Back up. Pop quiz.

• Did Jesus ever stumble and fall down?
• Did Jesus ever get sick?
• Did Jesus have any grey hairs?
• Did Christ ever get depressed?
• When did Jesus know he was God?
• Could Jesus have gotten a math problem wrong?

These are interesting questions as they all center around the relationship of Christ’s humanity to his deity while here on the earth. I think I know the answer to most of these. I am sure that Christ could misstep and fall down. Yes, I imagine he was sick from time to time. Grey hairs? Why not? No, he did not have a sin nature, but he did live in a fallen world whose inhabitants suffer the effects of the fall. Concerning being depressed, I imagine that Christ was depressed from time to time. He was a “man of sorrows” and even cried.

When did Jesus know he was God? That is a good question. I am not sure about this one. It seems as if he knew at least by the time he was twelve as he expresses this self-realization in Luke 2:42-49. But how long before that? Who knows? However, I do think that his self-realization was a realization that was communicated by the Father and the Holy Spirit according to “the plan.” In other words, I don’t think that he knew it from the womb of Mary. I think his humanity had to grow as any normal human would have to grow, therefore his knowledge was tied to his limitations as a human. After all, Luke 2:52 says that Christ “grew in wisdom.” In other words, he went from the lesser to the greater in his humanity, even in knowledge and wisdom.

This brings us to the question of the hour: Could Jesus have gotten a math problem wrong? Here are some options and the implications:

1. Yes, he could get a math problem wrong. He was human.

Problems: You are saying that Christ could have been mistaken about a factual error. I suppose that this is not problematic for the most part, right? I mean what are the harm in getting a math problem wrong or accidently saying the nails are in the second drawer when they were actually in the third. Harmless mistakes are not sinful. However, it is hard not to translate this into the words of Christ as recorded in the Scripture. What about the problem a Abiathar in Mark 2:23? You know where Christ said that Abiathar was the high preist at the time David took the bread but it seems like it was actually Ahimelech the 1 Sam. 21:1-7. The solution to that problem is not the issue. The very fact that it is a problem is the issue. If Christ could have gotten a math problem wrong, then he can be wrong about factual information. If he was wrong about factual information, then who cares about the Abiathar slip? But, conversly, if he could get a 90% on these type of factual quizzes, how do we determine the 10% that he missed? Is it only when it does not matter? How do we know what matters and what does not? Is it only when it is not in Scripture? So, technically speaking, Scripture is more inspired than Christ?

2. No, he could not get a math problem wrong. He was God.

Problems: This option is difficult because we want to be careful not to seem to “apollinarian” in our view of Christ. You know, the view that Christ was just “God in a bod”? If Christ was no more than pure divinity, knowledge and power, housed temporarily in human flesh, then we don’t have a redeemer because we don’t have full human representation. We all know the saying “to err is human.” I don’t really like that since it is not necessary for a human to err to be truly human. So I would not say that unless Christ erred, he was not really human. But I don’t think that Christ had to have perfect knowledge at every stage of his development. If he grew in wisdom, remember, this is from the lesser to the greater. Maybe the lesser got things wrong from time to time. Maybe he sent his dad to the wrong drawer to get the nails. To suggest otherwise seems very apollinarian and unnecessary.

I don’t know where I stand on this. I have to admit I do have trouble with the implications and problems of both answers. Maybe he could have gotten a math problem wrong simply because he left the answer blank!! That way he did not err and he could still grow from the lesser to the greater!

What do you think? Could Christ have gotten a math problem wrong?Similar Posts:

• Was Christ Ever Depressed? or “Why Didn’t Christ Know the Time of His Coming?”
• Why Didn’t Christ Know the Time of His Coming? or “How Can Christ Really Relate to Us?”
• Do Catholics Deny Chalcedon in their View of Mass?
• Heresies: Subordinationalism – A Lesser Christ
• Why Didn’t Christ Know the Time of His Coming?

Those who deny the deity of of Christ often use this passage in Matthew 24 (and others like it) to say that Christ must not have truly been God. After all, if Christ was God, they would argue, he would have known everything. However, I think that this represents a very common and fundamental misunderstanding of the mission of God in Christ and the relationship between Christ’s divine nature and his human nature.

Now, lets start with a chart!

In securing his right to be the second Adam and represent humanity on the cross, Christ had to be fully human. But in order to represent God to man and offer the atoning sacrifice to the Father, Christ has to be fully God. Therefore, after the incarnation, Christ had two complete natures, in one person. Got that? Two natures, one person. This chart illustrates the state of affairs which Christ was in while on earth before the resurrection. Notice that the two natures of Christ do not “communicate” with each other. This does not mean they don’t talk, it means that the natures do not co-mingle. In other words, the attributes or properties of one nature do not change the attributes or properties of the other. Though Christ’s divine nature is eternally omnipresent, it does not make his human nature omnipresent. Likewise, though Christ’s human nature was limited by time and space, it does not effect his divine nature. The Definition of Chalcedon in 451 says that Christ two natures were “without confusion” and “without change.” Were Christ’s human nature to mix with the divine nature, Christ would have be something else all together. He would have been a “humine.” Therefore, he could only represent other humines on the cross. But in order to represent us, he had to have an untainted and complete humanity.

But while the human and divine natures never communicate their properties to each other, as we will see, it is possible for them to communicate their properties to the one person of Christ. This is often referred to as the communicatio idiomatum (“communication of properties”). Berkhof speaks of it this way: “that the properties of both, the human and the divine natures, are now the properties of the person, and are therefore ascribed to the person” (Berkhof, L., Systematic Theology, WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.; Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1988, p. 324.)

So far so good?

Now, notice that in my chart, before the resurrection, the human nature communicates its attributes to the person of Christ, but the divine nature does not. Why? Because Christ had to live as a human, completely dependent on his human nature to make it through this life. Why? Because that is the way you and I have to live. We can’t drawl from omniscience, omnipresence, or omnipotence to aid us in living. How much easier would things be if we could! But Christ came to represent us. Therefore he had to live just like us, in utter dependance on God for his life. Of course Christ still had “access to” his divine nature, power, and properties at any time since he was always fully divine. At the snap of a finger he could have done this:

However, had Christ accessed his divine nature to make it through this life we would have lost our representation and salvation because we would have no one who serves as the ”new Adam.”

Think about this: What was the first temptation that Satan brought to the table when confronting Christ in the wilderness? Remember? It was to turn a stone into bread (Luke 4:3). This is Satan’s diabolical plan? To cause the Son of God to turn a stone into bread? Is it some eternal sin that man shall not turn stones into bread when they are hungry? After all, Christ did turn a few fish into thousands of fish and a few loaves of bread into enough to feed five thousand later in his ministry. So there is obviously not a problem with feeding the hungry through miraculous means. So why did Satan tempt Christ in such a way? What was he trying to accomplish? Well, considering Christ’s obligation to live according to his humanity, Satan was tempting him to access his divine nature for self-abasement. This would have immediately disqualified him from being our representative since neither you or I can turn stones into bread when we are hungry.

Notice how Donald MacLeod puts it when speaking about Satan’s temptation of Christ:

“Part of the truth here is suggested by the first of the three temptations in the desert: ‘tell these stones to become bread’ (Mt. 4:3). The essence of the temptation was that the Lord disavow the conditions of the incarnation and draw on his omnipotence to alleviate the discomforts of his self-abasement. He could have turned the stones into bread . . . But the latter would have undone his work as surely as the former. Christ had to submit to knowing dependently and to knowing partially. He had to learn to obey without knowing all the facts and to believe without being in possession of full information. He had to forgo the comfort which omniscience would sometimes have brought.” (The Person of Christ, 169)

The point is that Christ had to live as a human, with all the limitations of a human. So when it comes to Christ not knowing the time of his coming, we should not be surprised. Christ only knew what needed to be known in order to fulfill his mission. Sound familiar? That is just like you and I. We live with a great degree of uncertainty every day. We can’t look ahead into the future and see what is going to happen tomorrow. How much easier things would be if we could? But we can’t; therefore, Christ could not either. I believe that what he knew and what he did were all under the provisional hand of the Father, through the power of the Spirit.

MacLeod goes on:

“The other line of integration between the omniscience of the divine nature and the ignorance of the human is that just as Christ had to fulfill the office of Mediator within the limitations of a human body, so he had to fulfill it within the limitations of a human mind.” (ibid)

“Omniscience was a luxury always within reach, but incompatible with his rules of engagement. He had to serve within the limitations of finitude.” (ibid)

Millard Erickson shares similar thoughts:

“Perhaps we could say that he [Christ] had such knowledge as was necessary for him to accomplish his mission; in other matters he was as ignorant as we” (Christian Theology, Baker, 726; Leon Morris shares the same thoughts in Lord from Heaven, 48).

And then there is my (ahem) friend (whom I stalk) Thomas Oden:

“During his earthly ministry, the communication of divine power to the human Jesus was administered by the Holy Spirit, upon whom he constantly relied. Jesus taught, acted, and suffered what the Spirit enabled, directed, and permitted.”

“[T]here was sufficient impartation of divine empowerment to Jesus as was needed for each stage of the fulfillment of his office of Mediator” (The Word of Life, Prince Press, 183-184).

