John Calvin and Sebastian Castellio, The Secret Providence of God, ed. Paul Helm, trans. Keith Goad

Crossway, 2010, 125 pgs.

Summary: John Calvin’s former friend Sebastian Castellio (1515-1563) wrote, privately published, and circulated among Protestants a letter attacking Calvin’s articulation of the decrees of God. (Calvin divides God’s will into the revealed will of God and the secret will of God or the published and secret decrees [cf. Deut. 29:29]). The letter is rhetorically sophisticated and claims to summarize Calvin’s teachings into 14 articles drawn from his writings. Castellio, or the calumniator, then makes a show of defending Calvin and his careful theological distinctions before collapsing into accusing Calvin of erecting Satan as the God of the Bible (53), because God is the ultimate cause of evil.

Castellio sets the attitude and the framework of the later developments of Arminianism egalitarian love and libertarian free will. There is also the use of a “normal” hermeneutic used to shield Castellio’s  first premises: “When Christ taught divine thing he followed common sense. If common sense is taken away, then all the parables of Christ will be nullified, for we interpret these parables by means of common sense” (43).

“Calvin’s response to such questions is threefold: to affirm the meaning of the truth of the scriptural data that call forth these distinctions, to resolutely refuse to apply analogies to God that are not themselves warranted by Scripture, and to affirm (also on scriptural precedent) that God’s ways are mysterious and unfathomable” (29, Helm).

Calvin affirms that “there are enough testimonies pointing toward God’s love for the entire human race to prove that all who will die in a state of ingratitude are guilty. Nor is this any different from his special love with which he draws a few whom he esteems enough to be chosen from the many” (66). He also defends his attacked distinctions from Scripture and supports God’s absolute sovereignty.

Benefits/Detriments:

In as much as Castellio represents the modern tendency toward indifference to careful distinctions and exegesis created by the biblical data (cf. John 3:19; Rom. 9:13-18) and the semi-Pelagian push for “free will” and egalitarian love without recognizing the theological contradictions Calvin’s response is applicable. Helpful introduction by Paul Helm.

Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers

Harper Torch Book, 1958, 287 pgs.

Summary: Schleiermacher (1768-1834) attempts to preserve Protestant Christianity from the corrosive effects of materialism by mixing Lutheran pietism with Spinoza and Platonism. He is obviously influenced by dialectic thought but does not appear to be a strict Hegelian. He begins with the following presuppositions: human beings are evolving and maturing, God’s work with humanity must be universal, true piety is the positive emotional response of the finite to the Infinite. On the issue of universalism, there seems to be a synergy between Spinoza’s pantheism (all that is is God) and the egalitarian love of much medieval and Lutheran mysticism.

The book is divided up into five speeches to the cultured Germans of his day who are rejecting Christianity. Schleiermacher wrote the speeches as a rhetorical argument against despising Christianity. Because he was often more concerned about the rhetorical effect rather than clarity, there are about 60 pages of explanations required to explain to his readers exactly what he meant.  Many times he points his reader to his Glaubenslehre or systematic theology to clarify what his intentions were. Because he defines piety as an emotional response to the Infinite, truth is secondary to the emotional experience.

Since Schleiermacher concluded that Spinoza was mostly right, Christianity must now modify itself with the newly discovered insights of the modern age. Christianity remains the best religion; Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the redeemer and ultimate mediator between the finite and the Infinite. I can identify no rational grounds for Christ being a redeemer within On Religion, but perhaps this is explained in the Glaubenslehre.   He argues that doctrine and creeds are of little benefit in guiding the emotions, and the point of true religion is to experience the Infinite. Religions channel approaches to the Infinite around the insights of priests, but everyone should become Protestant Christian rather than a Catholic, Muslim, or Jew. Protestant Christianity is the purest approach to the Infinite because of the role of Christ as the ultimate mediator.

Benefits: The book is of historical value to exhibit what happens when Christians attempt to adopt the first principles of materialism or any other alien philosophy into their theological system. Schleiermacher’s insight that true religion is a finite man responding with love to an infinite God is accurate.

