In my blog entry yesterday, I raised a couple questions for Calvin about his theology of the sacraments. It seemed to me, at least from Sinclair Ferguson’s summary, that Calvin talks as if we shouldn’t need sacraments. The Word ought to be sufficient for us; the sacraments were added because of our weakness. I wanted to follow up on that today.
Ferguson’s summary of Calvin’s view appears to me to be accurate. Calvin approves of Augustine’s description of the sacraments as visible words: “Augustine calls a sacrament ‘a visible word’ for the reason that it represents God’s promises as painted in a picture and sets them before our sight, portrayed graphically and in the manner of images” (Institutes 4.14.6).
More disturbingly, he also writes this in his section on the sacraments:
God’s truth is of itself firm and sure enough…. But as our faith is slight and feeble unless it be propped on all sides and sustained by every means, it trembles, wavers, totters, and at last gives way. Here our merciful Lord, according to his infinite kindness, so tempers himself to our capacity that, since we are creatures who always creep on the ground, cleave to the flesh, and, do not think about or even conceive of anything spiritual, he condescends to lead us to himself, even by these earthly elements, and to set before us in the flesh a mirror of spiritual blessings. For if we were incorporeal … he would give us these very things naked and incorporeal. Now, because we have souls engrafted in bodies, he imparts spiritual things under visible ones (Institutes 4.14.3).
I have to admit that this statement puzzles me. Is Calvin talking about post-fall man, weakened by sin? That’s possible. If so, he’s part of a long tradition. As Peter Leithart pointed out to me,
The notion that sacraments are a result of sin comes up in Hugh of St. Victor’s De Sacramentis and is probably earlier than that. It seems connected with the notion that original sin is essentially about our obsession with carnality and materiality, along with the notion that Adam in the garden had a purely “inward” communion with God — come to think of it, I believe that Augustine says that kind of thing. The movement of redemptive history from a inner communion (Adam) through various sorts of accommodated outward forms of communion (from garden to consummation) but leading to a final restoration of purely inner communion.
In a blog entry, Leithart also notes that “Thomas … denies that sacraments were necessary in Eden, since there was no need to remedy sin (ST 61, 2).” So if this is what Calvin is thinking, then he’s in line with many theologians before him.
But if Calvin wants to say that sacraments became necessary because of our sinful (or at least, sin-induced) weakness, then what about those trees in the Garden of Eden? Before the Fall, God didn’t simply bestow life and the knowledge of good and evil on man apart from tangible means. Nor did He act by His Word alone. Instead, He determined to use food, the fruit of two trees. Those trees were as sacramental as the Lord’s Supper, and yet they were present in the Garden before Adam’s rebellion.
I’m not sure, however, that Calvin really is saying that it’s sin that weakened man. He might be, but the last two sentences in the long quotation above seem to indicate that he’s simply talking about physical man, even apart from the Fall. We need sacraments, Calvin says, because we “cleave to the flesh.” But then he says that the reason God “imparts spiritual things under visible ones” is “because we have souls engrafted in bodies.” According to Calvin, then, we need sacraments, not because we are impaired and weakened by sin, but rather because our souls are engrafted in bodies.
On the other hand, perhaps Calvin is still speaking about a weakness brought about by sin but is trying to say that because we’re embodied God uses earthly things to strengthen our faith. It’s not as if God sees that in our weakness and sin we “cleave to the flesh,” and so He cures that by using non-earthly, non-physical means. After all, we are embodied. We are physical. And so God uses physical means to bring about the cure and to strengthen our weak faith. That’s the best I can do with this passage, but it seems like a stretch to me.
So the worst interpretation is that Calvin thinks God uses sacraments because being physical itself constitutes a sort of weakness. I can certainly see how someone might conclude that from this paragraph. But the best interpretation, it seems to me, is that Calvin thinks sin has brought about our weakness, so that we don’t properly cling to the Word, which ought to be enough, and so God strengthens our faith by physical things because we are ourselves physical.
