Expressing the Ineffable

Cindy Aalders has written a fine monograph on the hymns of Anne Steele (1717-1778), entitled To Express the Ineffable: The Hymns and Spirituality of Anne Steele (Studies in Baptist Thought and History, Paternoster Press/Wipf and Stock, 2008). Steele was once well-known for her hymns, sung particularly in Particular Baptist chapels in England but also elsewhere, for some of them were widely reprinted in various collections. There is also a CD of fifteen of the hymns set to new tunes, ‘Awake the Sacred Song’, composed (and sung) by Andrea Tisher, available from the Regent Bookstore.

In fact this is very much a Regent College effort. Cindy is Director of Admissions at Regent, Andrea directs the worship there, and the book began as a thesis supervised by Bruce Hindmarsh, who is Professor of Spiritual Theology at the College.

Steele was born and lived in Broughton, Hampshire, in well-off circumstances (her father supplied timber to the British Navy), living a life that was deeply embedded in the Strict Baptist communities of Hampshire and Wiltshire. Her grandfather, Edward Froude, had been a member of the 1689 Assembly of Particular Baptists which issued the well-known Confession of Faith of that year. Her mother died when she was young, and Anne never married. She regarded her literary talents as both a gift and a calling.

Cindy Aalders slays a couple of dragons, tales that in the past have been routinely accompanied introductions to Steele’s hymn, or at least severely wounds them: Steele’s fiancé was not drowned in a river on the evening of their wedding (there is no evidence that she was engaged), though there was such a drowning, nor did she suffer life-long injury as a result of a fall from a horse, though she did fall, more than once. In a day of small-pox epidemics, and when a standard medical treatment was ‘bleeding’, Steele’s extended family were constantly plagued by ill-health and by the sorrows of premature deaths. Anne Steele was much caught up in this, in her expressions of sympathy and practical help, and in the offering of prayer. She was herself bed-ridden for the last years of her life.

Not only does the monograph serve to re-introduce Steele’s verse, but it also provides the results of interesting research based on the Steele papers which have recently been lodged in the Angus Library of Regent Park College, Oxford. Some of Steele’s correspondence is available there, as well as unpublished hymns and poems.

Anne Steele appears to have modelled her verse (and poetry) on Edward Young’s Night Thoughts, and her themes were drawn not only from her own life and the theology of the Particular Baptists, but often from Isaac Watts, the pioneer of what turned out to be a great flowering of evangelical hymn writing in the eighteenth century – Watts, Newton, Cowper, Charles Wesley, Toplady, and Benjamin Beddome, (with whom Anne was acquainted), and several others, including female hymn writers (besides Anne) such as Anne Dutton.


The hymns are noteworthy for their intense, nervous, questioning moods, and for their stress on the divine transcendence centring, of course, in the gift of the Saviour, and of his Cross. They are infused with Calvinistic doctrine and are ‘experimental’ in character. That is, they not only relate the ups and downs of Christian experience, but also recall its ‘testings’, the testings of faith and assurance by trials and losses and needs of various kinds. They are deeply personal, and I suppose one could raise the question as to whether some of them are suitable for congregational singing. Though to be fair to Steele, she did not intentionally write for congregational use as did, say, Newton and Cowper, and Beddome.

Cindy Aalders draws attention to the interrogative mood of the hymns, contrasting them with the exuberance of Charles Wesley, and even of Watts. She suggests that if the mark of Charles Wesley’s hymns is the exclamation mark, that of Steele’s is the question mark. Cindy offers well-informed, thoughtful and perceptive analyses of the hymns, from several angles; Steele’s recognition of the limited powers of our language to express the greatness of God, as in

But O, in vain our humble songs,
Attempt the honours of they Name,
Too weak our words, too low our tongues,
Thy countless favours to proclaim

And in her recognition of divine sovereignty in more straightforward terms

Eternal power, almighty God,
Who can approach thy throne?
Accessless light is thy abode,
To angel-eyes unknown

Before the radiance of thine eye,
The heavens no longer shine,
And all the glories of the sky,
Are but the shade of thine.

How strange! How awful is thy love!
With trembling we adore.
Not all the exalted minds above
Its wonders can explore.

While golden harps, and angel tongues,
Resound immortal lays,
Great God, permit our humble songs,
To rise and mean thy praise.

And the theme of Anne Steele’s own suffering, expressed in the attitudes of longing and resignation, and in the petitions of this verse, as the hymn-writer moves from physical disease to spiritual sickness

Dear Lord, we wait thy healing hand;
Diseases fly at thy command;
O let thy sovereign touch impart
Life, strength and health to every heart

Then shall the sick, the blind, the lame,
Adore their Great Physician’s name;
Then dying souls shall bless their God,
And spread they wondrous praise abroad.

And in this hymn

Thy deep decrees from creature sight,
Are hid in shades of awful night,
Amid the lines, with curious eye,
Not angel minds presume to pry.

Great God, I would not ask to see
What in futurity shall be;
If light and bliss attend my days,
Then let my future hours be praise.

Is darkness and distress my share?
Then let me trust thy guardian care;
Enough for me, if love divine,
At length through every cloud shall shine.

Cindy is careful to distinguish such expressions of resignation to the divine will from the Quietism of Fenelon and Madame Guyon.

As the inaccessible God is made known in Christ, the hymns express a deep reverence for the Saviour,

When sins and fears prevailing rise,
And fainting hope almost expires,
Jesus, to thee I lift my eyes,
To thee I breathe my soul’s desires.

And in the better-known hymn

And did the holy and the just,
The Sovereign of the skies,
Stoop down to wretchedness and dust,
That guilty worms might rise?

Yes, the Redeemer left his Throne,
His radiant throne on high,
(Surprising mercy! Love unknown!)
To suffer, bleed and die.

He took the dying traitor’s place,
And suffer’d in his stead;
For man, (O miracle of grace!)
For man the Saviour bled.

Questions, certainly. But also exclamations of praise.

The differences between these restrained, thoughtful, solemn addresses to Almighty God, and what today pass for 'worship songs', are obvious enough


(A selection of Steele’s hymns has been made available by John R. Broome, Hymns by Anne Steele, (London, Gospel Standard Trust, 1967))

July

This month I begin the first of a series of four posts on Bishop Tom Wright's book on justification.

I'll say this as a short preface to this series: It's a good thing to have a Bishop of the C of E debating the great things of the gospel. How many English bishops are there? Thirty? Forty? Two hundred? I've no idea. Their sepia features make them merge as one, the whole tribe apparently consumed by Anglican bureaucracy and political correctness

Where is there a theologian among them? Answer: There's one in Durham. So though, as I shall try to show, some of Bishop Tom's ideas on justification are off-centre, and his way of debating these matters is very strange (that is, if the idea is to home in on the truth), who can nonetheless fail to admire the commitment and industry of the man?

Side by side with the four posts on Wright on justification I shall be putting out four drafts of short extracts from a book, Calvin at the Centre, to be published by the Oxford University Press in November. The book is in central respects a sequel to John Calvin's Ideas, (OUP, 2004).

In a post on mental error, 'Hodge and Hymn Singing' I cited three Reformed theologians on the matter, without providing references. I am now in a position to reveal...that these are ....

(1) J.I.Packer, ‘Fundamentalism’ and the Word of God, 1958, 124
(2) Jonathan Edwards, Works, (Yale edition), 19, 242
(3) John Owen, Works, ( ed. Goold), 5, 163-4

Wright in General

Wright's Approach

Tom Wright’s new book on justification (Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (London SPCK)) is a good read, and with much of it I found myself nodding in agreement . He writes in a ‘jolly hockeysticks’ way, with great verve, enthusiasm and self-confidence. But he is not so good at running towards the goal. He is not as clear as he ought to be about identifying the matters at issue; what is common ground, and what is, or are, the remaining problems. In this first post on his book I shall try to show some of why this is.

Those expecting a blow by blow engagement with John Piper’s book on Wright (The Future of Justification) will be disappointed. The strategy is to outflank Piper exegetically - to say: ’If your aim is to see what Paul teaches about justification in its original context, then this is the way to do it, and what he teaches is substantially different from the Reformed view of Paul’s account of justification’. In my view, he does not succeed in showing this. It’s a pity, though, that the author did not have time to extend the same courtesy to John Piper as Piper extended to him, to invite him to read the MS in draft. Had he done so he might have saved himself some trouble. One has the feeling, occasionally, that Bishop Wright is not content unless he has the last word. One reason for the failure of the outflanking strategy is a straightforward but irritating misunderstanding, which a dose of Piper would have cured, as we shall see in due course.

The theocentricity of his approach, and the material on covenant history are excellent. – Of many statements, there is this:

God’s single plan always was to put the world to rights, to set it right, to undo Genesis 3 and Genesis 11, sin and the fracturing of human society which results from that sin and shows it up in its full colours…:to bring about new creation, through Abraham/Israel and, as the fulfilment of the Abraham/Israel shaped plan, through the Messiah, Jesus. (78. See also, for example 26, 73f, 83, 155, 174).

At this point he could have been reading John Calvin. Wright seems never to have heard of covenant theology, writing as if the phrase is his, (222) and as if the idea of a single history, a single covenant of grace, is a fresh exegetical insight. He’s also good on grace and faith.(184)

On tradition, the bishop has curious views. He routinely thinks of tradition as constraining what is thought in the present, and so anything ‘traditional’ must be rejected or at least viewed with suspicion. (eg 135, 223, and many other places.) But a rejection of all tradition seems unbiblical and in any case tends to lead to the reinvention of the wheel. Why does a traditional view, if it is a correct view, not inform and liberate? Belief in the resurrection of Jesus, is that not 'traditional'? He writes of ‘refreshing’ the tradition, and this could mean merely smartening it up, or replacing it with a fresh view. He does not say which. It is as if semper reformanda, together with the mantra that the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his Holy Word, are phrases which warrant a never-ending research project. The idea that we need a continuous stream of fresh readings of Paul, newer and newer new perspectives, is both wearying and scary. (13)

One has also to get over Wright’s understanding of Romans 2. 1 – 16 as being a description of Jew and Gentile believers. But though disagreeing with this view, one can live with it. It was after all Augustine’s view, and so part of the ‘Augustinian tradition’ which Wright elsewhere dismisses. (Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter, Ch.44)

Faith and Works

I gained three general impressions of a theological nature. One is that the gap between Wright and the classic Reformation view of justification (as expressed by John Piper, for example) seems to be not as great as before. If one presses the logic of Wright’s present position, then the gap is even less. Where the gap has already narrowed is over the question, Are believers justified now? Or are they only justified at the last, on the basis of a whole life? In the new book he writes that the 'future judgment.... corresponds to the present verdict which... is issued simply and solely on the basis of faith’ (165) See also 179, 207-12, 223. But it has to be admitted that Wright wobbles on this, as in 166-7 ‘the verdict on the last day will truly reflect what people have actually done’. The vagueness of the language irritates: 'corresponds to', 'anticipate', 'reflect'. How corresponds to, anticipates, reflects?, one vainly asks.