Detriments: To conclude that the Bible is wrong and that the church has always been wrong is to stand before man and say, “God is wrong, and some men tell the truth” (cf. Rom. 3:4). The system of Schleiermacher is not supported by the Bible, the Holy Spirit’s testimony within Christ’s Church, or by reason—reason submissive to revelation and reason ruling over revelation. The God of Schleiermacher is so indefinite and weak that it should be no surprise that Nietzsche (1844-1900) proclaimed him dead.

Gordon J. Wenham, Story as Torah: Reading Old Testament Narrative Ethically

Baker Academic Books, 2000, 180 pgs.

Summary: The basic argument of the book is that the “Old Testament narrative books do have a didactic purpose, that is, they are trying to instill both theological truths and ethical ideals into their readers” (3). The ethical ideal of the Old Testament is not merely found in bare conformity to the letter of the law, but is found in the characters imitating God. Since, the characters so often fail at meeting the requirements of the law or the ethical ideal, God must then be a gracious and forgiving God.

The ethics of the Old Testament narrative can be recovered by constructing the “implied author” and the “implied reader.” (Both of these concepts are literary terms that help scholars discuss the authors’ intended purpose.) Once the author and reader have been placed, then Wenham creates a three point criteria for recognizing whether or not the “actor’s behavior in a particular situation is regarded as virtuous” (88):  the behavior is “repeated in a number of contexts”; “it should be exhibited in a positive context”; “remarks in the legal codes, psalms and wisdom books often shed light on Old Testament attitudes” (89).

What we learn from Genesis 1 to 3 is that the intended goal of the law and personal behavior is to imitate God and to return the world to the pattern found in the Garden of Eden. Sin and death are unclean aspects of the world after the Fall of man, but life and holiness are gifts from God. Sin and death are to be avoided, minimized, and rejected as much as possible in the current era through obedience to the law.

Benefits: My hope is that this book was intended to reach academic researchers with an essentially secular argument that requires them to read the Bible in the ethical and textual manner intended by the original human authors.

Helpful in creating a systematic criterion for recovering the intended ethical teaching of Old Testament narrative texts. Also, the argument for a difference between the bare legal code and the ultimate ethic of imitating God is particularly valuable.

Detriments: Apparently, Dr. Wenham believes that Genesis was heavily edited during the Davidic monarchy (ftn. at 43). There is no discussion of the dual authorship of the Bible (God and man) and how this effects his conception of implied author and reader.

Further, he believes “Cain’s murder is more serious than Adam’s disobedience and his penalty, perpetual nomadism, is more severe than Adam’s exclusion from the garden” (23, cf. 33, 81-82). This statement is not defensible given the horizons of the human authors, let alone God’s perspective. Adam’s penalty, according to Genesis, was to be the cause of the regime of sin and death, the cause of all suffering that has fallen on humanity, and to participate in that suffering for some 900 years. Because Genesis teaches creation ex nihilo, Adam’s rebellion attempted to overthrow the Being on whom he was contingent physically and spiritually. In so doing he attempted to destroy God, the universe, himself and all his posterity in one act. And as the first image bearer of God, he had at least the capacity to murder humanity. Cain’s sin attacked an image bearer of God; it was not as direct nor can its penalty be considered “more severe.”

Finally, while there is a difference between the bare law and imitating God, the two great commandments are barely touched on as the ethical ideal. This is likely caused by the narrowness of his intended audience and his historical narrative scheme.

William G. T. Shedd, Calvinism: Pure and Mixed

The Banner of Truth Trust, 1989, 161 pgs.

Summary: Shedd’s response to the latitudinarian, liberal, and synergistic revisions suggested to the Westminster Confession among Presbyterians in the United States in the late 1800s.

A brilliant description, definition, and defense of some of the thorny points of Calvinism: preterition, the decrees of God, infant salvation, common and special grace, and the like.

From the section on Preterition and the Divine Decrees: “It is an objection of the sceptics, and sometimes of those who are not sceptics, that this perpetual assertion in the Scriptures that God is the chief end of creation, and this perpetual demand that the creature glorify him, is only a species of infinite egotism. . .But this objection overlooks the fact that God is an infinitely greater and higher being than any or all of his creatures; and that from the very nature of the case the less must be subordinated to the greater. Is it egotism, when man employs in his service his ox or his ass? Is it selfishness, when the rose or the lily takes up into its own fabric and tissue the inanimate qualities of matter, and converts the dull and colorless elements of the clod into hues and odors, into beauty and bloom” (82-83).