(Even on this reading, though, I still get a sense from the last two sentences that Calvin thinks there’s something “condescending” about God’s use of physical things, as if it might have been better to be non-physical and not to need physical sacraments. Physical sacraments are second-best; the Word alone would be best. That’s just a sense, and I can’t prove it.)
As I’ve indicated above, I don’t buy Calvin’s view. I don’t believe that the sacraments are in any sense the result of sin or the weakness resulting from sin. In part, I don’t believe that because there appear to have been sacraments before the Fall. But my rejection of his view also stems from my embrace of the goodness and physicality of the creation.
For God to use physical means — and speech, by the way, is no less physical than food, since it involves physical vibrations in the atmosphere and in the ear — is not condescension and certainly not condescension in the sense of “lowering oneself,” as if it’s somehow beneath God’s proper dignity to involve himself with physical stuff. As C. S. Lewis says somewhere in Mere Christianity (I’m paraphrasing): God likes matter; He invented it.
That’s why we have sacraments. God made us physical creatures. He likes us as physical creatures. He wants us to have bodies for all eternity.
And so He gives us physical food. He could, of course, simply zap us and give us, by His Spirit, all the energy and strength we need to live. Food doesn’t have power in itself to give life. We eat things that aren’t alive (like plants); we even eat things that are dead (like steak). Life comes from the Spirit. But God gives us life as we eat physical food.
So it is with the sacraments. The question “Why sacraments?” is no harder to answer than the question “Why baths?” and “Why food?”
Just as food isn’t the result of the Fall, so the sacraments aren’t the result of the Fall. Just as God gave life through all the fruit of all the trees of the Garden, God would give special life through the fruit of the Tree of Life. Just as God gives you life through your dinner every day, so God also gives you life — the life of Christ — through the Lord’s Supper.
Having said all of that, I do want to add this. Understood in a pastoral way, there is something to be salvaged from Calvin’s approach and from the approach of, for instance, the Belgic Confession, Article 33, which says that “our gracious God, mindful of our insensitivity and weakness, has ordained sacraments….” That “insensitivity and weakness” is not the ultimate reason for the sacraments, but it is a pastoral occasion for the assurance that the sacraments give.
It’s not wrong, therefore, for a pastor — following the lead of Calvin and the Belgic Confession — to say something like this to a guy who is struggling with his faith, struggling perhaps to believe that his sins are really forgiven:
Look, God proclaims Sunday after Sunday that your sins are forgiven. He tells you again and again that He loves you. He says it in one way or another in virtually every sermon.But He doesn’t just say it to you. That ought to give you comfort in itself. But God is so good that He’s done more than that. He also had you baptized into Christ. Maybe you think God isn’t really speaking to you in the sermon or in the declaration that your sins are forgiven. Well, what about your baptism? Do you think that water was meant for someone else? No! He called you by name. He had that water administered to you. You don’t need to doubt Him. His love and His forgiveness and His grace are as real as your baptism.
And as if that isn’t enough, what about the Lord’s Supper? Every Sunday, that bread and that cup are passed to you personally. That’s Jesus’ love right there. He’s giving you His body. He’s giving you His blood. Take it. Don’t doubt but eat and drink. Yes, your faith is weak. But God gave you not only His Word but also baptism and the Lord’s Supper and a host of other things, including your pastor and your fellow brothers and sisters, to strengthens your faith.
That’s how I read the Belgic Confession’s use of that “insensitivity and weakness” language: It’s not best understood as an explanation for why God gave sacraments in the first place, but it’s pastorally pointing to the comfort of having not only the Word but also the sacraments for the assurance of our faith.
Why sacraments alongside the Word? Because there’s a problem that needs to be overcome, namely our weakness that isn’t satisfied with the Word? No! Because God is Triune and so He always delights in “two or three witnesses,” as Jim Jordan pointed out in the comments in my previous entry.
