David: You have nailed it. It is almost impossible now, to think of biblical covenanting outside of the 17thC social contract theories. And it is now impossible to think outside of the tri-federalist schema we have inherited. As soon as you even try that, you are tagged ‘unReformed.’

And our talking about theology, becomes talking about how others have talked about it.

David

Kevin said:Our discourse and inquiry is being changed by our interaction on the Internet and it is lamentable that not all of it finds itself with the same mystery and beauty that other Christian discourse has inspired over the centuries. However, it should be noted that other centuries of Christians had their encounters with their own depravity in their own ways both in their discourse and often by use of the sword against their own Christian brothers.

David:

That’s true, but what I think is happening is more than that now. I was trying to focus on the “form” as well as the attitude and demeanor. To put it simply, our theological discourse now is not about exploration but about judgment. It is as if a accountant has an excel spread-sheet, wherein all the margins, columns, rows are all set out specifically. He sees his ‘spread-sheet’ as having “codified” all the relevant financial data. He talks only to compare the works of others in his field, with his own ‘spread-sheet,’ his “map” of his accounting reality. He is comparing notes with others, but not really to explore, to imagine new realities, to test, or to verify his ideas. He talks with his colleagues with the intention of judging where and where not they have deviated from his excel “map.” I am mixing metaphors for sure.

That way of discoursing on theology is what is changing us, it is perverting us. It is ‘gridding’ or aligning our consciousness along specific lines of inquiry which cut us off from the artful, from the imagination. Our theological discourse is mathematical, it’s interested in the correct angular juxtapositions. It is interested in the logical symmetry of our received theological hierarchy, all the dependent theological topics laid out in just the right way. The questions we ask now are settled questions, with all the complexity and contradiction nailed down, flattened out, and sand-papered to a finished theological smoothness. When some of us read Turretin for the first time, we are impressed with the sense, the appearance of form and depth, of exactitude, of specificity, or correctness. It is true to the inherited map and form we have received. Indeed, it is the ultimate expression of a way of doing theology, to which all other “maps” are to be judged, for good or ill. The Westminster confession is viewed with this same sort of attitude. And it all becomes a sort of closet idolatry.

The secondary and tertiary effects from this way of thinking and talking about theology has impacted us in so many non-tangible ways. It feeds a sort of fight or flight response, which does manifest itself more vigorously on the net of course. Yet it shapes the way we think about the man next door (his theological and ecclesial position in relation to mine, and so forth, which puts him on a graded scale of acceptance or rejection in my perception of him). I judge him along the lines of a graded difference to me, not positively, both bring united in Christ, but negative, how is ‘not like me.’

Anyway… I digress. It is all about discourse of judgment, judging other patterns of thought by some elevated standard, which is used to measure the angles and the symmetry of that which seems to differ from us. Nowadays, a lot of my conversation is not about theological inquiry on its own terms, but about defending or attacking the received orthodoxy, and penetrating its internal logical connections, its matrix of deductive relationships if you like. And when we do this sort of internal critique, everyone is put into fight or flight mode, with all its attendant posturing and counter-posturing. Its this fight or flight dualism that is perverting us. We are trapped in this sort of cyclical deterioration. We have lost the ability to have an adult conversation, or to talk with people who disagree with us, or to use imagination and even challenge ourselves.

It’s a grueling regiment, which at the very least, can only lead to intellectual and academic detritus.

I could say more, but that will do…

David

And Chalcedon didn’t really settle things, as subsequent history shows. Even the iconoclastic controversy which led to Nicea II (787) was as much about Nicene-Chalcedonian Christological orthodoxy as anything else. Incidentally, many aspects of those controversies are still being carried out in one form or another today. Luthern v. Reformed Christological debates being one classic example.

Two of Arius’ disciples were in attendance, though of course, when they read their creed the rest of the bishops rioted.

But Nicaea hardly achieved lasting unity on its own. There were some twenty regional councils that followed, and many rejected the homoousion. It wasn’t until the Council of Constantinople that true ratification of Nicaea was achieved.

