Van Til and the Foundation of Christian Ethics (Hatch)

Hatch, Scott J. Van Til and the Foundation of Christian Ethics: A God-Centered Approach to Moral Philosophy. Libertyville, IL: Reformed Forum, 2023.

In the investment world, there is a danger in over investing in stocks that appear good but do not deliver all that is hoped.  The same is true in theology.  There are good (intellectual) investments in Van Til’s theology.  Unfortunately, his students over invested in his epistemology and apologetic method while leaving his ethics largely untouched.  This is a shame, as his ethics promise a number of key insights to the Christian life.

Scott Hatch of Reformed Forum has given probably the best (and maybe the first; I am not sure) systematic treatment of Van Til’s ethics.  I do not think there is anything like it in print. He surveys the failure of modern ethics, the nature of the summum bonum, Van Til’s theonomic and Klinean followers, and the structure of the will in Christian discipleship.  He has several appendices that include the full text of Van Til’s 1930 syllabus.

The Enlightenment Project had to fail because it lacked a foundation for justification. It degenerated into emotivism. Kierkegaard could not give a reason for actions other than “because.” Hume realized morality was just desires.

By contrast, summing up the problem, Hatch notes: “To call something good is to make an evaluative judgment, but an evaluative judgment implies a kind of standard or criterion by which an evaluation can be made” (Hatch 17).

Van Til and Vos

Hatch comes closer than any other recent author in showing the connection that Geerhardus Vos had on Van Til.  We know Van Til said Vos was his favorite teacher, but seeing “Vosian” elements in Van Til’s work is a tougher challenge.  I maintain it is difficult because we look for Vosian elements in the wrong place.  You will not find them, not in any great detail, in his apologetics works.  You will, however, find them in his ethics (28). The biblical-theological method allowed Van Til to see a unity between Old Testament and New Testament ethics.

In Search of An Ethical Absolute

Van Til took a “worldview approach” to Christian ethics, specifically Reformed Christian ethics. By “worldview” neither Hatch nor Van Til mean giving the stock Christian answers to pre-selected questions.  Rather, “worldview” means “Reformed worldview,” a view of life derivative of the revelation of the self-contained God. A specifically Reformed ethic will contain “the absolute self-sufficient personal God; the self-revelation of God in nature and history; the reality of sin; and the revelation of God objectively in Christ and Scripture and subjectively through regeneration and sanctification” (31).

Metaphysics and Biblicism

This might not have been Hatch’s point, but Van Til eschews any type of biblicism that rejects the need for metaphysics.  Hatch notes that Van Til saw “how modernist and liberal thought veers toward moralism but lacks any real metaphysical or epistemological foundation” (33). Indeed, in Defense of the Faith (2008) he says “metaphysics is logically foundational for both epistemology and ethics” (quoted in Hatch 46).

Idealism and Pragmatism

Van Til’s comments on idealism are somewhat dated.  You will find few idealists today. Pragmatism, on the other hand, will always be relevant.  Fortunately, apart from any Christian ethic it is easily dispensed with: “if the absolute is constantly evolving, then there is no fixed reference point for moral values’ ‘ (53).

Personality and the Will

In 2010, Richard Muller critiqued Jonathan Edwards’ view of the will as departing from the historic Reformed teaching, causing a firestorm among some of Edwards’ followers. I tend to think Muller was right, but neither side was altogether convincing.  In other words, pace Edwards I actually believe I make free decisions.  Pace Muller, when I act I seem to act in a unity as a whole person.  Faculty psychology might be true (I think it is), but few people are conscious of it when they act.

It is a shame that neither side in the debate used Van Til’s insights.  Following Augustine, he notes “man is free, but he does not have the freedom of contrary choice, and is nonetheless responsible for his actions” (99). Modern advertising seems to confirm Van Til’s point: “the expanding industry of advertising and communications has highlighted psychologically just how subtly and subconsciously people can be influenced” (102). In other words, a judicious ethics has a whole approach to the whole man.

Toward a Reformed Christian Ethic

As man gets progressively sanctified, he gets progressively “freer” (104).  How is this possible?  Van Til gives an eloquent format from his syllabus: man must become “increasingly spontaneous in willing the will of God,” “increasingly fixed in strengthening the backbone of this will,” and “increasingly [growing] in momentum to meet this increasing responsibility” (CVT, CTE 44-46). This is made possible by its working out in the larger narrative of post-redemptive history. In other words, he must strive for the true summum bonum, the highest good. The summum bonum is the kingdom of God.

Kline, Bahnsen, and Frame

Both Meredith Kline and Greg Bahnsen saw Van Til as formative for their theology, yet Kline and Bahnsen came to radically different conclusions about ethics.  Who, then, was the most faithful student of Van Til?  There is a better way to rephrase this question and answer it: Van Til was a faithful student of Geerhardus Vos when it comes to the nature of the ethical life.