Therefore, Christ did not know the time of his coming because he did not need to know it to fulfill his mission.

After the resurrection, however, the person of Christ regained full access to his divine nature and properties and they were, once again, communicated to his person. This is the way Christ looks now:

Notice, though, that, in my estimation, there is still no communication of properties or attributes between the two natures of Christ. Christ’s human nature, even after the resurrection, does not become divinitized. This is the view of most reformed theologians. The person of Christ is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient today. He does know the time of his coming now. He knew it when the disciples asked before he ascended (Acts 1:6). However, his human nature is still limited in all the respects that humanity is (and always will be) limited. Christ’s resurrection body is in some place right now.  It cannot be everywhere. Why? Because that is the limitations of humanity. Therefore, when Catholics, Lutherans, and Eastern Orthdox say that Christ’s body can be at countless places around the globe during the Lord’s Supper, they are expressing their view that somehow after the resurrection there can be a communication between the two natures of Christ (just erase that line blocking the human and divine natures in the illustration and you will see what I mean). However, I believe that Christ still represents us as our high priest and pioneer to the new life and resurrection. Therefore, he still has a complete and untainted human nature.

Setting aside the debatable issues, one thing is clear: Christ really does sympathize with us in all that we are. I don’t know about you, but this fact comforts me a great deal. It comforts me to know that Christ had the same limitations as I have. It lets me know that when I turn to him in time of need, he really does understand.

“For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.” (Hebrews 2:17)

 Similar Posts:

• Why Didn’t Christ Know the Time of His Coming? or “How Can Christ Really Relate to Us?”
• Was Christ Ever Depressed? or “Why Didn’t Christ Know the Time of His Coming?”
• Do Catholics Deny Chalcedon in their View of Mass?
• Heresies: Nestorianism – A Divided Christ
• The Discipleship Book: Christ

Similar Posts:

• The Forgotten Gospel of the End Times
• Tom Schreiner on the Millennium . . . and So Much More
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• Is the Hyper-Preterist Gospel a Different Gospel?

Basic Definition: Christians worship one God who eternally exists in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, all of whom are fully God, all of whom are equal.

Now let’s break each of these down.

One God:

Christians are monotheists. This doesn’t merely mean we worship only one God, but that we believe there exists only one God. This is a basic teaching throughout the Bible (Deut. 6:4; Isa. 44:6; Isa. 45:5; Mark 12:29; 1Tim. 2:5; 1Cor. 8:4).

While this finds support in the Bible, the very definition of God demands that there only be one. In other words, “God” is not just a being to whom you pray or ascribe great worth and value, but the transcendent creator of all things (Heb. 11:3). Romans 1:18-20 informs us that natural theology and rational thinking necessarily demand there be a singular source for all things. Polytheism (which is the belief in many gods) must redefine the term “god” to mean simply “really powerful beings,” since there cannot be many ultimate creators of all things. There can be only one Uncaused Cause, only one Unmoved Mover, and only one Uncreated Creator. God is the only non-contingent (not dependent) being in the universe. Therefore, his essence is necessarily one.

Eternally exists as three persons:

Christians do not believe in contradictions or logical fallacies. Rational thinking and harmony of truth are found in the essence of God’s being; therefore, God cannot exist as a contradiction. Christians do not believe in three Gods for the reasons listed above. However, we do believe Scripture has revealed that God, while one in essence, is three in person. We often talk about this as “one what, three whos.” While this is a great mystery in the Christian faith, there are many mysteries that we are compelled to believe due to necessity and what has been revealed in Scripture. For example, we believe that God created all things out of nothing (Heb. 11:3; doctrine of creation ex nihilo). We believe that God is the sovereign first cause of all things, yet man is morally responsible for his actions. We believe that while Christ was complete in his humanity, he also remained complete in his deity (often called the “hypostatic union”). We believe that the Bible is the product of humans and the product of God. None of these, including the doctrine of the Trinity, are contradictions, but they are great mysteries.

While the Bible does not use the word “Trinity,” we believe that it is an accurate description of what the Bible teaches concerning God. After all, the Bible does not use the word “Bible,” but we can legitimately use the word to describe a collection of books we believe to be inspired. The Bible does not use the word “aseity,” yet we believe that it accurately represents a Biblical attribute of God. God is “of himself,” in no way dependent upon humans for his livelihood (Ps. 50:7-12).

While there are many passages in the Bible which necessitate a Trinitarian understanding of God, there are a few that stand out more than others:

John 1:1

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God.” (NET)

Here we encounter two subjects, “the Word” (Jesus; John 1:14), and “God.” We see in this one verse the unity and plurality in what we call the “Godhead.” The Word “was fully God,” yet we also see that they were “with” each other. The Greek word for “with,” pros, implies not merely proximity, but is used to describe the context of relationship in which they exist. Jesus and God (in this case God is “the Father”) are both sharing in the same essence of deity, yet are distinct in relationship (person).

Matt. 28:19

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

This is often referred to as the “Great Commission.” Here Christ tells his disciples that they are to make disciples by baptizing them (as a sign of identification) in the name (a singular term describing God’s unity) of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Notice that all three members of the Trinity are united, yet distinct in this baptismal creed.

John 14:8-9

“Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be content.” Jesus replied, “Have I been with you for so long, and you have not known me, Philip? The person who has seen me has seen the Father! How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”

This again speaks of the unity the members of the Trinity share with each other. To know Jesus is to know the Father. To know the Holy Spirit is to know Jesus and the Father. And to know the Father is to know Jesus and the Holy Spirit. They are all one. Yet in the very same section of Scripture, Jesus demonstrates that He and the Father are distinct persons by praying to the Father (John 17:1-26). They have been united and distinct for all eternity.

All of whom are fully God:

Don’t see the sharing of the divine essence as some sort of sharing in a type of nature. For example, my daughter Kylee and I share in a similar nature in two ways: 1) we are both humans and 2) we are both blood related as part of the “Patton” family. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit do not merely have similar natures. It is not that they are from the same species called “God” or “Divine.” It is not like a pie that has been cut into three pieces, or a three-leaf clover that can be divided into three parts. It is that they all have the exact same nature. Kylee and I are of the human species, but we do not share in the exact same essence. God’s essence is one and indivisible. All the members of the Trinity are all fully God since they share in the exact same nature..

All of whom are equal:

Christ’s essence is not lesser than the Father’s, nor the Spirit’s lesser than Christ’s. They are co-equal, co-powerful, and co-eternal since the essence of who they are is the same. While their persons may have distinction in function and thus evidence a willing hierarchy in time (John 14:28) and in eternity (1 Cor. 15:23-28), this does not mean that one is greater than the other in essence. Just as a king may have authority over his subject, this does not mean the king’s nature is greater than the subject’s. And just as a wife is to submit to her husband (Eph. 5:22), or as a pastor has authority over the congregation (Heb. 13:7), this does not mean in either case that the husband or pastor has more essential greatness or value than the wife or congregation. It simply means that in function, there is a hierarchy. Some Christians believe that the hierarchy in the Trinity was a temporal arrangement for the purpose of redemption and some believe that the subordination of the Son to the Father and the Spirit to the Father (and Son) is eternal. This is a valid debate in Christianity. However, all Christians have always believed that all three members of the Trinity are essentially equal.

Concerning the use of the word “Trinity”

Concerning the use of the name “Trinity” and other technical terms we often employ such as essence, ontos, ousia, substantia, persona, or hypostasis, the great theologian of the sixteenth century John Calvin writes:

“Where names have not been invented rashly, we must beware lest we become chargeable with arrogance and rashness in rejecting them. I wish, indeed, that such names were buried, provided all would concur in the belief that the Father, Son, and Spirit, are one God, and yet that the Son is not the Father, nor the Spirit the Son, but that each has his particular subsistence. I am not so minutely precise as to fight furiously for mere words. For I observe, that the writers of the ancient Church, while they uniformly spoke with great reverence on these matters, neither agreed with each other, nor were always consistent with themselves” (Institutes, 1.13.5).

No Christian understands the doctrine of the Trinity fully. In fact, if people are not confused to some degree by this doctrine, if someone says, “Ohhhh, now I understand,” it probably means they have slipped into heresy in their thinking. If we think about it too long, try to solve it, or nuance it according to our desire to comprehend things, we will find ourselves refusing the hand of God who has given the mysterious Trinity to us as a description of Himself. While it is impossible that finite beings can fully comprehend an infinite God, we can understand him truly. The doctrine of the Trinity does not give us the full understanding of God, but it does give us a true understanding of God.Similar Posts:

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• "The Trinity is Like 3-in-1 Shampoo". . . And Other Stupid Statements
• In What Sense Are Jesus and the Father One? Part III: One in Purpose? C: John 17:21-23
• T.D. Jakes Not Modalist? An Update from the Elephant Room
• In What Sense Are Jesus and the Father One? Part III: One in Purpose? B: The Father Is Greater than All

My friend Trevin Wax is helping us out as he “Live Blogs” through the Elephant Room. Beyond controversy (at least in the small circles I run in) is how I would describe the invitation of T.D. Jakes to the Elephant Room to discuss spirituality, truth, and theology. He has traditionally been defined as a Modalist theologically. Essentially what this means is that he denies the traditional definition of the Trinity by describing God as one God who shows himself in three different ways. The orthodox definition of the Trinity is that there is one God who eternally exists in three different persons: One what, three whos. Modalism, sometimes described as ”Jesus Only” and sometimes Oneness, to say the least, undermines our understanding of God as he has revealed himself and rapes the Trinity of the eternal relationship upon which so much of our theology is built, understood, and practically lived out.