And indeed, Garett’s point about the “broad mind of the church” deserves more attention. No Evangelical is a “strict subscriptionist” to the early creeds. They all allow exception to the “descent into Hell” clause in the Apostles creed, and many many change the “Holy Catholic and Apostolic” part of the Nicene Creed, not to mention their discomfort with the “one baptism for the remission of sins.”

Also the early councils discussed many matters of liturgy and polity that we no longer feel to be binding. Nicaea forbade kneeling on the Lord’s Day. I don’t know too many folks who keep that one.

Regarding comment 13: good point. However, I actually intended the word “Western” not as an adjective for “Europe,” but in the sense employed when the word stands on its own, as indicative (at that time) of Greco-Roman culture (and since then of the heirs of that culture in other parts of Europe). So I obviously should have written something like, “mostly-Greek, Western, European creeds,” or found some other way to express my intended idea more clearly. I apologize for my lack of clarity.

I don’t think it matters in this case where the councils were held. Nor does it matter whether there were representatives present from cultures under the dominion and influence of the Western powers of those days. Those who attended the councils came at the behest of a Roman emperor. The entire Middle East of that period had been dominated by Greek culture since the days of Alexander the Great, much of the first council was occupied by the question of whether to include a single Greek vowel (omicron) in one of the words of its creed, and all of them bear the stamp of distinctively Western ways of thinking.

BTW you wrote:

“Would you say the same thing about 4th- and 5th-century mostly-Greek Western European creeds?”

You meant “EASTERN” European creeds, right? Nicea was held in Asia (not Europe) and was attended by a hugely diverse and mostly southeastern Med. galaxy of folk including our favorite deacon, “the black dwarf.” Chalcedon and Constantinople were similar.

If we’re honest we have to admit that the only part of the early councils that we Reformed folk find authoritative is the creedal summations (Nicene Creed, etc.) which are distilled from the broad mind of the church. Nicea was a world council (there were many far-flung non-Greeks there) unlike Westminster, which was called to deal with uniquely a 17th Century, English European issue, right?

I think comparing say, the Nicene Creed, which is a living document that is utilized by over a 1.5 billion Christians worlwide each week is far cry from the Westminster Standards. Remember, this is a very broad board engaged in a very broad discussion. Not a meeting of a local PCA Presbytery trying figure out what is pertinent only to them.

Michael, good thoughts.

I realize that you are (as per usual) trying to be provocative, but you might want to actually reference the councils of which you speak and then note what is often the first action of each…

At each of the councils you cite the first action is to solemnly receive the conclusions of prior ecumenical councils. Only then does the council proceed to new definition and constructive theological discourse. This, of course, is no different than what Westminster itself actually was: a reception of the catholic faith of the councils (sans Nicea 2), a revision and refinement of the Articles of Religion, and a constructive codification of the non-Episcopal, Reformed consensus of the Interregnum

No one is arguing that Presbyterian and Reformed Christians ought to falsify or abandon their theological heritage. The sovereignty of God, the doctrines of grace, and a robust understanding of human depravity could all remain while adding particularity and context to new questions that have arisen in the intervening four-hundred years.

Historical context is certainly an effective tool for critiquing naive or reified readings of a confessional/ creedal document and as someone subject to said critique, I am not at all surprised that you feel threatened. That thickened context, however, is the necessary implication of the very theology that you want to be committed to. If creeds and confessions are forever subject to the Word of God and if noetic depravity is as pronounced as you wish to maintain, it follows that continual reformation and renewed confession are mandatory. You might demur to present-day confession-writing, thinking that your contemporaries are unworthy to assume the burdens borne by long-dead and heroic divines, but this is only because your limited historical context forbids you to see their fallibility and situatedness. Simply put, if you propose a question to which divines could not have imagined (and therefore, to which their confession provides no answer or only an equivocal/oblique answer), it is incumbent on theologians to think with the Church and craft a sufficient answer. Unfortunately, the pile of questions has grown so sky-high, that the WTS/NAPARC crowd would rather re-incarnate a church of their imagined past.

Unfortunately, the old wineskins have already begun to burst and historical context requires us to ask whether they are attempting to re-create a church that never actually was.