Greg Bahnsen’s theonomy is widely-known, so we will only touch on the highlights for this discussion.  Theonomy proper depends on two points: 1) a unique exegesis of Matthew 5:17ff and 2) the claim that the Old Testament penal codes are binding today unless otherwise rescinded.  It should be obvious by now that Van Til taught no such thing in his ethics.  Neither can it be inferred he taught this in his ethics. I think Bahnsen suspected this (and I think Gary North knew it).  Bahnsen mentions Van Til’s ethics only once in his 500 page work on theonomy, and there it is only Van Til’s claim that there is either theonomy or autonomy, but it is clear that Van Til meant it in a general sense.  Therefore, we can safely conclude, and Hatch does, that Bahnsen’s ethics is not faithful to Van Til’s.

Does that mean Kline is the true Van Tillian on ethics?  It is not so clear there, either. Kline maintained, or at least he pointed out, a “seeming inconsistency between the Decalogue and certain divine commands,” which he called “intrusion” (137). On one level, this seems like common sense.  The conquest of Canaan is an intrusion of the End Times Judgment into history, yet this intrusion is not normative.  What is not clear, though, is what counts as intrusion and what counts as application. The more we see typological anticipations in the Old Testament, the less useful is the Old Testament for ethics. I think Kline is probably closer to Van Til in terms of biblical narrative than Bahnsen is, but I do not believe he would have accepted Kline’s intrusion ethics.

Criticisms

As with many books about or by Van Til, “reason” is always “autonomous reason” if used by the other guy (21-22). Moreover, Hatch refers to Oliphint’s book on Thomas Aquinas, noting, however, that Oliphint’s analysis has met with severe criticism (22 n24).  He does not think the criticisms damage the main point.  I suspect they do.

Speaking of Thomas Aquinas, Hatch only mentions Aquinas’s actual writings once, and in a footnote, and even then it is a reference to James Dolezal’s God Without Parts, quoting Summa Contra Gentiles. This is a recurring theme with Van Tillian literature.  We need to see more interaction with actual passages from Thomas Aquinas. We are often told “Thomas’s view reduces to x” or “His Aristotelianism is clear here,” but we never see how that is the case.

I suppose some thinkers, notably Kant and Hume, were guilty of “autonomous reason,” but I have read enough works by presuppositionalists to suspect that the adjective “autonomous” is doing the heavy lifting normally required by sustained analysis of primary sources.  That analysis we do not always see.

Conclusion

These criticisms should be noted, but they do not take away the value of the book.  The book is literally in a class by itself.  Van Tillians, and even presuppositionalists from other schools, should pay more attention to Van Til’s writings on ethics. They generally do not have the difficulties found in some of his other works, save on one possible point: Van Til’s syllabus, in a way not dissimilar to Oliver O’Donovan’s works, does not always deal with practical problems in ethics.  That is not a problem.  Van Til, as the title of this work suggests, deals with “the foundation of Christian ethics.”

‘This review copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.’

The Claims of Truth (Trueman)

Trueman, Carl R. The Claims of Truth: John Owen’s Trinitarian Theology.  Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 1998, 2021.

The German Reformer Philip Melancthon said to know Christ is to know his benefits. This statement has been used to downplay the reality of scholastic theology, arguing that if we knew Christ’s saving work then we know more than what the scholastics tried to teach.  It is doubtful such was Melancthon’s intent, given that he named his major theology after scholastic categories.  In like manner, John Owen’s doctrine of God is a specifically Trinitarian doctrine of God.  In Owen we see a merging of rigorous scholastic distinctions with heartfelt application.  This book, long out of print, is a welcome addition to the growing renaissance of Reformed Scholasticism.

Trueman’s opening chapter, “Owen in Context,” is a tour-de-force of recent scholastic historiography.  Richard Muller’s Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics is one of the most important theology sets of the 20th century. Unfortunately, it is out of print.  Fortunately, Trueman offers a summary of Muller’s arguments, allowing him to rebut claims that Owen forced the biblical gospel into an Aristotelian model. Not only is Owen not a slave to an Aristotelian model, if such a thing even exists in the abstract, but it was Owen, not Richard Baxter, who modeled his theology around a biblical theme: the covenants.

“The choice of Calvin, a 16th century theologian, as the criterion for judging 17th century theology is, historically speaking, an entirely arbitrary move” (10).

“Aquinas’s use of Aristotle’s language in no way implies that he regards Aristotle’s system as the ultimate arbiter of the truth of falsehood of his doctrine” (42).

“For Owen, God can be described using the scholastic notion of pure or simple act” (110).

The Principles of Theology

Foundational to Owen’s method is the distinction between archetypal and ectypal theology (54). Because we are finite, we are incapable of infinite knowledge. As a result, such theological knowledge we do have is finite and mediated. It is the “theology of the ‘viator,’ the pilgrim on the way” (55). The object of knowledge in both cases, Trueman is quick to inform us, is God.  It is not a knowing of two different things, but a difference “in their respective modes of knowledge.” In short, “theology can be seen as having its principium essendi…in the being of God Himself, and its principium cognoscendi…in God’s ectypal revelation of Himself” (56).

Holy Spirit, Aristotle, or Both?