From “Inerrancy of the Scriptures”:  [The inspiration] extended not on one subject only, but to all the subjects of which the sacred writers treat, and on which they profess to teach the truth. The history, chronology, topography, and physics, as well as the theology and ethics, that were composed under ‘immediate inspiration’ of God, must from the nature of the case have been free from error” (132).

Benefits: An incredibly helpful book in defending the importance of confessions and doctrinal statements and conformity to them.  His arguments on the inerrancy of Scripture are especially worthwhile. It is a good source for developing an understanding of the Arminian and Calvinistic understanding of infant salvation. Interesting discussion and rejection of universalism and postmortem salvation and sanctification.

Detriments: This is not a book to introduce someone to the Westminster Confession. It is a defense of Augustinianism as attacked by liberals and theological latitudinarianism. Shedd’s allowance for regeneration among unevangelized responsible adults is not well defended and seems untenable.

John Howe, The Living Temple: Part II

reprint: Gale Ecco, 2011; London, Thomas Parkhurst, 1702.

Summary: Howe was a brilliant Puritan non-conformist, much admired by Shedd. The first volume of the Living Temple closely argues the ontological argument in its Anselmic form, likely in response to Descartes’ flawed reformulation. In the second book, he then takes Spinoza to task for his pantheism. Essentially, the issue is that if God is not a person than Spinoza should not be a person or as Howe summarizes:

Pg. 87, “You must also know, that whatever Being is not of it self, hath no Excellency in it, but what was in that Being that was of it self before. And therefore, it had in it, all the Excellency that is in such things as proceeded from it (unabated because in it necessarily) together with the proper Excellency of its own Being, whereas the other sort of Beings, have but their own deriv’d Excellency only. Wherefore this, also, is most evident, that , this World had a Maker distinct from, and more excellent than it self, that changes not, and whereto that Name most properly agrees, I AM THAT I AM.”

We can put this in to more contemporary terms: Dawkins is a contingent being. Contingent beings draw their qualities and capacities from the beings that came prior to them. Dawkins is an intelligent, living being, therefore his ultimate cause is also a intelligent living person. Since God is not a contingent being (witnessed by the I AM statement), God must be intelligent, etc.

Dawkins and Spinoza might try to work around this with a non-caused material cause, requiring that from nothing came something, but this is essentially irrational.

After having washed his hands of materialism, Howe then argues for Anselm’s view of the atonement and lays out a brilliant argument that God created man to be his physical temple. When Adam rebelled against God, the Spirit of God was withdrawn from man as an element of his creation. The Spirit has been progressively restored among those who have faith. The Old Testament saints claim to the Spirit was tentative (cf. Ps. 51: 11), because the legal transaction between God the Father and the God the Son had not yet occurred.  While those under the Mosaic covenant who believed had the Spirit, it was only when “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us- for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’-so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.” Having paid the penalty for man, the Spirit of God was then let loose upon the believing community as the legal seal of their final perfection (cf. 2 Cor. 2:21-22; Ephesians 2:19-22).

Benefits: An incredibly thought provoking book. I am still processing the theological arguments on the Holy Spirit, but I am inclined to accept the general outline as to the role of the Holy Spirit in salvation history.

As a taste of his more pastoral rather than philosophical work:

Pg. 467: “Look to EMMANUEL; consider Him in the several Capacities, and in all the Accomplishments, Performances, Acquisitions, by which He is so admirably fitted to bring it about, that God may have his Temple in your Breast. Will you defeat so kind, and so glorious a Design? Behold, or listen, Doth he not stand at the Door, and knock?”

Detriments: My copy was essentially a photocopy of the 1702 original. Orthography is not only archaic, but often blurred. I couldn’t read most of the Greek. The book is not accessible on many fronts.

William G. T. Shedd, Theological Essays

Solid Ground Christian Books; reprint, Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1877.

Summary: Seven articles developing an Augustinian response to modernity (note the publishing date).

• The Method, and Influence of Theological Studies:

“He who would obtain correct views in political or natural science, as well as he who would be a mind of power and depth in the sphere of literature; in short, the student generally; has a vital interest in the truths of supernatural science” (48).

