The Reformed faith has traditionally spoken of God condescending to reveal himself in creation. Presupposed in this assertion is that God is infinite in his own essence, both qualitatively and quantitatively. God is of a different type of “being” altogether, existing wholly within himself, outside of our plane of space and time. He is outside of our scale of being. In order for us to have knowledge of this wholly other God, God has revealed himself in an appropriate fashion. Calvin referred to this as accommodation, and this has given some occasion for question. It is very easy to interpret this accommodating as a less desirable way of relating, as if in the best of all possible worlds man could overcome this situation. However well-intentioned such a desire may be, it is indeed quite fatal, for what is called “accommodation” is really just one attempt at the larger Christian doctrine of analogy, that is, the relationship between the infinite and the finite.
This concept is indeed not free from controversy. I do not wish to touch on Aquinas’s use of the analogia entis, nor will I tread upon Eastern Orthodoxy’s distinction between God’s essence and his energies. These are all attempts to get at the same thing, and postmodernity has given a new popularity to questions of “being.” For our purposes, I would like to examine what the Reformed faith’s doctrine of the covenant has to offer on this question.
There is some diversity within the Reformed tradition as we well know. Everyone remembers the Van Til/Clark controversy, though few understand it still. Calvin scholarship is also divided on just what he meant “accommodation” and “condescension” to achieve. Was it specifically aimed at salvation or was it simply the relationship between Creator and creation? In order to get beyond some of these disputes and to the point of interaction with the topic at hand, I am basically assuming Van Til’s position, and I am assuming Van Til’s position to be basically consistent with Reformed Orthodoxy. Muller’s Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics supports this, and as I proceed, I will interact with Scott Oliphint’s Reasons {for Faith}, which will also substantiate this point. And in doing all of this, I believe that I will interact with a few points mentioned elsewhere concerning the sacraments and the covenant.
The 7th chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith begins with this statement:
The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him, as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.
Initially this statement could appear to be teaching that God begins as transcendent and condescends to an immanent relationship with creation as he makes covenant. This would presuppose some sort of space which could be used to measure “distance” between God and man and thus betray other Reformed commitments, namely God’s infinity. I’m not sure if Westminster has some particular Creator/blessedness dichotomy in mind when it makes its somewhat strange distinction, but Oliphint interprets it in a better fashion, stating that “covenant” just is the relationship between God and creation. He writes, “The very fact that God brings something into existence to which he himself is in some way related entails, automatically, an act of condescension” (Reasons, 233). Oliphint goes on to use the covenant concept, which is the means by which God condescends to creation, as a way to understand how God’s infinite nature can genuinely interact with our finite plane of being without thereby becoming constricted or limited. The covenant concept allows for true communion between God and man all the while preserving the Creator/creature distinction as well. God is as much not like us as he is like us.
That this “ontological otherness” has been taught by Reformed theology can be seen by consulting any of the so-called scholastics, and I shall go to a scholastic of scholastics to show it. Williams Ames, in his Marrow, writes, “God, as he is in himself, cannot be understood by any save himself” (Baker edition, 83). He adds, “many things are spoken of God according to our own conceiving rather than according to his real nature” and “we cannot know him otherwise as we live now, nor do we need to know him otherwise to live well.” A few pages later, Ames says, “Those [attributes of God] that are said to be communicated to creatures apply by analogy, not in the same mode nor with the same meaning as they are said to exist in God.” He immediately adds, “The attributes of God tell what he is and who he is” (85).
So, according to Ames God is incomprehensible in himself, yet he is known truly by his attributes. Man is an analogue of God, and thus man and creation analogously teach us of God’s character. There is a distinction, but the relationship is, nevertheless, true.
Oliphint describes this relationship as the Eimi/eikon. God is the Eimi (being), and man is the eikon (likeness). God’s condescension reveals the Eimi through the eikon, most prominently through the incarnation. Oliphint writes, “God has come down climactically in the person of Jesus Christ; Christ is the Eimi/eikon, in one supreme person. He is the principle of the covenant” (238). Oliphint continues:
This union by God, in God, and for us, of the Eimi/eikon principle is, in one sense, the most basic truth for us to understand if we want to know who God is; it is basic to a proper understanding of God, creation, and all of Scripture. It is the principle that we must use to understand how God can remain who he is while at the same time interacting with his creation. (240)
He concludes, “And here is the central truth of it all: The unified Eimi/eikon principle of the exodus becomes the Emmanuel principle of the new exodus, the deliverance of the Lord’s people from bondage to sin” (ibid).
