The three lights

Martin Luther:

Let us take it that there are three lights – the light of nature, the light of grace, and the light of glory, to use the common and valid distinction. By the light of nature it is an insoluble problem how it can be just that a good man should suffer and a bad man prosper; but this problem is solved by the light of grace. By the light of grace it is an insoluble problem how God can damn one who is unable by any power of his own to do anything but sin and be guilty. Here both the light of nature and the light of grace tell us that it is not the fault of the unhappy man, but of an unjust God; for they cannot judge otherwise of a God who crowns one ungodly man free from merits, yet damns another who may well be less, or at least not more, ungodly. But the light of glory tells us differently, and it will show us hereafter that the God whose judgment here is one of incomprehensible righteousness is a God of most perfect and manifest righteousness. In the meantime, we can only believe this, being admonished and confirmed by the example of the light of grace, which performs a similar miracle in relation to the light of nature.

(pp. 332, The Bondage of the Will, in Ernest Gordon Rupp, Desiderius Erasmus, Philip Saville Watson e.d., Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation)

Gavin Ortlund:

Luther also distinguishes between the light of nature, the light of grace, and the light of glory. I find this distinction very helpful. Just as there are many things that we see in the light of grace that we could not possibly understand by the light of nature, so there will be much that we will see in the light of glory that we cannot possibly understand in the light of grace. Therefore Christian faith has a drama, a mystery, and a tension to it as it waits for the eschatological vindication of its content.

Two kinds of knowledge of God

God knows everything and everybody. Yet, the Bible says that it is only Christians who love God who are known by God (1 Corinthians 8:3, Galatians 4:8-9). How did we come to be known by God when he already knew us?

We came to be known by God in a qualitatively different way. Before he knew us children of wrath, but now he knows us as his children.

Paralleling this everybody knows God (Psalm 19; Romans 1:19) even if they suppress that knowledge. However, in becoming a Christian we come to know God but in a different way. Not as your judge, but as your saviour. Not as distant, but as close. Caught between the times we know him this way only in part, but when he comes again we will know him fully (1 Corinthians 13:12). But it is more important that he knows us fully; and he does know us fully, closely and savingly as his children already (Romans 8:27, Galatians 4:8-9).

It is like knowing someone as your manger, but then you leave the place of work meet him at the local pub and begin to know him as your friend. The former knowledge was not a false knowledge, but the second knowledge is the better knowledge and supersedes the previous knowledge. Before you knew him, but now you know his heart.

Natural theology, law and Gospel

Glen has been interacting with some thoughts on truth and goodness in pagan philosophers. I agree with him entirely and he says things much better than I could. I just think he could do with a dash of law and Gospel!

I've talked about this more here and here, where you can see how much I'm relying on Oswald Bayer. I came across another Bayer gem that explains what I mean the other day:

"The effect that the law creates is not surprising. One has no trouble understanding what it means to rely on oneself and on one's own deeds; the action-consequences relationship has its own logic. But the gospel is absolutely, completely incomprehensible. That God rescues one from, and brings one safely through, the deserved judgment is a miracle. Law and gospel cannot be plausibly intertwined together; their existence is hard and fast in opposition to each other. The gospel is literally a paradox; it stands against that which the sinner can reasonably expect; it stands against damnation"

(p.228, Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation)

I think that makes clear how there can be good and true things in what pagan philosophers say (which, Glen, I think you could be clearer on), while also proclaiming the foolishness of the Gospel. They teach the good and true law, but cannot teach the Gospel. They never completely teach the law (that actually can only be done by teaching the cross), but they cannot even partially teach the Gospel. To me that makes sense of Psalm 19, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Job, Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 1-3 etc

It also makes sense of my experience. For example, I watch a fair number of films and attempt to do this from a Christian perspective. I tend to feel they are often great at showing our plight, but never offer anything but false solutions.

Now there is an interesting question which I haven't really addressed, and that is where does Christ fit into this? I have talked about law and Gospel and Glen has talked about Christ. Does Christ=the Gospel, which is what Luther and Mark 1:1 (granting my discussion with Chris about different meanings of 'gospel') seem to do? But isn't Christ the one shown to be the one who will judge the world (Acts 17:31), and isn't the cross the ultimate proclamation of the law (as PT Forsyth argues)? Can't Paul even say that 'according to [his] gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus' (Rom 2:16)?

Sorry but I don't have time to pick up those threads!... just thought I'd tease you!

BTW I'm sorry if all I do is talk about Oswald Bayer, Glen Scrivener and law and Gospel at the moment. As you can probably tell by the rushed off nature of this post I'm not getting much time at the moment.