Nevertheless, despite the wobbles in stating his position, wobbles that could be given a good and a bad sense, this is a change from his Edinburgh paper on justification in which he was clearly striking a different note. There justification was reserved for the final judgement, giving his account a moralistic flavour, which invited one to draw a comparison with Richard Baxter. (See here) But this has to be said: the relation of faith to actions badly needs a clarificatory word from the Bishop’s cathedra to settle this vital question: are Spirit-imbued virtues a sign of faith (à la Epistle of James)? Or do they complete faith, supplement it, fulfil it? These questions cry out for an answer, but answer is there none. A clear sentence of two would have done it. It is this sort of gap that holds up the discussion and the meeting of minds. So where, according to the Bishop, (one is left to wonder) does Paul stand on this issue? And where does the Bishop himself stand? (More on the difficulty in handling the Wright output in the fourth post.)

Imputation

To get to the heart of the second matter, imputation, one first has to negotiate one’s way through a whole tangle of issues. It is clear throughout the book that Wright has a forensic, law-court approach to justification, seeing this clearly in Paul. The second half of the book works this out in great and repetitive detail. The difficulty that arises is over what exactly is imputed and how it is imputed. As we shall see later on Wright has a clumsy and unsympathetic understanding of the Reformed doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. It’s hard to say, even at the end, whether Wright has got the picture.

Part of the reason for this failure may be the Bishop's strong belief that God’s righteousness (in Paul) is his covenant faithfulness, that such faithfulness is identical with the character of God’s righteousness, and is not simply an expression of it, or the chief expression of it. And so he repeatedly claims that what God reckons, in law-court fashion, to his people, is what Jesus, the faithful Israelite, achieved for his people in his death and resurrection. Because of what he did they are ‘in the right’. But (for Wright) being in the right cannot be having Christ’s righteousness imputed, since (in that sense) Christ has no righteousness to impute and to suppose otherwise is to be guilty of a ‘category mistake’.

John Piper insists that God requires a moral righteousness of us, and that since we have none of our own God must reckon or impute such a moral righteousness from somewhere else – obviously within this scheme, from the ‘righteousness’ of Jesus Christ . I can see how that works. But ‘righteousness’, within the very precise language of the courtroom which Paul is most clearly evoking, most obviously in Romans 3, is not ‘moral righteousness’. It is the status of the person whom the court has vindicated.’ (71)

I suspect that this failure to appreciate a deeper sense of God’ s righteousness (which is both a logical and a theological failure) lies at the heart of Wright’s present view of what it is that the judge in court declares the offender to be. But it is not so easy to tell because he has such a weird understanding of what the Reformed view is. (By the way, note the little word ‘moral’, ‘moral righteousness’. It seems no bigger than a man’s hand, but it will turn out to be much larger).

Imputation and fudge

The third matter is Wright’s fudging of the Reformed view. He writes blithely of it involving the transfer of merit from a ‘treasury’. So imputation is the granting of some of Christ’s merit. He says, writing of Paul’s teaching in Galatians, that God’s purposes have been accomplished through the single person of Israel’s faithful representative.

But this does not mean that he [Jesus] has ‘fulfilled the law’ in the sense of obeying it perfectly and thus building up a ‘treasury of merit’ which can then be ‘reckoned’ to his people. That scheme, with all its venerable antecedents in my own tradition as well as John Piper’s, always was an attempt to say something which Paul was saying, but in language and concepts which had still not shaken off the old idea that the law was, after all, given as a ladder of good works up which one might climb to impress God with one’s own moral accomplishments’(114, also 201, 134-5 the ‘amassing of a treasury of law-based ‘righteousness’, which a ‘blind alley’ (204, also 205, ‘a category mistake’, ‘legalism’)

If the imputation of righteousness is the treasury view, what is the imputation of sin? Does Christ get our sin? Is being made sin his being made sinful? (Did the Reformers never think about such points?) The language of the treasury, which I have never met in Reformed theologians, seems more reminiscent of Tetzel than of Luther and Calvin. It must at best be thought of as figurative or analogical language for imputation, and misleading at that.

Such language arises, I believe, because of a generally slap-happy approach to doctrine and its history, resulting in utter unclarity as to just who those Wright refers to as the followers of Augustine, those in his tradition, are intended to be, and especially what the history of Reformed theology in its relation to Augustine looks like. This failure is odd in view of the claim, at the end of he book, that the author is the one who has finally established Reformed theology. (224) One wonders, is he well-informed? Can he be serious?

This lack of seriousness is seen, for example, in comments on Gal. 3.29. He claims that for the ‘old perspective’ no one has even asked the question of why Paul concludes his argument, ‘you are therefore Abraham’s seed’ and not merely ‘you are therefore children of God’. (19) But glancing at John Calvin, we find

The conclusion rests on this argument, that Christ is the blessed seed, in whom, as we have said, all the children of Abraham are united. He proves this by the universal offer of the inheritance to them all, from which it follows, that the promise includes them among the children. It deserves notice, that, wherever faith is mentioned, it is always a relation to the promise.

Calvin does not ask the question, but he does give an answer that is strongly in accord with Wright’s own answer.

Here’s another sweeping claim - that the doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness is the central failure of Reformed people. (e.g. 71f.)

we have undercut in a single stroke the age-old problem highlighted in Augustine; interpretation of ‘justify’ as ‘make righteous’. This has always meant, for Augustine and his followers, that God, in justification, was actually transforming the character of the person, albeit in small, preliminary ways (by, for instance, implanting the beginnings of love and faith within them). The result was a subtle but crucial shifting of metaphors: the lawcourt scene is now replaced with a medical one, a kind of remedial spiritual surgery involving a ‘righteousness implant’ which, like an artificial heart, begins to enable to patient to do thing previously impossible.

‘Much of the post-Augustinian tradition has used ‘justification’ to cover the whole range of ‘becoming a Christian’ from first to last…’ linking with this, in the next paragraph, to John Piper! (71) This tradition is clearly intended to include the Reformers. Or this

There is indeed a sense in which ‘justification’ really does make someone ‘righteous’ – it really does create the righteousness, the status-of-being-in-the right, of which it speaks – but ‘righteousness’ in that law court sense does not mean either ‘morally good character’ or ‘performance of moral good deeds’, but ‘the status you have when the court has found in your favour’. (71)

There is absolutely no awareness that this is precisely the standard Reformed meaning of ‘imputation’, ‘reckoning’ and ‘count as’; and no recognition that what he then goes on to say about that view is filled with serious misconceptions.

The terms of debate

If a person is participating in a discussion and separating his own view from others' views then two things are needed: he needs to convey a clear sense of what his own view implies and does not imply, and he needs to show that he understands the view or views from which he dissents, representing them with the greatest sympathy and clarity that he can muster. On the matter of justification it is not sufficient to provide the reader with acres and acres of what St. Paul really said. The writer has also to say how this differs from standard Reformed views (if those are the issue) and to do this one needs to set out those views with clarity and sympathy. I don't find this in this book, and the failure lowers visibility. In the course of the next posts we shall from time to time find ourselves surrounded by this swirling mist.

So, beta minus for presentation.

In the next post I shall argue that there are good theological reasons why God’s righteousness cannot mean ‘covenant faithfulness’, (Piper 45, 71) and then, in the post after that I try to show that Wright’s root and branch opposition to the very idea of the imputation of righteousness also lands him in a certain amount of inconsistency. Finally, in the fourth post, I shall re-present the standard Reformed view of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, showing that it is a clear alternative both to Rome and to Wright's view as presented in his book. I do this in the hope that the differences between his view and the ‘traditional’ Reformed position, which may have already narrowed, may be narrowed further.

Augustine and Calvin on the Knowledge of God

In his use of Augustine what Calvin latches onto what, for Augustine, came after the vision, the knowledge of God and of ourselves which it initiated and made possible. Although Calvin looks to the Bishop of Hippo for much of his theological inspiration, or at least for the formulation of it, we need to bear in mind that he is no means an uncritical Augustinian. This often comes out in incidental details. So in his work on predestination, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, Calvin notes that Augustine's account of evil as a privation, which he accepts as true, is nonetheless a subtlety 'which does not satisfy many';1 and elsewhere he is critical of Augustine's platonically-influenced account of the creation.

Augustine, who is excessively addicted to the philosophy of Plato, is carried along, according to custom, to the doctrine of ideas; that before God made the world, he had the form of the whole building conceived in his mind; and so the life of those things which did not yet exist was in Christ, because the creation of the world was appointed in him. But how widely different this is from the intention of the Evangelist we shall immediately see.2

So one line of Calvin's criticism is over the evident or avowed platonism of Augustine. We may also see such filtering of Augustine's thought at work in the way in which Calvin assimilates the Augustinian theme of the interrelatedness of the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But it must also be remembered that Calvin was never in agonies over Manicheism and over what might take its place.

So we should not assume, a priori, that in developing his thoughts on the relation between the knowledge of God and of ourselves, Calvin slavishly follows Augustine. It is obvious that he cannot do that, for we have seen that this theme is an important strand in his discussion of the nature of faith, and the relationship between faith and assurance. And though Augustine discusses the place of faith in justification, and the relation of faith to belief, (as we shall note in Chapter Seven), there is nothing comparable in Augustine to Calvin's discussion of the nature of faith. The Reformation sola fide had intervened, as well as Calvin's genius as a 'theologian of the Holy Spirit'.

For another thing, there appears to be nothing in Calvin's experience that corresponds to what, for Augustine, followed the reading of the books of the Platonists. It is true that Calvin, by comparison with Augustine, was a very reticent, private individual. Nonetheless, he tells us something of his conversion and of other turning points in his life, and from time to time he mentions his own character traits. But even if we were to read portions of the Institutes autobiographically, there is nothing that corresponds in Calvin's experience to Augustine's 'ascent'. We have noted that at the centre of Augustine's experience of 'ascent' to God is both a metaphysical and an epistemological conclusion. As a result, he both learns how to think about God, and is certain of him. Through the use that he makes of these conclusions in the Libero he endeavours to bring them to others in a discursive way. There is nothing like this in Calvin. No vision, and no concern to establish the certainty of God's existence in such a manner.

Nevertheless, in the context of the Reformation and of his polemic against the Church of Rome, Calvin was most certainly interested in certainty, in the assured authority of Holy Scripture and what it teaches, and in the assurance of faith, as we have already noted. Calvin believed that he and all other Christians have certainty, or may have it, through the work of the Holy Spirit illuminating the revealed truth of Holy Scripture.3 But of course he does not discuss the character of this certainty in epistemological vein, carefully comparing it with that incorrigibility that later on Descartes was to claim for his knowledge of himself. Though it is interesting that there is one isolated example of an Augustinian (and by implication a Cartesian) turn of phrase. In his early Psychopannychia (1542) a sustained polemic against the Anabaptist doctrines of post-mortem 'soul-sleep' and of 'mortalism', commenting on Hebrews 11.6 ('they desire a better country') Calvin says,

Here our opponents argue as follows: If they desire a heavenly country, they do not already possess it: We, on the contrary, argue; If they desire, they must exist, for there cannot be desire without a subject in which it resides. 4

Calvin here commits himself to 'Necessarily, if A desires, then A exists'. This was, for him, in the case in hand, a refutation of the doctrine of 'mortalism', the belief that at the death of the body the soul also died, albeit temporarily, a refutation drawn from a premise of Holy Scripture. Despite at least one commentator drawing a parallel with Descartes' cogito it would be unwise to ascribe any greater epistemological significance to it than Calvin supplies in the context.5 It is an exaggeration to suppose that 'Both Calvin and Descartes start from an Augustinian premise, namely that personal experience is our gate of access to being. Calvin, however, places the experience of the self in desire rather than, as Descartes does, in thought.' 6 This is to promote an inference from a biblical text into a fundamental epistemic principle. It is not so much the individual experience of desire, but the fact of post-mortem desire, from which Calvin draws the inference that therefore there must be post-mortem awareness.