So, is T.D. Jakes a Modalist? I don’t know. Maybe not (or at least not anymore). Here is some of the stuff that he said that caught my ear:

Jakes: I believe the latter one is where I stand today. One God – Three Persons. I am not crazy about the word persons though. You describe “manifestations” as modalist, but I describe it as Pauline. For God was manifest in the flesh. Paul is not a modalist, but he doesn’t think it’s robbery to say manifest in the flesh. Maybe it’s semantics, but Paul says this. Now, when we start talking about that sort of thing, I think it’s important to realize there are distinctives between the work of the Father and the work of the Son. I’m with you. I have been with you. There are many people within and outside denominations labeled Oneness that would be okay with this. We are taught in society that when we disagree with someone in a movement, we leave. But I still have associations with people in Onenness movements. We need to humble both sides and say, “We are trying to describe a God we love.” Why should I fall out and hate and throw names at you when it’s through a glass darkly? None of our books on the Godhead will be on sale in heaven.

Disclaimer: I have never read any of Jakes’ books. I barely even know his voice as I have not heard him speak much (I think he screams a lot?). I think he sweats almost as much as I do. And I think he wrote a book about losing weight. Oh, and I have heard that he is a modalist. I have even told others this. For this, I am saddened as I might have been spreading misinformation. (Theology teaching 101: if you don’t know for sure, keep your mouth shut.)

If this paragraph were put together by someone else that I have a tradition of following and know is orthodox, it is not too bad. It even has a ”tweetable moment” or two in it! Let me deal with a few things though.

“I am not crazy about the word person”: You know what? Neither am I. It is sufficient, yet in no way exhausting. Anyone who has studied the history of this word “person” in a trinitarian context understands that it never, even in the Latin or Greek (persona, hypostasis, prosopa), conveyed everything it could. It often creates misunderstandings since the English “person” carries some connotations that we would not apply to God. Nevertheless, we work with what we got. Barth did not like the word “person”. I agree with Calvin who said this about our articulations with respect to the Trinity:

“Where names have not been invented rashly, we must beware lest we become chargeable with arrogance and rashness in rejecting them. I wish, indeed, that such names were buried, provided all would concur in the belief that the Father, Son, and Spirit, are one God, and yet that the Son is not the Father, nor the Spirit the Son, but that each has his particular subsistence. I am not so minutely precise as to fight furiously for mere words. For I observe, that the writers of the ancient Church, while they uniformly spoke with great reverence on these matters, neither agreed with each other, nor were always consistent with themselves.” (John Calvin, Institutes, 1.13.5)

 It is not about the words we use, but the concepts we believe. I use the word “person” and I raise and eyebrow when others don’t. But if they have trouble with it the way Calvin speaks of, I understand. Jakes comment seems to be in this vein, but I don’t know.

“Paul is not a modalist, but he doesn’t think it’s robbery to say manifest in the flesh.”

Obviously I don’t mind the use of the word “manifestations” either. However, I think we need to be very careful about the context we use this in. The way that Paul uses this to Timothy was an early Christian creed (1 Tim. 3:16) and was not speaking about the Trinity in the way that we speak about the nature and distinctions in the Trinity. As well, the KJV supplies the word “God” to “manifest in the flesh” giving some misconceptions. It is not best translated “God was manifest in the flesh” but “Christ (or simply “he” – the context being Christ) was manifest in the flesh.” And the word manifestation simply means “to reveal” or “make known”. Christ was made known to us in a body. Therefore, I don’t really like the way Jakes defended the Oneness use of “manifestation” by using Paul.

“None of our books on the Godhead will be on sale in heaven.”

Can I just be honest with you and say that were it not somewhat undignified to quote T.D. Jakes in my world (to say the least), this would definitely be a keeper? Love it.

Another paragraph from Jakes:

“The Bible made me rethink my ideas and I got quiet about it for a while. There are things that you can say about the Father you cannot say about the Son or the Spirit. There are distinctives. I’m very comfortable with that. There is very little difference between what I believe and what you believe. But I don’t think anything that any of us believes fully describes what God is. We in our finite minds cannot fully describe what God is.”

“The Bible made me rethink”

The Bible makes me rethink every day. Good stuff. The context here is encouraging as it essentially says “The Bible made me rethink my view of the Trinity that I was taught in my Oneness (modalist) background.” Right?

“There are things that you can say about the Father you cannot say about the Son or the Spirit. There are distinctives.”

I appreciate this as well. I am not sure if it says quite enough. It certainly could be evidence that Jakes is no longer a modalist as this is the type of language orthodox Christianity uses concerning the Trinity. There are things that the Father and the Spirit did not do that the Son did (i.e. become incarnate and die on the cross). I think that this is what he is saying. I hope that this is what he is saying. I suppose that this could be also seen in a Modalist concept as well. For example, a Modalist could say this: “There are things that you can say about the role of the Father you cannot say about the role of the Son or the Spirit. There are distinctives in their roles.” So, I am not quit sure I am committing to Jakes Trinitarian orthodoxy through this paragraph. But it is hopeful.

“There is very little difference between what I believe and what you believe.”

This makes me somewhat nervous. In fact, it give me more pause than any of the other statements. What is this “very little” difference? I really want to know. Mormons say the same thing. What I consider very little and what he considers very little might be very different.

“But I don’t think anything that any of us believes fully describes what God is. We in our finite minds cannot fully describe what God is.”

I can certainly agree with this. I don’t think we can describe God fully. However, I do think we can understand God truly. The “mirror dimly” may not give us a full understanding of things, but what we do see can be accurate. “Let him who rejoice, rejoice in this: that he understands and knows me” (Jer. 9:24). God seeks to be understood. Though our minds are finite, they are made by an infinite God. He is pretty good at making things. Therefore, if he has revealed himself to us, even in a limited way, that which he has revealed can be truly understood. The mysterious (i.e. unrevealed) things belong to the Lord, but those things that have been revealed belong to us (Deut 29:29). I say this because I want to be careful that we don’t go down the there-is-no-way-to-understand-the-trinity-so-there-is-no-”orthodox”-view-that-God-cares-about path. Our view of God is that he is one God who eternally exists in three persons, all of whom are fully God, all of whom are equal. While this statement is insufficient in scope, it is sufficient in accuracy (properly understood).

Is T.D. Jakes an orthodox Trinitarian? I don’t know, but I am more hopeful than I was before. I really just want to know what that “little difference” is.

UPDTE: here is the video of what Jakes said. It has some more red flags, but he did explicitly say that the Father did not die on the cross. Of course this could mean that the manifestation of the Father did not die, but I think he meant it rightly.Similar Posts:

• Heresies: Subordinationalism – A Lesser Christ
• The Doctrine of the Trinity in a Nutshell
• In What Sense Are Jesus and the Father One? Part III: One in Purpose? B: The Father Is Greater than All
• "The Trinity is Like 3-in-1 Shampoo". . . And Other Stupid Statements
• In What Sense Are Jesus and the Father One? Part III: One in Purpose? Calvin's View

Below is an article I was assigned to read in my Spiritual Formation group at DTS. I have looked and looked for it for years (as I lost my Spiritual Formation workbook), but could not find it. But a friend just sent it to me a few days ago! It is called “Sinners” who are forgiven or “Saints” who sin? and it definitely belongs in my portfolio.  The author is Robert Saucy. It’s long, but well worth the read. I hope you enjoy.

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“Sinners” Who Are Forgiven or “Saints” Who Sin? – Robert Saucy

The question of the true identity of the Christian has been the topic of discussion for some time. Although not directly framed as a question of identity, the issues of self-love, self-esteem, and self-worth all relate in some way to the question, “Who am I?” This question has been posed more sharply in the alternatives, “Am I as a Christian basically a sinner who is forgiven, or a saint who sins?”

The first of these alternatives may be associated with what Warfield favorably termed “miserable-sinner Christianity.”¹ He referred to it this way because similar terminology runs through Protestant confessional formulas and catechisms.² Luther’s Short Catechism, for example, teaches the believer to say, “I, miserable sinner, confess myself before God guilty of all manner of sins.” A Lutheran Confession of Sin reads:

I, poor sinful man, confess to God, the Almighty, my Creator and Redeemer, that I not only have sinned in thoughts, words and deeds, but also was conceived and born in sin, and so all my nature and being is deserving of punishment and condemnation before His righteousness. Therefore I flee to His gratuitous mercy and seek and beseech His grace. Lord, be merciful to me, miserable sinner.

A similar expression is found in the prayers of the Church of England. After acknowledging sinfulness and declaring that “there is no health in us,” the prayer closes with the petition, “But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.” One of the most rhetorical expressions of the concept of “miserable-sinner Christianity” is given by the Scottish minister, Alexander Whyte, in his work Bunyan Characters.