And why sacraments at all? Not because of our weakness, whether it’s the weakness induced by sin or some weakness that comes from being physical creatures, but because God, who created matter and who made us as physical creatures, delights in matter, in physicality, in stuff. And so He delights in making waves in the air that vibrate the bones in our ears. He delights in washing us with water and feeding us with bread and quenching our thirst and setting our tongues and throats and blood on fire with wine. And He delights, in these ways, to communicate with us, to join us to Christ’s body, the church, to nourish us with Christ’s life, to assure us of His love and faithfulness toward us, to give us all the riches we have in Christ Jesus.
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Interesting thoughts, John. I’m just starting a dissertation on the strengths and weaknesses of Calvin’s eucharistic theology, but I don’t want to unload all that here!
I’m curious to get anyone’s reactions to the work of Max Thurian, particuarly his Eucharistic Memorial. I’m halfway through Part I, and I wondered how he is viewed among the BH circle.
Is he a good guy, bad guy, or mix of both?
Thanks!
It’s been a looong time since I read Thurian, but I recall having a mixed response. Memorial, yes. But what is the memorial? It is the act of eating, centrally, that God observes and is pleased with. Or, more broadly, the rite encompassed in “do this.” If I recall correctly, Thurian believes in consecrating elements and then presenting them to God — something that is not part of what Jesus commanded at all. But as I say, I’m a long way away from this and am open to correction.
I don’t know that I have that much of a problem with Calvin’s statement. On my view, Sacraments are, like the Incarnation, part of God’s adapting Himself to us–even to our frailty. “Dust you are and to dust you shall return” and so to save us, God Himself became dust. “You are what you eat” and so to save us, God Himself became our food. (Yes, I know the first is directly scriptural, the second isn’t.)
Moreover, I don’t think I have a problem saying that the Incarnation is necessary because of our creaturely weakness. Finitum non capax infinitum. We are created, and so cannot raise ourselves up to God. We do not have the capacity to contain the divine.
But infinitum capax finitum. Because God is without bound, he is not limited from compassing Himself in human flesh. Because of God’s infinitude, He can come before us in our weak physical creatureliness. And He does this as a Man.
Similarly, as the Eternal Son veiled his glory and came down as a man, so the Glorified Man conforms Himself to our physical limitations, to our creaturely limitations, and cloaks Himself as bread and wine.
And though I’m not sure I believe it; I would be willing to say that prior to the fall we were able to look through physical things to God, but because of the fall, we idolatrize and look to the physical thing. So, to make even the sin of Adam glorious, Christ came as a man, and as Bread so that we can look to the physical, and be looking to Divinity Himself. Prior to the fall we would use the physical to enjoy God. Now we attempt to enjoy the physical, and are constrained by our sin to enjoy the physical. But in Christ, the physical Itself is Divine, and our enjoyment of physical things is an enjoyment of God, for the Physical thing is God. Felix Culpa Adae.
The difficulty I have with Calvin’s quote isn’t that it says God ammends Himself to our physical weakness, but that it says the physical is just a cloak for the really important non-physical things. “For if we were incorporeal … he would give us these very things naked and incorporeal. Now, because we have souls engrafted in bodies, he imparts spiritual things under visible ones” Change “incorporeal” to “uncreated” (and the second time to “through the uncreated”) and capitalize Spiritual, and I don’t have much difficulty with that passage.
In Christ,
Matt
I am not up on Calvin to the level of everyone here, so I cannot say if this adequately presents Calvin’s actual view. From the little I have read, it doesn’t ring true..
As for the statement “The Word ought to be sufficient for us; the sacraments were added because of our weakness. ” I would say the Word was added because of our weakness too; if by the Word, you mean all of God’s self revelation of himself as contained in the Scriptures. Isn’t the Christian message that God takes into account our weakness in everything and does it for us? I would think that would include his self revelation in the Word as much as it does in the sacraments.