Further, Calvin's appreciation of divine transcendence was couched in much more negative terms than Augustine's - he stresses the incomprehensibility of God, the 'secrets' of his providence and grace, the fact that we cannot know God 'in himself', and the inscrutability of his will. Calvin was not so much concerned with scepticism as with what does and ought to count as the knowledge of God in the Church. No mere assent, not implicit faith, was sufficient, only explicit trust in God as he is to us, the God of the covenant, the God of promise. So, much of what there was of value for Descartes in Augustine passes Calvin by.

In addition, Calvin differs rather markedly from Augustine in one respect that we have not so far brought out very fully, and this also will be significant when, in the next Chapter, we consider the question of the reception of Descartes and Cartesianism in the Reformed churches. We noted at the beginning of the Chapter that in the opening sentences of the Institutes not only does Calvin assert the importance of the knowledge of God and of ourselves, but he imparts his own distinctive emphasis to this. He finds in our knowledge of God as Creator another source of wisdom. Calvin here opens the door onto a significant difference between Augustine and himself over what I shall call 'worthwhileness', a difference which at the same time brings him nearer to Descartes. We now go on briefly to look at this, and to tease out some of its importance for our theme.

Contrary to a widespread misconception, Augustine certainly had a positive view of the body, and of the physical world in general. It was after all the creation of God, and was originally good. And he had been emancipated from Manichean dualism. Yet he never ceased to be concerned with his own physicality and with what he judged to be its negative impact on his life with God. The external world was also distracting. The lizard on the wall is something that, despite himself, fascinated Augustine. But it is a distraction which results in his mind being filled with 'a mass of empty thoughts',7 not something to be interested in or to wonder at. For Augustine the place of the physical world was an element in a life-long tension, a deep strain in his thought between use and enjoyment, uti and frui; a strain revealed, for example, in human friendship, and over his reaction to the death of his mother Monica. 8

Augustine sets out the distinction between uti and frui in a rather deadpan, matter of fact way in his On Christian Teaching.

There are some things which are to be enjoyed, some which are to be used, and some whose function is both to enjoy and use. Those which are to be enjoyed make us happy; those which are to be used assist us and give us a boost, so to speak, as we press on towards our happiness, so that we may reach and hold fast to the things which make us happy. And we, placed as we are among things of both kinds, both enjoy and use them; but if we choose to enjoy things that are to be used, our advance is impeded and sometimes even diverted, and we are held back, or even put off, from attaining things which are to be enjoyed, because we are hamstrung by our love of lower things. 9

Yet things are not always that clear for Augustine

When you enjoy a human being in God, you are enjoying God rather than that human being. For you enjoy the one by whom you are made happy, and you will one day rejoice that you have attained the one in whom you now set your hope of attaining him.... Yet the idea of enjoying someone or something is very close to that of using someone or something together with love.10

There is enough ambivalence here to have provoked a justifiable scholarly controversy over the relation of uti to frui in Augustine.11

Calvin has a different emphasis. He does not seem to have been plagued by physical temptations as Augustine was, any more than he was attracted by the pull of Platonism, and as a consequence, and as a part of his reaction against the medieval clergy-laity distinction, he himself supported secular disciplines and callings, and emphasised, with Luther, their legitimacy. He was, after all, at one time destined for the law, and then set out to become a Renaissance scholar. In his conversion he does not turn his back on all this, but comes to have a different estimate of it.

At the personal level he did not feel the strain between uti and frui as Augustine did. He was as aware of the dangers of misusing things below, and setting one's affection on things below and not on things above. We shall look at this, and at the different kind of strain that it imposes on Calvin's thought , in Chapter Ten. Nevertheless, in drawing the distinction between 'things below' and 'things above', a distinction he took, of course, from the New Testament,12 and giving overriding importance to the second, Calvin nevertheless recognised the legitimacy of the first in a way that Augustine found it difficult to do. He was comfortable with the everyday world in a way that Augustine never was, not at least after his conversion.

As far as one can tell Calvin finds little or no tension in uti and frui because he thinks, in a fairly straightforward way, that the same things can be both used and enjoyed. This is because he believed that many created things possess features which are at one and the same time both useful and enjoyable, and are designed as such by their Creator. In his treatment of marriage he writes that man may 'enjoy a help-meet for him',13 something that it would be difficult to imagine Augustine saying. In his discussion of the present life and its helps it is striking that Calvin has a positive view of life which goes well beyond regarding it as merely a disposable means to a greater end. There is not only necessity, but delight.

For if we are to live, we must use the necessary supports of life; nor can we even shun those things which seem more subservient to delight than to necessity. We must therefore observe a mean, that we may use them with a pure conscience, whether for necessity or for pleasure. 14

He refers to

some good and holy men who, when they saw intemperance and luxury perpetually carried to excess, if not strictly curbed, and were desirous to correct so pernicious an evil, imagined that there was no other method than to allow man to use corporeal goods only in so far as they were necessaries: a counsel pious indeed, but unnecessarily austere; for it does the very dangerous thing of binding consciences in closer fetters than those in which they are bound by the word of God.15

Calvin counsels moderation, and enjoyment, not abstinence. Our guide is to discern the end for which God gave us the gifts. They are for our good, not our ruin.

Now then, if we consider for what end he created food, we shall find that he consulted not only for our necessity, but also for our enjoyment and delight. Thus in clothing, the end was, in addition to necessity, comeliness and honour; and in herbs, fruits and trees besides their various uses, gracefulness of appearance and sweetness of smell….The natural qualities of things themselves demonstrate to what end, and how far, they may be lawfully enjoyed. Has the Lord adorned flowers with all the beauty which spontaneously presents itself to the eye, and that sweet odour which delights the sense of smell, and shall it be unlawful for us to enjoy that beauty and that odour? What? Has he not so distinguished colours as to make some more agreeable than others? Has he not given qualities to gold and silver, ivory and marble, thereby, rendering them precious things above other metals and stones? In short, has he not given many things a value without having any necessary use? 16

No tension here, then, between use and enjoyment or delight. Certainly not an emphasis upon the first to the exclusion of the second, but moderate enjoyment, moderate delight, as expressed in this amusing passage.

For many are so devoted to luxury in all their senses, that their mind lies buried; many are so delighted with marble, gold, and pictures that they become marble-hearted - are changed as it were into metal, and made like painted figures. The kitchen, with its savoury smells, so engrosses them that they have no spiritual savour. 17

This outlook translates itself into Calvin's regard for secular callings, including those of philosophy, law and medicine, as quaintly expressed in Arthur Golding's translation of part of a sermon on Job.

Furthermore, they have also trades and handicraftes: as, one is a Baker, another a Plowman, another a Shoomaker, and another a Clothyer: and all these trades are the gift of God, and they be common, as well to the unbelievers, as to the faythfull whome God thath inlightened by his holy spirite.... to speake of some handicraft: before a man come to be cunning in the occupation, he shall find straunge things: yea there are some woorkes that require such cunning, as ye would woonder. Howe is this possible to be done, will men say? Howe coulde men know where Golde lyeth in the earth? Beholde men make Salt of water. Howe commeth that to passe? Surely even bycause God has given men the skill.... When wee once knowe these things, wee thinke them not straunge at all, but yet is it God that hath given us the skill of them...18

Calvin and Calvinism, while generally Augustinian in outlook, had a regard for those callings that proved to be the seedbed of modern science, and so of modern industry, an outlook that was quite foreign to Augustine himself. The wisdom of God could be known in these ways also and those who are properly versed in them would become, in their turn, wise. Such wisdom is enjoyable and worth having for its own sake, even though it is eclipsed by God's saving wisdom as revealed in Jesus Christ, the key to which is the fear of God.


1 Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God , (1552), trans. J.K. S. Reid (London, James Clarke and Co., 1961), 169.
2 Comm. on John's Gospel 1.3, perhaps a reference to Book XII of the Confessions.
3 Inst. I.7
4 Psychopannychia, in Selected Works of John Calvin III. 473
5 George Tavard, The Starting Point of Calvin's Theology, (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2000.), 103
6 Tavard, 103
7 Confessions, X 35.57
8 On one aspect of this tension, see Paul Helm, 'Augustine's Griefs' in Augustine's Confessions ed. William E. Mann, (Lanham, Ma., Rowman and Littlefield, 2005)
9 On Christian Teaching, trans. R.P.H. Green (Oxford, Oxford World's Classics, 1997), 9
10 On Christian Teaching , 25
11 For a summary of this see Raymond Canning, 'uti/frui',
in Augustine Through the Ages , ed. Allan D Fitzgerald, (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans,
1999)
12 Inst. III.10.2
13 Inst. II.8.41
14 Inst. III.10.1
15 Inst. III.10. 1
16 Inst. III.10.2
17 Inst. III.10.3
18 Sermons of Maister John Calvin, upon the Book of Job, trans.Arthur Golding (London, 1574; repr. in facsimile, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1993), 477

Paradox and Mystery

Some ships, decked in bunting, set sail with a great fanfare and to the sounds of a brass band. Others, carrying an equally valuable cargo, weigh anchor and make for the open sea unnoticed. James Anderson’s book, Paradox in Christian Theology, (Milton Keynes, Paternoster, 2007) has slipped out almost unnoticed. There has certainly been no fanfare, and though it has received several favourable reviews as far as I can tell it has not yet been much appreciated by that sector of the Christian public likely to enjoy and benefit from it.

This is a pity. For what Anderson has written is a book of great importance to those concerned both with the relation of Christian theology to reason, and with the question of the reasonableness of Christian belief. In the first half of the book he raises questions about doctrinal coherence, and in the second half he raises how deep our understanding of the mysteries of the faith can hope to be, and whether it is reasonable to believe what we cannot understand. Anderson has admirable contributions to each of these areas. His treatments of the questions are thorough and clear, with a good theological grasp and a philosophical mind. A rare combination. He writes clearly and carefully, with no inclination to fudge or equivocate over the central questions that he raises. He and shows a good knowledge of the primary and secondary sources. His treatment also raises further questions for discussion. My aim here is simply to note some of its main features in the hope that it will whet some appetites. Though it is written from an avowed Reformed perspective, (Anderson is Assistant Professor of Theology and Philosophy, R. T. S., Charlotte, North Carolina), the theses of the book are intended by the author for wider consumption, so this is not by no means a mere ‘in house’ Reformed production.

