In response to Wielenberg's first argument, it seems perfectly reasonable for the Theist to assert two propositions.  The first being that it is impossible for God’s character to be different than it is, and the second being that it is impossible to actually change the nature of moral perfection, as the evil contestant does in Wielenberg’s story.  The second claim rests on the first.  God’s character simply is the definition of moral perfection, and if His character cannot change, than neither can moral perfection.  But to the first proposition Wielenberg might ask why God’s character cannot change.  The response is simple, because if it did, then He would cease to be morally perfect, and thus cease to be God.  At this point, Wielenberg might accuse the Theist of a contradiction.  If God’s character cannot change without ceasing to be morally perfect, then isn’t there some outside standard to which we are holding God’s character?  To this the Theist may reply that God’s character is indeed the only standard of perfection, and that all things are either good or bad based on their relation to Him alone, but that His character, being what it is, cannot be otherwise.  It is simply a brute fact of the universe.  For God is the ground of all being, the source and foundation for all reality.  He simply is.  And he could not be otherwise.  If Wielenberg still wishes to object to this claim, then the Theist can quickly remind him that this is precisely what he wishes his reader to believe about the brute moral facts of the universe.  Indeed, this is the thesis of his book!  Moral facts such as “it is wrong to torture babies for fun” are, according to Wielenberg, real moral entities that exist and simply cannot be otherwise.  But as far I can tell, there is no reason to believe that brute moral facts cannot change and not believe that God’s character cannot change.  Thus, for Wielenberg to reject the Dependency Thesis for this reason would also be for him to reject his own moral theory.

    For the second argument, I believe that two possible responses are open to the Theist.  First, it can be argued that since a thing’s nature is given to it by God, it is still possible for something to be either good or evil by virtue of its nature, even though God indirectly made it so.  Taking the example of falling in love, a Theist might say that falling in love is most certainly an instance of intrinsic good, its very nature is simply and completely good, but that because its nature was given to it by God, it is ultimately God that has, in a sense, “declared” it to be what it is.  It sounds to me as though Wielenberg’s argument is actually saying, “nothing can be good in virtue of its nature because God gave it its nature.”  But of course that doesn’t follow.  What Wielenberg is really attacking is the notion that falling in love is not good for its own sake, but that it is good because God told us so.  What he overlooks is the simple solution that God “told us so” by giving it a nature that was either good or evil. 
   
    However, there is another response that seems perfectly reasonable to me, namely that the Theist simply accepts that nothing actually is intrinsically good or evil apart from God.  Why is suffering evil?  Because God doesn’t want his creatures to suffer.  Why is falling in love good?  Because God wants us to be happy, and in part because it facilitates the creation of families, children, and society.  Wielenberg is relying on the unshakable intuition that pain is evil in and of itself.  It is better to keep this obvious truth than to accept a theory that rejects it.  But isn’t it just as likely that the unshakable intuition in question is merely that pain is evil, leaving entirely open the question of why or how it is evil?  This seems more plausible to me.

   In Chapter Two of Value And Virtue In A Godless Universe, Erik Wielenberg introduces two theses that he believes implicitly support Divine Command Theory.  The first is the Control Thesis which states that “every logically consistent ethical claim, E, is such that God could make E true.”   The second is the Dependency Thesis which states that “every true ethical claim is true in virtue of some act of will on the part of God.”  Essentially, the great difference between these two is that in the former God creates ethics (by divine fiat we might say), while in the later ethics is based upon and originates from God’s nature or character.  From this, Wielenberg distinguishes between two forms of Divine Command Theory.  The first or “strong” form accepts both the Control and Dependency Thesis, while the “weak” form accepts only the Dependency Thesis.