#4. Orthodox Christianity says that the 2nd person of God is Word. Language. And the 3rd person is Spirit. Manifestation. It is in the nature of God to give Word and Manifestation. This is not a condescension to our weakness. It is an aspect of God’s nature. The notion that either Word or Manifestation are optional really gives us a unitarian god, which I’m sure you don’t want. Stick with the Athanasian Creed.
Jim
(We met during a conference in Tyler 22 years ago. You said I could call you Jim then, so I’m stickin’ with it :-D )
I think we are approaching the same answer from two different directions. Our common answer appears to be: both Word and Sacrament are necessary on the part of God to His creatures, no matter what Calvin purportedly said.
You say it is in his nature of God as Trinity that this is necessary, being Word (language) and Spirit (Manifestation–Sacrament?) as well as Father. By that, I assume you mean that God cannot avoid being God and therefore MUST self reveal himself.
By that, though, perhaps he could have settled with the Angels. 2/3 of those have proven better listeners than has most of humanity. Also, he could have revealed himself in Trinitarian unity to himself, without involving “weaker” entities.
I say God’s nature is love, and especially sacrificial love, that must reveal itself to the weaker creature. He does this as Father, Son, and Spirit in different ways, but united in purpose and nature. But the motive is his nature as love.
It is this proclamation of God as sacrificial and victorious love toward those consigned to death (weak and sinners) that took over the world. It impels those running from the death of their cultures in Africa toward Christ today.
Backing up Jim’s #6, Calvin explicitly said some pretty unfortunate things about the ‘personhood’ of the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is brought out in Paul Helm’s “John Calvin’s Ideas,” 51f. Though I imagine there are other discussions from people who are more theological commentators (Helm is actually a philosopher by training).
Calvin speaks of the persons themselves as though they are something that can be set aside in order to discuss divinity-in-general. The Son, he says, is self-existent b/c He is God, and so that means that He is only “generated” in the sense that He is Son, and that if we are ever talking about Him in any other capacity (i.e., if we aren’t talking about His personhood), then we should NOT speak of Him as generated. It’s actually one of the starker statements of the “Latin” view of the Trinity. I often think that the distinction between “east” and “west”/ “social” and “Latin” trinitarianism is overblown (and largely the fruit of eastern orthodox polemicists not giving the west a fair shake, along with contemporary scholars who like to be provocative and contrarian with their own tradition not giving the west a fair shake). But Calvin really does seem to present a pretty stereotypical ‘western’ view here, where the essence of God is completely separate from personality.
In any case, it’s a little more complicated to take this observation and apply it directly to Calvin’s views of condescension and the sacraments. But food for thought, anyway.
I should also point out that Helm defends Calvin’s view here. I was rather perturbed, but that’s not the consensus.
” … begotten of the substance of the Father before all worlds”.
That phrase contradicts Calvin, doesn’t it? If personhood is different from substance, and it is personhood that is begotten, not substance, then the above statement is in error. Is the person begotten of the substance of the Father, but not the substance of the Son?
On a related point, was there any time when the personhood of the Son was not? If not, then what does the word “begotten” mean?
“Begotten” not in the temporal sense, but in the sense that the Second Person of the Trinity was always related to the First Person as a Son to a Father. The original Father-Son relationship. Eternally begotten = always the Son.
Whoa Xon! I don’t have the time right now, but let me just register some strong disagreement.
Calvin explicitly rejects that the persons are anterior to the substance, and the fact that he can talk about substance qua substance and persons qua persons is not unique. Folks have been doing it since Athanasius.
I’ll have to be back with more.
I look forward to some interaction on this point, Steven, whenever you have the time. I take it you disagree not with my characterization of Calvin’s view (since you say that he “explicitly rejects that the persons are anterior to the substance”), but with my disagreement with Calvin on this score.