Owen uses Aristotle–as did almost everyone else.  Those who attack scholasticism’s use of Aristotle are at a loss to suggest what other model should have been used: Plato, Ramus (who only revised, not replaced Aristotle), or one of the Hermeticists?  Trueman argues Owen’s use of Aristotle precluded rationalism.  For example, effects are always in proportion to their causes.  Therefore, as our human reason is finite, it needs a supernatural agent to reach a supernatural end (76-77).

The Doctrine of God

Owen followed the standard course on God’s attributes, although he did depart from Calvin by acknowledging a distinction between potentia absolutal and potentia ordinata (104 n11). Owen’s doctrine of God, as perhaps ours today, was fine-tuned in the debates against Socinianism. And in this battle, Owen could not be simply a rationalist.  For example, “God’s freedom does not mean he is subject in His actions only to the logical restrictions demanded by the principle of noncontradiction, but refers simply to the fact that all of His external acts derive from his will, uncoerced by external factors, and, second, God’s essence, his absolute attributes, determine the nature of these external acts” (109). Owen faced a two-fold danger: he could not simply trade bible verses with the Socinians, or appeal to some noble-sounding goal of “just using the bible’s language;” nor, on the other hand, could he rest merely on logical axioms, essential though they be.  Rather, he had to ground his argument, both in its logical and biblical forms, in God’s very being.

Contingency and Causality

Owen’s use of causal terms allows him to affirm both God’s unconditional election, the reality of providence, and man’s responsibility. As Trueman explains, “Contingency for Owen is rooted in the notion of secondary causality: things happen contingently with reference to their immediate causes” (115).  Therefore, man’s actions have real freedom.  Such freedom, however, does not mean man is free from the necessity of the First Cause, the Foreknowledge of God (WCF 5.2). All of this is standard scholastic thinking on freedom.  What Owen does is remind his readers that this causal chain is hierarchical, not simply chronological. However else the chain may play out in a linear fashion, the important point is that God is the logical start of every chain of causes.

The Person of Christ

As with his doctrine  of God, Owen follows the general Western and conciliar framework on Christology. In the eternal generation of the Son, “the whole essence of the Father is communicated to the Son as to a personal existence in the same essence” (155). Socinians had said that essences must divide if they are subtracted or added.  That is true for finite essences, not for infinite ones (or even finite spiritual essences, maybe).

Conclusion

Trueman’s work concludes with Owen’s careful and nuanced discussions on the threefold office of Christ and his satisfaction. We heartily applaud Reformation Heritage Books for getting this work back into print, as it represented a landmark volume in Owen studies.

Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism (Asselt)

Van Asselt. Willem. Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism. Reformation Heritage Books.

This book changed my life. It should be required reading in at least one seminary course, preferably the first systematic theology class.

Imagine someone taking Richard Muller’s four volume Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics and condensing it to an affordable single volume, and this would be what Van Asselt has done. His thesis does not differ significantly from Muller in that “Reformed Scholasticism” was a legitimate outgrowth of Calvin’s own theology. That last sentence might not be too accurate. It suggests that later Reformed theologians sought to base their theology on Calvin’s work. That is not true. They were there own theologians, and both they and Calvin were in the same stream. In any case, Van Asselt takes his work beyond that statement and posits this book as a “how-to do” historical theology. He covers the basics of Reformed Scholasticism, the important players, the necessary bibliographies, and ends with a few appendices on how to write an historical theology essay for a post-graduate class.

Nature, Necessity, and Free Will

Contrary to Arminian and Catholic charges, the Reformed view of a “necessary” will is not incompatible with “freedom,” provided both terms are understood correctly. Francis Turretin provides six different types of “necessity,” four of which the Arminian/Romanist must affirm are compatible with freedom: 1) there is a necessity of dependence of the creature on God; 2) [Asselt intended to list the second type of necessity, but I do not think he did]; 3) every creature is dependent on God in terms of the future per God’s foreknowledge and decree. 3a) Asselt writes, “However great the creature’s freedom may be, these acts are still necessary from this perspective, otherwise God’s foreknowledge could be false and his decree changeable”; 4) free will must go with rational necessity, for must not a free action be a rational one? 5) Free will relates to moral necessity, or that of habit. If you do an action enough, whether good or bad, it becomes a habit, making it easier to do this action. Few will deny this observation; and 6) The necessity of an event or the existence of a thing. If a thing is, it is necessarily (though not always the reverse)

In short, freedom can be determined because freedom is not absolute (Asselt, 162-163).

Necessity of the Consequent, Consequence

The necessity of the consequent is the necessity of a proposition behind the “then” in an if…then statement. The necessity of the consequence is the consequence itself, i.e., the implicative necessity. In the implicative necessity, neither the antecedent nor the consequent needs to be necessary. Only the necessity of the implicative relation counts. At the risk of confusing the issue even more, it is closer to a “logical necessity between two terms.” Take the two propositions:

(1) If I marry Marian, then Marian is my wife.
(2) It is necessary that Marian is my wife (if I marry her).