Anderson is chiefly concerned with what are usually called the mysteries of our faith, with what he calls paradoxes. He understands paradoxes to be sets of statements that are apparently contradictory. (The way that the author ties 'mystery' to the test of logic, and does not treat it as a hold-all for any theological difficulty, is excellent). Take for example the dogma of the Holy Trinity. This states, inter alia, that the one God exists in three persons each of whom is wholly divine. The fact that the church denotes this state of affairs as one substance (or essence) in three persons (or hypostates) prevents the doctrine from falling to the immediate self-contradiction that ‘God is one person in three persons’ would entail. God is one substance (or essence) in three persons. But that is not the end of the matter. For each of these persons is God, fully God, not divine in some watered-down sense: the Father is fully, wholly, God; and the Son, and the Spirit. And yet the Son is not the Father nor the Spirit, and so on. The three persons are wholly God, but distinct, having distinct properties. The Son could not be the Father, nor the Father the Spirit, and so on. So each of the Father, the Son and the Spirit is one and the same God, yet each person has distinct properties. This flouts the principle that if X is identical with Y then necessarily whatever is true of X is true of Y. Not in the case of the Trinity, or so it seems. An apparent self-contradiction.

Anderson clearly expounds this paradox, as well as that arising from the Incarnation, though these are not the only paradoxes, of course. He surveys the chief attempts that have been made in the history of dogmatic discussion to soften or eliminate the appearance of incoherence. In the case of the Trinity one move is to argue that ‘being fully divine’ operates rather like ‘being fully human’. Tom, Dick and Harry are three individuals, each fully human. They are distinct individuals, but share this common nature, human nature. But the consequence of this is tri-theism, or at least of a godhead of three individuals having a common divine nature, none of them being numerically identical with the one divine essence. In the case of the incarnation, the thesis of kenoticism typically argues that in becoming human the Son divests himself of some divine properties, making him less than fully divine, and so not truly divine.

It is in this sense that Anderson demonstrates that essential Christian doctrines, the doctrines formulated in the great Creeds of the Church and taken over largely unmodified by the magisterial Reformers, are paradoxical. The cost of strategies that are designed to remove or lessen the paradoxical element outweigh the benefits. The appearance of self-contradiction resists the best efforts of the most insightful believer, but actual inconsistency has not been demonstrated either. To suppose that there was actual and demonstrable inconsistency at the doctrinal centre of the Christian Faith would be to suppose the logical incoherence of the Faith; in fact to suppose that the Faith was no Faith.

That’s the problem, an abiding problem, the paradoxes at the centre of the Faith. Anderson then turns his attention to the question of whether it is rational to adhere to a faith which has paradoxes at its heart. So the author's question is: does belief in the mysteries of the faith, or beliefs which entail such mysteries, have warrant for the believer? ‘Warrant’ signifies reliance upon the epistemology of Alvin Plantinga (Warranted Christian Belief, NY, Oxford University Press, 2000, and elsewhere). As befits his project, this part of the book is written in a more purely philosophical style which makes some assumptions about the reader’s knowledge of modern epistemology, for example, modern attempts to analyse the concept of knowledge. The reader without such a background will need to exercise some patience at this point, but patience will be rewarded. The chapters are a good summary introduction to the work of Plantinga, and to what he has to say about basic theistic belief, and more especially about the operation of the Spirit upon the testimonial evidence of Scripture in properly forming convictions about ‘the great things of the Gospel’, as Plantinga himself puts it.

Anderson in effect is extending Plantinga's argument to belief in creedal formula which rest purely on a foundation of Scriptural testimony. The argument (roughly) is : If belief in the great things of the Gospel is warranted by the testimony of Scripture, as Plantinga plausibly argues, then doctrines adequately based on that testimony are also belief-worthy, even though they contain paradoxical elements. Anderson’s distinctively Reformed conviction about the necessity and sufficiency of Scripture become evident here. So he links his idea of paradox to biblical testimony regarding divine incomprehensibility. It is because God’s nature and his ways are past finding out that our present understanding of the divine nature contains paradoxical elements. But these are due, Anderson in effect argues, to the present limitations of our cognitive apparatus (and not, for example, to our creatureliness.) In defending his position Anderson has interesting things to say about the relation of doctrine to Scripture, logic as a hermeneutical tool, and much else.

Some further questions may be raised about the central claim of the book. Is Anderson’s argument not in effect an endorsement of implicit faith? For he is defending the view that it is reasonable to believe what we may not understand, which is another way of saying we may believe a statement whose meaning is known to be unclear. And does holding that there are paradoxes (in Anderson’s sense) at the heart of the Faith not inhibit the pursuit of that greater understanding that is characteristic of the great tradition of Faith Seeking Understanding from Augustine onwards? For what is the point of seeking further understanding of matters which we know are, under present circumstances, beyond our comprehension? The answer presumably is: we may seek and gain more understanding while still falling short of a full understanding.

There is much to learn and to ponder from Anderson’s book.

June

This month I post an Analysis, 'Hodge and Hymn-singing', which raises the little-discussed question of the place of mental error in religious commitment, the conflict that may and does arise between head and heart.

This is accompanied by the second instalment of a piece on theological compatibilism, the first part of which was put out last month. This post is entitled - 'Theological Compatibilism - Two Counter-arguments Considered'

Goodness only knows what the Taking a View piece, to be posted in mid-month, will turn out to be. But we'll get there.

Beginning in July, I hope, God willing, to put out the first of several Analyses on Bishop Tom Wright's (fairly) new book on justification, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision, (London, SPCK, 2009)

The first of these, 'Wright in General' has to do with the general tone and orientation of the book, with the Bishop's comments on the Reformation and the 'Augustinian tradition', and on how the author's views have changed since his Edinburgh lecture on justification, which was on of the chief things that got John Piper going, I think. I see a narrowing of the differences.

Posts two and three will be concerned first with the meaning of 'covenant faithfulnss' , the second with divine righteousness, and then (finally) with Wright and the Reformation. In each I argue that attention to points of logic would further narrow the differences, in the direction of Piper's views, of course.

Hodge and Hymn-singing

The best, most beautiful, and most perfect way that we have
of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other, is by music.
- Jonathan Edwards

In the first Chapter of his Systematic Theology, the chapter in which he sets out his theological method, Charles Hodge warns against two methods that are in his judgment unsatisfactory; the Speculative, and the Mystical. These very different approaches to the construction of Christian theological doctrine have one thing in common. They each impose on Scripture, the only authentic source of Christian doctrine, norms from outside. He mentions Anselm’s work on the atonement, Cur Deus Homo? as an example of Speculative theology, for in that work Anselm seeks to establish the necessity of the atonement from reason alone; or at least, from reasoning that is based on a few plausible theological principles. In the case of Mystical method he particularly mentions Schleiermacher, who believed it to be the duty of the theologian not to systematize theology from Scripture, but to construct theology from the Christian consciousness.

Hodge had studied the work and influence of Schleiermacher at first hand during his time in Germany, 1826-8. In the Systematic Theology he conducts a sustained critique of Schleiermachian theology, not only its method, but also its theological fruits. A glance at the Index shows that he takes the German theologian to task for (inter alia) his views on divine omnipotence, omniscience, divine holiness, the Trinity, inspiration, Christology, Soteriology, and the post-mortem status of human beings. This feature of the Hodge's Theology – its assessment of post-Kantian German Protestant theology - is one reason, perhaps the main reason, why it is wrong to consider Hodge’s work as a mere repristination of Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology, which was the textbook used at Princeton before the arrival of his book. We may surmise that it was his desire to have such German theology assessed for the benefit of his students that was one reason for him writing the work.

Although Hodge was resolutely opposed to constructing Christian theology out of the religious consciousness alone, this does not mean that he disparaged Christian experience in any way. ‘The true method in theology requires that the facts of religious experience should be accepted as facts, and when duly authenticated by Scripture, be allowed to interpret the doctrinal statements of the Word of God.’ Then he says this

So legitimate and powerful is this inward teaching of the Holy Spirit, that it is no uncommon thing to find men having two theologies, - one of the intellect, and another of the heart. The one may find expressions in creeds and systems of divinity, the other in their prayers and hymns. It would be safe for a man to resolve to admit into his theology nothing which is not sustained by the devotional writings of true Christians in every denomination. It would be easy to construct from such writings, received and sanctioned by Romanists, Lutherans, Reformed, and Remonstrants, a system of Pauline or Augustinian theology, such as would satisfy any intelligent and devout Calvinist in the world.

And later on in his Systematic Theology he says about Schleiermacher:

When in Berlin the writer often attended Schleiermacher’s church. The hymns to be sung were printed on slips of paper and distributed at the door. They were always evangelical and spiritual to an eminent degree, filled with praise and gratitude to the Redeemer. Tholuck said that Schleiermacher, when sitting in the evening with his family, would often say ‘Hush, children; let us sing a human of praise to Christ’. Can we doubt that he is singing those praises now? To whomsoever Christ is God, St. John assures us, Christ is a Saviour. (II.440 footnote).

What is Hodge saying that hymn-singing may reveal and express what a person’s developed theology may not? At this point I'm tempted to launch into a diatribe against those who think that Charles Hodge was a child of the Enlightenment, a rationalist, a pure intellectual, a religious scientist. But I forbear. In any case, it’s immediately obvious what a serious distortion that is. If you are still in doubt, read the last page of Ch. 1 of his Systematic Theology. (His critics never seem to read that far.) My aim instead is to try to answer the issue raised by Hodge's remarks about hymn-singing. Here’s what I think.

Beginning at the most abstract level, Hodge is saying that the Fall, which disrupted and disorded the image of God in man, continues in the life of the Church. Regeneration, which brings new life and light, does not immediately heal that disruption. So Paul’s ‘law’, that ‘when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand’ finds expression not only in moral desire and action, narrowly understood, but in all the operations of ‘right reason’. Such a person wants to subject himself to Christ in his word, but may find that he cannot, or cannot easily do this. The reason why unregeneracy, ‘the flesh’ in Paul’s special sense, cannot easily do this may be because of a person’s background, or his intellectual training, or the effect of party spirit, or of ambition, for example. Just as a person can be all head and no heart, or all heart and no head, so he may be part head and part heart, but in such a case his head part may out of kilter with his heart part. So what happens?

What Hodge thinks happens is that in such a case, where (in a regenerate person) the intellect is blocked, or is taken over by various factors, the forces of regeneration nevertheless find their outlet in what he calls the ‘religious consciousness’, the ‘renewed heart’. He gives the example of the experience of being ‘sold under sin; of being its slaves; or being possessed by it as a power or law, immanent, innate, and beyond our control’. This experience is Spirit-given and Spirit-driven. But because of the disruption, the disjunction between head and heart, these teachings of the Spirit may find expression not in exact doctrinal formulae, but in devotional writing, not in the strict cognitive language of doctrine, but in that language of aspiration, and the use of such language, devotional language, in worship. Such language, note, is not simply an expression of vague sentiment or religiosity, but it is that from which, as Hodge puts it, one could construct ‘a system of Pauline or Augustinian theology’. Such people subscribe to these beliefs as long as they are singing, but (strange though it may seem) deny them when they study. Is this weird? Yes, it is weird. Does it happen? Yes, according to Hodge, it does.

The recognition of this disjunction between heart and head, the presence and working of ‘mental error’ in the construction of Christian theology, is a recurrent strand of Reformed theology, though one to which (so it seems to me) little attention has been given. Here are three other examples, from three different centuries, the latest first. Try to guess who the authors are.

(Answers to be given next month. No prizes.)