A quick note about speaking about the substance qua substance and persons qua persons. In some sense, I acknowledge that we CAN do this and in fact this is what systematic theology is in some sense. Linguistically, we cannot speak or conceptualize at all without taking the different words in our speech as representative of theoretically separate entities. I cannot say “You know, I’ve never seen Clark Kent and Superman in the same place at the same time…” without, in the act of saying it, setting “Clark Kent” and “Superman” apart from each other. In the end, of course, we may conclude that in fact CK and Superman are identical, in which case we have to be careful about some of the other things we might say.
So, for instance, Athanasius discusses “substance” qua substance (though even here “substance” is subejct to a complex evolution in the early church, isn’t it?) as a separable discussion from the persons qua persons. But in the end one of the things Athanasius ends up asserting is that the ‘substance’ is inherently personal: that you cannot have the substance as anything other than it’s personal “mode” of existence. E.g., “just as the Father is always good by nature, so he is by nature always generative”.
The “nature” (substance?) of the Father is TO BE FATHER. His nature is not an abstracted “deity” that exists as a logical independence from the three persons. The nature of God is to BE Father eternally generating Son and processing Holy Spirit, Son eternally generated from Father and processing Holy Spirit (on the western filioque version), and Holy Spirit eternally proceeding from Father and Son. The “nature” of God is to BE–as you say in the “Infinity” post–Father Son and Holy Spirit in perichoretic community. The community of PERSONS IS God.
This “substance is inherently personal” stuff relies on an equivocation.
There is no “part” of the substance that is not personal- there is no way you could access God except for through a person, but there is no generic “personness” apart from either A) The Father B) The Son C) The Holy Spirit. You will interact with one of the persons or perhaps all of the persons together, but they will not morph into one “personal substance.”
Furthermore, we could say that fathers are naturally fathers. It is of the nature of fatherness to beget, but really fatherhood is not an essential property of the godhead. Fatherhood is a personal attribute. Only the Father has it.
There is a tradition of trinitarian language, and I would suggest that we part with it only at our own peril. One cannot dismiss the foundations of Nicea and still keep its words (contra Reymond and co.). All of the Persons of the godhead share the natural attributes. Personal attributes are unique to specific persons.
Persons and Nature are different categories for this discussion. Thus Calvin can say that the Son is naturally uncaused, but personally caused. He is personally generated, but naturally eternal.
Is this “explainable”? Not beyond the little that has been said. But this is ok, because the divine nature is infinite and simple, and so we don’t have a point of reference for it. We don’t know how each person can be coterminous with one another and yet still have different attributes, but we confess it of necessity because of revelation.
This is where there is some value in apophatic theology. We know more of what is *not* the case that what is.
You should also keep in mind that Helm is a very questionable source in this discussion. He has written elsewhere that the personal names have no ontological value and are rather only true of the redemptive economy. The Son would not even be a son, according to Helm, had he not been sent as son through the incarnation. There is no eternal generation, nor indeed is there eternal spiration for the Spirit. Helm’s account actually shows the necessity for clear person/substance distinctions.
The Son is generated of the substance of the Father, thus possessing eternality in the generation. He shares the substance, for that is where he “comes from” (eternally and infinitely so), but he is also distinct in that he, not the Father, was the one generated. All of this takes place outside of our space/time realm, of course, and so our human notions of origins have to be checked. This discussion is a question of order, not time.
Stephen,
I don’t know too much about this debate, but I do know Bulgakov’s criticism of the Westerners (and of the Westernized Photian response to the filioque) is that they put substance first as a base, and then make Person something with certian attributes on top of substance. He would object to statements like “Furthermore, we could say that fathers are naturally fathers. It is of the nature of fatherness to beget, but really fatherhood is not an essential property of the godhead. Fatherhood is a personal attribute. Only the Father has it.” or “All of the Persons of the godhead share the natural attributes. Personal attributes are unique to specific persons.” as distinctly western errors, and as the distinctly western heresy (though one that since Photius has affected the east).