In proposition (1), it is contingent that I marry Marian. I did not have to do so. Only the implication between the antecedent and consequent is necessary. In proposition 2, it is the result of the conditional proposition that is necessary.

Proposition 1 does not imply proposition 2. Therefore, in an argument of the implicative relation of necessity, both the antecedent and consequent can be contingent and not necessary. It is the logical relation between the two that is necessary. In this distinction, the Reformed scholastics combat the charge that the divine decree destroys the contingency and freedom of the world. Therefore, necessity and contingency are compatible and not contradictory.

Most important in this distinction is that it depends on God’s will ad extra. If the decision of the divine will is directed to contingent objects ad extra, then God’s will is contingent, too. In other words, God contingently wills all that is contingent. Created reality, therefore, is the contingent manifestation of divine freedom and does not necessarily emanate from God’s essence. For if this were the case, all things would coincide fundamentally with God’s essence, and the actual world would be eternal (198-199).

Ectypal Theology

Van Asselt notes that the ectypal construction has its origins with Duns Scotus. Scotus distinguished between theologia in se (theology in itself) and theologia nostra (our theology). This is an end-run, if not a rejection, of Aquinas on analogy. The difficulty with analogy was pinpointing where the realm of the Creator’s knowledge ends and the creature’s begins. Scotus cuts it cleanly down the middle. Far from being a rationalist construct, this radically limits reason’s claims.

Conclusion

Some of today’s students, outside of some reading Calvin and the Puritans, know next to nothing about their Reformed Scholastic heritage. They know nothing of the distinctions made in theology in response to Catholic, Arminian and now Orthodox critics. As a result, they are woefully underprepared to deal with these challenges (and not a few cross the Tiber). Van Asselt, happily, has presented Reformed Scholasticism in a strong and engaging manner, and has pointed the student in the direction that he may also become a Reformed Scholastic.

A Primer on Ectypal Theology

I first discovered ectypal theology from Richard Muller’s Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. Rather than being an academic topic, ectypal theology unites theological method with Christology. I’ve done pieces on ectypal theology in the past, but the following from Willem Van Asselt’s Introducing Reformed Scholasticism does it better than anyone else.

(1) Archetypal theology: the uncreated knowledge God has of himself. It is the matrix of all forms of theology (Junius).
(2) Ectypal theology: The knowledge of God revealed to humans.

2.1) It is primarily the knowledge that Christ as mediator has of the Father. This is the ectypal theology of union and is the common principle of all other theology (Junius). Muller explains it best: “The Christological problem follows the [epistemological issue]:  if the human nature of Jesus, as finite, is incapable in itself of comprehending the infinite knowledge of the theologia archetypal, then any equation of the theologia unionis with archetypal theology must involve some alteration of the human nature of Jesus” (PRRD I:250).

The following are forms of ectypal theology.
2.2) ectypal theology is communicated to men in a twofold way: Nature and grace
2.2.1) Nature: internal principle of communication
2.2.2) Grace: external principle of communication
2.3) The union of the two two natures is ectypal. This is one of the reasons why the Reformed reject the Lutheran view of the Supper.
2.4) theologia beatorum (theology of the blessed in glory; still ectypal and finite).
2.5) theologia angelorum (theology of angels)

3) This construction, if not the idea, has its origins with Duns Scotus. Scotus distinguished between theoleogia in se (theology in itself) and theologia nostra (our theology).
3.1) This might be an improvement on Aquinas’s principle of analogy. For Scotus God is the only true theologian because only he has knowledge of himself.

Reflecting on Theonomy After I left it

EDIT AND CORRECTION: Prof Clark linked David Bahnsen’s post where his father, Greg, supported Norman Shepherd.

A few blogs ago, I did a series called “The Theonomy Files.” I have since updated my own thinking more in line with Reformed Scholasticism since I wrote that. Here is the gist of it. Part of this will be a number of problems in theonomy. These aren’t “gotcha” but they are difficulties to which I never saw a satisfactory answer. I do plan on offering more substantial criticisms later.

 Let’s briefly define our terms:   theonomy is the position that all of the old testament laws are binding for the new covenant Christian, unless rescinded by command (or presumably practice), and are to be applied in their new covenant context.  

It is hard to debate with theonomists.   Part of the reason is they respond to every criticism with “Oh, but you are simply an antinomian/statist/relativist.”  

The following points of criticism do not necessary serve as any one  refutation of theonomy.    Taken together, however, the place a burden of epistemological proof upon theonomists that I deem is impossible for them to bear.

