Departing from Definitions

Catholic Christendom has not, always and everywhere, remained faithful to what it confessed at Chalcedon.  In the Lutheran churches, for example, a form of Eutychianism emerged that serves that church’s peculiar view of the relationship of Christ’s body to the physical elements of the Lord’s Supper.  This may be seen in the Lutheran representation of the “communicatio idiomatum” (“communication of attributes”), whereby our Lord’s divine nature at His virginal conception virtually “divinized” His human nature by communicating its attributes to the human nature.  Thus, the latter is ubiquitous, Lutherans insist, and is really physically present “in, with, and under” the elements of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  But, such a christological construction, in the words of Charles Hodge, “form[s] no part of Catholic Christianity.”

From: A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith by Robert L. Reymond (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), p. 615.

 

God’s Omnipotence

My second point of development is this: when we speak of God’s omnipotence and say that God has the power to do anything He wants, we must make clear to our congregations, when we say this, that we do not mean that God can do *anything.*  He can do neither the logically irrational nor that which is ontologically or ethically contrary to His nature.  I will explain what I mean here by two sub-points: First, God cannot do the logically irrational, that is, the self-contradictory, nor would He even try to do so because He is rational and contradictions are eternal disruptions of His rationality.  He cannot make or think that two and two are five, He cannot make a stone too heavy for Him to lift, He cannot make adjacent mountains with no valley between them.  These are “pseudo-tasks” ([George] Mavrodes), “imaginary inventions” ([Gerald] Bray), totally unrelated to power, that cannot exist in reality, and all one has to do in order to verify to himself that what I have just said is true is to ask himself, “How much power would it take to make a wrong answer in arithmetical calculation, without changing anything, the correct answer?” to realize that such pseudo-tasks belong to the domain of logic (and are condemned by it) and not to the domain of power at all.

From: What is God?: An Investigation of the Perfections of God’s Nature by Robert L. Reymond (Fearn: Mentor, 2007), pp. 157-158.

 

On Sabbath Observance

If men wish the knowledge of [Jesus's resurrection from the dead] to die out, let them neglect to keep holy the first day of the week; if they desire that event to be everywhere known and remembered, let them consecrate that day to the worship of the risen Savior. – Charles Hodge (1797-1878), American Reformed theologian, author, and educator

Quoted in: “What is God?”: An Investigation of the Perfections of God’s Nature by Robert L. Reymond (Fearn: Mentor, 2007), p. 196.

 

The Word of God as a Means of Grace

The Reformed church…insists that the salvation of men is always under the direct, sovereign governance of God, that salvation is always directly from the Lord and, therefore, that the Holy Spirit must bear witness, immediately and directly, by and with the Word in men’s hearts if they are to respond in repentance and faith to the Word of God….

In short, the Reformed position on the efficacy of the Word as a means of grace is that, even though the Bible is the very Word of God, it is rendered efficacious as a means of special grace, not intrinsically or automatically, but only by the immediate and direct attendant working of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of its readers and hearers.  The Reformed church emphasizes that the imparting of spiritual life is ever sovereignly with God the Spirit, who is the Giver of life.  That is to say, where and when the Spirit effectually works in human hearts by and with the Word of God (and only there and then), the Word is irresistably efficacious as a means of grace in the salvation of lost men and the building up of the saints in faith.

From: A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith by Robert L. Reymond (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), p. 916.

 

Bad Origen

It is clear, from all this, that Origen’s trinitarian construction was seriously flawed.  But, if this is so, also flawed was his view of the incarnation.  In keeping with his unbiblical view of the pre-existence of all human souls, Origen maintained that Christ’s human soul both pre-existed and had undergone a complete interpenetration with the Logos.  It was this Logos-filled soul which became flesh and which provided the link between the Logos and the material nature of Jesus.  Jesus, for Origen, did actually suffer, die, and rise again but, after the ascension, the humanity was so absorbed into the divine Logos that it was “no longer other than the Logos, but the same with it.”  As a man, He is now “everywhere and pervades the universe” (De principiis 2.11.6).  The true humanity of Christ is obscured, if not totally abandoned, by this construction.

From: A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith by Robert L. Reymond (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), p. 595.