    It is important to consider Wielenberg’s objection to the strong form of Divine Command Theory first (which is essentially an objection to the Control Thesis), since it will play a role in his objection to the weak form.  He objects to the strong form by way of an illustration.   He asks us to imagine a competition in which the prize is omnipotence.  One contestant is a very good person, while the other is very evil.  Suppose, he says, that the evil person wins the contest and gains omnipotence.  According to the Control Thesis, the evil contestant can now make it such that all of the evil acts he intends to perform (mass slaughter of innocents, torture, etc.) are actually very good.  Moreover, he can make it such he is now a morally perfect being, not by changing himself, but by changing the nature of moral perfection.  Thus, in the end, evil becomes good and the killing and torture of innocent people is morally commendable.  Wielenberg relies primarily on intuition to argue that “there is simply no amount of power that would enable a being to make that true.”   He further argues that “This story seems to get things backwards by making morality subject to power.”  Fair enough.  Our moral intuitions certainly do seem to suggest to us that no amount of power could make such atrocities good.  We want to argue, especially as Christians, that morality is somehow objective and fixed, and that it could not be otherwise.  At least on the surface, Wielenberg’s argument seems to offer convincing reasons to reject the Control Thesis on just such grounds.  And so, for the sake of argument, we will grant him his conclusion.

    Now Wielenberg turns his philosophical gun on the weak form of Divine Command Theory, specifically on the Dependency Thesis, which he states as follows, “It is still divine willing that determines which ethical claims are true, but the scope of divine willing is limited by the divine character.”   In other words, God still retains the prerogative to say what things humans can and cannot do in certain times and places, but contra the Control Thesis He cannot command simply anything, but can only command those things which are in accordance with His own character, which sets the standard of moral goodness.  Wielenberg proposes three objections to this thesis.  First, he suggests that “implicit in the proposal is the notion that God has the power to make any logically consistent ethical claim true.”  In the weak claim, God’s character prevents Him from making evil things good, but Wielenberg seems to be suggesting that the Control Thesis still manages to slip in the back door, and that we are left with the same problem, just moved back a step.  If it were the case that God’s character turned out to be like the evil contestant in Wielenberg’s imaginary story, then even on the Dependency Thesis alone it would still be conceivable that God could make the slaughter of innocents a morally good thing.  But Wielenberg has already refuted such a notion. 

    Wielenberg’s second objection to the Dependency Thesis is even stronger.  He argues that an implication of the Dependency Thesis is that nothing is intrinsically good or evil.  He says, “If an act of will on the part of God bestows value on something distinct from God, that value cannot be intrinsic.”   By intrinsic value he means that a thing is valuable only in virtue of its nature.  As an example of an intrinsic evil, he suggests pain.  Pain is just bad, in and of itself, without reference to anything else.  Conversely, falling in love is intrinsically good; it is simply good for its own sake.  Following Chisholm, who argues that any theory of epistemology that doesn’t allow for obvious instances of knowledge should be rejected, Wielenberg suggests that any theory of morality that rejects something as obvious as the fact that some things are intrinsically good or evil should also be rejected. 

    What might the Christian say in response to these arguments?  Tune in tomorrow!

    When it comes to the gender debate, we must always keep sight of the Biblical picture of leadership.  Egalitarians frequently argue that our focus should not be on claiming our rights to authority over others, and I couldn’t agree more.  They argue that we should focus on serving one another, and again I couldn’t agree more.  But something that egalitarians would do well to remember is that true Biblical leadership is nothing more than the ultimate form of servanthood. 

    Christ has all power and authority and dominion over all the earth, and yet He humbled himself more than any human being possibly could.  The same is true for those who are called to lead in Christ’s church.  The powerful description of the way in which a husband is to love his wife (Ephesians 5) does not reveal some sort of egalitarian model of marriage, rather it reinforces the Biblical picture of true, Christ-like leadership.  For a husband to take on the role of head of his wife is for him to give up his own desires for her sake.  It is for him to always put her first, to always think of her before himself, and ultimately to give up his whole life for her (figuratively as well as in reality).  This is not a command to “mutually submit.”  Far from it.  This is a command to be a true Christian leader, as Christ was, and is, and ever will be. 

I was on facebook the other day, taking a silly quiz to see how "Reformed" I was.  As it turns out, the quiz was designed by Presbyterians, so it wasn't very accurate. 

One person, obviously irked by Reformation theology, left a rather cynical comment on the quiz's wall, along the lines of "child prostitution brings glory to God."  This person was attempting to raise the objection that, because the Reformed believe quite strongly that every event and every moment of history is ordained by God, for the purpose of glorifying Himself, they are left with the (supposedly) absurd conclusion that the most vile and wicked acts imaginable are somehow God-glorifying.  Child prostitution exists, according to this line of thought, because God in some sense wanted it to. 