Our guilt is so great that we dare not think of it. It crushes our minds with a perfect stupor of horror, when for a moment we try to imagine a day of judgment when we shall be judged for all the deeds that we have done in the body. Heart-beat after heart-beat, breath after breath, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, and all full of sin; all nothing but sin from our mother’s womb to our grave.³

It would be wrong to take such a statement as necessarily signifying “miserable Christianity” rather than “miserable-sinner Christianity.” Many of those who confessed their situation in this way knew how to flee to the grace of God and find the joy of forgiveness. But such statements would also seem to color the self-understanding of believers as to their basic nature.

An example of the alternative understanding of Christian identity as a “saint who sins” is a statement by Neil Anderson in one of his popular books.

Many Christians refer to themselves as sinners saved by grace. But are you really a sinner? Is that your scriptural identity? Not at all. God doesn’t call you a sinner; He calls you a saint—a holy one. Why not identity yourself for who you really are: a saint who occasionally sins?⁴

If the word “occasionally” is excluded from Anderson’s statement, there is truth in both alternatives of the question. Believers are sinners in that they continue to sin, but Scripture also refers to them as saints. Believers therefore are sinners who by God’s grace are forgiven, and they are saints who sin.

Thus in a sense Christians have a kind of double identity. But this does not mean they are schizophrenic or multiple persons. Each believer is one person, one ego or “I”.  The Apostle Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God” (Gal 2:20). There was only one “I” and one Paul throughout this transition. The question of the believer’s identity is therefore the question of the identity of that ego or “I.” And it would seem that that identity must be related to the actual nature and behavior of that ego. If the nature and activity of the person is primarily sinful, then it is difficult not to see his core identity as a “sinner.” On the other hand if the believer’s nature and activity is primarily holy, then that person’s real identity is that of a “saint.”

The Believer’s Positive Identity

Consideration of the scriptural description of the believer and his activity obviously reveals a mixture of sin and holiness. But when the focus is on the actual description of the person’s identity, the picture is decidedly positive. Even in the Old Testament, believers are described as living with a heart of integrity, soundness, and uprightness (e.g., 1 Kings 8:61; 9:4 {1 Kgs 9:4}; Pss. 78:72 {Ps 78:72}; 119:7 {Ps 119:7}). This of course does not mean that they were sinless or unaware of their sin. But they had a heart and life that was fundamentally devoted to God. Turning to the New Testament, Christians are frequently addressed as “saints” (e.g., Acts 9:32; Eph 1:1; Col 1:2). This surely has reference to their status in Christ, but other descriptions reveal that it also denotes something about their nature. Believers in the Lord are “sons” and “children of God” which, along with speaking of position or status, also depicts something of the nature of believers who are now oriented toward righteousness (1 John 2:29-3:2 {1 John 3:2}). Those in Christ are also called “light” (Eph 5:8) and “sons of light” (1 Thess 5:5), which means “they are characterized by light” as a result of the “transformation that takes place when anyone believes.”⁵

The believer is part of the “new creation” (2 Cor 5:17). He has put off the “old man” and put on the “new man” (Col 3:9-10; cf. Rom 6:6). This transition refers to the believer’s transference from the old corporate humanity under the headship of Adam to the new humanity with Christ as Head. But it also has reference to a change in the individual.⁶ Pointing to the imagery used of putting off and putting on clothing, Lincoln rightly explains that this “change of clothing imagery signifies an exchange of identities, and the concepts of the old and the new persons reinforce this.”⁷ Since the appellation “new man” also has reference to the individual, the descriptions of it as “created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Eph 4:24) and “being renewed according to the image of the One who created him” (Col 3:10) both have reference to the individual believer. Thus Bruce says, “The new man who is created is the new personality that each believer becomes when he is reborn as a member of the new creation whose source of life is Christ.”⁸ Putting off the old man and putting on the new are related to the teaching of the believer’s death and resurrection with Christ (Rom 6:4-6).⁹ In codeath and coresurrection the individual’s identity is radically changed. The old “I” dies and the new “I” rises in newness of life (Gal 2:20).

These descriptions of the Christian clearly indicate a positive identity and refer not only to status but also to the nature of the believer. This conclusion is borne out by the fact that the apostolic exhortation to new ethical behavior is made directly on the basis of the believer’s new identity. The apostles were not grounding their hope for a new behavior simply on a new position or status, but on a new nature which can produce new actions. True, these actions are due to the life of God in the believer and are called “the fruit of the Spirit.” But at the same time they are the product of the believer even as the fruit of the vine is the fruit of the branches (John 15:2-5,16). The exhortations to new ethical life are based on the principle Jesus taught that “good fruit” is borne by “good trees” (Matt 7:17). The nature as well as the identity of the believer is therefore seen as primarily “good.”

These descriptions of the believer point in the direction of the root identity of the Christian as “a saint who sins,” rather than “a sinner who is saved.” But that is not the whole of the matter. Practical experience as well as biblical teaching still relate the believer to sin. Consideration of the identity of the believer therefore cannot avoid discussion of his relationship to sin.

The Believer’s Relation to Sin

Believers Still Sin

It is not difficult to convince most believers from Scripture as well as from experience that sin is still a part of their existence. They sometimes act carnally (1 Cor 3:1-3). The promise of continual cleansing of sin as they walk in the light (1 John 1:7) as well as the present tense used for the confession of sins (1:9 {1 John 1:9}) suggest that sin is continually present with believers. To say “we have no sin,” John wrote, is self-deception and impossible for believers (1:8 {1 John 1:8}). Although the personal identity of the believer is in Christ, and thus in the new man which is being transformed into His image, the manner of life of the old man remains a part of the believer’s experience. This is why Paul directed believers to put off the practices of the old man (Eph 4:22; Col 3:8-9).

Calvin’s statement of what Christians ought to be should convince any believer that he or she has not attained sinlessness. “Since all the capacities of our soul ought to be so filled with the love of God,” he said, “it is certain that this precept [to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind] is not fulfilled by those who can either retain in the heart a slight inclination or admit to the mind any thought at all that would lead them away from the love of God into vanity.”¹⁰ “There remains in a regenerate man a moldering cinder of evil, from which desires continually leap forth to allure and spur him to commit sin.”¹¹

Does this true but rather bleak perspective make the identity of the believer a “sinner” as well as a “saint” so that he or she is actually both? Interestingly, although the New Testament gives extensive evidence that believers sin, it never clearly identifies believers as “sinners.” Paul’s reference to himself in which he declared, “I am foremost” of sinners is often raised to the contrary (1 Tim 1:15). Guthrie’s comment on Paul’s assertion is illustrative of a common understanding of Paul’s statement and what should be true of all believers. “Paul never got away from the fact that Christian salvation was intended for sinners, and the more he increased his grasp of the magnitude of God’s grace, the more he deepened the consciousness of his own naturally sinful state, until he could write of whom I am chief (pro,tos).”¹²

Despite the use of the present tense by the apostle, several things make it preferable to see his description of himself as “the foremost of sinners” as a reference to his preconversion activity as an opponent of the gospel. First, the reference to himself as “sinner” is in support of the statement that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (v. 15 {1 Tim 1:15}). The reference to “the ungodly and sinners” a few verses earlier (v. 9 {1 Tim 1:9}) along with the other New Testament uses of the term “sinners” for those who are outside of salvation¹³ shows that he was referring to “sinners” whom Christ came to save rather than believers who yet sinned.

Second, Paul’s reference to himself as a “sinner” is followed by the statement, “And yet I found [past tense] mercy” (v. 16 {1 Tim 1:16}), clearly pointing to the past occasion of his conversion. Paul was grateful for God’s mercy toward him, “the foremost of sinners.” A similar present evaluation of himself based on the past is seen when the apostle wrote, “I am [present tense] the least of the apostles, who am not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (1 Cor

15:9). Because of his past action, Paul considered himself unworthy of what he presently was by God’s grace and mercy, an apostle who was “not in the least inferior to the most eminent apostles” (2 Cor 11:5; cf. 12:11 {2 Cor 12:11}).

Declaring that he was “the foremost of sinners,” the apostle also declared that Christ had strengthened him for the ministry, having considered him “faithful” or “trustworthy” for it, to which He had called him (1 Tim 1:2). As Knight concludes, “Paul regards this classification of himself as `foremost of sinners’ as still valid (eijmi, present tense); though he is fully forgiven, regarded as faithful, and put into service, he is still the notorious opponent who is so received.”¹⁴ Thus the apostle was not applying the appellation “sinner” to himself as a believer, but rather in remembrance of what he was before Christ took hold of him.

James’ reference to turning “a sinner” from the error of his ways is also best seen as bringing someone into salvation rather than restoring a genuine believer to repentance (James 5:19-20).

Though the erring one is described as one “among you,” the

resultant outcome of saving the soul of the turned “sinner” from “death,” which is most likely spiritual death, suggests that the person was not a Christian.¹⁵ Scripture surely teaches that unbelievers can be “among” the saints (cf. 1 John 2:19).