And from my understanding, that objection is a relatively common Orthodox objection. Thus, as I understand him from secondary sources, Zizioulas would say that the most basic thing in the universe is not whatness, but whoness. As would several other Orthodox I have interacted with.
And in my opinion, the gospel message, and the Calchedon formula, hangs on precisely this point. Mary is the theotokos not because she gives us the divine nature, but because she gives us the Divine Person. The Person Jesus Christ is a more fundamental reality than God’s whatness. The whatness is an abstraction of ours due to our inability to think of the Trinity as a Person, or the Whatness is Himself not a what, but a Who–the Life Giving Spirit–and we only call Him what because we do not sufficiently know Him as a person yet. (Or perhaps the whatness is perhaps the Son-Spirit dyad.)
And the gospel message also hangs on this point. If the fundamental reality is what, and Who arises out of what, at the fundamental level we 1) do not have any contact with God at His most base, and 2) our most basic and fundamental Comfort (and Christ’s most fundamental comfort) is not communion with a Person–our communion in the Comforter with the Father and the Son–but is something we receive.
In my opinion, God is not in any way what, but is entirely Who. The Person the Father, the Person the Son, and the Person the Spirit. The Unity of the Father and the Son is the Spirit, and the Spirit is the ground and base of the Father and the Son. And even, as Leithart said Van Til and Jenson said, the Trinity is not what, but Who.
Steven, I think we’re “talking past each other” to a fairly large extent. I started this line of discussion, so the blame is on me. Basically, in your #14 above I agree with every third paragraph, but somehow the connecting wires are tangled up for us.
Like Matthew, I am thinking of eastern polemicists like Zizioulas (as well as Meyendorff and, on the philosophical side, Bradshaw). I haven’t read any Bulgakov myself, but his name comes up in the same group. That said, I’m not sure my gloss on these guys quite lines up with Matthew’s. But we’ll see.
Also, regarding Helm. I myself agree with you that Helm’s theological formulations of the Trinity are bad news, Steven. But that’s not the point: Helm thinks he gets some of the roots for those views in Calvin himself, and as I read Helm’s book on Calvin’s thought I find Helm’s case compelling (though I’m open to other interpretations). Helm may be a bad source to explain what orthodox Trinitarianism is, but I’m not using him as such a source. In fact, my original comment presupposed just the opposite: Helm is messed up on the Trinity, but he sees Calvin as a brother on this. Thus, my concern about Calvin’s view on this point.
Some interaction below (You can also just skip to the last paragraph if you’re not interested in my rambly details)
I’d like to go into this a bit more, but if you could would you mind stating the equivocation clearly in a sentence or two? I had trouble picking up on it in your previous comment.
I agree with this completely. Hence my suspicion we are talking past one another. As I acknowledged in #13, we can and must talk about substance qua substance and person qua person. The two are separate categories for discursive reasoning; but this is, again, presupposed by the ‘eastern’ view of Zizi et al. In fact, the eastern view is often characterized as one in which “person” is a category “irreducible to nature.” (See Bradshaw’s Aristotle East and West page 12 where he uses that phrase, See Meyendorff’s Byzantine Theology 142f, see Zizi’s discussion of the “ontology” of the church fathers in Being and Communion, 41f, etc.) The point is that person is the more ontologically “fundamental’ category than is “nature/substance.” It is impossible to BE without BEING-A-CERTAIN-WAY, a certain kind of thing. Yes, it is impossible to be a person without having a nature, but it is also impossible to have a nature without being a ‘person’ (for God anyway…). Personhood is not some auxiliary quality that gets added onto substance, the latter being where the ontological action really is. Instead, the personhood is what constitutes the being, rather than the substance. The Son is eternally Son–this IS his “being” or “essence”. Of course, if you ask “What does it mean to ‘be Son’?” then we can say that it means to be God in such-and-such a way (generated, mutually loving the Father, etc.). Nature and personhood accompany one another, but the question is which is “ontologically” prior. The ‘eastern’/Cappadocian answer is that personhood is the more fundamental category.
