While Re-Imaging Election is firmly rooted in the Reformed tradition, the re-expression of the doctrine presented here opens up new possibilities for dialogue across the theological spectrum and offers suggestive directions for reclaiming an often-divisive doctrine in the life of the church.
While Re-Imaging Election is firmly rooted in the Reformed tradition, the re-expression of the doctrine presented here opens up new possibilities for dialogue across the theological spectrum and offers suggestive directions for reclaiming an often-divisive doctrine in the life of the church.
Re-Imaging Election: Divine Election as Representing God to Others and Others to God
233
Re-Imaging Election: Divine Election as Representing God to Others and Others to God
233Paperback
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Overview
While Re-Imaging Election is firmly rooted in the Reformed tradition, the re-expression of the doctrine presented here opens up new possibilities for dialogue across the theological spectrum and offers suggestive directions for reclaiming an often-divisive doctrine in the life of the church.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780802864086 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company |
| Publication date: | 09/07/2010 |
| Pages: | 233 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Re-Imaging Election
Divine Election as Representing God to Others and Others to GodBy Suzanne McDonald
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Copyright © 2010 Suzanne McDonaldAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-6408-6
Chapter One
Election, the Image, and the Spirit: John Owen
Rediscovering the "Forgotten Man" of English Theology
Even in a period that produced an abundance of extraordinary and fascinating individuals, John Owen cut a notable figure at the heart of theological and political life in one of the most turbulent periods of British history. Summoned to preach to the House of Commons on the day following the execution of Charles I, he later became one of Cromwell's chaplains, until his forthright objections to Cromwell's inclination to take the crown ruptured the close relationship between them.
Having been at the center of political and theological life during the Commonwealth and Protectorate, Owen remained unwavering in his adherence to dissenting Congregationalism throughout the persecutions that followed the Restoration. Noting Owen's extensive contacts and powerful intellect at the service of the non-conformist cause, the French Ambassador wrote to Louis XIV that Owen had as much religious and political influence in London as its Bishop.
Recognized as among the most erudite theologians of his generation, Owen was also a deep admirer and strong supporter of John Bunyan. Constantly engaged in detailed doctrinal controversies, he also demonstrates deep pastoral concern. In surveying Owen's life as well as his theological corpus, we are left with the inescapable impression of the breadth of his compass.
Until recently, however, in spite of his intellectual stature and political prominence during his lifetime, Owen has provoked relatively little interest either from theologians or from historians. In his seminal study of Owen's theology, Carl Trueman suggests that Owen has been the "forgotten man" of English theology, and the neglect of Owen has likewise been noted from the perspective of historians of the period. Nevertheless, in recent decades there has been a resurgence in Owen studies, from reappraisals of his theological method in its historical context to suggestions for the positive reappropriation of elements of his thought for contemporary theology. Here, aspects of Owen's account of election, the image, and the Spirit will set out some of the key questions for a Reformed approach to election that will occupy the remainder of Part I, and will provide some central themes and concepts for the attempt to rearticulate the doctrine in Parts II and III.
Election, the Image, and the Spirit in Context: The Shape of Owen's Theology
While much of Owen's life and work has been left in relative obscurity, one aspect of his thought has been more widely and consistently recognized. Without doubt, he is one of the strongest champions of what might be termed the classical Reformed orthodox position on the doctrine of election. Owen's The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (1647) is an exhaustive scriptural and theological defense of the efficacy of Christ's death for salvation, and therefore of individual double predestination and "limited atonement." It is among the best-known works in his extensive corpus, and stands with Perkins's A Golden Chaine as one of the most famous (or notorious) English presentations of the strictest Reformed interpretation of the doctrine of election.
Moreover, The Death of Death is not the only place in which Owen demonstrates his interest in the doctrine; his first published work is the anti-Arminian A Display of Arminianism (1642). Throughout his life Owen's theological priorities are shaped by an abiding concern to combat what he considers to be the two greatest contemporary threats to the integrity of the gospel: Arminian and Socinian thought. As a result Owen repeatedly seeks to state and defend a fundamental core of intimately related doctrines, the distortion of which he considers to lie at the root of all falsification of Christian thinking and living. These are, above all, the Trinitarian being of God, the Chalcedonian understanding of Christ's person, and the way in which both of these considerations must inform our understanding of the decrees of God and their outworking. While one or other of these may at times receive greater emphasis, each implies the other two.
Owen's theology, then, might best be described as spiraling round these three ellipses, rather than as a "systematic"enterprise unfolding from a single first principle. In particular, Trueman's detailed and persuasive analysis puts to rest any notion that Owen's theology is a system shaped by the inexorable unfolding of Aristotelian teleology, with an abstract double decree at its head.
If the shape of Owen's thinking is not "systematic" in this sense, neither is the nature of his corpus. He offers nothing comparable to his near contemporary Francis Turretin's Institutio theologia elencticae or even to Calvin's Institutio. Instead, his extensive output largely comprises theological and pastoral treatises on key loci, often in response to contemporary controversies, and a magisterial seven-volume commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews.