This is not to say that in the Scriptures believers did not see themselves as sinful. Confrontation with the righteousness and holiness of God frequently brought deep acknowledgment of an individual’s own sinful condition. Peter’s recognition of himself before the Lord as a “sinful man” is not uncommon among the saints (Luke 5:8; cf. Gen 18:27; Job 42:6; Isa 6:5; Dan 9:4-20). The believer is sinful, but Scripture does not seem to define his identity as a “sinner.”

Believers Are Opposed to Sin

Instead of being identified as a “sinner,” the real person or “I” of the believer is opposed to sin. Before salvation the “I” or the “ego” of the believer, like the “I” of all “sinners,” was in radical rebellion against the true God. Now the “I” of the believer is on God’s side seeking to mortify the rebellion that is still present in the believer. Several truths combine to teach this new identity of the believer and his change of nature.

First, death and resurrection with Christ severed the believer from sin. The believer’s participation in Christ’s death and resurrection is a way in which Paul expressed the change that takes place when one becomes a Christian. According to the most extensive explanation of this truth in Romans 6, the primary significance of this transaction is the change of dominions over the believer. Christ’s death and resurrection signify (a) death to the old age of sin and its dominion and (b) resurrection to a new sphere ruled by God. These objective realities take place in Christ as the Head of the new humanity much like His actions as the Head of the corporate “new man.”¹⁶ But also like the transfer from the “old” to the “new” man, Christ’s death and resurrection apply subjectively to the person of the believer who participates with Him.

In Rom 6 Paul is not simply concerned with the two dominions, but with the decisive transfer of the believer from the one dominion to the other. The believers were enslaved to sin, but now they stand under a new master. This change has taken place through dying with Christ…. Dying with Christ means dying to the powers of the old aeon and entry into a new life under a new power.¹⁷

The believers’ union with Christ in His death and resurrection transforms them not just legally but also personally. As the person’s

“I” previously had a nature that willingly chose to serve sin, now he or she is a new “I” who willingly chooses God. Paul’s testimony was that having been crucified with Christ, he now lived in such union with Him that his “I” could hardly be separated, not just legally but morally. Paul’s “I” was willingly united with Christ, who continually and willingly obeyed the Father’s will. As Bonar said, “The cross, then, makes us decided men. It brings both our hearts and our wills to the side of God.”¹⁸

Second, the transformation of the believer in the change of dominions over him through dying and rising with Christ is further seen in the biblical concept of having a “new heart.” As Jewett explains, “A characteristic of the heart as the center of man is its inherent openness to outside impulses, its directionality, its propensity to give itself to a master and to live towards some desired goal.”¹⁹ This characteristic stems from the fact that Christians as finite persons can live only in “radical dependence on otherness.”²⁰

Most significantly, as Jewett noted, what the heart takes in becomes its master, stamping the heart with its character. What truly determines the heart and consequently the person is therefore the nature of the desire of the heart. After defining the heart as “our center, our prefunctional root, ” Kreeft adds, “at this center we decide the meaning of our lives, for our deepest desires constitute ourselves, decide our identity.”²¹

According to Scripture the deepest desire of the believer has been changed. This truth is seen in the apostle’s words to the Galatians: “And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, `Abba! Father!’” (4:6 {Gal 4:6}). The cry, “Abba! Father!” is typical of a son and represents the believer’s most basic relationship with God. This cry is determined by the presence of the Spirit who brings Christ the Son into the center of one’s personality to live within his or her heart. “The center of man is thus his heart; the heart’s intentionality [or desire] is determined by the power which rules it. In the case of Christian[s], the direction of the heart’s intentionality is determined by Christ’s Spirit.”²²

The desire or intentionality of the human heart is in reality its love. As Augustine noted, love is what moves an individual. A person goes where his love moves him. His identity is determined by his love. The identity of the believer is thus a person who basically loves God rather than sin.

The presence of sin in the life of the believer indicates that remnants of the old disordered love of self remain. But those remnants now stand at the periphery of the real core of the person who is redeemed, God-oriented, and thus bent toward righteousness in his nature. “God begins his good work in us, therefore, by arousing love and desire and zeal for righteousness in our hearts; or, to speak more correctly, by bending, forming, and directing, our hearts to righteousness.”²³

This core of the new person is often not evident in conscious life, but it is nevertheless the dominating aspect of his being. As Delitzsch notes, there is a kind of will of nature that is basically self-consciously unreflected. This deep will of nature precedes the conscious actions of the person. The will of the believer has been changed through regeneration despite the fact that remnants of the old life still remain and continue to express themselves. The action of regeneration is directed not so much to “our occasional will, as to the substance of our will,

i.e. to the nature and essence of our spiritual being.”²⁴ Thus the regenerate individual in the depth of his heart is changed; he has a nature oriented toward God. Although the person can still sin, this sin is related to a more surface level of his being which can still act contrary to the real person of the heart. But these surface actions do not change the real nature of the heart and thus the person’s identity. The relationship of the real core nature of the human heart to its more surface activities is seen in Pedersen’s discussion of the “soul” or what is perhaps better termed the heart.

It [the soul] is partly an entirety in itself and partly forms an entirety with others. What entireties it is merged in, depends upon the constant interchange of life.

Every time the soul merges into a new entirety, new centres of action are formed in it; but they are created by temporary situations, only lie on the surface and quickly disappear. There are other entireties to which the soul belongs, and which live in it with quite a different depth and firmness, because they make the very nucleus of the soul. Thus there may be a difference between the momentary and the stable points of gravity in the soul. But none of the momentary centres of action can ever annul or counteract those which lie deeper.

The deepest-lying contents of the soul are, it is true, always there, but they do not always make themselves equally felt.²⁵

This understanding of the human heart helps explain the practice of sin in the believer’s life as well as the “good” in the life of the unbelieving sinner. The true nature of the person does not always express itself fully in actual life. But the basic identity of the individual is still there, and in the case of the believer it is positive.

Third, this same truth is seen in the positive nature of the ego or “I” of Romans 7:14-25. Paul’s description of the “I” in this passage suggests that it refers to someone who has experienced the regenerative grace of God. Also this person is viewed in relation to the law of God apart from the empowerment of the Spirit of God. It could thus have reference to a Christian living according to the flesh in his own strength,²⁶ or more probably to the experience of the pious Jew living under the Mosaic Law viewed from a Christian perspective.²⁷

Of interest in this passage is the description of the “I” which is solidly on God’s side. If what is said of this “I” or ego could refer to a pious Jew living under the Old Covenant, how much more would it be fitting for the believer of the New Covenant as part of the new creation through union with Christ. Considering the actions of the “I,” all three dimensions normally seen as constituting personhood, that is, thought, emotion, and will, are all oriented toward God and His righteous law. Regarding the element of thought, the apostle wrote in 7:15 {Rom 7:15}, “For that which I am doing, I do not understand,” or perhaps better with Cranfield, “I do not acknowledge” or “approve.”²⁸ In other words his thinking was opposed to his action of sin. This is also seen in verse 25 {Rom 7:25}: “I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin.”

His emotion is likewise seen to be on God’s side in opposition to sin. “I am doing the very thing I hate” (v. 15 {Rom 7:15}). As Dunn puts it, “he wholly detests and abhors what he does.”²⁹ If hatred is the opposite of love, then his love is directed toward righteousness. A further expression of emotion is indicated in verse 22 {Rom 7:22}. “I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man.”

Also his will or volition is for God and against sin. “What I want [or `will,' qevlw] to do,” Paul wrote, “I do not do. I have the desire [qevlein] to do what is good” (vv. 15,18 {Rom 7}, NIV). The verb qevlein is used seven times in the passage, the last when he described himself as “the one who wishes to do good” (v. 21 {Rom 7:21}).

These descriptions of the personal attributes of the “I” clearly define it as one with a positive nature. But more than this, the apostle went so far as to absolve, as it were, the “I” from sinning: “if I do the very thing I do not wish to do no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which indwells me” (vv. 16-17 {Rom 7}; cf. the same thought in v. 20 {Rom 7:20}).

Since the same passage clearly shows the “I” as the subject of sinful actions as well as being opposed to sin, the apostle was not trying to evade the personal responsibility of the “I” in sin. But when the “I” is related to sin, it is never described in terms of the functions of personhood. There are no equal statements of thought, emotion, and will on the side of sin. Paul did not say, “I want to do the will of God, but I also want to sin.” Nor did he say, “I love the law of God, but I also love sin.” Thus the “I” that is positively oriented toward God is the person in the deepest sense of his personhood or identity. He is the “I” of the “inner man” (v. 22 {Rom 7:22}), the “I” that is the subject of the “mind” (v. 25 {Rom 7:25}).

The assertion that it is no longer “I” but sin that actually does the sinning is similar to other apparently contradictory statements of the apostle when he was referring to the dominating power that mastered him: “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live” (Gal 2:20); “I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me” (1 Cor 15:10; cf. Matt 10:20). In these statements Paul was not intending to disavow responsibility, but to affirm the existence in himself of a power that exercised a dominating influence on him. The real person of the believer willingly assents to this dominating power, but in the case of sin as in Romans 7 the real “I” opposes it and can thus be set against it. Here the ego or real “I” in the believer is viewed as so opposed to sin that they can be isolated from each other. And the actual committing of sin, instead of being the action of the ego can be regarded as the action of the sin that enslaves the ego contrary to its will. As Delitzsch says, “the Ego is no longer one with sin-it is free from it; sin resides in such a man still, only as a foreign power.”³⁰

Romans 7 thus presents the real person of the believer as positive. To be sure, he commits sin both in thought and act but he also does righteousness. Sin and righteousness, however, do not characterize the real person of the believer in the same way. The believer is capable of experiencing a double servitude expressed in the apostle’s words, “on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin” (v. 25 {Rom 7:25}).³¹ But as this statement, along with the entire passage, indicates, the real person of the believer willingly serves God.

