John Frame generally does not present his
views polemically, or in an historical context, but they are offered as
permanent biblical orthodoxy. The thrust is, as always with Frame, to make
doctrine practical. So that the reader may gather that God is always at his
shoulder, seeing the world from a human like perspective.
There is a pattern of discussion of God’s
relation to creature time and space similar to that of Scott Oliphint. The
transcendence of God, his timeless and spaceless eternality, is affirmed. And
then the immanence of God. God, as immanent, dwells in time and space. He is
the God (or better, the Lord) of the covenant, but Frame does not write of God’s
acquisition of covenant properties, as far as I can see, though it must be that
these are implied. For new things are true of God once he creates, not simply
the fact of the creation but new things concerning God himself, the way that he
relates to, and is present in, created time and space. Certain attributes of
God are said to have both a timely and an eternal expression, such as covenant
faithfulness. (568) This, covenant
presence, is for Frame his third
Lordship attribute.(158). He is fond of Dorothy Sayers’s analogy of God’s
relation to the created order as that of a playwright to his play. ‘The author
is always present in the drama, arranging it to fit the characters, and the
characters to fit the drama…He does not treat them as robots, even though he
has complete control over then. Rather, he interacts with them on a personal
level…’ (158)
What motivates Frame’s theological work? I’d
say, besides what has already been mentioned, a hermeneutic. The Bible, particularly the Bible’s language
about God, is to be interpreted literally wherever possible. The genre of
literal description is to prevail unless there s a very strong reason to
disallow it. As Kevin Vanhoozer might say, the spirit of Carl Henry lives in
KJV’s old teacher, John Frame. So wherever possible what God is said to be in
Scripture, God literally is.
This hermeneutic is in evidence in Frame’s
attitude to change in God, and to his various perspectives in time and in space,
as we saw in our earlier piece on Frame’s outlook. ‘When he is present in our
world of time, he looks at his creation from within and shares the perspectives
of his creatures’. (570 ) ‘God engages in a conversation with man, as an actor
in history. The author of history has written himself into the play as the lead
character, and he interacts with other characters, doing what they do.’ (571) It
would not be surprising if Frame has imbibed some of the modern outlook of the
Christian religion as consisting in personal interaction between God and his
creatures, despite holding that if one rejects libertarianism then the
strongest argument for God being in time vanishes.
As already noted, another strong theme in
Frame’s systematic theology is his concern that theology should be readily
applied in the life of the believer. This is understood as having an everyday
relationship with God as he interacts with his people. Such an interactive God
must change, he thinks. It is important for obvious reasons that theology
should be user-friendly, though it should not be forgotten that, say, Stephen
Charnock’s Existence and Attributes of
God contains numerous ‘applications’ in the Puritan style. Charnock’s
theology is by no means purely cerebral. And – while we are on the topic – the
nature of the worship of God will clearly be affected by the worshippers
understanding of God. Worshipping a God who is at our
shoulder is likely to be different from worshipping one who is simply ‘Our Father in
heaven’. But that’s another topic.
The consequences of God being both Lord of
eternity and Lord of Time is, as Frame candidly acknowledges, a certain
bipolarity in the being of God, even being prepared to think of the universe as
God’s body, though he quickly distances his view from the bi-polarism of
process theology. (572-3) I think it is fair to say that these views arise
because of the literalness with which Frame takes biblical language about God
changing, coming down, being present and hiding his presence, and so on.