MJGP+

Thanks for the interaction. We are in large agreement here. The situational analogue that I have in mind is that of catholicism in the early to mid-twentieth century. Following Leo XIII’s 1880 declaration that Thomism would be the official philosophy of Catholic schools, Catholic theological reflection languished for its captivity to neo-Thomism and the most promising theologians of the day (including such luminaries as Rahner, DeLubac, Danielou, Congar, and von Balthazar) were censured and/ or silenced. Fortunately, the tide changed rather surprisingly when John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council.

The problem in this situation is that Presbyterians in North America are possessed of a much weaker ecclesiological sense than those Catholics and are therefore more habituated to either depart their denominational bodies or (on the other hand) to create conditions so inhospitable to dissent that creativity is effectively excised. I’m not sure what the answer is here, but I do pray for a kind of paradigm shift on the horizon.

You wrote:

…a 17th Century White European confession cannot possibly be employed to speak with unequivocal force to define a 21st Century, multi-ethnic, and globalized Christian body.

Would you say the same thing about 4th- and 5th-century mostly-Greek Western European creeds?

I think a good deal of the problem intrinsic to this predeliction for the angular and symmetrical is the unfortunate attempt by just oodles and oodles of folk to make Systematic theological formulations function in ways alien to their best use (hence, brother Pahls’ aptly pointing out the insufficiency of a 17th century document such as the WCF which bears a derived, fallible authority, to help the church settle the host of challenges unique to context, such as NPP, bogeymen like Shepherd, etc.).

A telling barometer of the utter depth of the problem, of this “dead faith of the living” (Pelikan, quoting an unknown author) which is well on its way if not already arrived, is the ubiqutious tendency of our (Presbyterian and Reformed Christians’) reflexively coming to any and all perceived problems within our small and largely ineffectual world, with an aphoristic, fundamentalistic approach content with simply offering a “The Confession says”, or “my truly Reformed wing of the overall ‘Reformed’ church says.” Often, this means not even taking the time to consider how the Confession (say, Westminster) utilized various proof-texts on a given subject, or religious controversy. Carrying almost a ‘Quran-like, static authority somehow removed from all developments in the ensuing centuries across the various domains of study (ie. what does our study of the Hebrew language since, say,1648 reveal about the 17th century conception that “covenant” means “legal contract”) the “Confession” then takes on the role of a de facto hermeneutical presupposition or lens by which men simply do theology, or react to what they perceive to be threats to their “confessional” fortress.

Of course, the common response to this from those who appear more interested in simply repristinating a bygone, utopian era (enough with the Puritan reprints already!) is that our sinful and perverse generation simply wants to revolt from legitimate established confessional authority, and that even HAVING this conversation is proof positive of the “great defection.” But of course, if that were the case, it seems that Luther also was part of a rather sinful and perverse generation as well, no? On the grounds of what I’ll call “the case for repristination” 16th century Reformation is just as ill-advised in principle, as is 21st…

It struck me reading a recent paper by Dr./Pastor Robert Rayburn, given at a PCA Colloquium dealing with the efficacy of the sacraments that Rayburn went so far as to suggest that there are cases in which the desire for an air-tight harmonious doctrinal system offered by the Westminster Confession (i.e., not just from its heirs, present-hour) can lead to our inability to speak the way the Bible does, which in turn, causes us to mislead God’s people. On this score, Rayburn notes,

“I wish more of us were also willing to admit that a large measure of the problem we face in coming to a unanimous mind about the sacraments and their efficacy is the Bible’s own way of speaking about these rituals. Is it not that the Holy Scripture addresses these rituals and their use in ways we typically do not? We pride ourselves on our Biblicism without always recognizing the gap that has opened between our practice and that described in the Bible.”

The result, Rayburn laments, is that “baptism is, for many of our people, a matter of little spiritual consequence….” How odd, insofar as for PAUL, baptism serves as the very basis or launching pad for his exhortations to the people of God, to be, or live, what they are through their baptismal union with the crucified and risen Christ.