1. Where were you all this time?   Theonomists like to point out that older, medieval Christian societies were theocratic and would be opposed to the secularism of today’s politics.   Yes, they were theocratic, but they were not theonomic.   And to the degree that the early Western medieval church was Augustinian, they were most certainly not theonomic (Oliver O’Donovan’s reading of Augustinian ethics shows how difficult the Augustine = theonomist case really is).  Further, almost ALL of these societies were explicitly monarchist, a position theonomists vehemently reject.  Obviously, you can’t simultaneously say you affirm (King) Alfred the Great’s social ethic while denying the form of Alfred the Great’s politics (and by implication, social ethic).
2. Bird’s Nests and God’s Law.  Deuteronomy 22:6 tells you what to do when you come across a bird’s nest.   Is that considered civil case law, moral law, or ceremonial law?   While I admit at times the law can be delineated along such lines, more often than not it cannot.  It is not always clear whether a law is civil, moral, or ceremonial.  Or maybe it’s all three.   If it’s all three, and we obey the moral part, do we not also obey the ceremonial part? But isn’t that heresy on the standard reading of the law (by both sides)?
3. Moses isn’t the same as John Locke.   Similar to (1);  theonomists have a tendency to read 18th century American (and 17th century British) political concepts back into the law of God.  Ultimately, this means they reject Christian Monarchy, but they reject Christian Monarchy along American revolutionary lines.   They conclude their rejection of monarchy (which would entail a rejection of most of Christian historical ethical reasoning–a point theonomists often fail to grasp) by an appeal to 1 Samuel 8.   Presumably, 1 Samuel 8 is binding on all Christians all the time (though 1 Samuel gives no evidence to that claim).   Notwithstanding, theonomists cannot give us a clear answer to the question:  does Torah teach monarchy or theocratic republicanism?  (Read Deuteronomy 17 and Genesis 49).  Further, is 1 Samuel 8 civil law or moral law?  Is it even law? If it isn’t a law, should we be bound by it?

Torah isn’t the Congressional Register

Of course, by Torah we mean after Christ, apart from works of Torah.   I am saying that seeing the “Law” as Torah and not theonomy provides a better model for understanding Scripture.  A quick perusal of the Pentateuch will show that it was not written with late Western modernity in mind.  In fact, seen in our categories, much of it is quite bizarre.

That’s not to deny its importance.  If anything, the strange ways in which Torah is organized should invite the reader to reflect even deeper about reality and the way that God’s world works.  Let’s consider a few and ask how these can possibly work on the theonomic thesis:

1. While there are covenantal-sequential patterns and typological motifs (riffing off of the days of creation–Ex. 25-40), many of the laws are apparently haphazardly organized together.  This should alert us to the fact that maybe God didn’t intend for these laws to be understood in a post-common law framework.
2. Torah is also story.  In Paul’s use of Abraham in Romans Torah is not functioning as a list of dos and don’ts, but as story.  How do you put story into a law code?

Women Breaking up fights

Here is another difficulty with theonomy.   Maybe it’s not with theonomy the idea, but it does invite young theonomists to reflect more deeply on what they are actually saying.  Here is Deuteronomy 25:11

“When men fight with one another and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts, 12then you shall cut off her hand. Your eye shall have no pity.

There are several problems here if we take it at face value and apply it to a modern Western law code:

1. Just think about it:  how likely is something like this ever going to happen?   I am a school teacher and I break up fights all the time.   It’s not that easy to get between two people in a fight (and I’ve been hit before, though I was so pumped up with adrenaline I didn’t feel it).
2. If two guys are moving rapidly and throwing punches, how likely is it that a woman is going to go low and grab the private parts of the other guy?
3. And would you really apply this?  If a bad guy broke into your home and the wife was able to help out by “disabling” him (and for the sake of argument, save your life), are you really going to reward her by cutting off her hand?  Really?

Someone could say, “Well, that applies to the Mosaic covenant when it was important to provide an heir.”  Maybe.  The text doesn’t say anything about that, so it’s just ad hoc and speculation.  There is still the justice of the matter, covenant heir or no.

And then there is the equity of the matter.   Well before that:  is this law moral or civil/judicial?   It’s obviously judicial since there is a penalty attached to it.   So what’s the equity for today for theonomists?  Remember, on the theonomic gloss the “judicial law abides in exhaustive detail.”    The Reformed Confessionalist does not have this problem.   The Confession only says “allows” the equity and no more.  Which is a nice way of saying that this law would never be applied.  The theonomist has to apply the law.

The After-Calvin Source Failure

One of the reasons theonomy failed as a movement, and this reason perhaps dovetails with why theonomy went Federal Vision and also failed to work out a coherent alternative, is that theonomists generally did not read the Protestant Scholastic sources carefully, to the degree they read them at all. 

That raises another problem:  reading these sources required reading these sources on the sources’ terms.  Theonomists usually viewed anyone who disagreed with them as a “natural law adherent,” defining natural law as a mix of Locke, Newton, and Aquinas.  Here is an experiment for you:  pick up a theonomic text and find a fair definition of natural law on Reformed terms.  Bahnsen avoids it in TiCE . Gary North slams it but never really defines (or explains how modern Reformed accepted natural law).   The real villain, I think, is Kuyperianism (though, ironically, Kuyper himself was a pluralist).   The result was the no-neutrality concept was applied to areas which really didn’t make sense in a practical way (yes, we should do math and plumbing to the glory of God, but there really isn’t a Christian praxis to Christian plumbing).

If you read Reformed natural law sources carefully, you will note that
1) they don’t contradict Moses [many advocated using the Mosaic judicials because of the wisdom found therein;
2) they aren’t using the term “nature” to mean butterflies and puppies [which is how I had usually glossed it].