The description of the believer in Romans 7 thus fits the same picture of the believer seen in the teaching of his death and resurrection with Christ and his new heart. The Christian has been radically changed in his relationship to sin and righteousness from what he was before salvation. And this change is more than simply positional or judicial consisting in the forgiveness of sin and the imputation of righteousness. It includes a radical change of nature. The Christian is a new person. He has a new heart which is the real identity of the person.

Conclusion

The full picture of the believer’s relationship to sin and righteousness is obviously beyond the scope of this study. But when the question of his identity is posed-is the Christian a saved sinner or a saint who sins?-the Scriptures seem to point to the latter.

There is truth in the following explanation of so-called “miserable-sinner Christianity” expressed by Luther:

A Christian is at the same time a sinner and a saint; he is at once bad and good. For in our own person we are in sin,

and in our own name we are sinners. But Christ brings us another name in which there is forgiveness of sin, so that for His sake our sin is forgiven and done away. Both then are true. There are sins and yet there are no sins. thou standest there for God not in thy name but in Christ’s name; thou dost adorn thyself with grace and righteousness although in thine own eyes and in thine own person, thou art a miserable sinner.³²

Christians are sinners who are forgiven. But there is more to it than that. They are regenerated persons whose root core has been changed. They are forgiven, but also their heart-the spring of their life and their true identity-is new.

To confess as present-day Anglicans do³³ that “there is no health in us” or that “all my nature and being is deserving of punishment,” as also stated in the old German Lutheran confession, is contrary to the biblical picture of the believer.

All the apostles’ ethical imperatives are addressed to

believers on the premise that their natures are now on God’s side and have a new ability to obey God. The very assumption that Christians should grow demonstrates a belief that the positive dominates over the negative in their being. For a Christian to grow, there must be a stronger inclination toward God than toward sin.

Although the terminology “miserable sinner” does not adequately define the true identity of the believer, several

truths at the heart of so-called “miserable-sinner Christianity” must be retained even when viewing the believer as a “saint who sins.”

First, despite the truth that the believer’s heart and thus his or her identity have been transformed to an orientation toward God and His righteousness, one’s acceptance before God is only on the basis of Christ’s righteousness. One’s salvation is complete in Christ’s righteousness alone.

Second, the believer who sins must experience misery over sin. If a persons’ affections have truly been changed so that he or she is now on God’s side, then that one must hate sin and experience a godly sorrow over what grieves and wounds the One who loves believers deeply. Fisher’s description of sorrow over sin should be the experience of all believers.

When faith hath bathed a man’s heart in the blood of Christ, it is so mollified that it generally dissolves into tears of godly sorrow; so that if Christ turn and look upon him, O then, with Peter he goes out and weeps bitterly. And this is true gospel mourning; this is right evangelical repenting.³⁴

Third, even though God in His grace has created in believers

the germ of a new nature which gives them a new identity, their focus in life must be not on themselves, but on Christ. Dying and rising with Christ means the end of self-trust. Therefore, even though they are new persons, their source of life and growth is not in their own identity but in Christ. Their focus must be on Him and not on their own new identity. In Him they are new creatures (2 Cor 5:17).

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1 Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield, Perfectionism, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, l931), 1:113-301.

2 Ibid, 115. The following quotations expressing the “miserable-sinner” concept are cited by Warfield (ibid., 118-19, 123).

3 Cited by Warfield (ibid., 128).

4 Neil Anderson, Victory Over the Darkness (Ventura, CA; Regal, 1990), 44-45. The word “occasionally” should be omitted from Anderson’s statement as he has indicated to this writer in personal conversation that it was not his intention to include this word.

5 Leon Morris, The First {1 Thess} and Second {2 Thess} Epistles to the Thessalonians, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 155.

6 Peter T. O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco, TX: Word, 1982), 190-91; and Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas, TX: Word, 1990), 287.

7 Lincoln, Ephesians, 285.

8 E. K. Simpson and F. F. Bruce, Commentary on the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), 273. O’Brien similarly says that in addition to a reference to the new corporate humanity, the “new man” designates “the new nature which the Colossians had put on and which was continually being renewed” (Colossians, Philemon, 190).

9 Robert C. Tannehill, Dying and Rising with Christ (Berlin:Töpelmann, 1967), 52; and A. Van Roon, The Authenticity of Ephesians (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 336-37.

10 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.3.11; cf. 3.12.1.

11 Ibid., 3.3.10.

12 Donald Guthrie, The Pastoral Epistles (London: Tyndale, 1957), 65 (italics his).

13 Karl Heinrich Rengstorf, “aJmartwloj”,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 1:327-28; and George W. Knight, The Pastoral Epistles (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 101.

14 Knight, The Pastoral Epistles, 102.

15 Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 200.

16 “When Paul speaks of dying and rising with Christ, he is referring to Christ’s death and resurrection as eschatological events. As such, they concern the old and new aeons. Through this death and resurrection the believers are freed from the old aeon and the new aeon is founded…. Because the existence of all within an aeon is based upon and determined by the founding events, the whole of the aeon shares in these events” (Tannehill, Dying and Rising with Christ, 39). On the similar significance of dying and rising with Christ and stripping off the old man and putting on the new, see ibid., 52.

17 Ibid., 21.

18 Horatius Bonar, God’s Way of Holiness (New York: Carter & Bros., 1865), 108 (italics his).

19 Robert Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 313. John Laidlaw describes the heart as “the work-place for the personal appropriation and assimilation of every influence” (The Bible Doctrine of Man [Edinburgh: Clark, 1895], 122).

20 Andrew Tallon, “A Response to Fr. Dulles,” in Theology and Discovery: Essays in Honor of Karl Rahner, ed. William J. Kelly (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980), 37.

21 Peter Kreeft, Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), 45.

22 Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms, 322-23.

23 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.3.6.

24 Franz Delitzsch, A System of Biblical Psychology (reprint, Grand Rapids; Baker, 1966), 416.

25 Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 1:166.

26 James D. B. Dunn, “Romans 7:14-25 in the Theology of Paul,”Theologische Zeitschrift 31 (September-October, 1975): 257-73.

27 For a brief sketch of this latter interpretation, see N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 196-200.

28 C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, International Critical Commentary, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1975), 1:358-59.

29 James D. B. Dunn, Romans 1-8 {Rom 8}, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas, TX: Word, 1988), 389.

30 Delitzsch, A System of Biblical Psychology, 438. Delitzsch gives a helpful description of the interaction between the believing ego opposed to sin and the power of sin. Referring to the sin of unchastity, he says sin “is possible only when the might of temptation succeeds either in overmastering, or even in interesting, the Ego of the man. At times there are mingled in the range of man’s thoughts impure thoughts which he acknowledges as not less thought by his Ego than the pure ones which it opposed to them in order to dislodge them. Sometimes temptation succeeds in drawing in the man’s Ego into itself; but in the midst of the sinful act, the man draws it back from it, full of loathing for it. Sometimes, moreover, the Ego, in order to complete the sinful act unrestrainedly, is voluntarily absorbed into unconsciousness, and does not until after its completion return in horror to recollection of itself; and the spirit with shame becomes conscious of its having been veiled by its own responsibility” (ibid.).

31 J. Knox Chamblin, Paul and the Self (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 173-74.

32 Martin Luther, Werke, Erlangen ed., 2.197; cited by Warfield, Perfectionism, 1:116.

33 J. I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1984), 123.

34 Fisher, Marrow of Divinity, cited by Bonar, God’s Way of Holiness, 72.Similar Posts:

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Thanks for your careful approach to this question. I appreciate your desire to properly honor our common heroes of the faith throughout these past 2,000 years of church history. But I have to say that I remain utterly unmoved and altogether unconvinced by your appeal to this argument from the life of the church these past two millennia. I can’t address all your points, and on several occasions I will simply encourage the reader to go back and examine my article and the evidence I cited one more time. But I do have a few important points to make.

(1) First, I don’t think you honestly believe what I’m about to say (at least I hope you don’t), but much of what you wrote in your article, together with several comments in previous entries, suggests that it may be hiding just beneath the surface and I want our readers to reckon with it.

In all your talk of how experience or the lack thereof shapes your beliefs and practices, you’ve made several good points. But a danger lurks when one question is pressed: “What should I do when my experience does not line up with Scripture?” I put it this way because you have conceded on several occasions that the NT does not teach hard cessationism. You have even conceded that the exegetical case for continuationism is stronger than the one for cessationism. Your response has been to rely on the argument of what you call de facto cessation (“How do we know the gifts ceased? We know they have ceased because they in fact ceased”).