To this we should add the various BH guys who have written on the Trinity. Ralph Smith has written an introduction to the Trinitarian thought of James B. Jordan, which is quite helpful, and from this position one can start to see Trinitarian applications in various other areas of thought. The covenant, which accommodates the infinite to the finite, just is a description of God’s nature.
Thus, the covenant is reflective of who God is. It is a description of the way he relates to all of creation precisely because it is also a description of his nature. God is a God who lives in communion, the perichoresis between the Father, Son, and the Spirit, and thus when he brings creation into this communion, we see it in the form of covenant. Condescension or accommodation, understood in this light, is not something to be overcome. What is revealed is true, even as it remains analogous to the infinite, and as analogues, we are to appropriate what is given. We are not to attempt to ascend into the heavens, nor to drag Christ back down to earth, but rather we should live and dwell in covenant, for that is the means by which both Christ comes “down” to earth and we go “up” to heaven. Covenant is the means by which the finite communes with the infinite.
This is a better way of understanding the sacraments and the incarnation as condescension. There is no preferable reality in which we would not have them, but rather they just are the way God relates to us. Just as Jesus will not set aside his human nature, the Church shall not set aside the historical means of grace. We can understand covenant better as well, now that we allow various systematic commitments to mutually inform one another. A covenant is not simply a “deal” that two parties strike up, but rather, as John Murray taught us, it is the relationship God enjoys with all others.
I’m not sure how consistently every Reformed theologian has used this understanding of condescension. I can think of at least one view of creation that employs the term “analogical” in the exact opposite direction, using it to take away the truth of the relationship. I also imagine that many a discussion about the decree (ie. lapsarianism) fails to take infinity into account as it proposes an “order” (whether it be logical or temporal) in God’s mind.
In fact, a right understanding of analogy would have us relate to God through the revealed means, that is, through the covenant. The secret things remain on the other side of the Eimi/eikon divide, but this does not mean they are unknowable. Rather, it is precisely through the covenant that they are known.
I dunno. You write in a sort of summary fashion, “The covenant, which accommodates the infinite to the finite, just is a description of God’s nature.” I have no problem with that, but that’s hard to square with what Westminster seems to be saying.
If the covenant is a description of God’s nature, then is it really merely “a voluntary condescension on God’s part”? Does it really make sense to speak of the great distance between God and the creature being so great, if that distance is – by the nature of the case, if it is a description of God’s nature – inherently dealt with in God’s covenantal nature?
I’m thus led to believe that Westminster views the covenant as a sort of donum superadditum.
Or perhaps speaking of God’s nature as “just a description of God’s nature” is too strong; it is simply better to say that the interaction between the divine persons is covenantal in nature. And then, with reference to the creature, we could add that God chooses to create in such a way that He extends the covenantal relationship to His creation. Perhaps that salvages the Westminster statement.
The “voluntary condescension” would have to include creation itself, which I agree, seems a little different from what Westminster is saying.
In fact, I find Westminster’s wording there to be rather confusing all around.
I asked Oliphint about it, and he said that we should interpret creation as itself covenantal and Westminster’s language as trying to emphasize the need for that concept.
But that could very well be a modification of original intent.
Does anyone have any ideas on what a pre-covenantal existence would have meant for the divines? What were they thinking of?
Also note that the WCF teaching is with regard to our having “any fruition of [God], as their blessedness and reward.” That’s to say, it has to do with eschatology, not creation.
Human beings are created by God, for God, but that doesn’t mean we can require God to give himself to us as our end. Rather, we receive God as our end by grace (or as the WCF says, “voluntary condescension”).
Or perhaps, more accurately, it has to do with creation only insofar as the created order, crowned and summed up in humanity, is directed towards a greater share in God’s own life as its ultimate end.
In that light, we might paraphrase WCF 7.1 in the following way:
The fact that the WCF uses “voluntary condescension” rather than “grace” to express its point is a reflection of that fact that while most of the Westminster Assembly accepted the language of “grace” some wanted to reserve that term for the post-lapsarian situation.
Joel,
Your way of reading this is, of course, acceptable to me. I appreciate your trying to reword it. It would be nice if we could update the language of the entire confession like this.