(1) ' Heretical notions may occupy Christian men’s heads, leading to error of thought and practice and spiritual impoverishment; but these notions cannot control their hearts. As regenerate men, it is their nature to be better than the unscriptural parts of their creed would allow. Hence they are inconsistent; it is good that they are. In this case, Christians in the liberal camp have adopted a position which logically makes reason, and not Scripture, their final authority. But just because they are Christians and have the witness of the Spirit, it is not in their nature to follow this anti-Christian principle to its logical conclusion – which would be to dismiss as incredible all that is incomprehensible, and so to deny the whole Christian faith. Regenerate men can never do that. Hence we find that they are in practice inconsistent'.

(2) 'How far a wonderful and mysterious agency of God’s Spirit may so influence some men’s hearts, that their practice in this regard may be contrary to their own principles, so that they shall not trust in their own righteousness, though they profess that men are justified by their own righteousness—or how far they may believe the doctrine of justification by men’s own righteousness in general, and yet not believe it in a particular application of it to themselves—or how far that error which they may have been led into by education, or cunning sophistry of others, may yet be indeed contrary to the prevailing disposition of their hearts, and contrary to their practice—or how far some may seem to maintain a doctrine contrary to this gospel-doctrine of justification, that really do not, but only express themselves differently from others; or seem to oppose it through their misunderstanding of our expressions, or we of theirs, when indeed our real sentiments are the same in the main—or may seem to differ more than they do, by using terms that are without a precisely fixed and determinate meaning—or to be wide in their sentiments from this doctrine, for want of a distinct understanding of it; whose hearts, at the same time, entirely agree with it, and if once it was clearly explained to their understandings, would immediately close with it, and embrace it: — how far these things may be, I will not determine; but am fully persuaded that great allowances are to be made on these and such like accounts, in innumerable instances; though it is manifest, from what has been said, that the teaching and propagating [of] contrary doctrines and schemes, is of a pernicious and fatal tendency'.

(3) 'Men may be really saved by that grace which doctrinally they do deny; and they may be justified by the imputation of that righteousness which in opinion they deny to be imputed'.

The consequences of such an analysis of mental error for those of us interested in Reformed theology and its outworkings are too obvious to need stating.

Theological Compatibilism: Two Counter-arguments considered

Byrne’s First Counter-Argument

I turn now to Peter Byrne’s first counter-argument to my claim that (despite the point just made about apophatism) there is a significant parallel between theistic creation and sustaining on the one hand, and general determinism on the other, and that if general determinism is consistent with human responsibility so may divine sustaining be. Arguing in support of Antony Flew, Byrne claims that there are ‘customs and institutions associated with human responsibility because human beings possess characters and all that pertains thereto – patterns of belief, desire and intention...it would be very odd on this account to praise or blame the non-purposive, non-characterful causes that stretch beyond any instance of human choice and action’. (HG 196) And he goes on to claim that things are different ‘in the case of theistic determinism’.

But this counter-argument clearly rests upon an ambiguity regarding ‘responsibility’, as between ‘personal responsibility’ and ‘causal responsibility’. These phrases are not equivalent, of course. On some versions of atheistic general determinism my beliefs and desires and my character are solely the product of my genes and my environment. It is certainly true that it makes no sense to wag one’s finger at my genes, or to look disapprovingly at my early upbringing, to charge them with moral failure or to punish them because of it. As Byrne says, we do not blame the genes or diet, or the Big Bang. Nevertheless, determinists must assign causal responsibility to them; too many strawberries are responsible for my stomach ache, being high up brings about giddiness, my genetic structure is responsible for my maleness, and so on.

Byrne’s presentation of his counter-argument, with its reference to appropriateness, and customs and institutions, makes it seem as if the attribution of personal responsibility is merely a matter of human convention. But if, according to Flew’s general outlook, it is perfectly in order to hold me responsible for some voluntary action that I perform, but not to hold my genes responsible, and if this is based upon a set of human conventions, or ‘paradigm cases’ of free and voluntary action, as Flew used to argue, then why (by the same token) is there a reason to blame God but not me for my vicious actions? If in the matter of ascribing responsibility to human actions we choose to ignore the causal role that genes play, why may we not, in a similar way, choose to ignore the causal role played by God’s ordaining what I do? Flew’s and Byrne’s answer is: because God himself, unlike our genes, has motives, beliefs and intentions. But they have not shown why this is a telling difference.

Byrne also applies his (and Flew’s) questionable principle about the locus of responsibility to an argument of Anthony Kenny’s to the effect that whenever a person X causes another person Y to do moral evil, X must also do the moral evil. (HG 197) Besides failing to compel, for the same reason as Flew’s argument failed to compel, Kenny’s argument also explicitly raises the spectre of the second matter that Byrne focuses on, God’s relation to moral evil, and particularly the question of whether God’s attitudes to good and to evil are asymmetrical. So we must next look at this.

God, Good and Evil

On the view developed in Eternal God it is possible for God, in ordaining that A does evil, to take up a different intentional stance to what he ordains than does A take up to what he does. While conceding something to this, Byrne proceeds to claim that ‘if X infallibly and down to the smallest level of detail caused and necessitated Y’s acts of torture, then Y is fulfilling X’s purposes in committing torture’. (HG 197) To be sure, but – leaving aside the fact that Byrne’s language points once again to the conflation of (1) and (2) discussed earlier – X’s purposes may be distinct from Y’s. God may ordain evil but not as evil in that his reasons for ordaining the evil cannot themselves be wicked. In ordaining a murder God cannot himself be murderous.

Byrne responds that this claim for the asymmetry in God’s authorship of good and evil, namely that God does not intend the evil that he ordains as evil, that is, he does not have an evil intention in ordaining it, is based upon a serious confusion, that of running together different types of excuse for someone’s commission of an evil act . (HG 198) One type of excuse deflects responsibility away from the accused; but another type justifies the one accused, pointing to good reason s the accused had for doing what appears to be evil.

He has two distinct arguments on this. First he states that ‘If it were really the case that evil is not authored by God, Helm would have no need of the excuse that God does not will it as evil but only as part of an outweighing good’. (HG 198) That is, if my first argument, the one against Flew, is sound, then the second counter-argument is unnecessary. But this is a hard saying. To start with, in that argument I don’t say that God is not the author of evil in the sense that he intends evil, merely that if according to an atheist compatibilist such as Flew my genes are not responsible for my evil action, but I am, then by parity of reasoning God is not responsible for my evil action, but I am.

My second defensive argument has to do with something rather different, namely an objection from a theistic libertarian, or someone arguing on his behalf, based on a comparison between theistic compatibilism and theistic libertarianism. In other words, the second argument is directed to someone using libertarian assumptions. Though, as Byrne himself notes, both of the arguments are defensive strategies, as he calls them, (HG 195) it is hardly reasonable to say of two distinct arguments, one of which is an ad hominem argument, that they ought not to be distinct, in that the success of the ad hominem objection should make an answer to the second objection unnecessary. One has to take arguments as they come. The argument from Anthony Kenny (an argument that is also characteristic of libertarian theists) to the effect that compatibilist theism makes God the author of evil, has different premises than that of a secular determinist such as Flew who claims that if God ordains all that comes to pass then only he is responsible for what happens, that he is the Grand Manipulator.

Further, Byrne claims that the asymmetry of good and evil cannot apply to God because on my account of divine sovereignty and human freedom ‘exactly the same kind of divine causal responsibility lies behind both good and evil acts. For both kinds of acts it is the case that God foreordains, strictly determines and necessitates that they be done and that human beings have the plans, purposes and values that give issue to them.’ (HG 198, Byrne’s italics). But we need to note that exactly the same objection may be made against the secular compatibilist. For the secular compatibilist such as Flew, exactly the same kind of deterministic account - in terms of genes and the influence of the environment, say – lies behind both good and evil acts. Beyond noting this obvious parallelism here, in the next section I shall return to this objection.

Theodicy

Byrne believes that the only way open for getting off this particular hook of God’s being the author of sin lies in my general theodicy, and this brings us to his second argument.
Here he concentrates on my ‘second argumentative strategy’, the claim that in the matter of God’s responsibility for evil ‘standard libertarian theodicies’ (HG 200) are in no better a position than are compatibilist theodicies.

Byrne’s counter-argument to this claim relies on the Principle of Double Effect (HG 201), a principle that in turn relies on a distinction between an act which is merely foreseen and willingly brought about by some agent and an effect which is fully intended. Byrne illustrates the distinction using Philip Quinn’s example of ‘Strategic Bomber’ and ‘Terror Bomber’. Terror Bomber seeks to shorten the war by bombing civilians, fully intending to do so. Strategic Bomber seeks to shorten the war by bombing a munitions factory, knowing that civilians will in fact also be killed by his bombs. Byrne comments, ‘There is a difference between an effect that is foreseen and willingly brought about and an effect which is intended. An effect is intended when it is part of the act’s objective (that is, its immediate purpose) or part of its end (that is, its larger purpose). The difference lies in this: an effect which is part of the agent’s objective or end defines the act’s success and failure’. (HG 201) Further, the type of responsibility in the case where a person intends X and merely foresees Y as a necessary bye-product of X is different from that where a person intends both X and Y. Byrne believes that the first kind of case, illustrated by Strategic Bomber, corresponds in its logic to libertarian theodicies, the second kind of case, illustrated by Terror Bomber, to compatibilist theodicies.

But in fact the cases are not parallel to libertarian and compatibilist theodicies respectively. In the case of such theodicies, if each employs a standard understanding of theism, God is the creator of all his creatures and upholds all of them and all their actions. In addition, in the case of those libertarian theodicies which do not have an ‘openness’ approach to God and his relation to the future, God perfectly foreknows what his creatures will do, whether for good or evil. The case of Quinn’s Strategic Bomber is not appropriate to the divine creating, upholding and foreknowing of a universe in which human beings have been gifted with libertarian freedom. Adopting Byrne’s language (HG 203), we may say that in standard libertarian theodicy, God knowingly created and sustained the person of Adolf Hitler, infallibly knowing that Auschwitz would follow, while retaining the power to cut short this devilish regime at any time. On this view, God has from all eternity been planning and purposing states of affairs with the infallible knowledge that horrendous evils will result from certain exercises of human free agency, and chooses to do nothing about it. There are of course important differences between libertarian and compatibilist theodicies. But is there much of a moral difference?

Further, Byrne deploys his human analogy as part of an account of human action in terms of objectives and intentions. So we might ask, what, in the case of libertarian theodicies , are God’s objectives? Perhaps he has only one objective, to create and sustain a universe in which men and women have libertarian free will and exercise it come what may. As Byrne puts it ‘Free will is a great good in itself and its grant will lead to further greater goods (such as the development of significant moral and spiritual qualities)’.(HG 200) Maybe so.

Here’s a dilemma: on theistic libertarianism either human libertarian freedom is the supreme aim and end of creation, or it is a means to other ends. The objections to the exercise of human libertarian freedom being the only or the supreme aim and end of creation are too obvious to need spelling out. Alternatively, it may be that in such a libertarian universe God has other purposes, and that the grant of libertarian freedom is a means to the achieving of these ends. In characterising the libertarian view Byrne himself refers to God’s ‘wider purposes’. (HG 200) Perhaps these wider purposes are not directly connected with the granting and exercise of human libertarian freedom. However, this does not seem likely. So maybe the achieving of such wider purposes does arise out of this granting.