You do not argue that they have ceased because Scripture teaches they have. You concede that Scripture appears to teach otherwise. So, in my opinion, we have one of two available responses: either (1) marginalize Scripture on the subject of our responsibility with regard to spiritual gifts, or (2) do what we can, with God’s help, to alter our experience and repent of what we have believed or done that has led us to fall short of what Scripture truly says and commands. It strikes me that the only legitimate response to the alleged de facto cessation of gifts (which I’m only conceding for the sake of argument; as you can see from my article, I don’t believe they ever altogether ceased) is to admit that this must mean the problem is with us, the people of God, and not the Word of God.

I guess what I’m getting at is this: I struggle to understand how your view can be made consistent with a high view of biblical authority. If you concede that the NT makes a stronger case for continuationism than cessationism, then embrace the former and do everything within your power (as empowered by God) to pursue and facilitate and practice the gifts, regardless of what anyone else in any age of church history may believe or do. Otherwise, I don’t know how the Bible functions authoritatively in your life. Now, as I said above, I don’t believe you deny the functional authority of Scripture (I know you too well for that), but I fear that your arguments betray the subtle and perhaps unconscious influence of a tendency to invest more authority in your and others’ experience than in that of Paul and his precepts.

(2) Second, you write that “the cumulative experience of the historic body of Christ, at this point, is one of the things that keeps me from being charismatic.” In keeping with the previous point, I’m very sad to hear you say that. I would have hoped you had said, “the cumulative evidence from God’s inspired Word, at this point, is the primary thing that prompts me to be a charismatic, the experience or lack thereof in other believers notwithstanding.”

(3) Third, you insist that, subsequent to the first two centuries of church life, spiritual gifts were in decline and were at best infrequent and on the fringe for the next 1,800 years or so. I’m not going to continue to argue that point, but would ask only one question: “Why were they purportedly in decline and infrequent?” I would simply ask that you and our readers consider the several possible explanations for this found in my article. One explanation that you will not find, because Scripture won’t allow it, is that it was God’s design that the gifts only operate during the initial stages of the church’s existence. The Bible simply nowhere says that.

(4) Fourth, I will not respond to your quotations from church history but choose to stand by the evidence cited in my article. I would simply encourage the reader to go back and carefully read the statements from prominent figures and ask if what they believed and saw and experienced is consistent with de facto cessationism. In my opinion, it most certainly isn’t.

(5) Fifth, you argue that “the loss of the [truth] of the Gospel was a loss of an understanding of a doctrine (sola fide), not a loss of the effectiveness of this doctrine,” and thus can’t be compared with the decline or relative loss of the exercise of spiritual gifts in the church. You go on to say with regard to tongues that “you never have as a prerequisite a belief in the truthfulness of a doctrine of continuationism before Christians experience their effectiveness.”

I honestly can’t believe you believe this. Are you actually saying that one’s theological convictions about the validity or cessation of tongues and other gifts has no effect on whether or not a person eventually experiences them? I would insist that our beliefs control and shape our zeal, our expectations, our prayer life, and especially how we respond to and interpret claims people make regarding their experience of supernatural phenomena. Let me develop this point at greater length, because I think it is of crucial importance.

I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but your understanding of when and why spiritual gifts either are or are not present in the life of the church appears to be influenced by what strikes me as hyper-Calvinism, or at least a somewhat fatalistic approach to the Christian life that undermines both prayer and human responsibility. Can you believe that a committed 5-point Calvinist just wrote that? Well, yes, he (I) did.

You point to the gift of tongues in Acts and argue that in all three instances where it appears it came “sovereignly,” so to speak, without regard to the prayer or spiritual posture of those who received it. I think this is misleading for a couple of reasons.

For one, those present on the Day of Pentecost were there in obedience to the command of Jesus: “But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49: cf. Acts 1:5,8). The reason all received the gift of tongues on that Day is due to at least two factors. First, they were obedient in responding to Jesus’ command. There is no reason to believe, at least in my opinion, that if some had disbelieved Jesus’ promise, disobeyed his command, and had refused to wait with the others in Jerusalem for the outpouring of the Spirit that they would have received tongues anyway, irrespective of their response to him.

Whether or not they were praying for this to occur we can’t know, for the simple fact that the text says nothing to this effect. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. It’s difficult for me to believe, however, that given John’s and Jesus’ prophecies of the impending Spirit baptism and the coming on them of divine power that they sat silently and passively and refused or at least failed to pray for the coming of what Christ had promised. In any case, no one knows what they were doing in preparation for the coming of the Spirit. For you to say that God gave tongues to all of them irrespective of their obedience or belief or prayer is simply not substantiated by the text. The text is silent.

My second reason for finding your argument misleading is that Acts 10 concerns the spread of the gospel to the Gentiles. I think most everyone acknowledges that we are dealing here with an unusual geo-ethnic expansion of the gospel that called for the same phenomenon that occurred at Pentecost in order to attest to the reality of their acceptance by faith. Peter and the others are clear that the experience of Cornelius and the other Gentiles in receiving the Spirit and speaking in tongues served uniquely in this case to corroborate the fact that “the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out EVEN on the Gentiles” (10:45). This leads Peter to conclude that they were fit subjects for water baptism, just as were those among the Jews who believed and received the Spirit. I hardly think this example from Acts 10 is sufficient warrant for drawing the conclusion you do that if God wants his people to speak in tongues they will do so irrespective of their own beliefs, prayers, desires, or state of mind and heart.

As for Acts 19, they spoke in tongues only “when Paul laid his hands on them” (19:6). In the course of Paul’s explanation of the gospel and the reality of Pentecost, did these “disciples” of John express their desire to experience what those did in Acts 2? We don’t know. The text is silent. What we do know is that Paul was dealing with a situation that is altogether unrepeatable today. These “disciples” were men who had embraced the baptism of John but had lived in the overlap of the transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. They evidently lived at a distance from Jerusalem and had no access to the news of what had happened on Pentecost (no TV, no Internet, no Twitter, etc.). This is hardly a situation that we can use as paradigmatic for us today, as no one today lives in what might be called a “redemptive-historical time warp”.

My point is simply that I believe you are building far too much on these incidents in Acts. The only other place where the gift of tongues is explicitly mentioned (outside the dubious long ending of Mark) is in 1 Corinthians. And it is important to remember that not everyone in Corinth spoke in tongues (indicating that in a time when the gift of tongues was clearly God’s will for his church some [most] Christians did not receive the gift). If they did, Paul would not have had to say in 14:5, “I wish that all of you spoke in tongues.” Clearly not everyone did.

Your argument seems to be as follows: If spiritual gifts are designed and intended by God to function in the church throughout its existence, into the present day, then such gifts will consistently appear by divine fiat irrespective of how people live, what they believe (especially regarding the continuation or cessation of said gifts), and whether or not they pray for and pursue such gifts and are committed to practicing them in accordance with Scripture.

Don’t take offense, but I find this approach to the Christian life to be presumptuous, irresponsible, and negligent of God’s ordained means to achieve his ordained ends. If your view were true, it would empty prayer of its value. Why pray (as our Arminian friends would say) if God is going to do what God is going to do regardless? Is it not the case that God suspends the bestowal of countless blessings on our asking for them? If the principle you are defending is correct, why would Jesus have rebuked his disciples for their failure to pray (Mark 9:28-29) in attempting to cast the demon out of a young boy? On your belief, why wouldn’t we conclude that if God wanted the boy to be delivered he would sovereignly do it without calling for or waiting upon the prayers of others on the boy’s behalf? And why should we obey Jesus who commanded us to persevere in prayer (keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking; Luke 11) to receive the gifts and blessings of the Spirit that we so desperately need (Luke 11:13)? And why would James tell us that “we have not because we ask not” (Js. 4:2) if God typically grants gifts and blessings as sovereignly and irrespectively of our desires and prayers as you suggest?

Neither you or I have any idea what the Corinthians did or did not do when it came to the reception of spiritual gifts. You seem to suggest that these Christians received their gifts by divine fiat apart from their desire or prayer. I would like for you to give me a text that says this. The text is again silent, well, almost silent. You still have not answered the question I asked quite some time ago about the prayer of 1 Cor. 14:13. There a Christian man/woman who already has the gift of tongues is commanded to “pray for the power to interpret.” But why, if what you say is correct? Why bother, if God’s will is to grant the gift of interpretation? Clearly, at least it is clear to me, Paul believed that the reception of a spiritual gift is often based on one’s prayer for it. Ask and you shall receive. Don’t ask, and you shouldn’t expect to receive.

It appears to me that perhaps your position on this point is again related to your denial that a Christian, after his/her conversion, can still receive additional spiritual gifts. Your attempt to evade this point as it is stated in 1 Corinthians 14:1 and 14:39 simply doesn’t ring true to me. And I don’t know how you can get around 1 Timothy 4:14 where Paul speaks of a “gift” (charismatos) that was given by God to Timothy through the exercise of another’s spiritual gift of prophecy when hands were laid upon him. Timothy was a Christian, yet here the Elders lay hands on him and God imparts to him a spiritual gift. It seems to me the only reason you might have to doubt this is the recognition that if you concede the point your position is undermined. If Timothy could receive a spiritual gift in response to the prayers of others and through the instrumentality of prophecy, and all this subsequent to his conversion, why can’t we?