• The Nature, and Influence of the Historic Spirit:

“It begins to be seen that the harmony between philosophy and Christianity is not to be brought about, by first assuming that the infallibility is on the side of the human reason; and that, too, as it appears in a single and particular philosophical system; and then insisting that all the adjustments, conformity, and coalescence, shall be on the side of the Divine revelation” (101).

• The Idea of Evolution Defined, and Applied to History:

“The definition of Evolution by Herbert Spencer, as ‘the development of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous,’ is exactly wrong” (158).

• The Doctrine of Original Sin:

“The characteristic of the Will proper, as distinguished from the volitionary faculty, is determination of the whole being to an ultimate end, rather than selection of means for attaining that end in a particular case” (234). Ft. “This distinction between Will proper, and the faculty of choices, is marked in Latin by two words, Voluntas and Abritrium. . .”

• The Atonement a Satisfaction for the Ethical Nature of Both God and Man:

“Even if he should be renewed and sanctified by the Spirit of God, this sanctification has in it nothing expiatory, or correlative to guilt, and therefore could not remove [the sinner’s] remorse. Food is good and necessary, but it cannot slake thirst. Personal holiness is excellent and indispensable, but it cannot perform the function of atonement” (301).

• Symbols and Congregationalism:

“It is not enough, in the present condition of Christendom, for an individual to point to the word of God, as it lies upon the table, saying: ‘My doctrinal belief is between those covers. . .’” (338).

• Clerical Education:

“Modern infidelity assumes a greater variety of forms than the ancient, although its essential character remains the same. . . It involves the relation of Ethics to Christianity. In our country, in particular, this form of infidelity associates itself, parasitically, with the reformation of society, and thereby becomes doubly dangerous to the Christian church, which ever takes a deep interest in the removal of social evils” (373).

Benefits/Detriments: A refreshing and historic consideration of the above listed topics. Because Shedd grasps the marrow of infidelity and the source of truth, his writings are incredibly relevant to today.

Hebrews commentaries

• Chrysostom, Homilies on Hebrews

• Martin Luther, Lectures on Hebrews

• John Calvin

• John Owen

• John Brown of Edinburgh, Hebrews in The Geneva Series of Commentaries

• Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews

• F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews: Revised

• Raymond Brown, The Message of Hebrews

• William L. Lane, Hebrews 9-13

Thessalonians Commentaries

• John Calvin

• John Stott, 1 and 2 Thessalonians

• Gene L. Green, The Letters to the Thessalonians

• Leon Morris, The First and Second Epistle to the Thessalonians

• D. Michael Martin, 1, 2 Thessalonians

Luke Commentaries

• Augustine, Harmony of Luke -- Somewhat helpful. Recommended if interested in Augustine.

• John Calvin, Harmony of Matthew, Mark, and Luke -- Calvin is too prone to assume a single theological referent for a historical event in all three of the gospels instead of allowing for multiple referents using the same event. Otherwise very helpful. Recommended.

• John Gill, Mathew to John -- Very helpful development of Jewish background from primary sources. See above on Calvin. Recommended.

• Walter L. Liefeld, The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Luke -- Some very helpful insights. Recommended.

• I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (NIGTC) -- Basically orthodox but too prone to assume higher criticism. Some good work in the Greek.

• J. C. Ryle, Luke -- Highly recommended for all.

Deuteronomy commentaries

• Raymond Brown, The Message Deuteronomy (BST) -- Edifying.

• Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy (NICOT) -- Served as the grammatical-historical backbone of my Deuteronomy series.

• Martin Luther, Lectures on Deuteronomy -- Offers some interesting insights; Luther is always refreshing.
  

• J. Gary Millar, Now Choose Life: Theology and Ethics Deuteronomy (NSBT) -- Very academic in outlook, but with some helpful insights as to how to bridge the text to a modern audience.

• Edward J. Woods, Deuteronomy (TOTC) -- Useful, but badly organized for reference.

• Telford Work, Deuteronomy-Brazo Theological Commentary -- Mildly bizarre and experimental, perhaps neo-orthodox in outlook; it was sent to me by accident by Baker books. Some edifying comments.

• Christopher Wright, Deuteronomy (NIBC) -- Edifying.