Of course the three divine persons, in their essentially personal existence, have all the “substantive” qualities of Deity in common with one another. They are indeed of the same substance, as Nicea says and nobody here is departing from the traditional formula. But we tend to think of this like Scruffy Snowball and Wolfie all being DOGS first and foremost. But the better way to think about it (perhaps) is that there is Scruffy as an unrepeatable entity (existing as what he is in virtue of his own personal qualities), Snowball as an unrepeatable entity, Wolfie as an unrepeatable entity. Then, when we ‘look’ at their three respective existences, we notice that they do have certain things in common (they all crawl on all fours, have fleas, love and obey humans, pee on trees, etc.) and so we realize that each of these completely unique and unrepeatable entities actually share the same ‘nature’ of “dogness.” That’s fine; not only is it fine, it’s true and necessary.
So, I agree with you wholeheartedly (and I take it that Zizioulas et al do as well) when you say that “All of the Persons of the godhead share the natural attributes. Personal attributes are unique to specific persons,” and when you say that “Fatherhood is a personal attribute. Only the Father has it.” Again, this is precisely one of the points those guys are making with their own view. Each of the persons are wholly unique and unrepeatable. Only the Father is “unoriginated,” for instance.
But wait, what does this do to Calvin’s view? Calvin wants to say that the Son is also “unoriginated” because He is God. But this isn’t true: it is the Father who is “unoriginated,” not the Son. Every position has mystery, of course. Calvin is worried about aseity–if the Son is essentially generated then how he can exist of Himself? I don’t think there is an easy answer to this (although I think perichoresis gets us somewhere at least), so we lean upon the mysteries of God without trying to pry them all open. But Calvin instead tries to ‘solve’ it by making the Son “unoriginated” in His deity, but originated in His person.
Under perichoresis this is true, but that doesn’t seem (as best I can tell) to be the way Calvin intends it. Under perichoresis, the three persons are all mutually inter-penetrating into a community of love, and that community of love is the essence or deity which they all share. So, since each of the three persons is this community of three-in-one (b/c each person is in each other person), each of the three persons is fully and completely God and is unoriginated with regard to anything outside of itself. This is what I take the traditional doctrine of aseity to properly refer to, and not to some property of ‘unorigination’ that applies to each Person with respect even to the other two.
Again, I don’t see how anything I’ve said contradicts this. It’s a fine statement of the eternity of the Son, and I agree that the Son is eternal.
But earlier in your comment you slipped and said that the Son is “naturally uncaused, but personally caused. He is personally generated, but naturally eternal.” (Emphasis mine) I’m not picking on you for a slip, I’m just wondering if your choice of words here reveals that the distinction between being eternal and being “uncaused” is unclear in your own thinking about this. Of course the Son is eternal, but not just ‘naturally.’ He is personally eternal, too, because He is the eternal generation of the Father. You associate being naturally “uncaused” with being naturally “eternal” in your comment, but the Son is not “eternal” only naturally. He is eternal personally as well. So what do we say about His being “uncaused?” What the patristic doctrine of eternal generation and procession shows is that you can be caused but also be eternal; i.e., the Son and the Holy Spirit. Because the originating activity from the Father is an eternal one, the originated person is likewise eternal. And since the Father generates by His very “nature” (or, more properly, by His essence or being), it is the very essence of the Father to generate the Son (and to process the Holy Spirit), then the perichoretic community of all three is an eternal community that in fact constitutes the being of divinity itself. The “personal” quality of generativeness is inherent to the Father as the kind of thing that He is. Which is why the Son and the Spirit are also eternal, and God is a trinity rather than a mere unity. See? The personal quality which is unique to the Father (as you acknowledge) is also the more fundamental “aspect” of His being. It is His ‘nature’ to generate, to exist as Paternal Person.