But the libertarian might press the following: if God could have he would have created a world in which human beings always do what is right, but the counterfactuals of freedom prevented this outcome. Isn’t this behaviour more like that of Strategic Bomber than of Terror Bomber? While the compatibilist theist is not able to agree that God would have if he could have, nevertheless, his position has analogous features. God ordains evil because it is logically necessary for his goal of the greater good. So perhaps what the difference between libertarian theism and compatiblist theism comes to at this point is: for the libertarian God knowingly and hypothetically necessarily permits evil that good may come, for the compatibilist he knowingly and hypothetically necessarily ordains evil that good may come.

A notable contemporary instance of such a free will theodicy is offered by Alvin Plantinga in his ‘Supralapsariansm, or “O Felix Culpa”’. In this instance God knowingly allows evil, giving life and breath to all evildoers, in order that good may come. Of course while one should not tar all libertarian theists with the Plantingan brush, nevertheless all such theists (with the exception of those of the ‘openness’ variety) subscribe both to infallible divine foreknowledge and to God having wise and just purposes. Byrne accuses compatibilist theodicies of violating the moral principle that one should not do evil that good may come of it. (HG 200) Does Plantinga’s free will theodicy not also violate that principle? And is God ‘s end not sullied and dirtied by him permitting and upholding evildoers? (HG 201) Is not God flawed by the most terrible deception because he could not tell himself that he did not allow the death camps as an evil but only as part of an outweighing good? (HG 203) In my view, Byrne’s deployment of the Principle of Double Effect has failed to show that God ‘s responsibility for sin and evil is significantly morally different in the case of libertarian theism than it is in that of compatibilist theism.

‘Hip! Hip! Hooray!’ ‘Hip! Hip! Hooray!’ - Two Cheers for Consumer Religion

Consumer religion is that type of religious allegiance that follows the pattern of, and perhaps is an expression of, the consumption of everyday goods and services. If the household needs a power-washer, then we set about buying one; save, take out credit, or buy one for cash. And similarly with a bottle of good red wine, or a trip to Jordan, or a CD of J.S. Bach’s Organ Concertos.

Currently religious observance and allegiance is like that, at least in the fortunate West. (This piece is not meant to refer to the actual conditions of what it means to be a Christian in Pakistan, or Turkey, or China). Perhaps such observance is modelled on, or apes, consumerism, or simply occupies a similar kind of human space as does the consumption of any of the articles that are ‘necessary', even ‘vital’, to our well-being. This space is created by the coming together of a goodly supply of leisure, health, mobility, and disposable income.

For some, evidently, religion does not merely follow that pattern of such consumerism but is a case of consumerism, sharing many of its more obvious hedonistic desires and goals. For a Shopping Mall, read: a Megachurch Complex. For vitamins, a personal trainer and activity holidays, read: ‘the gospel of Health and Wealth’. Such consumer religion comes in various degrees of intensity. The point is obvious, and so not one that needs to be laboured.

Two cheers!

The existence of such debased religion, religion as conspicuous, hedonistic consumption is the reason that one cannot give consumer religion as such Three Hearty Cheers. But I do think that one can give it Two Hearty Cheers. This is why -

‘Consumer religion’ is another name for toleration, or one implication of toleration in its present-day expression in the West. In England the time was when religious toleration was expressed by the various religious denominations of putting up with each other, existing side by side. The existence and structure of such groups partly followed geography, partly class, partly history, and partly religious conviction. Individual or family choice rarely came into the picture. This was, we might say, stratified toleration. It was similar in other European countries except where Roman Catholicism exercised exclusive rights. But today these stratifications have largely gone, they have just about crumbled into the dust. New denominations have arisen or been imported, independent congregations have been formed or have seceded from the historic denominations; house churches have grown up, the historic denominations, included the established church, have become more doctrinally variegated and weaker. Above all, social mobility has increased. And the consequence is pick ‘n’ mix religion. Never has the religious consumer been better served than at present, even though the scene in the UK seems sepia-coloured by comparison with the glorious technicolour of California.

I say, this is a good thing. Who wants to go back to the day of Jingoistic religion: ‘my denomination right or wrong’ or to the time when a dissenter could be imprisoned, like John Bunyan or Jerome Bolsec? Later, Bolsec was banished from Calvin’s Geneva ‘to the sound of the trumpet’. (On 23rd December 1551: ‘Happy Christmas, Jerry!’) Isn’t it gain, pure gain, to be free to move from congregation to congregation? If ‘worship bands’ wish to play ‘Christian music’ until one's head aches, let them do it. But please may I be free not to attend? Please may I go to a congregation where there are decent hymns and psalms and good tunes? Yes, I may. If top-down, control-freakish ministerial antics scare me, do I have to put up with them? Certainly not. If people come to confuse the latest ideas of the ‘eco-theologians’ (yes, there are such) with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and so put in jeopardy the freedom we have in Christ, isn’t it great to be at liberty to move from St. Ethelbert’s to Ebenezer, where they know the difference between a faddish panic and the real stuff? Yes it is.

For all their talk of Christian fellowship, are the people sniffy and aloof? If they are, do I have to stay? Most certainly not! Are there benefits to moving on? There may be. Are there benefits of staying? Perhaps there are. The matter must be weighed, of course. It may be difficult to balance one factor against another. But in all these cases, the choice is mine, not the state’s or the hierarchy’s. Nor need I be controlled by what is ‘the done thing’, or by what the Rectory or the Manor or the mill-owner dictate.

You’ll notice that the presence or the absence of sound doctrine has hardly been mentioned. Of course the presence of serious error is serious. May we not leave the congregation that is subjected to it? Of course! Isn’t such freedom a great blessing?

I can think of two possible reasons against such an attitude. The first (and lesser) of these is that such courses of action as leaving one congregation for another can be whimsical and unserious. There is no perfect church. (And if you find one, as Spurgeon once said, don’t dare join it. My father used to say that only he and I agreed on what constituted a true church, but that he wasn’t so sure of me.) Of course people can act whimsically, just as they can make bad purchases when shopping. Does the fact that some people buy garden gnomes and plastic flowers mean that I ought not surrender my opportunity to buy a pleasing terracotta pot and a clematis?

An alternative?

What’s the alternative? There isn't one. Trying to show this brings us to the second, and main, objection, to consumer religion, that it undermines church discipline. By church discipline is meant the practice of identifying public misdemeanours of a certain kind of seriousness, and offering various procedures to the offender with the aim of his or her restoration to ‘full fellowship’, with excommunication as a last resort. A number of points need to be made.

There are only two social circumstances in which such church discipline has a serious chance of being effective. One is where the church is a small sect-like community in a predominantly hostile environment. In such circumstances to be prepared to reject restorative discipline may literally be a matter of life and death. One might find oneself rejected both by the community and by the hostile environment. In such a situation the words of John make perfect sense: ‘They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us’. (I Jn. 2.19) But the movements between congregations made possible by consumer religion are not equivalent to apostasy: to think that they are is to be guilty of a kind of category mistake.

The second set of circumstances is where the church is dominant in a society and is in a friendly alliance with the state. Then excommunication, the final, fateful step in restorative discipline, the point when attempts at restoration have ceased to be only a moral or spiritual matter, the point where the issue becomes public, is also the point where excommunication has multiple consequences. In such a situation excommunication is not merely a churchly act, but it carries with it social ostracism, perhaps loss of income or social status, of the sort made notorious by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

But these days in the West such excommunication is only of historical interest, like the stocks and the May-pole. Why? Because a person who is deprived of the privilege of Holy Communion for some real or supposed misdemeanour for which he remains impenitent – supposing things get that far - can cross the road or the city to another congregation and immediately be in good standing. Besides, what is it to be in good standing? In my experience, participating in the Supper, the most visible and most precious sign of Christian fellowship, is pretty well universally administered in a slap-happy way. Even when in theory there is some kind of ‘fencing’, attendance at the Supper is pretty-much the result of a process of self-selection. Participation is solely at the initiative of the would-be attender. That's how the Supper is presented: 'We'd love to have you join us if you'd like to'. Besides, who except the church secretary knows who the members of a local church are?

So the argument against consumer religion from the breakdown of the operation of church discipline is not strong. For church discipline has already broken down.

Ought we not to hope and pray that our brothers and sisters in Pakistan, Turkey or China soon have the privileges of such consumer religion?

So – I say – Two Hearty Cheers for consumer religion: ‘Hip! Hip! Hooray!’, ‘Hip! Hip! Hooray!’

May

As I mentioned in introducing the April posts, May is ‘God and Evil’ month. In a paper in Reason, Faith and History: Essays for Paul Helm ed. M. W. F. Stone, one of my former colleagues at King's College, Peter Byrne, took me to task over two arguments I used, two ‘negative strategies’ as he calls them, in Eternal God (Clarendon Press, 1988) and The Providence of God (IVP, 1993), in support of 'theological compatibilism'. I have responded to his arguments in a paper which is to come out in Religious Studies (published by C.U.P.) next year.

For Helm’s Deep I am posting a draft of this paper, in two halves. The first instalment, ‘Theological Compatibilism: A Case of Faith Seeking Understanding'’ , corresponds to the first and fourth parts of the to-be-published paper. It attempts to clarify something of what I take the position known as 'theological compatibilism' to mean, and also has to do with what it means to be a philosopher in the Faith Seeking Understanding tradition. This is now posted.

Then, in June, I shall post the heart of the paper, parts two and three, in which I attempt to rebut Peter’s arguments.

For good measure, this month’s Analysis considers the phenomenon of ‘Compatibilist Middle Knowledge’ as presented by Bruce Ware.

So maybe this is not so much 'God and Evil' month as 'Compatibilism' month.

Around the middle of May I shall post the latest Taking a Line, "'Hip! Hip! Hooray! Hip! Hip! Hooray!' Two Cheers for Consumer Religion."

Theological Compatibilism: A Case of Faith Seeking Understanding

In ‘Helm’s God and the Authorship of Sin’ (a Chapter in Reason, Faith and History: Essays for Paul Helm, ed. M.W.F Stone (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008)) Peter Byrne considers two arguments that I have used in defending God against the charge that he is the author of sin, and finds both of them seriously wanting. The arguments were advanced in Eternal God and The Providence of God respectively

first argument has to do with the defence of theistic compatibilism (as it might be called) against the charge of secular compatibilists such as Antony Flew, that given theistic compatibilism God must be the author of sin. I respond by arguing that if secular, atheistic compatibilism preserves human responsibility, (as Flew claims) then theistic compatibilism may also preserve human responsibility. The second argument has to do with my claim that, with respect to the moral character of God, compatibilist theism is in no better or worse case than free will theism of various stripes. This is because if, on the view of theistic compatibilism, God is the author of evil, then he is compromised in a parallel way by the supposition that evil is the consequence of the exercise of libertarian free choices with which our Creator has endowed us. As Byrne notes, each of these arguments is defensive, and one of them is an explicitly ad hominem argument. I shall consider the two arguments in order.

Theistic Compatibilism

But first, some remarks on the language of ‘theistic compatibilism’. These remarks are not a direct reply to Byrne’s two arguments, but attempt to counter possible misunderstandings that his language indicates.

In Eternal God an attempt was made to separate two claims:

1. That the divine ordination and sustaining of everything down to its last detail, including every human action, is a case of soft determinism, the doctrine that determinism is compatible with human moral responsibility.
and
2. That divine ordaining and sustaining is consistent with soft determinism.