The formal and material principles

Philip Schaff defines the formal and material principles of the Reformation thus:

the material of life principle (principium essendi) of the Reformation [...] is no other than the great doctrine, which is presented by Paul especially as the entire sum of the gospel - the doctrine of the justification of the sinner before God by the merit of Christ alone through faith [...]

the formal or knowledge principle [...] consists in this, that the word of God, as it has been handed down to us in the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments, is the pure and proper source as well as the only certain measure of all saving truth.

(italics original, p.80-98, The Principle of Protestantism)

Martin Luther may be everyone's go-to guy for the material principle, but would we point to the person who called James an 'epistle of straw' as a great exponent of the formal principle? A lot could be written about Luther's doctrine of Scripture, but I think Oswald Bayer gets to the heart of why Luther doesn't fit into the standard neat distinction of formal and material principles. For Luther the 'authority of Scripture is not formal but is highly material and is content driven' (p.69, Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation). This means that we don't follow a two step plan to knowing the truth of God:

• Step 1: Establish source of revelation
• Step 2: From that source derive knowledge of God and how we relate to him

This is the way that many Protestant confessions seem to proceed (at least post-Reformation), and it is the way many systematic theologies are organised. Oswald Bayer certainly does not like to do things that way though:

one does not arrive at the solution to the question [of the authority of Scripture] "in the passionless calm of a knowledge which is in the element of pure thought alone" [Hegel]; instead, it includes a change in the existence of the reader and interpreter. The Holy Scripture verifies itself, in that it awakens faith. As has been stated already, it does not work for one to take the so-called scriptural principle and try to differentiate between a "Protestant formal principle" and a "Protestant material principle," which states the teaching about justification; one certainly ought not to treat them as separate. Both are one and the same: wrapped up in the event that takes place when the righteousness of God is actually given as a gift, at the moment the promissio is articulated, one encounters the authority of Scripture, its efficacy and clarity - its ability to enlighten - as well as its sufficiency: its power to bring one to salvation - if indeed Scriputure is given "for the salvation" of human beings (2 Tim. 3:15). The question about the significance of the reformational turning point in Luther's theology and the question about Luther's understanding of biblical authority are the same; they are one and the same question.

(p.75-76, ibid)

I think this is related to what Mike Reeves is getting at when he says when you treat revelation as 'the ladder to get you up into the actual playroom of Christian theology, you tend to treat revelation and scripture in a non-Christian way because it is outside the room' (beginning of talk 2 here). Mike Reeves concern here is with the relation between Christology and revelation, but one thing I have begun to see lately is that Christology, revelation and salvation are all so bound up together that you cannot really separate them without doing some serious harm. John Calvin's Geneva Catechism, 1541, exemplifies that:

1. Minister. What is the chief end of human life?

Child. To know God

[...how do we know?...]

C. By His Word, in which He declares His mercy to us in Christ, and assures us of His love toward us

14. M. Then the foundation for true reliance upon God is to know Him in Jesus Christ (John 17:3)?

C. That is true

(pp.5-7, Trans. and ed. TF Torrance, The School of Faith: The Catechisms of the Reformed Church - that is the beginning and end of the introduction section prior to the section on the Apostles Creed)

This may seem to be the height of obscure theological discussion, but if you think that just meditate a while on what this means for how you try and witness to the truth of the Gospel to non-Christians.

Is God really like Jesus?

Now if God is not what he is towards us in Jesus Christ then of course there is no fidelity between what God is towards us and what he is in Jesus Christ, and therefore the revelation is not ultimately trustworthy, it is not ultimately something upon which all our knowledge of God can rest.

But tie that up also with the love of God. If what we have in Jesus, the love so manifest and embodied in Jesus, is not rooted in the very being of God. If God himself is not loving us and acting out his love in the life and death of Jesus, then that means that God does not love us to the uttermost, to the extent that he really became one with us in the incarnation and cross of Christ.

That means that there is no essential real connection between what we call 'love' defined by Jesus and what God is in his own being; and so we cannot say that God is love. And so cut the bond of being between Christ and God and we are left in the dark with an inscrutable deity behind the back of Jesus Christ. Now, a manifestation of God for which Jesus Christ does not, as it were, go bail or for which he is not a sure pledge.

Now pastorally this is one of the most fearful thing that can afflict people. I remember on the battlefield a soldier with only half an hour to live asking me 'padre, is God really like Jesus' and I can remember people in the parish wondering whether God was ultimately really like Jesus or not. You see behind the back of Jesus they've got some concept of God that is dark and terrifying.