The problem I’m still having with this is that it appears like creation and the voluntary condensation are two separate acts. God creates and then he shows grace. Don’t you think it would be better to describe the act of creation itself as a gracious act? That would remove all doubt about the meaning. Nothing needed to be added to creation in order for man to enjoy fellowship with God.
Your point, however, is that God had more in store for Adam. But I’m not so sure that your attempt to interpret the language of “voluntary condescension” as eschatological hope for Adam does justice to the original wording. The wording there seems to indicate that the “voluntary condescension” was the making of the covenant of life, not the consummation of the promise of that covenant. But I could be wrong. I’m happy to read it your way.
I’ve often said that God didn’t make us as janitors, but as rulers in the universe.
Now, strictly speaking (perhaps, “literally”) my statement is nonsense. We were made in the image of God to rule and we wouldn’t be us, humanity, if we were not God’s image-bearers and thus rulers.
This is like saying, “If I had been born before the French Revolution I would have been a royalist,” when in fact we would be entirely different people if we were born in a different culture and history. Yet the statement is still useful in relaying true information.
Likewise, surely Adam and Eve could and should be grateful that God did not just make them, but also spoke with them. Even though that was God’s purpose for them from the beginning and there was no other way he could be righteous toward them as Creatures made in his image.
I guess, what I’m saying, is that I’ve never taken the “voluntary condescension” as some sort of literal metaphysical statement claiming that creation and covenant are truly separable. I think it is basically pointing out that we can be grateful for “bare creation” and be thankful also for God’s revalation of himself to his creatures in covenant.
Of course Adam, as created, already enjoyed fellowship with God. This is explicitly taught by the Standards: WCF 4.2; WLC 20. What he didn’t enjoy was eschatological fellowship with God, fruition of God as his blessedness and reward.
And isn’t the “covenant of life” a promise of eschatological reward? “Life” here isn’t just “life” or even “life with God,” but “eschatological life with God” – whether that is conceived as mere confirmation in Adam’s original state of life, so that it would be no longer possible for him to fall (the minority view at the Assembly) or whether that is conceived as eschatological transfiguration into a kind of heavenly life after the pattern we see in the resurrected Christ (the majority view at the Assembly).
I don’t see any hint of creation and voluntary condescension as two separate acts here in WCF 7.1, though that’s how it comes across elsewhere in the Standards: WLC 20 and especially WSC 12 (which could be remedied simply by dropping the word “had”).
Perhaps this will help: consider “blessedness and reward” against the backdrop of “beatitudo” as historically understood in Christian theology.
We’re talking eschatology here: the beatific vision, ultimate human eudaimonia or blessedness found in a graciously given human elevation and perfection in God. That’s to say, read the WCF in light of Augustine, Lombard, and Aquinas.
I certainly like Joel’s rewrite better than the original. The original was probably fine at the time, but post-Van Til it seems odd. Non-moderns are critical of spatial metaphors.
In Biblical terms, God created us in the garden with the Tree of Life, and promised a second gifting to us at the Tree of Knowledge when He shall have decided we are ready for it.
If grace is the right word for this second gift (“new creation” in Biblical parlance), then grace is the right word for the first creation. If “voluntary condescension” is right for one, it is right for the other.
What I don’t like about VC language is that is implies that the incarnation qua incarnation was some kind of condescension or humiliation. Quite the contrary, the incarnation of the Son was an act of glorification. Human beings are God’s good creation, the best of the creation, and for God to add the garment of human flesh to Himself is to glorify Himself. The humiliating aspects of the incarnation have to do with “likeness of sinful” flesh, etc.
I don’t see the need to employ non-Biblical language when perfectly good Biblical language is available. “Voluntary condescension” is not like “trinity.” We don’t need it. We have gift, grace, creation, etc. Joel’s rewrite moves in the right direction.
Just some vague thoughts.
Or maybe I should say: I agree with John Frame that the Bible is to be translated into other universes of discourse. If, to deal in philosophical language, “voluntary condescension” is a good translation of grace, gift, whatever, then perhaps there’s value. Then one can be a scholastic and explain it, as Stephen’s essay rehearses. I would submit, however, that for a Church confession, sticking as close as possible to Biblical language is important.
in positing the covenant w.r.t. “humanity” I can’t help but notice that the WCF spoke of “reasonable creatures”, subsuming angels under the same covenantal order.