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, reading the Protestant Scholastic sources on their own terms will also bring the reader face-to-face with their teachings on covenant and justification, areas which modern theonomists are painfully weak. 

The Steroid Effect

One of the dangers in taking steroids while lifting weights is that despite all the gains, the level you reach is likely the highest you will ever reach.   Once you get off steroids, and even the biggest “user” won’t take them perpetually (No one does steroids, or even creatine, during the regular season for risk of dehydration), it is unlikely you will ever reach those levels naturally again.

We see something similar in theological studies.   Deciding which area to major in will determine how deep one’s theological knowledge can get.   Here was my (and many others; and for what it’s worth, throughout this post substitute any Federal Vision term in place of a theonomy term and the point is largely the same) problem in institutional learning:  I immediately jumped on how important apologetics was for the Christian life to the extent that I made apologetical concerns overwhelm theological concerns.  I essentially made theology proper (and soteriology and ecclesiology) subsets of apologetics/ethics, instead of the other way around.

I won’t deny:  I became very good at apologetics and ethics, but I didn’t know anything about theology outside of a basic outline of Berkhof.   Studying Reformed theology among sources, and worse, movements, who are only barely Reformed, limited how deep I could go in Reformed theology.

I’ll say it another way:  when I was taking covenant theology we had to read sections of Gisbertus Voetius and Cocceius in class.  I got frustrated thinking, “These guys are tying in the covenant of works with natural law.  Don’t they know how un-reformed natural law is?”  Problem was, I was wrong.  But if you read the standard theonomic (or FV; by the way, the FV fully adopts the Barthian, and now historically falsified, Calvin vs. Calvinist paradigm) historiography, there is no way to avoid such misreadings.  Even worse, said historiography fully prevents one from learning at the feet of these high Reformed masters.

The Collapse of First Generation Reconstructionism

I’m not going to touch on the infamous “whitewall” sermon.

I suppose the inevitable question, one loaded with irony, is that given Christian Reconstruction’s commitment to postmillennialism, how come the movement fractured immediately and society is not reconstructed?  Before we get into the individual faults of the men and camps, it is important to first note perhaps why they were prone to fracturing.

Many CR leaders knew they wouldn’t be welcomed in the presbyteries.   So they reasoned:  too bad for the presbyteries!  For all the problems and limitations in local presbyteries, they tend to keep individuals from going off the deep end.   We will soon see why.

1. Rushdoony:  On one hand it’s a good thing that Rushdoony’s errors are so easy to see.   Being egregious errors and out in the open, they are fairly easy to avoid.  His main errors are the dietary laws, ecclesiology, and shallow readings of some Reformed sources.  I won’t bother refuting his interpretation dietary laws.   I suspect his personal experiences drove his ecclesiology.  I don’t know the whole story, though Gary North has documented it here.   Evidently he got angry at the OPC and separated himself from church bodies for the greater part of a decade. A bit more minor issue but one more prevalent is that many young CRs began their study of theology by beginning with Rushdoony.  As a result, many simply parroted his slogans without really understanding all the theology and philosophy behind it.  Their grasp of Reformed theology was very tenuous beyond the basics.   Once they came across sharp Orthodox and Roman Catholic apologists, they were toast.  They didn’t have the strong foundation in Turretin, Hodge, and Owen that older men had.  Had they begun with the latter and had a decent foundation, then they could have approached Rushdoony Finally, people who really follow Rushdoony have a hard time accepting any criticism of the man.
2. Was the home-church movement an inevitable spin off from Rushdoony?  That he endorsed something like it is clear, but most Reformed people understand he is wrong on that point.  I think one of the dangers of the home church movement is that apart from any presbyterial oversight, there is nothing stopping the members from embodying outrageous positions.
3. Gary North:  His Y2K debacle lost him his credibility.  Others have pointed out his refusal to condemn the Federal Vision, though truth be told, would it have mattered?  Most people stopped listening to him in 2,000.   Would his condemning FV in 2003 have changed anything?  Another of his problems would be the Tyler connection. Tyler had the bizarre mixture of independent congregationalism and quasi-sacerdotal episcopalianism.  
4. Was Federal Vision inevitable?  If you read Bahnsen’s Theonomy in Christian Ethics carefully, it doesn’t seem like it.  He is citing standard P&R and evangelical textbooks on hermeneutics and the Sermon on the Mount.   All of this is wildly at odds with the later Federal Visionists. That’s the problem: other theonomists either became Federal Visionists or they ran interference for them.  

Gary North notes that CR split into two camps:  Tyler Ecclesiasticalism and Rushdoony’s Home Church Patriarchalism. Neither seems like a good choice.

