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.

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.

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.

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.

(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.

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.

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.

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”).

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.