(but not under the order of federal headship in Adam, presumably).
A re-write would have to take into account the desire of the writers to write broadly of reasonable creatures such as angels which have a different (?) eschatological end-point.
Or maybe one shouldn’t lump humans and angels together under covenant.
It’s not clear to me that “reasonable creatures” is supposed to include angels.
While angels and humans both fall under God’s decree of election in the WCF, “reasonable” seems to be a way to talk about human beings (WCF 4.2; WLC 17, 24, 37; WSC 22).
In most medieval theology, angels were intellectual substances, but not reasonable, while humans are reasonable. That’s to say, when angels know truth, they know it simply and without discursive elaboration, but when human beings know truth, our minds move from one thing to another discursively. This latter operation is what is properly called “reason.”
I imagine the WCF is working in the context of this scholastic background.
To me that quote from Ames gets it off on the wrong track (though I’m not making a historical claim, as I am too ignorant of such things…perhaps Ames is not the only one who did this and perhaps he was just following others?)
The Westminster language in WCF 7.1, especially as glossed by Joel, I am jiving with quite nicely. But Ames’ explanation of the Creator/creature divide is what bothers me: “God, as he is in himself, cannot be understood by any save himself.” That statement sounds like it rules out revelation altogether that communicates any accurate information about God ‘as He is.” Of course, there is an ontological “divide” b/w God and creation: of course! and that’s just Christian Orthodoxy 101. But the notion that this divide menas that God cannot be understood as He is “in himself,” even if He chooses to reveal Himself to us, is what I don’t get. Of course, if “in himself” refers to some sort of exhaustive knowledge or (to use another modernized metaphor) to the sort of “direct awareness” a person has of themself within their own consciousness, then sure, we can’t have that kind of knowledge of God. But it seems to me that the better way to speak of this is simply to stick with the language of analogy already established in the Church: we DO know God, by analogy as He reveals Himself to us. This knowledge is the only kind of knowledge there is. It is not some ‘inferior’ kind of knowledge that we have to settle for. And it is not a sign that God somehow had to diminish Himself or ’step away’ from His own nature in order to “babble” a picture to us that we can understand but which isn’t really accurate. My problem is that statements like Ames’s seem to turn analogy into falsity, though maybe I’m reading too much into him.
Xon,
I don’t think you and Ames really disagree. “In himself” has to do with the infinite nature. We don’t understand that.
We understand God finitely.
Peter Leithart pointed out at the BH Conference two years ago that in pagan thought, every move away from an origin is a diminution or corruption. Hence, all the early Church heresies had to have the Son inferior to the Father, since He comes from the Father. All of this is “moving down the scale of being” thinking.
In Biblical thought there is a sense in which the reverse is true. The Son is a glorification of the Father, and the Spirit of the Son. In the creation, the past is mere prologue to a better and better future. The golden age is not in the past but in the future.
This Biblical way of thinking has only imperfectly penetrated the Church as yet. Just look at most eschatological systems and you can see this. And such theological systems as neo-orthodoxy see human language as a broken vessel. The real reality cannot be expressed in words.
In Biblical thought, the Son is the Word, and the real reality is exhaustively verbal (as well as personal and spiritual).
The upshot is that when reading pre-Vantillian writers one sometimes senses some kind of metaphysics of diminution (!) while at the same time an orthodoxy that really does not want such a thing. The beauty of Vantillian thinking is that it simply clarifies the orthodoxy that is there all along, though sometimes awkwardly expressed.
Along these lines is the never-quite-admitted belief that there are better ways to say things than how God says them in the Bible. We need to “translate” “symbols” and parables etc. into better language. In the past God “condescended” to “lisp” to us as primitive savages, but we know better now. The whole “Federal Vision” controversy was over the fact that we FV-ers said that God’s way of putting things is in fact the perfectly right way to put things, and that the language of our confessions is impoverished (though at some points necessary) and inadequate by comparison.
A final note: In modern English “condescend” has come to connote a sneer. To condescend is to treat someone without honor. I don’t believe the word used to carry that freight, but it does now. As such it really does need to be replaced. God’s attitude toward His daughter/bride/family is not one of condescension but of honor. God delights to honor and glorify us. The Confession includes that when it says that God is “pleased” to do these things. Hence, I like Joel’s reformulation, which drops the now-misleading term.