I just want to say two things in response to this.  The first is that, as is often the case, this is a stilted charicature of Reformed theology.  No sane Reformed person actually believes that God possesses a disposition such that He actually delights in suffering.  There is a very real sense in which God does not want anyone to suffer, in this life or in the next.  He justly hates evil in every possible sense.  You'll also be hard pressed to find a Reformed theologian who will claim that the Fall (and the subsequent existence of sin and evil in the world) was somehow necessary.  What you will find is a commitment to the idea that, even though evil things are evil in and of themselves, and should not be considered good in any way, it must be the case that they exist for the good, or God would not allow them.  I think Reformed and non-Reformed alike should be able to agree on this.  The only other option is that God does not work all things for good (even if only the best good possible).

The second point is very important, and too often overlooked.  Typically it is said that Reformed theology places the ultimate blame on God, while Arminian forms remove from Him any such responsibility and place it back on us.  Here's the problem:  Both views must account for vile atrocities like child prostitution.  And both views believe in an omnipotent and wholly good God.  In short, both must still account for the problem of evil.  But to simply say, "well, it's human freedom" does little to get God off the hook.  At the heart of the so-called "free will defense" against the problem of evil is the notion that the free choice to love God is so infinitely beautiful and good that it is worth the price of child prostitution.  This is, to say the least, a contentious claim.  But more importantly, most advocates of this view will also argue that such free choices of love are supremely God-glorifying.  Arminian theology doesn't glorify man by placing all the emphasis on him and his choices, says the Arminian, but rather it places equal emphasis on God and His glory.  Fair enough.  But notice what the Arminian view is now saying:  God "allows" (rather than "ordains") child prostitution so that some can freely choose Him, to the end of glorifying Himself.  Does that sound familair? 

My point here is not necessarily to defend one view over the other.  I don't think I've made any case for Reformed theology here.  But we need to stop acting as though any one denomination has the sure-fire, bullet-proof response to something as immensely troubling and difficult as the problem of evil.  I don't hold to Reformed theology because I think it makes more sense of the problem of evil than Arminian theology, and I would strongly discourage anyone from holding to Arminian theology for the same reason.  If you can't accept Reformed doctrine because of exegetical concerns, or because you think it has no adequate grounding for moral responsibility, great!  All I wish to submit here is that the mere presence of evil in the world is not by itself sufficient grounds for accepting or rejecting either view.  It is, as they say, a two-way street.   

Why is it that those who borrow 99% of their ideas from Plato, Augustine and Aquinas are "sheep"...

 while those who borrow 99% of their ideas from Nietzsche, Marx and Freud are "free thinkers"? 

    Obviously, all four views have some strengths and some weaknesses.  It seems to me that it is simply a matter of deciding which view has the fewest weaknesses and the most strengths.  For me, the Reformed view is the clear winner, but with Memorialism in a close second.  Let me elaborate.

    The Reformed critiques of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran views are, I believe, devastating.  To confer a divine attribute to Christ’s human nature is nothing less than a violation of the Chalcedonian Creed, which affirms that Christ’s two natures are neither confused nor mixed.  Likewise, the finite cannot contain the infinite, which rules out any doctrine of the Eucharist that would seek to contain Christ within the elements.  David P. Scaer’s response to this argument was twofold: First, he argued that we cannot let a philosophical axiom be a basis of doctrine.  This is a weak argument, however, since I’m sure Scaer would agree that we can and should (and indeed must!) allow the basic laws of logic to be a basis for doctrine.  Second, he argued that without the power to contain itself in the finite, the infinite would not truly be infinite.   But this sounds like the sort of argument that says “if God were truly omnipotent He could do anything, including make a contradiction true.”  But this, of course, is to misconstrue the meaning of omnipotence.  Likewise Scaer seems to have the wrong idea about infinitude. 

    Moreover, Russell D. Moore’s argument that the misunderstanding of Christ’s metaphorical teachings about Himself is a recurring theme in John’s gospel (an argument that can easily be appropriated by the Reformed view) deals a similar deathblow to Catholicism and Lutheranism by removing the force of the most explicit passage of Scripture in their favor (John 6). 