Rayburn goes on, after acknowledging the importance of systematic theology (true in what it often affirms generally, but at other junctures, misleading in its precision), to state that that “theological definition, the special province of dogmatics, leaves much unaccounted for. Definition provides an essential foundation, but that is all. Systematic theology has not helped us very much to answer the question” (on the efficacy of the sacraments) “we are seeking to answer today.”

What so refreshing about reading Rayburn is the degree to which he, as a Presbyterian pastor and serious theologian (he has a real PhD from Edinburgh and not some prison/correspondence diploma mill, thus, the requisite German and French) was and is willing to engage in serious critical reflection on his own confessional heritage, a reflection which of necessity involves a careful re-examination of the WAY in which systematic theology has, through its misuse, failed in ways where, say, liturgical theology would bring profound and lasting benefit.

Pardon the stream ‘o…..

Our discourse and inquiry is being changed by our interaction on the Internet and it is lamentable that not all of it finds itself with the same mystery and beauty that other Christian discourse has inspired over the centuries. However, it should be noted that other centuries of Christians had their encounters with their own depravity in their own ways both in their discourse and often by use of the sword against their own Christian brothers.

I sometimes wonder whether the virtual world of Internet polemics is any more or less damaging to us than the blood spilled in the past. If I were one of the few Huguenots left in France just after the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre, I might consider it an especially stupid question. It’s probably still a stupid question even today.

But it serves to make a point and in our own day, on the other hand, it is very easy for us to say (and draw comparison’s a la Godwin’s law and the Nazis) that this sort of rough discourse is damning and hurtful and destructive and yet no one reading this thread has likely ever suffered at the wrong end of a bayonet or sword point at you by another Christian. Which is worse?

Obviously spilled blood is worse but I wonder if the sin we engender by our own depravity isn’t something we pretend to be less than sinful because we don’t draw literal swords today like men of other centuries who would have killed for the semantic differences we can pull out of a phrase like “This is my Body”.

Though the scale of it is dramatically different and to me–somewhat inappropriate to mention the Nazis (or sixteenth-century French Catholics) in reflecting upon it–I do believe that we break the Sixth Commandment when we don’t treat our brothers as we should on the Internet. It’s interesting to me that I just phrased that last sentence referring to the Sixth Commandment instead of mentioning killing or murder. We even have the propensity to minimize our sin by rephrasing and putting forward euphemisms to cover our tracks I think. All in all, the hazards of our virtual world here.

I regret much of the discourse I’ve put forward on the Internet and have had to learn the hard way that there is almost always a better path. I’m not always on that path and to the extent that I’ve wronged any of you, I certainly apologize. We’ll likely not ever agree as to the exact nature of how we’re to discuss things on the Internet but I am still glad that whatever wrongs I have committed in our discussions together–we are still brothers together in Christ and I am immeasurably thankful for that. I realize virtual apologies aren’t worth the paper they’re not printed on, but to make good on this–I’m happy to welcome back anyone who wants to return to write at reformedcatholicism.com. You’ll still have to put up with me, of course, but a bit of the magic of the site was lost when some left. I’d love to see you come back.

I put a link recently on refcath for “Two Ways to Live” – a gospel presentation that emphasizes the sovereignty of God and the work of Christ for those who’ve yet to hear the gospel. I know I’m not the first person that has gotten jazzed about discussions on the Internet but I wonder how enthusiastic we remain to discuss with the gospel with others. I can only speak for myself here but I believe I need to do more work with those who have not heard than with those who have. That’s just me of course but I think most of us have some amount of similar feeling in regards to what God has called us to do, how much time we spend on it, and how freely and long our commentary on a site like this or others winds up being.

That having been said, I also don’t believe that this site, refcath, or the discussions we have are all a waste of time either. Even the old cathedrals had dark brooding corners, gargoyles, and other things that in and of themselves would appear terrible and impeding close up and yet they were the architectural masterpieces of concrete Christian expression in Europe for a thousand years and counting.

I content myself with knowing that however we fail, our Lord’s grace covers it all and by Him we are saved. May we all extend similar grace to one another.