So here’s the problem I understand Calvin to have. He wants to say that the Son only has His personal qualities (i.e., being generated) in a way that is isolatable from His essence as a living entity. We can talk about Him as generated only when we have to, the rest of the time, we say He is ‘ungenerated’ just like the Father. This is not just a separate discussion of person and substance/nature; it is a fundamental division and an ontological subordination of the former to the latter.
I see now. I disagree that Helm is actually in line with Calvin, though I understand the association. He’s, of course, working through the Princetonians, of whom I’m also suspicious.
Another point is that I have to confess to no longer being a Neo-Eastern fan. Sure they are interesting, but I do not grant them the default priority. Ayres and Barnes have done quite a number on me, and I find their historical work persuasive when they say that the whole 20th century quest was driven by anachronisms and false polarities.
With that being said, we have to ask how we should read Calvin. Is it reasonable to assume he’s really splitting up the Trinity into nature Trinty and persons Trinity, or is it more reasonable to assume that he’s answering heretics at specific points?
And so to discuss the Son’s natural existence is to discuss him as related to all non-God. That’s how I’ve understood it. Calvin still uses monarchia of the Father and fount of deity to describe the ad intra relations, and as Warfield notes, none of Calvin’s students picked up on the big redefinition. Calvin still claimed Nicaea too. You’ll notice Reymond and Helm are more open to tossing it.
I don’t have the books handy now to start quoting, but I believe the burden of proof is first to show that Calvin was moving away from the traditional position. The East/West split itself is dubious, and falling fast in the scholarly world, and so we’d also need to spend enough time just on that.
In other words, don’t let false momentum fool you.
I’ll be back to say more, but that’s my starting point of view.
Xon
I think the difference between in large part reflects our different reading. My guess is (unless I’ve been unclear) is that your more Zizioulian, I’m more Bulgakovian.
Steven,
Even if the historical premise that the East says “Person, then Substance” while the West says “Substance then Person”, is flawed; I think the Eastern theologians like Bulgakov and Zizioulas are attacking real problems in both the East and the West, and propounding something true. Since reading The Comforter a preference for nature is everywhere.
Matt
I am with you here 100%, as I tried to hint in my #13. In my own dissertation I’m having to acknowledge this debate while coyly (in the footnotes) making it clear that I think the distinction is overblown. But so many commentators on Jonathan Edwards (subject of my diss) assume the distinction b/w east and west and then take JE as this “exciting” attempt to bridge the two. I also find JE exciting (hence why I’m writing on him), but I think the distinction b/w east and west is overblown. I think the neo-Eastern guys are over-polemicizing against western thinkers, and that if we read the western guys charitably we usually find that they are okeedokee. But, the thing is that I DO (in general) like the formulations of the neo-Eastern guys. IOW, if the west really did disagree with the ‘eastern’ view, then I would think that was a pity for the west. But the truth is that the west isn’t so far off from the east, filioque notwithstanding. We’re in agreement here.
I also appreciate your effort to read Calvin more charitably than I have been doing. I hope you’re reading is correct, and until I have a chance to look more closely, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.
And I don’t want to say that Calvin didn’t open himself up to the unfortunate understanding that Reymond and Helm give him. His misuse of applying ingenerate to the divine nature could have been avoided, even as I think I agree with his point.
But again, Warfield notes that none of Calvin’s students felt the need to part with Nicene language. They all retained monarchia of the Father language (and other such stuff), and so it seems odd that it takes 19th & 20th cent. moderns to finally flesh out what Calvin was intending to acheive.
Man, that last comment was the product of poor editing. Sorry.
Also, I haven’t read Zizioulas, but Bulgakov, while very critical of St. Augustine and the westerners is equally critical of St. Photius and the Easterners, and of the Eastern rejection of the filioque; and seems to say that an Orthodox rejection of the filioque as heretical is premature, and a discussion of the Spirit, in the Spirit of unity, between the East and the West is absolutely needed.