the benefits of his creatures.
(2) And Christ came for the benefit of his creatures.
(3) Therefore God cannot be ultimately self-referential.

The fallacy with this reasoning is that it misunderstands the Calvinist view of UDSR. The Calvinist view is not that UDSR precludes God from acting for the benefit of his creatures. Certainly God acts for the benefit of his creatures. The Calvinist view is that God's motivations are both unified and diverse. The triune God is both simple and complex. Let's take a very brief look at each aspect in turn.
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On the unity of God's will:

The language of ultimacy or primacy is typically employed by Calvinist theologians to describe the unity of God's will. God has one unified or ultimate purpose: himself. In other words, he is ultimately his own end in all he does.

On the diversity of God's will:

But that one unified purpose subsumes a diversity of other subordinate purposes. The coming of Christ for the benefit of his creatures is understood to be included in the purposes of God subordinately. In other words, the salvation of elect creatures is a purpose of God that serves the ultimate purpose. But it is, nonetheless, a distinct purpose.
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I have written more extensively on the ultimate/subordinate distinction, particularly Jonathan Edwards's articulation of it, here.

In conclusion, one biblical example of the unity and diversity of God's purposes is found in the beginning of the high priestly prayer recorded in John 17:1-2.

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

Here we see in the first bold section the Lord Jesus acknowledging the ultimate purpose of God in all things--himself. He prays, "glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you."

And in the second bold section we see the Lord Jesus acknowledging a subordinate purpose of God--the salvation of the elect--which is subsumed under the ultimate. He prays, "to give eternal life to all whom you have given him."

Stay tuned for part 5 . . .

FRIDAY EDWARDS QUOTE: Did Father Abraham Participate in the Lord's Supper?

In sermon 4 of Jonathan Edwards's A History of the Work of Redemption (Yale, vol. 9), Edwards begins to teach on the period of redemptive history from Abraham to Moses. He presents several evidences from the Biblical account that demonstrate the fact that Abraham received the covenant of grace from God. One evidence is that Abraham celebrated a proto-Lord's Supper with Melchizedek, King of Salem (Shalom, peace). He writes:

Another remarkable confirmation Abraham received the covenant of grace was when he returned from the slaughter of the kings, when Melchizedek, the king of Salem, the priest of the most high God, that great type of Christ, met him and blessed him and brought forth bread and wine. The bread and wine signified the same blessings of the covenant of grace that the bread and wine does in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. So that as Abraham had a seal of the covenant in circumcision that was equivalent to baptism, so now he had a seal of it equivalent to the Lord's Supper. And Melchizedek's coming to meet him with such a seal of the covenant of grace on the occasion of this victory of his over the kings of the earth, confirms that that victory was a pledge of God's fulfillment of the same covenant; for that is the mercy that Melchizedek with his bread and wine takes notice of, as you may see by what he says, Gen. 14:19-20.

Genesis 14:19-20 reads:

And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all.

BOOK REVIEW: The Wages of Spin (pt. 1)

I just finished Carl Trueman's book The Wages of Spin: Critical Writings on Historic & Contemporary Evangelicalism (Christian Focus Publications, 2004). It is collection of essays offering a historical theological evaluation of contemporary issues facing evangelicalism. As expected, Trueman does not disappoint.

The book has two parts: (1) "Evangelical Essays" and (2) "Short, Sharp Shocks." In part one Trueman offers penetrating analyses of the decline of historic Christian orthodoxy in evangelicalism. Beginning with the Enlightenment, Trueman traces the germination and growth of anti-historical tendencies in Western thought in an essay entitled, "Reckoning with the Past in an Anti-Historical Age." He writes:

As the Enlightenment downgraded history and tradition by stigmatizing them with the language of obscurantism and reaction, and as consumerism has made space for history only as a marketing opportunity in the shape of theme parks and nostalgia shops, so much recent philosophy has labeled history as yet another surreptitious attempt to exert power under the guise of objective truth. Taken together, the voracious appetite for novelty and innovation that marks advanced consumerist societies, and the inveterate cynicism of the modern world, whether expressed in popular political apathy or sophisticated postmodern theories, have proved to be a potent anti-historical, anti-traditional combination.