(1) is obviously distinct from (2), in the following way: (1) is the view that the divine ordination of human actions is a n instance of a thesis (or set of theses) which is, considered historically, about the implications of the creaturely determinants of creaturely action. (2), by contrast, asserts merely the consistency of the divine ordination of everything with at least one version of soft determinism. The two differ on account of the fact that it is asserted that the connection between the divine ordination and creaturely compatibilistic systems is set up by a Creatorly determinant, not a creaturely determinant: the divine ordination is not a creaturely cause in the way that human beliefs and desires are creaturely causes . My argument in Eternal God was merely that if creaturely compatibilism is consistent with human responsibility then a fortiori such responsibility is consistent with Creatorly compatibilism. As I put it

It will be argued that if we suppose that theism is true, and that therefore God ordains and sustains everything by his creative power, then this fact does not provide an additional difficulty for theism. If non-theistic determinism is compatible with freedom then, it will be argued, theistic creation is as well. (EG146)

The point of comparison is between God’s ordaining and sustaining on the one hand, and philosophical determinism on the other, even if what God creates and sustains is an order best understood as a philosophically deterministic order. Later on in the book I referred to possible additional difficulties that allegedly attach to the idea of theistic creation and responsibility, (EG 147) and distinguished on the one hand between human freedom and determinism and human freedom and theistic creation (EG 149), and between the thesis of general determinism and that of God’s creating and sustaining activity. (EG 153) On one occasion the claim that creation is compatible with responsibility only if determinism is was explicitly denied (EG157), and arguments couched in terms of God ‘setting up’ deterministic processes were discussed. (EG 162) It was not argued that divine ordination is itself a straightforward instance of philosophical determinism, and for the purposes of my ad hominem argument against Flew which we will shortly discuss there was no need for me to develop or subscribe to some version of philosophical determinism. In arguing against Flew I needed only to employ whatever version of determinism that he subscribed to.

So in the language that was used, there was a consistent attempt to distinguish between what (in more theological terminology) might be called immanent cause-effect relations, such as those between human desires and beliefs and the actions they prompt, and transcendent cause-effect relations, where God is the ordainer of all human actions, including all their immanent causal antecedents. This distinction was signalled by using different words to refer to God’s causal activity (words such as ‘create’, and ‘ordain’) from those used to refer to immanent cause-effect relations, (words such as ‘cause’ and ‘determine’). In general the phrase ‘theistic determinism’ was avoided, except occasionally when it was used in an ad hominem context (e.g. EG 157), just as claims such as ‘God determines human actions’ or that he is the ‘all-determining cause’ were avoided. Otherwise it becomes difficult to keep the distinction between (1) and (2) in mind.

In the twenty or so years following the publication of Eternal God I have occasionally had the opportunity to develop this point of view, that Creatorly causation (or ordination) has a different sense from creaturely causation. For example,

God is the source of all creaturely power, but the powers of creatures, even when efficaciously empowered by God, are really theirs, and so are distinct from his. If God efficaciously empowers me to type this essay, still the typing of this paper is my action, not God’s. The wicked men who crucified Jesus were the cause of his death, even though he was crucified by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. (Acts.2.23)

One way of expressing this difference might be as follows. While it seems clear that intramundane causation is transitive, that if (where A, B and C are events) A causes B, and B causes C, then A causes C, there is no necessary transitivity in the case of any causal aspects of features of the divine willing permission, if there are any. It is not necessarily the case that God governs by willingly permitting some event B, and B causes C, then God causes C; rather, God may will by permitting that B causes C and so willingly permit C. God’s willing permission is thus not a straightforward case of causation, and those who seek to assimilate God’s willing permission of evil to the actions of someone manipulating a puppet, or to hypnotism, or to brainwashing or programming, have not recognized the true character of such permission.

Judging by the language that he uses in characterising my view, Byrne misses the distinction between (1) and (2). Thus he says that Helm ‘takes Flew to task for talking about an all-determining God as the manipulator of human beings, someone who reduces human beings to mere puppets and then blames them for what he forces them to do. Such language is dismissed as anthropomorphic and castigated for missing the main point that the divine causation of human acts goes through the normal patterns of desire, belief and intention that are the sources of non-compelled human agency’. (HG196, emphasis added.) But the actual remarks of mine referred to at this place have to do with the character of causal determinism, and not with the character of divine ordination. So it is claimed

General determinism does not claim that the antecedent causal factors manipulate. ‘Manipulate’ is a piece of anthropomorphism. The causal factors are usually non-intentional in character, without plans and aims, but causally sufficient for the bringing about of certain intentional, voluntary actions. The question of having or not having the agent’s consent, or of going or not going against his wishes, does not arise. (EG , 152-3)

My point here is not to argue that God does not manipulate his creatures, (though in fact I deny that he does) but that if he does (as Flew claims) then, on Flew’s own atheistic determinism, so do our genes manipulate our actions. It is an ad hominem argument, no more and no less. So Byrne has overestimated my willingness to assimilate standard causal determinism to God’s creative and sustaining (and providential) activity, to say that such activity is a case of such determinism. I deliberately allow for elements of disanalogy, and of apophatism, in our understanding of divine activity. After all, the book has to do with divine timelessness. The significance of this fact will be considered further, in the closing section.

Faith Seeking Understanding

At the outset of his remarks, and also subsequently, Peter Byrne observes that my writings in the philosophy of religion have characteristically been in the faith seeking understanding mode. (HG 193, 195) In this enterprise philosophy plays a subordinate role, subordinate that is, to the dogmatic theology of the faith. When it is at its best, this philosophical mode of enquiry does not attempt to spin a theology out of the resources of human reason alone, nor to force the contours of the theology to bend under the weight of such reason. Rather it seeks to use the resources of philosophical reasoning to elucidate and where possible to harmonise the complex claims of the dogmas. While demonstrating the consistency of sets of propositions would be a fine thing, in the case of Christian theology such harmonising aims may have to be content with showing that an alleged inconsistency within a dogma is not proven. One way to do this is to argue that unwelcome consequences of a dogma do not in fact follow. This is its typical stance, for example, in the case of the Christian dogmas of the Creation, of the Trinity, and of the Person of Christ.

So it is also, I believe, with issues to do with divine sovereignty, human responsibility and sin. This is because, in common with the other instances mentioned, these problems also possesses what might be called sui generis features. Each problem area is a case where, according to the dogma, either we are considering the divine spirit as he is in himself, or as he impinges on some creaturely entity or entities. As a result of this our ordinary analogies and thought experiments, drawn from creaturely relationships alone, cannot fully engage with such Creator-creature relations. This is as it should be. So there is ‘mystery’, a term that is not used as a warrant for mouthing gobbledegook, nor as a philosophical bolt-hole, but as referring to features of theological dogma where obliqueness and opaqueness are to be expected.
However, in furtherance of the Faith Seeking Understanding programme, one can also attempt to elucidate aspects of such a mystery. So it is important for my overall case regarding God and evil that divine ordination is not understood as a straightforward case of intramundane determinism, and that God’s attitude to good and evil is capable of being asymmetrical. In order to maintain these positions I have attempted to offer ways of explicating the first by denying the transitivity of divine causation (as we noted earlier), and of explicating the second by employing Augustine’s notion of willing permission. Neither of these gambits has been needed to be deployed to offer the further defence of the two ‘defensive strategies’ Byrne queries. Nevertheless they are a central part of the overall case for the philosophical cogency of an Augustinian approach to God and sin.

To be clear, such an approach does not amount to a case of theological special pleading. For there are non-theological ‘mysteries’ of a parallel kind, for example, the non-theological ‘mystery’ of the psycho-physical unity of the human being. Materialism has the virtue of simplicity but has difficulty with the content of consciousness and with intentionality. Body-mind dualism, in its various offerings, has difficulty with the relation between brain and mind. Interaction, psycho-physical parallelism, epiphenomenalism, emergence, supervenience – each of these seems to fall short of providing the needed level of understanding, and not unnaturally each is in turn hotly contested. Such theories fall short for pretty much the same sort of reason that human analogies for the divine mysteries are unsatisfactory. The human person is sui generis. In this case, the mystery arises not because of divine transcendence, but from our inability to transcend ourselves. For we ourselves are the cases for which understanding is sought.

Shunning Middle Knowledge

Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions. (Westminster Confession of Faith, 3.2)

I’ve heard it said that many Calvinist writers currently favour some form of the doctrine of middle knowledge. I’ve also heard that among the roll call are the names of John Frame, and John Feinberg, but I have not checked this. I hope not. Terrance Tiessen and Bruce Ware have openly avowed their commitment to Calvinist middle knowledge. Terry and I have been involved in a conversation on the matter, arising from his article 'Why Calvinists Should Believe in Divine Middle Knowledge Although They Reject Molinism' (Westminster Jnl., 2007), which is to be published in due course in that journal . So this leaves Bruce, whose presentation differs somewhat from Terry Tiessen’s. I devote this short Analysis to his views as they are to be found in his God’s Greater Glory, (Crossway, 2004)

Two preliminary points

Bruce Ware offers his thoughts about middle knowledge as a contribution to establishing and further understanding God’s asymmetrical attitude to good and evil. Although God works all things after the counsel of his own will, the way in which he works his will regarding evil is different from the way in which he works good, since being immaculately holy, he cannot be the author of sin, that is, he is incapable of having evil imaginations and wicked desires that immediately bring forth evil.

There is a long tradition in Reformed Theology of addressing this question, if only because the Reformed among all theological outlooks are the most frequently taxed with the objection that their views entail that God is the author of sin. Various responses have been offered; for example, that evil is a privation or loss and therefore that as a matter of metaphysical necessity God, who has fullness of being, cannot author evil; that God is a distinct type of causal agency, he is the primary cause, not to be confused with secondary, creaturely causes; and finally that God brings about evil by willingly permitting it. Each of these positions is repeated ad nauseam in the literature; they are not exclusive of each other, but can be combined to make a cumulative case against the charge of God’s authorship of evil. There remains, of course, an element of mystery, of how it is that the divine ordination meshes with human sin and evil. Augustine and Calvin, for example, routinely refer to the matter as ‘ineffable’. Bruce Ware, and others, offer 'Compatibilist Middle Knowledge' as one way in which such ineffability can be mitigated.

Middle Knowledge

What is middle knowledge? This is the doctrine that between God’s natural knowledge, his knowledge of all necessities and possibilities, and his free knowledge, what he has freely planned to bring to pass, there is a middle knowledge, his knowledge of what his free creatures would do in a vast variety of different circumstances. This third type of knowledge is an invention of Fonseca and Molina (two Jesuit theologians) tailored specifically to harmonise God’s sovereignty and libertarian free choice and divine grace and evil. Jacobus Arminius borrowed or adopted this device in his Protestant account of divine foreknowledge and human free choice. (The details can be found in Alfred Freddoso’s Introduction to his translation of Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge, (Cornell University Press, 1988) and in Richard Muller’s book on Arminius, respectively.)

To begin with, it should be noted that the very notion of middle knowledge collapses if its underlying rationale and necessity are changed. That rationale and necessity rest upon the Jesuit and Arminian commitment to the freedom of indifference. As it is impossible to have a soufflé without eggs, so it is impossible to have middle knowledge without the freedom of indifference. Indeed, I think it is true that it was Molinism and the debate that it raised, and Arminianism and the debate that it raised, that made it clear to the Reformed, clearer than it had been before, that they would be better, much better, to be committed to a compatibilist account of human freedom than to some form of incompatibilism.