Covenant contact through time and space
The dominant theme in Frame’s theology is
divine change, by comparison with the Reformed theological tradition, is divine
changelessness, and the consequent existence of a God who is equally timeless
and in time. And it is not surprising that it is such relationships that he
deals with in the bulk of his book. Let us look at these in turn….*
Not necessary therefore to regard the
creation ‘from within’, perspectivally, for him to have contact with it. From
the fact that many of God’s decrees come to pass in time, it does not follow that
God the decreer is in time, and no longer eternal. There is an important
difference between. Frame shows no
appreciation of the distinction between
God decrees the rising of the sun at 5.30am
And
At 5.30 am God decrees the rising of the sun
Importantly, the second does not follow from
the first. So when Frame says ‘History
involves constant change, and so, as an agent in history, God himself changes’
(571), this does not follow. God may be an agent in history without changing. Pursuing
this line, he says ‘In my view, this is more than just an anthropomorphic
description. In these accounts, God is not merely like an agent in time, he
really is in time changing as others change.’ He writes this entire section of
his work in such a way as to suggest that he is not aware of this distinction,
or else he thinks that it is not worth bringing up. He implies that otherwise
this is no more than an anthropomorphic description for God. It is not clear
what words he has in mind. But if it is that ‘On Monday he wants a certain
thing to happen and on Tuesday he wants something else to happen’ this is quite
compatible with eternalism, indeed as it stands it does not necessarily denote
any change. As eternally decreed it may
be that he expresses that he wants A on Monday and B on Tuesday. Why not? If I want to go to Oxford on Monday
and to Cambridge on Tuesday, why is this even a prima facie account of me changing? I haven’t changed my mind, but
to achieve what I want it is necessary to undergo changes. All at once we have
a major doctrinal innovation, apparently with the least biblical justification,
with God having two forms of existence. It must be that Frame sees an
overriding need for such a proposal.
He says that God has these two forms of existence
and that they are not contradictory. This is not clear. God changes and yet he is
changeless. It is true that Frame says
that God has an eternal plan, to which his agency in time is subject, it is
part of his eternal plan coming to pass, being realized. (571-2) But if we say
this, that what God brings about in time what he eternally decrees, there is
obviously no change in God.
It is clear that one motive here is the
avoidance of having to think that what God does in history is anthropomorphic
and therefore less real than his eternal existence. (571) But this is a bit of
a red-herring, I think. Of course if God acts then he acts, but the way that
this is represented to men and women may be in human-like terms. Not even a God
in time, if we suppose one, has hands or feet or a voice. So to say that he has
is anthropomorphic. When God made a covenant he spoke, but sounds did not come
from his mouth, nor were lungs and larynx employed. They heard a voice, but saw
no man. So I don’t see how the new proposal does without anthropomorphism
We need to remind ourselves that the Lord of
Creation is pure spirit. So the problems of anthropomorphism are
not solved by invoking him, they are simply relocated. For this pure spirit
must be without bodily parts. When at the Annunciation, the words ‘This is my
beloved Son…’ are heard ‘from the excellent glory’ as Peter says (which in any
case does not suggest a creaturely site), this happens without any aid from human
lungs and larynx. So if the invoking of a Lord of Time to do what the Lord of Eternity
(as we might call them) cannot do is meant to deflect the problem of
anthropomorphism, it must fail.
Theology and pagan philosophy
Like Oliphint, Frame is ambivalent as
regards the tradition. At various places in The
Doctrine of God, (particularly in the Introduction) Frame expresses his
dissatisfaction with Reformed Orthodoxy’s use of pagan philosophy, as well as
in Dooyeweerd’s recommendation of his own philosophy.
Nevertheless it is true that
Protestant scholastics were generally too uncritical of the Greek philosophers
and of the Medieval systems. Therefore, particularly
on the doctrine of God, their thought was not always firmly grounded in Scripture.
((Emphasis added) 10)
The implication is clear: we can do better
than they did on the doctrine of God. Part of this involves shaking the dust of
pagan metaphysics and epistemology from off his feet. Instead he proposes a
development of scriptural, theistic epistemology and metaphysics. All well and
good. But we see here the dangers of the project. In general, these are the
dangers of unintended consequences. Another is the danger of a multiplication
of gods. Ditheism is no doubt far from Frame’s mind, but here he is proposing a
Lord of Eternity who transcends the creation, and another, the Lord of Time,
(there must be another for the Lord of Time possesses a set of incompatible attributes
to those possessed by the Lord of eternity, and vice versa), immanent within
it. One is reminded of the Stoics, who had gods of the evening and the
morning, of the winter and of the summer, and so on. The eclectic ways in which
the Reformed Orthodox appropriated from pagan philosophy may seem to be untidy,
but they were employed inter alia in
elucidating a pure theism. Frame’s metaphysics has the effect (I do not say the
intention) of weakening such theism.