 

God’s Omniscience

God has never forgotten anything, either.  Never will He experience a momentary lapse of memory, know a “senior moment,” or suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease.  I make this point simply to note that, when God says, in Jeremiah 31:34, that He will not remember our sins, He means that He will not remember our sins against us, but He will never forget that we are redeemed sinners.  All this is what we intend when we attribute omniscience to Him.  And, He has always been, is now, and ever shall be, everlastingly omniscient…

A few early church fathers questioned whether God concerns Himself with such earthly trivia as the number of gnats that are born or die every second or the number of fleas that are on earth.  But, the holy Scriptures affirm that God has just that kind of knowledge.  He not only determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name (Psalm 147:4), but He also knows when the sparrow falls (Luke 12:6) and He determines the number of hairs on our heads (Matthew 10:29-30) – as well as the number of fleas on earth at any given moment.  To all this, we can only say, with the psalmist: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it” (Psalm 139:6).

From: “What is God?”: An Investigation of the Perfections of God’s Nature by Robert L. Reymond (Fearn: Mentor Books, 2007), pp. 125, 126.

Robert L. Reymond (born in 1932) is Professor of Systematic Theology at Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

 

The Authority of the Church

The nature of the church’s authority is exclusively spiritual and moral, over against the civil and legislative authority of the state – also a divinely appointed authority (Romans 13:1-7) – the latter authority often manifesting itself in physically coercive ways against human violence and public disorder.  That is to say, the church’s authority is strictly ministerial and declarative, not imperial, magisterial, or legislative. 

The church has no police force or battalions of soldiers.  The medieval church was dead wrong when it endorsed, under Innocent IV’s bull Ad extirpanda (1252), the use of torture to break the will of heretics and to extort recantations from them, and penalized the unrepentant with confiscation of goods, imprisonment, and their surrender to the “secular arm,” which meant death at the stake.  The Spanish Inquisition, in 1479 under Ferdinand V and Isabella, in particular, was aimed at Jews, Muslims and, later, Protestants and, under its first Grand Inquisitor, Tomas Torquemada, burned some two thousand people for heresy and expelled from the Holy Roman Empire Jews who refused to be baptized.  The church was wrong when, in the eleventh through the thirteenth century, it launced the Crusades (eight or nine, in all) to recover the Holy Land from Islam.  Martin Luther was wrong when he called for the German princes to use the sword against the Anabaptists.  The Protestant leaders at Geneva, including John Calvin, were wrong when they burned Servetus at the stake as a heretic.  The English Reformers under Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Elizabeth I were wrong when they employed the secular authority to persecute Roman Catholics.  And the theonomic reconstructionists of our day are just as wrong when they call upon the state to execute false prophets, witches, adulterers, and homosexuals.

The church is to address the spiritual and moral needs of men and women who are, prior to their salvation, by nature slaves to sin and Satan, and who are, after their salvation, in need of instruction in the details of living out their most holy faith before a watching world.  This is not to say that the church must not speak out against political injustice and moral abuses by the state – it must be willing to speak out against moral abuses whenever they occur.  But the church’s officers must never resort to physical force in order to establish a beachhead for the church within the human community it seeks to reach for Christ.

From: A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith by Robert L. Reymond (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), pp. 865-866.

Robert L. Reymond (born in 1932) was Professor of Systematic Theology at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri (1968-1990).

Reymond’s statement: “The church has no police force or battalions of soldiers” reminded me of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s sneer, made during World War II: “How many divisions does the Pope have?”

 

The Doctrine of Scripture

A word must be said about the willingness of the Confession to include within the “whole counsel of God” truths that “by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture.”  Some Christians have urged that logical deduction adds to Scripture and, therefore, must be resisted.  This is wrong.  Validly deduced truths add nothing to the overall truths of Scripture.  John Frame has, rightly, declared:

Implication does not add anything new [in syllogistic argument]; it merely rearranges information contained in the premises.  It takes what is implicit in the premises and states it explicitly.  Thus, when we learn logical implications of sentences, we are learning more and more of what those sentences mean.  The conclusion represents part of the meaning of the premises.

So, in theology, logical deductions set forth the meaning of Scripture…

When it is used rightly, logical deduction adds nothing to Scripture.  It merely sets forth what is there.  Thus, we need not fear any violation of sola scriptura, as long as we use logic responsibly.  Logic sets forth the meaning of Scripture.

A case in point is the doctrine of the Trinity.  In no single passage of Scripture is the full doctrine of the Trinity set forth.  But the church has deduced “by good and necessary consequence,” as the implicate of all the Scripture data, the doctrine of the Trinity – to be believed as surely as the explicit declaration of Scripture that God is loving!

One final comment.  While the framers of the Confession were absolutely convinced of the Scripture’s sufficiency, and stated as much, they affirm once again, here, that “the inward illumination of the Spirit of God [is] necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the word.”  In so doing, they indicated their zeal to keep the source of spiritual life where it must always be kept – directly in God alone.  It is the Spirit of God, working immediately and directly by and with the Word of God in the hearts of men, who imparts spiritual life!