Enter Bruce Ware

Enter Bruce Ware. Ware has an explicit commitment to compatibilist human freedom; he thinks that it is revealed truth, and besides that, he argues (like Jonathan Edwards) that forms of incompatibilism are logically defective. (GGG 78) So what can possibly be the attraction of middle knowledge?

Let us try to answer this first by seeing what according to Bruce Ware is left of middle knowledge. He notes that libertarian freedom is problematic. (GGG 112) But once we abandon libertarian freedom, according to Ware, and recognise that there is a necessary connection (that is, a causally necessary connection), ‘between knowledge of a given state of affairs and knowledge of what the agent would choose in that particular setting…’ then all is plain sailing; more light is immediately thrown on the meshing of sovereignty and responsibiity. For given this connectedness, ‘God could know what the agent would choose by knowing fully the circumstances in which the agent would make his choice’. (GGG 113-4) As Ware explains, ‘The set of factors in which the agent makes his choice constitutes a set of individually necessary and jointly necessary sufficient conditions for forming within the agent a strongest inclination or highest desire by which he then makes the one choice that is in accordance with that highest desire’. (GGG 114)

But if God knows what Jones, if placed in circumstances C, would do, then this is surely part of God’s natural knowledge, his knowledge of all necessities and possibilities. Among these possibilities are segments like those described by Ware. Middle knowledge ‘works’ for the compatibilist, Ware says (GGG 115), but it only works because it is not genuine middle knowledge, a distinct type of divine knowledge, but part of God’s natural knowledge. It works precisely because it is not middle knowledge. The examples that he cites from Scripture (GGG115-9) are of God’s knowledge of unactualised possibilities, possibilities therefore that are counterfactual, but they are not counterfactuals of human (libertarian) freedom, and so are not middle knowledge at all. Ware can only be saying what he does because of an imperfect grasp of what the medieval theologians, and following them the Reformed and the Reformed Orthodox, have meant by God’s necessary knowledge. I fear that what results is not so much middle knowledge as muddle knowledge.

Of course what particularly interests Ware is the use that this alleged middle knowledge can be put to in elucidating God’s relationship to evil. (GGG 119f.) Here we must note that he is keen to elucidate that relationship, to show more about how it can be that God ordains evil but is not its author. (This is a recurring theme, GGG, 112, 113, 122, 130.) His idea is that middle knowledge explains more of how it can be that such a relation is indirect and permissive, in that God’s decree respecting some possible acts of evil is routed through his knowledge of certain counterfactuals.

Ware represents God as deliberating as he passes from his natural knowledge to his free knowledge via his middle knowledge, his knowledge of counterfactuals. In a footnote (GGG, 120 fn. 12) he warns the reader that such language is a mere façon de parler, since all God’s deliberations are in ‘eternity past’, atemporal. But I doubt whether Ware can have it both ways. I doubt whether he has a hope of preserving a special kind of knowledge, compatibilisit middle knowledge, which is timelessly eternal. For Molina, the contents of God’s middle knowledge were timelessly eternal but they were distinct because they had a distinct content, they were (one and all) possible instances of the liberty of indifference, which immediately gave such knowledge a status distinct from God’s natural knowledge. If Warian middle knowledge is distinct from natural knowledge, what makes it distinct? The only possible candidate for an answer to that question is that it is the knowledge of what God will permissively decree that he ‘comes to’, that he deliberates over such knowledge in deciding which evils he will permissively decree. Ware’s account is, I believe, infected with temporalism. The classic grammar of God , bequeathed to us from Augustine, creaks: temporalism, mutability, ignorance - each began to show their heads

That apart, even as Ware describes this deliberation, whether it is a temporal process or not, it is not at all clear that such middle knowledge helps us with evil. This is what Ware says ‘By controlling the complex of factors prompting the natures of moral agents to develop a strongest inclination within a given situation, God could effectively redirect the choice and action that the agent could carry our’.’ (GGG 121). This cannot be God ‘occasioning’ a choice, as Ware suggests (GGG123) ). But nor can it be a description of God changing the complex of factors, as Ware supposes (GGG 121) but of him simply choosing one set of possibilities over another. God does not change possible people, like a marionette may be changed by being painted red instead of its present green before the show begins. Rather God simply selects a possible person placed in one set of circumstances (one set of possibilities) or that person placed in another set (another possibility).

The only kind of middle knowledge is that devised by Molina and his frères. There are no other kinds, and Ware’s attempt to show that there is another kind, compatibilist middle knowledge, and that it will help us deflecting from God the charge of being the author of evil, is consequently futile. There is divine counterfactual knowledge, knowledge of what might be and of what might have been, but that is part of God’s natural knowledge. And there remain the standard ways of parrying the charge of God and evil: evil as privation, primary and secondary causation, and the Augustinian idea of ‘willing permission’. But the mystery remains as well. Which is how we might expect things to be.

New Books, Fresh Books

Timothy Ward’s Words of Life (IVP) is a beautifully written, clear, calm, reasonable – a very English - treatment of the historical evangelical and classical Christian approach to Scripture. Besides being explicitly Reformed – he builds on Calvin, Turretin, Bavinck and Warfield - its orientation is also noteworthy for stressing the Bible’s own witness to itself, in particular to the closeness of God’s words and God’s action. He then proceeds to place this material in an explicitly theological, Trinitarian framework, and to apply it in the restatement of the traditional doctrinal attributes of scripture as necessary, sufficient and clear. Finally, the doctrinal formulation is brought to bear onto the life and witness of the Christian and the church; doctrine, and then application. Most important of all, perhaps, Timothy Ward puts all this in his own way, not simply mouthing traditional doctrine in traditional ways. And he comes to theological conclusions the proper way, from the scriptural data to scriptural doctrine. To cap it all, he has an eye both to history and to contemporary discussion.

So this is a fresh, clear-headed and reliable treatment of an important topic. Ward was a student of Kevin Vanhoozer’s, and due regard is paid to speech acts.(Ward’s doctoral dissertation on this topic is already available (Word and Supplement: Speech Acts, Biblical Texts, and the Sufficiency of Scripture, (Oxford University Press, 2002)) But speech-acts are servants rather than masters, chiefly put in service to elucidate the one important fact that often God’s deeds are his words, so binding very closely together who God is, what God does, and what God says. Nor does the author claim any great novelty for this insight, as if no one in the church had ever got the point before. Nor does the use of speech-act theory get in the way of good, old-fashioned, doctrinal construction. More could be said here, but on this occasion I forbear.

Instead I draw attention to what I think is its most noteworthy treatment – its consideration of inerrancy. The book does not wobble on the topic, and Ward is explicit in his rebuttal of the well-rehearsed claim that the concept is a late addition to the Reformed understanding of Scripture, ‘an invention of a Western rationalistic Christianity since the Enlightenment’. Nor is inerrancy a piece of a priori reasoning from the doctrine of God, making it impossible that he could ever use an errant writing for his purposes. But Ward does keep inerrancy in its place, or, if you prefer, put it in its place. Inerrancy is not a talisman, a mantra, a shibboleth or a touchstone, an isolated phenomenon that has to be given singular prominence. Rather, as the author says, the inerrancy of Scripture is logically subordinate to and so a consequence of the Bible’s teaching about the authority of God’s words. This is how he puts it.

The claim that the Bible is inerrant is a conclusion that is directly drawn from what Scripture says about God, and about itself in relation to God. Scripture says, as we have seen, that it is breathed out by God, as his own words. In addition, in Scripture God states with great clarity that his character is such that he cannot lie, and that he alone is utterly true and trustworthy. (Titus 1:2, Heb. 6.18) The conclusion that the Bible is inerrant is essentially derived from linking these two related truths closely together.

In my judgment, this is well said.

To have an erratum slip in a book that upholds biblical inerrancy is quite something. I read this book on April Fools’ Day, and thought at first that the inclusion of the slip was a piece of clever marketing. But no, the book is in systematic error – the index is everywhere two pages out. Happily, once spotted, soon corrected.

There is no shortage of biographies of John Calvin. But Herman Selderhuis’s John Calvin, a Pilgrim’s Life, (IVP Academic) is another blast of fresh air. It is not solemn or pietistic hagiography, nor is it a full-dress apologia for the life and theology of Calvin. ‘Calvin is approached as neither friend nor enemy; I just do not categorise him in that sense. I feel nothing for Calvin either way, but I am fascinated by him as a person’. Selderhuis is a notable Calvin scholar, but this is not a work of i-dotting and t-crossing from the Calvin academic guild. Rather it is scholarship with a light touch. Being witty and pointed about a serious subject may suggest satire, but Selderhuis has succeeded in being both skittish and penetrating about a serious man without undermining him, but instead helping the reader to get under Calvin’s skin, as he puts it.

How has he achieved this? Partly through style. The writing style is sharp, witty, knowledgeable, terse, compact. The book never drifts. This is helped by the way in which the chapters themselves are divided into discrete sections each of no more than a couple of pages, which often jump from one topic to another, sometimes interrupting the flow of the narrative of the life as topics seem to have suggested themselves to the author. It has the jumpiness and unexpectedness of live conversation. Each of these sections has a separate short title, inviting the reader to read on - ‘Battle’, ‘Clean-Up’, ‘Miracle’, ‘Promised Land’, ‘Money’, ‘Frustration’. The sections make it possible easily to pick the book up and to put it down, but I did not find that I wanted to put it down very often. It has been brilliantly translated from the Dutch by Albert Grootjes.

Following the death of his own father, Calvin’s pilgrimage was conducted with the help of certain father figures – Alciati, Farel, Bucer – and his life was spent doing what he definitely did not want to do, but was constrained to, and was amazingly gifted for, and (somewhat reluctantly) believed himself called by God to. As such, he had no ‘career plan’, no drive to be at the top of the greasy pole. He did have blind spots, however – in particular, he was unable to realise that not every one else was like himself. He was bad tempered, emotional, sometimes uncontrollable in his grief, yet also insensitive and childish. He was above all things strong willed, a workaholic who neglected his health and so shortened his life, paying scant regard to his own teaching on the place of prudence in providence. Calvin was certainly not the flint-faced Lenin that he is often portrayed as. Face to face, and in his correspondence, he was friendly, but in his other writings he tended to let rip. Ardent in his love of simplicity, directness and order , hating the complications of everything from horoscopes to ceremonies.

The author peppers his judgments with pertinent quotes from all over the Calvin corpus, but chiefly from his letters. Where Selderhuis does tend to be apologetic is over Servetus, and also over Calvin’s place in the politics and rule of Geneva. Calvin and Geneva were bound together in seemingly endless friction from which Calvin was only released towards the end of his life, as French refugees became citizens and took control of the city. Even so, Geneva was no DDR. The politically correct of today cannot in all conscience grumble at the political correctness and zero tolerance that was present in Calvin’s Geneva.

The author ends his book by saying that if he gets to heaven there are certainly things that he would like to talk to Calvin about. By then the reader will think the same. There’ll be quite a queue.

So, two new books, and two fresh books. Not necessarily the same thing.