The limitations of such an approach for another of the concerns in this chapter — Owen's account of the imago dei — are self evident, in that Owen nowhere presents us with a treatise devoted to the image of God. Instead, he provides occasional discussions of aspects of the doctrine in the context of wider concerns. The image, in common with his presentation of many other doctrinal loci, is discussed and clarified less for its own sake than as part of broader arguments centered upon expounding and defending the scriptural and theological validity, as well as the practical consequences for Christian living, of the three ellipses mentioned earlier.
Nevertheless, Owen offers a sufficiently wide-ranging presentation of the image for a consistent picture to emerge with considerable detail and clarity. The contours of Owen's understanding of the image can be drawn from his Pneumatologia (1674) and his Christologia (1679). Since both of these works also present the core of Owen's doctrine of election, and both go to considerable lengths to spell out the scripturally shaped, soteriologically decisive pneumatological dynamic that binds the doctrines of election and the image of God together, they will form the primary sources for the following account.
If Owen is most widely known for his upholding of individual double predestination and limited atonement, and if his distinctive understanding of the imago dei has as yet received little attention, perhaps the most widely appreciated legacy of his theology is his particularly rich pneumatology. As we shall seek to show, this is inseparable from his account of election, which is in turn inseparable from his understanding of the person and work of the Spirit in the triune life of God, and therefore from his approach to the relationship between the Spirit and the incarnate life of the Son. Owen's pneumatology is anchored firmly in and related rigorously to the New Testament presentation of the Spirit's work towards Christ and towards us, and is the lynchpin of the relationship that Owen perceives between the doctrines of election and the image of God. There are few who could set out more clearly and cogently than Owen the nexus of concerns that will occupy the remainder of this work.
The Spirit, Election, and the Trinitarian Being of God
It is axiomatic for the whole of Owen's theology that the economic acts of God express the being of God, or in his own terms, that "the order of the dispensation of the divine persons towards us ariseth from the order of their own subsistence." Inner-Trinitarian relations are a touchstone for the right understanding of all doctrines. Thus, the nature of the Spirit's role in election is understood at once as the reflection of the implications of the New Testament witness, in which the Spirit is the agent of the new creation in Christ, and also as the expression of a principle that is close to the heart of Owen's theology as a whole: the filioque-shaped Trinitarian consistency of all of God's dealings with the created order.
Owen is firmly conventional in his adherence to the Western theological tradition's understanding that in the New Testament witness to Christ as the bearer and bestower of the Spirit, and to the inseparability of the Spirit's work from that of Christ, lie both the warrant for and expression of the dual procession. That which sets Owen apart from many is the rigor with which he allows this to inform every aspect of his theology. This is particularly notable in his strongly Trinitarian approach to the electing decree of God and its unfolding in time. Trueman rightly observes that for Owen, the intra-divine covenant of redemption and its outworking in the economy as the covenant of grace are "a specifically functional and soteriological application of the filioque."
Thus, in a clear reflection of the inner-Trinitarian order of being, we find that it is the Father and the Son who together determine the extent and nature of the redeeming work to be undertaken by the Son in our humanity. Owen speaks of God's delight in his determinations, and "Especially ... these counsels of the Father and the Son, as to the redemption and salvation of the church, wherein they delight and mutually rejoice in each other...."
It is a major aspect of this mutual delight that it is both in and with the Son that the Father determines the salvation of the elect, and in and by the Son that this is to be accomplished. God "delighteth in these his eternal counsels in Christ ... [and] because they were all laid in him and with him, therefore [Christ] is said to be his 'delight continually before the world was.'" Owen writes also that it is the "ineffable delight" of God that "whereas in all other effects of his goodness he gives of his own, herein he gave himself, in taking our nature upon him...."
In turn, as the full expression of the filioque dynamic, it is the particular task of the Holy Spirit to ensure the fulfillment in the economy of that which has been determined by the Father and the Son. As the Spirit owes his being to the Father and the Son, so the Spirit's task in the unfolding of election "is not an original but a perfecting work." It is therefore
the peculiar work of the Holy Spirit to make those things of the Father and the Son effectual unto ... the elect ... [so that] in the work of the new creation, God ... intends the especial revelation of each person of the whole Trinity distinctly....
Thus, while the Spirit's work has its source in and depends upon that of Father and Son, theirs depends upon the Spirit to be brought to its fulfillment. After the eternal counsel of the Father and the Son, and the mediation of the Son,
There yet remains the actual application ... that [we] may be partakers in the mediation of the Son; and herein is the Holy Spirit to be manifested and glorified, that he also, together with the Father and the Son, may be known, adored, worshipped....