    But what of the Memorialist view?  There is strength in their connection of the Lord’s Supper to Passover, which was by no means a meal that conferred special grace or contained the Spirit of God.  And if we are to support Memorialist arguments regarding the metaphorical nature of Christ’s body and blood, why not go all the way and admit that the elements are merely signs that point metaphorically to those realities?
  
    I believe there is one primary reason to affirm the Reformed view rather than the Memorialist view (I think there are others, but they would take us too far into other areas of theology), and it is found in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 16.  In this verse, Paul is clear that when we eat of the bread and drink of the cup we are actually participating with Christ’s body and blood in a special way that is different from the “regular” participation with Christ that the church in general enjoys.  At this point, Russell D. Moore reminds us that Paul contrasts this with food offered to idols, which he says makes a person a participant with demons.  Does this imply that eating food offered to idols allows a person to spiritually commune with the “real presence” of a demon?  Of course not.  But here I think Moore simply makes the mistake of directly equivocating what the Lord’s Supper means and what food sacrificed to demons means.  What is significant in this passage is not that there is a direct and perfect correlation between the two, but rather that Paul is affirming that there is something real and supernatural at work behind the worship of idols.  To be sure, the statues themselves are lifeless creations of man and the “gods” they represent do not exist, but behind them is the real, supernatural work of Satan and his demons.  That is the only point Paul is trying to make here.  The correlation to the Lord’s Supper, then, is in the fact that, likewise, there is something very real and very supernatural going on behind the partaking of the Lord’s Supper.  This strongly suggests something more than mere symbolism.

     For these reasons, then, I believe the Reformed view to be the superior understanding of the doctrine of Holy Communion, while at the same time acknowledging that such a profound mystery will never fully be grasped by the human mind, at least not this side of Paradise.  

    I place the Roman Catholic view next because it represents that opposite extreme from Memorialism and is (mostly) just as straightforward.  According to Roman Catholics, during the Mass (when the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist is celebrated), when the Priest consecrates the bread and wine, a miracle occurs and the very substance of the bread and wine are transformed into the substance of the body and blood of Christ.  According to Aquinas’s formulation, which remains official Catholic dogma to this day, while the substance is changed, the accidents remain the same.  So, the bread still looks, feels, and tastes like bread, but nevertheless its substance has become the body of Christ Himself. 

    Roman Catholics would take Christ’s words of institution in the Gospels literally, as they would also take Christ’s words in John 6 literally.  Also undergirding this view is the Catholic understanding of sacrifice and the continuation of the priesthood.  Each Lord’s Supper is another sacrifice, albeit an “unbloody” one. 

    The Lutheran view is very close to the Roman Catholic one, but with slight differences.  The Lutheran view is often referred to as “Consubstantiation”, denoting the idea of one substance being with or along side another.  This is typically explained in terms of Christ being “in, with and under” the elements.   The Lutheran doctrine is notoriously difficult to articulate.  On the one hand, they fully affirm that Christ is actually and physically present in the elements, that Christ is literally ingested through the mouth, and that the elements are really changed somehow.  And yet, on the other hand, they deny transubstantiation and the notion that the substance of the bread and wine actually change.  A metaphor that is used to explain this is a piece of iron that is placed in a fire.  When it comes out, every single molecule of the metal is changed in some way.  The metal is infused at every point with the heat of the fire.  And yet the substance of the metal has not changed. 

    Luther also took very seriously Christ’s words in the gospels, “this is my body” and “this is my blood.”  Although, historically, Lutherans have shied away from using John 6 as support for their view.  David P. Scaer (a Lutheran theologian) argues that that should change. 

    Lastly is the “Reformed” view.  Although many Reformed churches today follow Zwingli and the Memorialist view, the majority of Reformed churches since the Reformation have held this fourth view, which might simply be called Calvin’s view.  Calvin objected to the Roman Catholic view because it conferred a divine attribute, omnipresence, to the human nature of Christ.  He rejected the Lutheran view for this same reason, and also because he held to the axiom that the finite cannot contain the infinite, and therefore any theology of the Eucharist that claimed that Christ was actually contained within the elements must be rejected. 