Muller: Christ and the Decree

Richard Muller’s work begins on a promising note: he refuses to view election in any way apart from the Person of Christ, specifically regarding the role of the mediator. Part of the difficulty in this review is noting what is Muller’s own view and what is John Calvin’s. Assuming Muller wants to identify his position with Calvin’s, I will use “Muller” and “Calvin/Calvin’s contemporaries” interchangeably. One of the caricatures of Reformed theology is that it posits an angry Father making an arbitrary decision on who gets to go to hell and to heaven. Muller reconstructs Calvin’s work to show that Calvin spoke of election in the context of Christology; therefore, election and the saving work of Christ can never be separated. By the end of the review one will see how successful Muller was.

This review will examine the historical development of Reformed perspectives on predestination as they relate to a specifically Reformed approach to Christology. Also, whether or not the doctrine of unconditional election is true or false is independent of Muller’s historical thesis. If election is false, that in no way validates whether Muller’s reconstruction of these Reformers is true or false.

As to the Christology itself, Calvin distinguishes the Person of the Son from the Son as God, which leads to the Reformed doctrine of aseity and autotheos (Muller 29). Much of the book will hinge on the connections between aseity, autotheos, and extra calvinisticum. This leads to Calvin’s important doctrine of mediation, which is framed according to the Son’s two natures. Muller claims that Calvin’s Christology is a historical Christology that focuses on the covenant-keeping God who acts in history to save man. Yet, Muller claims this marks a genuine innovation. In fact, it is the covenant-keeping Christology that sets Calvin apart from the Eastern and Chalcedonian Christology (33). Presumably, the East is more interested in a Divine Person who assumes a human nature to himself, whereas Calvin is more interested in the mediator who acts in history to save his people.

The rest of Muller’s book tracing the development from Peter Martyr Vermigli to William Perkins documents how these writers viewed election “in Christ.” There is no such thing as a nude Deos absconditus who makes deals “behind the back” of the Son. Starting with Vermigli, we see an emphasis on grace as mediated (57), putting a Reformed slant on a very Roman Catholic doctrine and structure. One side-note related to this, and important for Muller’s thesis, is that election is mediated by Christ while reprobation is im-mediate (80). In other words, Christ actively saves the elect while no person actively damns the reprobate. Obviously, Muller is putting a very infralapsarian spin on the matter.

Calvin gives this specifically Antiochene Christology a more rigid structure. Starting with Calvin we see the office of mediator taking a more prominent role In other words, as Muller hints, “Office has replaced person” (180-181).

Calvin isn’t saying that the office of mediator constitutes the divine person. That would be Nestorian or Adoptionist.  Rather, the office of mediator is recognized in his human nature (p.29 of the Labyrinth Press edition).

Conclusion

Muller’s book deserves high praise. He has done yeoman’s work synthesizing a large amount of material, the nature of which is prohibitive to the average layman.

Divine Will, Human Choice; notes 4 (Reformed Understandings)

Necessity, Contingency, and Freedom: Reformed Understandings

With Vos, Muller notes that the Reformed orthodox did use an architectonic framework of an “ultimate and absolute divine knowledge, identified as scientia necessaria,” which meant that God knew himself and all possibles (183). This meant that some possibles are indefinite.  Others are contingent.  Neither are necessary, since God doesn’t have to actualize all possibles (and a possible is a state of affairs which doesn’t entail a contradiction).

Calvin does remark on necessity and contingently, but not exhaustively.  While his comments are often ambiguous, “he is quite consistent in his assumption that God in no way causes human agents to act contrary to their natures or to will contrary to their own inclinations” (187; cf. Institutes I.18.2).

His contemporary Peter Martyr Vermigli, however, is quite exhaustive on the subject.  Divine knowledge doesn’t actually cause x, since knowledge isn’t a matter of will (Muller 194). We must, rather, identify the ground of a thing’s necessity. An interior principle means an intrinsic necessity. Think of fire burning, earth moving, etc.  Here’s where it gets interesting: these are necessary only in the usual course of the world.  God overrode these at times (Shadrach, etc., and Joshua and the Sun).  Therefore, it is a contingent necessity.

Vermigli then clarifies what the Reformed mean by “free will,” or more accurately free choice. He writes, “Choice (arbitrium) seems to consist in this, that we follow things that are appointed by reason….Then, without a doubt, the will (voluntas) is free what it embraces those things that are approved on the part of the knowing soul” (Vermigli, Loci II.ii.1).

In an interesting comment, Vermigli doesn’t reduce freedom to spontaneity.  That makes sense if you think about it.  If a free choice is one where the reason deliberates, then it isn’t purely spontaneous (although it doesn’t rule out spontaneity in other areas). What is important is the absence of coercion.

Zanchi, a few years later, continues the same line of thought concerning contingency and the two kinds of necessity.  Elsewhere, he modifies Vermigli’s comments on free choice by adding that the will also has the freedom of contradiction, “namely, potency to more than one effect” (Muller 200).

Divine Will, Human Choice; notes 3 (Scotus)

Duns Scotus and Late Medieval Perspectives on Contingency

Initial proposition: there remains in the creature an act of potency to be otherwise (143). Scotus isn’t concerned with multiple actualities but potencies (151).  Even when I will A, I logically have the potency to will -A, even if I can’t do both at the same time. This is in actu primo.