Trueman goes on to demonstrate how this anti-historical, anti-traditional bias has impacted the church through its loss of liturgical practice in a broad sense--by which he means "the kind of songs that are sung, prayers that are prayed, and sermons that are preached"--and its grasping for historically misinformed "traditions" in order to rejuvenate its spirituality. According to Trueman, the Reformed tradition is in a good position to fill the historical/traditional void. Two theses are offered in support.

First, the Reformed faith emphasizes the idea that God is a speaking God. It is a Word-based tradition. Enlightenment skepticism has seeped into the church undermining propositional truth claims and unduly emphasizing the visual over the verbal. Confessionalism has been jettisoned for flights of mysticism and artistic expression. The deconstructionist's "death of the author" has become the nihilist's "death of God" leaving the church with an intense sociological pressure to sacrifice its epistemology on the anvil of cultural relevance. The Reformed emphasis on the Word of God as the basis of epistemology is an appropriate answer to this problem.

Second, the Reformed faith has a great appreciation for history and tradition (God is a God who acts in history). While some might paint the Reformed tradition with the broad brush of sectarianism, Trueman argues that it is the furthest thing from it. The Reformers were very much appreciative of and conversant with the early and medieval Christianity. They did not break away from the catholic tradition wholesale. Instead, they viewed themselves as Reformed Catholics, historically and confessionally connected to the Western and early church traditions. Furthermore, the covenant theology fleshed out by Calvin's successors, Trueman argues, is fundamentally concerned with God's acts in history to redeem his people.

It is one of the strengths of Reformed theology that it sees the biblical history as witnessing to the actions of a single God who is committed to the salvation of his people through the Messiah who marks the culmination of the history of his people. While there are manifest problems in extending this approach to our reading of post-biblical history, the notion of covenant, the place of families and children within our understanding of the church, and the centrality of the sacraments to our worship, all reinforce the importance of continuity with God's saving actions throughout history. As soon as sight is lost of this historical dimension to God's action, then there will be a tendency towards mysticism and individualism and all sight is lost of the real significance of the church as the covenant community of the God who rules over history and works within history.

[Barth and his followers would not appreciate Trueman's regard for the importance of history with respect to theology, but I find it refreshing.]

Trueman continues:

In short, without God as its author, history becomes meaningless, as do the lives of all those who make up history. All that is left is the unchained and autonomous individual in the present. The way we worship becomes whatever suits us here and now; and our theology becomes whatever we think the Bible means or whatever the latest scholarly consensus tells us it means. In short, we lose any perspective from which to be self-critical.

[Perhaps we should consider whether the philosophies Trueman is arguing against are in fact intended for the purpose of avoiding self-criticism. Perhaps the Enlightenment ideal of the autonomous individual is just another evidence of the lengths God's rebellious image bearers will go to avoid entertaining any thoughts of accountability to a personal and holy God.]

Trueman concludes:

Why, then, should we study the Reformed faith today? The answer is because it offers the most effective and biblical antidote to the forces around us which most threaten Christianity. These are Western materialist consumerism and its concomitant ideologies of the superiority of the new and the rejection of the old. The cultural war around us is, at a very deep level, a war against history and thus against the God who works in and through history. In this context the Reformed faith sets forth the theological importance of history with supreme clarity; it also offers us a framework for doing justice not just to biblical history but also to church tradition.

Stay tuned for part 2 . . .

FRIDAY EDWARDS QUOTE: A Sober Assessment of Religious Revival

Apologies for missing the last two weeks of entries in this series. The convergence of holiday travels and newborn feedings has been a bit draining and consumed much of my "free" time. But God has been good to us. Our travels were relatively uneventful and our little Joanna is growing more beautiful by the hour.