(Tom Torrance in one of the MP3 Mediation of Christ lectures - I can't remember which)

Can God be known?

'Can God be known? Yes, God can be known, since it is actually true and real that He is knowable through Himself. When that happens, man becomes free, he becomes empowered, he becomes capable - a mystery to himself - of knowing God. Knowledge of God is a knowledge completely effected and determined from the side of its object, from the side of God. But for that very reason it is genuine knowledge; for that very reason it is in the deepest sense free knowledge. Of course it remains a relative knowledge, a knowledge imprisoned within the limits of the creaturely. Of course it is especially true here that we are carrying heavenly treasures in earthen vessels. Our concepts are not adequate to grasp this treasure. Precisely where this genuine knowledge of God takes place it will also be clear that there is no occasion for any pride. There always remains powerless man, creaturely reason within its limitations. But in this area of the creaturely, of the inadequate, it has pleased God to reveal Himself. And since man is foolish in this respect too. He will be wise; since man is petty, He will be great; since man is inadequate, God is adequate. 'Let my grace suffice for thee. For my strength is mighty in the weak' holds good also for the question of knowledge.'

(p.24, Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline)

I really, really love that quote. The only think I don't quite understand is quite what Barth means by it being 'free' knowledge.

The challenge is to ask how I am rejecting that revelation and the promise of knowing God it contains, and choosing to 'know' God in other ways?

The sole and proper witness of God

'God himself is the sole and proper witness of himself' (John Calvin, Institutes 1.11.1)

'He who we can know only through his own utterances is a fitting witness concerning himself' (Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity I, xviii)

I'm re-reading Calvin's Institutes this year. A little way in I'm thinking that I need to do some reflection on what I'm learning from it.

Perhaps the thing I'm most struck by so far is Calvin's determination to let God describe who God is. I am perhaps more aware of this because of reading a little Karl Barth recently, but it is great seeing that conviction that God is the proper witness of himself worked out in Calvin's explanation of what God is like.

Stumbling around in my head

I'm currently reading Like Father Like Son: The Trinity Imaged in Our Humanity by Tom Smail. It is a good book, and I'm seeing the truth of Jason Goroncy's statement about Tom Smail that 'If only he didn't write so clearly then perhaps he might be taken more seriously as a theologian'.

I'm still trying to thrash over in my head what Tom Smail describes quite well:

'One of Karl Barth's central theological axioms was that when we are talking of God, it is the actuality that determines the possibility and not the other way round. We do not limit our openness to what God has done by prior notions of our own about what he could do; rather, our basis for recognizing what he can do is what he has already done' (p.27)

Karl Barth himself explains how this has massive implications for our understanding of the nature of God:

'If in faith in Jesus Christ we are ready to learn, to be told, what Godhead, or the divine nature is, we are confronted with what is and always will be to all other ways of thinking a mystery, and indeed a mystery that offends. The mystery reveals to us that for God it is just as natural to be lowly as it is to be high, to be near as it is to be far, to be little as it is to be great, to be abroad as it is to be at home.' (p. 152, CD IV:1 The Doctrine of Reconcilliation, 1956; quoted in p.77, Smail)

I keep on thinking over Philippians 2 and this idea. I am far from decided. My difficulty is that Jesus gave up what was naturally his in his incarnation ('though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor'). And also that though he was crucified, he was also resurrected. Although the NT is clear that Jesus' glory is his cruxifiction as well as his resurrection (e.g. John 12) and that he is glorified because of his cruxifiction (e.g. Phil 2:9 and Rev 5:12). It is difficult for me.

Also difficult for me is understand is precisely how the Son reveals the Trinity. Tom Smail describes how he has two icons of Jesus. One depicting him alone looking out, and one of Jesus with the other two members of the Trinity looking at the Father (he has Rublev's famous one).

Smail comments that 'It is impossible to make any sense of the Jesus of the gospels if we treat him as a solitary individual whose significance is in himself' (p. 67 - which begs the question why you have such an icon - I hate icons). My difficulty is understanding whether we should see the Trinity revealed in Jesus as that solitary individual dying on the cross and rising to new life, or in Jesus as he dies in broken relationship toward his Father, and whom the Father restored by the power of the Spirit. The second option would seem to be right, but does that alter Barth's conclusion that for God it is 'natural to be lowly', when our Father is, and always has been, in heaven. Having said that God the Father obviously suffered seeing his Son crucified, and has throughout human history endured his name being blasphemed. All very difficult for me to make my head around!

And as an aside, listenining to their podcast, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo have both introduced me to the wonderful phrase 'pharisaic cadre', and to the fact that Richard Nixon was a Quaker.