While Scotus doesn’t represent a break with the tradition, there are differences with Aquinas.  While both “identified the divine will as intervening between the necessary or simply divine knowledge of all possibility and the visionary divine knowledge of all actualit” (157), Scotus does not agree with Aquinas that the intellect performs the ordering function of the will (159).  Freedom of willing depends “on the absence of anything causally prior to the will.”

Moreover, Scotus grounds “contingency and God’s certain knowledge of it in God’s omnicausality and knowledge of his will” (163). Aquinas, to put it simply, says God knows possibilia by his own contemplation of his essence.  Scotus says they are produced as intelligible in a non-temporal moment or instant of the operation of the divine intellect” (163).

Scotus’s Moments in God

Muller quotes Gelber’s It Could Have Been Otherwise to show what Scotus would have meant by the above paragraph.  I’m going to put it in bullet-format to make it clearer.  Remember, these are non-temporal moments (think of the order of the decrees in the infra/supra debate).

1. God’s intellect produces intelligible beings.
2. God’s intellect identifies possible beings.
3. God chooses among the various compossibilities.

Muller notes on Divine Will, part 2; Aristotle and Aquinas

Aristotle and Aquinas

Main idea: Aristotle never set aside the principle of bivalence but instead presumed a distinction between “definitely true” and “indefinitely true” propositions (88).  A human being can have opposing potencies, and even when one is actualized, the contrary potency doesn’t disappear but remains as a potency.

The Medieval Reception

It isn’t simply “either we are free or God knows everything.”  Rather, as Augustine pointed out, there is an “order of causes in which the highest efficiency is attributed to the will of God” (Civ. Dei 5.9).

Boethius

Let’s take the statement, what will be tomorrow is necessary.  The medievals understood this statement to be mean: “Whatever is, when it is, cannot be in the same moment other than what it is” (Muller 107). To anticipate later discussions, while the future may not be “up for grabs” from God’s point of view, it is nevertheless contingent.

There is also a distinction between necessity and certainty.  Necessity is lodged in the thing known and certainty in the knower.

Aquinas

Aquinas held that not all effects have necessary causes.  Aquinas maintained free choice by saying rational beings have the potency to more than one effect.  We have a simultaneity of potencies (SCG III.72).

Aquinas and Divine Power.

Muller then discusses the standard distinction of absolute vs. ordained power. This undergirds how God is said to relate to the world, and the world order itself is contingent result of God’s free willing (Muller 121).

Since this created order is contingent, “God has created contingent agents that act or cause effects contingently” (123).  As a result, we have the potency to do otherwise.  We should also point out the language of “determined” in the medievals.  They weren’t thinking about the determinism vs. libertarianism debate.  Determined simply meant the “terminus whether a quo or ad quem of a causal sequence has been identified” (130).

Therefore, per a future contingent, it is “undetermined” not in the sense that God is not aware of it, but that it doesn’t have a determinate cause.  God knows future contingents as “hypothetically necessary, as the effects of contingent causes” (131).

Opening Notes on Muller’s Divine Will and Human Choice

Muller, Richard A. Divine Will and Human Choice: Freedom, Contingency, and Necessity in Early Modern Reformed Thought. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017.

This book is more than a continuation of the Muller/Helm debate on Jonathan Edwards’ view of free choice.  It clarifies what was actually debated and explores recent attempts in Reformed historiography that appropriates Duns Scotus’s view of synchronic contingency. In doing so, it explores many issues in metaphysics which older Reformed writers considered vital but sadly have disappeared from today’s scene.

In fact, according to the index Jonathan Edwards doesn’t play a role.  The conversation goes something like this:  scholars like Antonie Vos argue the Reformed used Scotist synchronicity (we’ll unpack these terms later), which allowed them to avoid divine determinism as perhaps found in Thomas Aquinas.  Helm, by contrast, counters no, they were in fact determinists and Scotist synchronicity doesn’t actually solve anything.

Muller takes a more middle position.  The Reformed did in fact use Scotist concepts but only insofar as it allowed them to affirm God’s decree and rational human choice (Muller 34).

Some Terminology

Synchronic contingency: “the contingent is something present that presently could be otherwise given the unactualized but nonetheless remaining alternative possibility or potency” (37). Let’s pretend that Socrates is sitting. He can either sit or run, sit at one time and run at another.  He can’t do both. However, his sitting is only an historic necessity, not an absolute one.

Possibility: having the potential or capacity for existence or being true. Something could be otherwise.

Power of simultaneity: he can’t do both at the same time.

Simultaneity of potency: the possibility of running exists simultaneously with the actuality of sitting.

Composite sense: Socrates cannot be sitting and running.

Divided sense: Socrates can be sitting and running, albeit not simultaneously.

For Scotists such as Vos, the divine will intervenes between a divine necessary knowledge and a divine free knowledge of all actuality (51). This means that the divine knowing “yields a sense of the continuing presence of possibles.” This corresponds to the potentia absoluta even while their contraries are known in the potentia ordinata.

In other words, God’s willing p does not exclude the synchronic possibility of the opposite state of affairs.