    Still, however, Calvin took seriously the “real presence” of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, even going so far as to affirm that we do indeed partake of Christ’s flesh and blood.  How could this be?  Calvin understood that while the two natures of Christ were distinct, they were also inseparably joined.  This meant that even though Christ’s human nature is localized in Heaven, it is united to His divine nature, which is omnipresent.  Thus, by partaking of Christ’s divine nature (which is present in a special way during Communion), through the Holy Spirit, we are also partaking of His human nature.  Calvin readily admitted that this is a mystery beyond our comprehension.  In the same mystical way that Christ’s two natures are united, so we can mystically commune with and partake of Christ’s human nature through His divine nature, which is brought to the Supper and given to the believer by the Holy Spirit (interestingly, this focus on the Holy Spirit in Calvin's doctrine of the Lord's Supper bears some similarities to the Eastern Orthodox doctrine.  So much so, in fact, that both Catholic and Lutheran theologians have pointed this out.  In many ways, it actually seems as though the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of the Eucharist is closer to the Reformed view than to the Roman view.  This would be an interesting topic of exploration for another time). 

So, which view is the best (in my young and humble opinion)?  Stay tuned! 

(For a recap of the Memorialist view click here).

(Note: The following post was adapted from a paper I wrote for a Theology class.  As such, much of its descriptions of different theological viewpoints are painted with very broad strokes.  Still, I tried to keep them as accurate as possible)

If you stopped random evangelicals on the street and asked them what the differences are between Protestants and Roman Catholics, the top three responses would likely be the Pope, the adoration of Mary, and the Lord’s Supper.  The average evangelical layperson may not know very much about Roman Catholic dogma, but he is likely to know that they believe in transubstantiation (even if he isn’t familiar with that term).  What the average layperson is not likely to know is that the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper was also the single most divisive doctrine within the various camps of Protestantism as well, sharply dividing Lutherans from their Reformed counterparts.  Today in the West, there are basically four major views of the Lord’s Supper, three of which are held by different Protestant evangelical groups; Lutheran, Reformed and Baptist/Pentecostal.  In this series of posts, I will briefly outline the four positions, and then offer my critical analysis.  For the sake of space, I will leave out questions of how often the sacrament should be administered, who should administer it, who can partake, whether or not other elements can be substituted for bread and wine, etc.  I will instead focus on what I believe is the primary issue, namely the presence of Christ.  Where is Christ present?  How is He present?  How is the sacrament efficacious?  With these questions in mind, let us now explore the first view. 

    The Memorialist view, first articulated by the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli, says that Christ is not locally present in or with the elements themselves in any sense, physical or spiritual.  Rather, the elements are signs that point us to the spiritual reality they are meant to signify.  Memorialists focus on Christ’s command to “do this in remembrance” of Him.  Thus the Lord’s Supper points us back, to remind us of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice on our behalf.  But it also points us forward, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:26 that as often as the Lord’s Supper is celebrated Christians “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”  This aspect of proclamation also highlights what is going on in the present.  Believers are being uplifted and strengthened in their faith, in much the same way as they would be by the preaching of the Word. 
    Memorialists argue that Christ’s words of institution in the Gospels, “this is my body” and “this is my blood” are symbolic or metaphorical.  This is especially true of Christ’s words in John 6:53-54, where he seems to explicitly teach that believers must actually eat his flesh and drink his blood to have eternal life.  Russel D. Moore responds to the Catholic reading of these verses by pointing out that there is an ongoing theme in John’s gospel of Jesus teaching metaphorically, but being taken literally by his hearers and thus misunderstood by them.  In John 2, for example, Jesus teaches that He will destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, and his hearers do not understand becaue they assume he means the literal temple in Jerusalem.  In John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born again in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and Nicodemus is confused because he takes Christ’s metaphor literally.  In John 4, when Jesus speaks of living water, the Samaritan woman takes him literally and misunderstands what he is trying to teach.  And more examples abound. 
    Memorialists also ground their position in a continuity between the Passover feast and the Lord’s Supper.  Just as the Passover feast was meant as a celebration and remembrance of things past and a proclamation and hope of things to come, so is the Lord’s Supper.  More importantly, there was nothing spiritually efficacious about eating the Passover meal, and neither is there with the Lord’s Supper.