In all of this, we see the outworking for election of a general axiom that operates throughout Owen's theology. Since the Spirit is the logically sequential "third" in the Trinity, so it is the Spirit's task to bring to fulfillment the determinations of the triune God in the economy. For this reason, Owen remarks that in every work of God, "the concluding, completing, perfecting acts are ascribed to the Holy Ghost," and the Spirit is therefore the only way in which God chooses to act directly in the created order. It is the Spirit's primary overall function for Owen to be the "immediate ... efficient cause of all external divine operations."
In turn, the Spirit's role in election clearly corresponds to the notion of the Spirit as the vinculum amoris who both expresses and completes the mutual love of Father and Son in the Trinity. His person and work mean that he particularly is the one who conveys the love of God to humanity and enables the human response of love to God in return. Hence, "As the descending of God towards us in love and grace issues or ends in the work of the Spirit in us and on us, so all our ascending towards him begins therein."
The Spirit's work is therefore decisive in the unfolding of election in the economy, and following the New Testament witness, the concept of being "in Christ" by the Spirit, and so of union with Christ effected by the Spirit, lies at the heart of Owen's understanding of election and the Christian life. The New Testament indicates that it is the Spirit who brings the completed work of Christ to bear upon us and in us, as the agent of union with Christ and new creation in Christ. More will be said later on the role of the Spirit in the New Testament in designating those who belong to the new covenant community in Christ. For the moment, Owen rightly discerns that election is inseparable from the nexus of themes drawn together around the notion of union with Christ, and in turn, that everything about our being found to be "in Christ" presupposes and entails the work of the Spirit in us. Thus, in a characteristic summary, Owen states that "[w]hatever is wrought in believers by the Spirit of Christ, it is in their union to the person of Christ, and by virtue thereof," such that the Spirit's task in election can be summed up straightforwardly as "to unite us to Christ; and ... to communicate all grace unto us from Christ, by virtue of that union." Our election is both grounded in and might be summed up by the concept of being "in Christ by the Spirit."
It must be made clear that this does not signify that one only "becomes" elect through the work of the Spirit in the economy. The elect are eternally elect in Christ before the foundation of the world. It is simply that for Owen and the historic Reformed tradition the Trinitarian nature of the decree and its unfolding in time means that there can finally be no participating in Christ's election that does not also include the work of the Spirit. It is this which makes the decree a fully Trinitarian determination and action.
With this in mind, in addition to acknowledging the determinative role of the Spirit towards us, it is also imperative to recognize the full significance of the Spirit's role in the decree in relation to the Godhead. As the one person of the Godhead who acts directly in the created order, and as the one through whom the terms of the covenant are therefore accomplished in the economy, the Spirit is the guarantor of the unity of God's determination ad intra and ad extra in the electing decree. Only if we grasp the centrality of this are we able to appreciate that what is at stake in the Spirit's role in election is not simply logical consistency, nor even an attempt to ensure that full account is taken of the New Testament presentation of the Spirit's work, but also the integrity of the being-and-act of God.
At the fulcrum of the relationship between the unfolding of the decree in time and the integrity of the Godhead is the mutual binding of the Spirit's work and that of the ascended Christ. Just as the Son's work is both his own, and the fulfillment of the Father's will, so the Spirit's work is both his own and is the unfolding of the Son's accomplished and continuing work. As we have noted, the Spirit's work in election depends upon Christ's act of bestowal, in accordance with his procession from the Son as well as the Father, and in turn, the fulfillment of Christ's work depends upon the work of the Spirit.
Hence, it is as the Spirit brings about the efficacious application of the work of Christ, on the basis of his mediation, that there is a basic unity in the Son's own role in the eternal decree of election and its execution in time, and between the inner-Trinitarian relations that constitute the being of God, the electing decree of God, and the saving acts of God in human history. As co-author of the electing decree with the Father, the Son determines with the Father those who will be saved and the manner in which that salvation will be wrought. As the incarnate Son and primary object of God's electing will, the Son in his atoning work accomplishes through the Spirit all that is needful for that salvation. In his ascended mediation, the elect receive the gift of the Spirit and so are brought to participate in the salvation determined for them in Christ before the foundation of the world.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Re-Imaging Election by Suzanne McDonald Copyright © 2010 by Suzanne McDonald. Excerpted by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS....................ixABBREVIATIONS....................xi
Introduction....................xii
1. Election, the Image, and the Spirit: John Owen....................3
2. Election, the Image, and the Spirit: Karl Barth....................31
3. Election "in Christ" in Barth: Some Pneumatological Queries....................59
4. Sketching Some Scriptural Contours....................87
Re-Presenting the Image: A Scriptural Overview....................88
The Twofold Dynamic of Representation....................90
5. Election, the Spirit, and the Ecclesial Imago Dei....................115
6. Some Problems, a Parable, and the Parousia....................145
7. Owen and Barth: Beyond the Impasse....................175
Epilogue: Glancing Backward, Looking Forward....................195
BIBLIOGRAPHY....................202
INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS....................210