From: A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith by Robert L. Reymond (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), pp. 86-87.

The Frame quotation is from: The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God by John Frame; A Theology of Lordship series (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1987), p. 247.

 

The Ten Commandments in the New Testament

In fact, the New Testament writers allude to every commandment, in one place or other, in their letters to the churches: the first three commandments lie behind many of the statements in Romans 1:21-30, 2:22, 1 Corinthians 6:9, Ephesians 5:5, Colossians 3:5, James 2:7, 19, and Revelation 21:7; the fourth commandment behind the designation of the first day of the week – the Christian’s day of worship – as “the Lord’s Day” (Acts 20:7, 1 Corinthians 16:2, and Revelation 1:10; see Isaiah 58:13); the fifth commandment behind statements in Romans 1:30, Ephesians 6:2-3, Colossians 3:20, and 1 Timothy 1:9; the sixth commandment behind statements in Romans 1:29, 13:9, 1 Timothy 1:9-10, James 2:11, 1 John 3:15, and Revelation 21:8; the seventh commandment behind statements in Romans 2:22, 13:9, 1 Corinthians 6:9, Ephesians 5:3, 1 Thessalonians 4:3, 1 Timothy 1:10, James 2:11, Revelation 21:8; the eighth commandment behind statements in Romans 2:21, 13:9, 1 Corinthians 6:10, Ephesians 4:28, 1 Timothy 1:10; the ninth commandment behind statements in Romans 13:9, Ephesians 4:25, Colossians 3:9, 1 Timothy 1:10, and Revelation 21:8; and the tenth commandment behind statements in Romans 1:29, 7:7-8, 13:9, 1 Corinthians 6:10, Galatians 5:26, Ephesians 5:5, Colossians 3:5, and Hebrews 13:5.  In addition, the two great Old Testament love commandments – to love God with all one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18), which are beautifully New Testament, as well, in scope and concept, are declared to be summary statements of the Ten Commandments (see Matthew 22:37-40; Mark 12:29-31; Romans 13:8-9).  Surely, the Christian is to obey these commandments!  Indeed, Jesus said to His disciples: “If you love Me, you will obey what I command” (John 14:15), and again, “You are My friends if you do what I command” (John 15:14).  And, John declared, “We know that we have come to know Him if we keep His commandments” (1 John 2:3), and then actually defined love for God in terms of obedience to His law: “This is love for God, that we keep His commandments” (1 John 5:3).

From: A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith by Robert L. Reymond (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), pp. 776-777.

 

On Eternal Generation, Again

Finally, John Murray also says of Calvin’s rejection of the ancient doctrine of the Father’s eternal generation of the Son:

Students of historical theology are acquainted with the furore which Calvin’s insistence upon the self-existence of the Son as to His deity aroused at the time of the Reformation.  Calvin was too much of a student of Scripture to be content to follow the lines of what had been regarded as Nicene orthodoxy on this particular issue.  He was too jealous for the implication of the homoousion clause of the Nicene creed to be willing to accede to the interpretation which the Nicene fathers, including Athanasius, placed upon another expression in the same creed, namely, “very God of very God.”  No doubt this expression is repeated by orthodox people without any thought of suggesting what the evidence derived from the writings of the Nicene fathers would indicate the content to have been.  This evidence shows that the meaning intended is that the son DERIVED His deity from the Father and that the Son was not, therefore, “autotheos.”  It was precisely this position that Calvin controverted with such vigor.  He maintained that, as respects personal distinction, the Son was of the Father but, as respects deity, He was self-existent.  This position ran counter to the Nicene tradition.  Hence, the indictments levelled against him.  It is, however, to the credit of Calvin that he did not allow his own more sober thinking to be suppressed out of deference to an established pattern of thought when the latter did not commend itself by conformity to Scripture and was inimical to Christ’s divine identity.

John Murray (1898-1975), quoted in Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), p. 330.  All bold emphases are mine.

Reymond cites John Murray, “Systematic Theology,” Westminster Theological Journal 25 (May, 1963), p. 141. 

Murray’s approval of Calvin’s attitude toward Nicea on this subject would seem to imply that Murray was, himself, skeptical of the doctrine of eternal generation.  The last sentence (which I’ve put in bold type) espouses an important principle: Scripture is always and ever the touchstone, the final arbiter of truth, not any tradition, no matter how ancient and (otherwise) venerable.