So, I realize that this method of breaking up my critique of Storms' book into small, brief sections lends itself to the suspicion that I'm just taking cheap pot shots.  But I hope the reader will understand that I'm simply doing this for practical reasons, mostly relating to time (and besides, you don't want to read a 1500 word blog post anyway!).

In Are Miraculous Gifts For Today?: 4 Views, Storms gives two suggestions to explain the "dormant" periods in history, where the Spirit was not ubiquitously and supernaturally active among the people of God.  The first is sin and apostasy, the second is Biblical ignorance.  The first suggestion is meant for Old Testament history, the idea being that Israel's constant sin and rebellion against God caused the quenching of the Spirit's power.  But as Dr. Robert Saucy points out in his response to Storms, this suggestion can hardly be taken seriously, since one of the most active periods of supernatural power in Israel's history is the time of Elijah and Elisha, and this is arguably one of the worst times of apostasy, at least in the Northern Kingdom.

The second suggestion is meant for the early medieval period.  Rampant Biblical ignorance, primarily due to illiteracy, is a primary reason that the Spirit was not working miraculously in the same way that He was in the 1st century.  My question is, does Storms extend this charge to his contemporary cessationist (or even open-but-cautious) brothers?  I would think not, since Storms praises cessationists for being word-centered and having a high view of doctrine, etc.  And yet, the only other option Storms has left us with is sin and apostasy.  One of these two things must be true, or, according to Storms, cessationists should be experiencing the power of the Spirit on a regular basis.  He might want to suggest that some cessationists do in fact experience the power of the Spirit, but dismiss or rationalize it.  But this seems unlikely on any large scale, especially when it comes to things like speaking in tongues.  It could also be argued that cessationists don't experience such things beacuse they don't believe in them.  This seems problematic for two reasons.  First, it seems to adopt the "if it didn't happen, then you just didn't have enough faith" mentality that is antithetical to a true Christian worldview.  Second, according to Stroms, one of the primary purposes of the spiritual gifts is to engender and strengthen faith, so it would be odd to argue simultaneously that faith must preceed them (with the possible exception of initial, regenerating faith). 

The fairly obviously conclusion, that Storms and others seem stubbornly unwilling to accept (and I'm really not sure why), is that it is God who ultiamtely determines when and where (and how) the Spirit works, not just on any given Sunday morning, but within history as a whole.  I personally don't see how this conclusion is harmful to the Third Wave position, and I see no reason why Storms must attempt to rationalize the Spirit's "dormant" periods by appeals to apostasy or ignorance. 

 

 

In Convergence: Spiritual Journeys Of A Charismatic Calvinist, Sam Storms lays out a solid case for the continuation of spiritual gifts in the church today, and argues that "charismatics" need not be anti-intellectual or anti-doctrine.  He believes that cessationists have historically done a wonderful job developing doctrine and what we might call the "life of the mind" in the church, and he admits that charismatics have often ignored the life of the mind in favor of spiritual experiences.  But he does not believe that this divide is a necessary one, and takes his own story to be evidence that one can be both charismatic and a "Word-centered" Calvinist.

 

I found the majority of the book to be both helpful and informative.  I was a cessationist not too long ago, but now I would consider myself in the broad middle category of "open but cautious" (in part due to Storms' arguments against cessationism).  But I found several of Storms' arguments to be inadequate, and at times even ad hoc.  I wish to address these concerns in a series of posts.  This first post will deal with just one of the arguments.

 

Storms argues that Charismatics don't put immediate Spiritual guidance ahead of guidance found in the Word.  Why not?  Because, says Storms, every prophetic word or dream or vision that is received is immediately and meticulously weighed against Scripture.  Scripture, then, is the final authority. 

 

That answer sounds good, but it actually dodges the question.  Notice that, while the Bible may act as a rubber stamp that will allow a certain bit of direct Spiritual guidance to pass, it is still the direct guidance itself that remains central.  It is not Scripture that is actively guiding a person, Scripture merely allows (most often by its silence) someone to be guided by other means.

 

This is no knock-down, drag-out rebuttle, but it does seem that Storms' attempt to show that the Bible remains just as central to daily guidance for the charismatic as for the cessationist mostly fails.  The difference between "active guidance" and "passive allowance" is a big one, and one that Storms cannot ignore.