Today I read a bit of Michael Haykin's excellent book A Sweet Flame: Piety in the Letters of Jonathan Edwards. Chapter 7 is a letter Edwards wrote from Northampton, MA on May 12, 1743 to a Scottish Presbyterian minister named James Robe. In it he discusses what he views as the waning influence of the Spirit of God among the churches in New England where there had recently been a great revival.

The revival, sometimes referred to as the First Great Awakening, was controversial. There were excesses and abuses. Those called the "old lights" viewed it as enthusiastic extremism, a sort of zeal without knowledge. They didn't view the revival as good in any sense. Others, called the "new lights," cautiously viewed it as a true work of the Spirit mixed with abuses. Edwards was sympathetic to the new lights. Through his preaching and writing Edwards attempted to understand what was truly a work of the Spirit of God, so that he might warn against abuses and promote true revival (see Edwards's A Narrative of Surprising Conversions, The Distinguishing Marks of the Work of the Spirit of God, and An Account of the Revival of Religion in Northampton 1740-1742 as found in On Revival. Also see Edwards's Religious Affections.)

What follows is an excerpt from Edwards's letter to Mr. Robe. Edwards's thoughts on the nature of true religious affections and the role of the doctrine of assurance in either instigating or regulating the abuses of the awakening are penetrating. In the wake of much enthusiastic excess he offers a sober assessment of religious revival.

It can scarcely be conceived of what consequence it is, to the continuance and propagation of a revival of religion, that the utmost care be used to prevent error and disorder among those that appear to be the subjects of such a work, As also that all imaginable care be taken by ministers in conducting souls under the work; and particularly that there be the greatest caution used in comforting and establishing persons as being safe and past danger of hell. Many among us have been ready to think that all high raptures are divine; but experience plainly shows that it is not the degree of rapture and ecstasy (though it should be to the third heavens), but the nature and kind that must determine us in their favor. It would have been better for us, if all ministers here had taken care diligently to distinguish such joys and raised affections, as were attended with deep humiliation, brokenness of heart, poverty of spirit, mourning for sin, solemnity of spirit, a trembling reverence towards God, tenderness of spirit, self-jealousy and fear, and great engagedness of heart after holiness of life, and a readiness to esteem others better than themselves; and that sort of humility that is not a noisy showy humility, but rather this which disposes to walk softly and speak trembling. And if we had encouraged no discoveries or joys but such as manifestly wrought this way, it would have been well for us.

And I am persuaded we shall generally be sensible, before long, that we run too fast when we endeavor by our positive determinations to banish all fears of damnation from the minds of men, though they may be true saints, if they are not such as are eminently humble and mortified, and (what the Apostle calls) "rooted and grounded in love" [Ephesians 3:17]. It seems to be running before the Spirit of God. God by his Spirit does not give assurance any other way, than by advancing these things in the soul. He does not wholly cast out fear, the legal principle, but by advancing and filling the soul full of love, the evangelical principle. When love is low in the true saints, they need the fear of hell to deter them from sin, and engage them to exactness in their walk, and stir them up to seek heaven. But when love is high, and the soul full of it, we don't need fear. And therefore a wise God has so ordered it that love and fear should rise and fall like the scales of a balance. When one rises, the other falls, as there is need, or as light and darkness take place of each other in a room, as light decays, darkness comes in, and as light increases and fills the room, darkness is cast out. So love, or the spirit of adoption, casts out fear, the spirit of bondage. And experience convinces me that even in the brightness and most promising appearances of new converts, it would have been better for us to have encouraged them only as it were conditionally, after the example of the Apostle, Hebrews 3:6, "Whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of hope firm unto the end," and verse 14, "For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of of our confidence steadfast unto the end." And after the example of Christ, Revelation 2:10, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." So Luke 21:34-36, and in many other places. 'Tis probable that one reason why God has suffered us to err is to teach us wisdom by experience of the ill consequence of our errors.