My point here is that you appear to say, contrary to these texts, that a Christian receives from God as a sovereign impartation, irrespective of their own beliefs, prayers, and desires, all the gifts that he/she will ever receive at conversion. These texts clearly say otherwise.

Now, how does all this relate to the issue of gifts in history? Isn’t it obvious? One of the reasons I cited why gifts are less frequent in certain seasons of church history than in others is simply due to the fact that based on their hard cessationism (together with other factors, such as fear) they don’t seek and pursue and above all else fail (refuse?) to pray for these gifts.

They have not because they asked not, and they asked not because they believed not! Not believing in the validity of those gifts, not believing that God would grant them, they didn’t ask for them. Not asking for them, they didn’t receive them. You seem to think that their asking is irrelevant. If God wants them to have the gift, then, by golly, they’ll get it one way or the other. This strikes me as an illegitimate extension of our commonly held Calvinist convictions. God works through means, prayer being one of the more important of them.

I’m not suggesting that this accounts sufficiently for why certain spiritual gifts were not present in certain seasons of church life, but I am saying that it simply isn’t biblical or God’s way (at least as I read the Scriptures, even as a “good Calvinist”) to impart gifts and blessings irrespective of our obedience to pray and ask for them. The hungry are those who are filled. The thirsty are those who are given drink. Those who ask and seek and knock are those to whom the door is opened.

Can God set aside this principle and grant gifts anyway, irrespective of our theological beliefs about their validity and irrespective of our disobedience to pray for them? Yes, of course he can. I think that is precisely what happened in the case of Spurgeon. And I would venture to say (while acknowledging that I can’t prove it) that this happened countless times throughout the course of church history. But that doesn’t cancel out the basic principle that we cannot expect God to do things for us if we ignore the command to fulfill those conditions on which he suspends their impartation.

The principle is simply this: We should never expect God to do for us apart from prayer what he has promised in his Word to do for us only through prayer.

(6) Now for my sixth and concluding point. I want to take a minute or two and address this distinction that you continually (see, you are a “continuationist” of sorts!) make between “miraculous” gifts of the Spirit, which you contend have ceased (so much for your “continuationism”!), and “miracles”. This is typical among cessationists of all stripes. They deny that the “gifts” are valid but are “open” to the possibility that God “can” perform miracles if he so chooses throughout the course of church history. Let me say two things by way of response to this.

First, this distinction carries weight with people only (or at least to a large degree) because of an entirely fallacious understanding of how miraculous gifts of the Spirit operate. I made this point at some length in an earlier post, but it bears repeating. My sense is that cessationists want to deny the validity of “miraculous” gifts but affirm “miracles” because they don’t like (or believe in) the idea of any one person today claiming to operate in healing or prophecy or word of knowledge. They don’t like it because they don’t see it. That is to say, no one always heals at will or prophecies at will or is the recipient of revelatory words at will. Cessationists have a notion of spiritual gifts that if one ever, on any occasion, might heal or prophesy, they should be able always on every occasion to do so. And since everyone (me included) acknowledges that no one ministers in any miraculous gifting at this level of consistency and accuracy, cessationists can only conclude that such gifts ceased.

This, I insist, is an entirely wrong-headed and misleading understanding of these gifts. Not even Paul operated in his gifting in this manner. The more overtly supernatural or miraculous gifts, and especially the ones dependent on divine revelation (word of knowledge, word of wisdom, prophecy, discerning of spirits) are not permanent and residential, as if they are always present in a person and can be used at the will of the believer. They are, as I earlier argued, occasional and circumstantial. They are given by the sovereign good will of God according to his timing and purpose. They can only be exercised when he wills, not when we will.

So, the fact that no one who ever healed can always heal, or the fact that no one who ever prophesied can always prophesy, or the fact that no one who ever worked a miracle can always work a miracle, proves absolutely nothing about the cessation or perpetuity of such gifts. There is no need for a cessationist to deny the validity of miraculous gifts while affirming the validity of the miraculous since all instances of miracles, whether healing or revelatory words or the like, are subject to the sovereign will and providential oversight of God.

My first point, then, is this. Cessationists are drawing the wrong conclusion from the relative absence or alleged infrequency today (or in church history at large) of miraculous gifts. They were never under the control of the individual and were never designed by God to operate whenever we will or whenever we pray. Their relative absence or alleged infrequency is due to the intrinsic nature of the miraculous itself, not to any supposed purpose of God concerning the on-going validity or, conversely, cessation of the gifts Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10. If cessationists would only acknowledge the distinction between gifts that are residential and permanent (such as teaching or mercy or evangelism or leadership or exhortation) and those that are occasional and circumstantial (such as healing, word of knowledge, wisdom, miracles, faith, discerning of spirits), much of this debate would, I believe, simply go away.

Second, cessationists must be able to differentiate between what Paul calls the gift of “miracles” (literally, the “working of powers”) in 1 Corinthians 12:10 and the occurrence of a “miracle” which they seem happy to acknowledge can still occur in our day (and throughout church history). But what is the difference? You can’t respond or answer by saying, “The difference is between a gifted ‘person’ who always operates at will in this sort of supernatural power and the isolated occurrence of a ‘miracle’ that comes merely by the sovereign hand of God.” Why doesn’t this response work? There are two reasons.

The first reason is what I said above: there never was and never will be, as far as I can tell from Scripture, any person (aside from Jesus) who “always operates at will in this sort of supernatural power.”

The second reason concerns how the miracles that even cessationists admit do occur, actually occur. Here’s what I mean. Most cessationists would acknowledge that on occasion God heals the sick or perhaps performs a so-called “nature” miracle. But how does God do it? Or better still, through what means or instrumentality does he do it? Is it not in most instances through or in response to the prayers of God’s people? Is it not after and because the Elders have anointed a person with oil and prayed the prayer of faith (James 5)? Is it not typically, by some manner or other, through a human being who is seeking God, looking to God, and praying to God for precisely such a supernatural intervention?

I’m not suggesting that God never performs a miracle by fiat or in some unmediated way. Of course he does. But when it comes to healing or revelatory experiences in particular, it is most often through the impartation to a particular person or persons of a “gift” for a healing or a word of revelatory insight or some other expression of power.

I would simply ask you and other cessationists who say you believe in miracles (or that God can surely perform them beyond the time of the NT) to describe for me one that you’ve seen or heard of that occurred independently of Christians who were praying and seeking God for his supernatural power or were in some other way directly involved in the facilitation of that miracle. For every example you might cite, I’ve got ten where God did it through a human instrumentality. That, I believe, is what the “gift of miracles” (1 Cor. 12:10) is all about. It is about God, at his time and according to his purpose, imparting a gift or enablement to a particular person on a particular occasion to accomplish a particular purpose.

Perhaps the best illustration of what I’m getting at is found in Galatians 3:5. There Paul asks, “Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” Note two things in this text that apply to our discussion. First, it appears that God sovereignly, according to his will and timing, was performing miracles among the Galatians. Some might think that this is what even cessationists concede can and on occasion happens throughout the course of church history. No special spiritual “gift” is required for God to do this.

But I’m persuaded that this is, in fact, yet another reference to the “gift” of miracles. Observe what Paul says concerning how or by what means such miracles are performed: “by hearing with faith”! The Galatians (and we, too, I believe) hear the Word of God, the Spirit whom God gives to us awakens belief in its truths and deepens faith in who God is and what he can do, to which God then responds by imparting or bestowing a “gift” to work a miracle or display his supernatural presence.

Second, that Paul has in view here precisely the same phenomenon (the “gift of miracles”) that he describes in 1 Corinthians 12:10 and again in 12:28-29 is evident from the language he employs. In Galatians 3:5, the phrase “works miracles” is a translation of the Greek energon dunameis, which is virtually the same terminology Paul uses in 1 Cor. 12:10 to describe the spiritual “gift” of miracles (energemata dunameon; in 12:28-29, where his description of the gifts is abbreviated, he uses dunameis alone). Does God “work miracles” among us, or do gifted individuals “work miracles” among us? Yes! God “works miracles” among us by awakening faith in his Word, in conjunction with or as a result of which he imparts a gracious divine enabling (i.e., a charisma, a gift) so that the believer can “work miracles” among us.

So, if you are willing to recognize that this is the nature of the “gift of miracles” as well as the nature of gifts of healings and revelatory experiences, etc., then what’s the point or value in denying that such “gifts” continue in the life of the church all the while you concede that miracles still occur? I also believe this is why it is indeed legitimate for continuationists to appeal to examples such as we find in the ministry of Augustine to support their view.

The bottom line is that I think you and other cessationists continue to draw this distinction because you don’t want to be forced into a theological corner where you are found doubting or, worse still, denying that the omnipotent God of the universe “can” do something. You want to be able to justify praying for a miracle when someone is sick, and to be able to account for what happened to Spurgeon, for example, and other similar instances without conceding this debate to the continuationist.

Thus, I simply don’t see this as a helpful or biblical distinction. I believe that God continues to bestow the “gift of miracles” much in the same way he most likely did in the early church: rarely, occasionally, and most often (but not always) through a particular Christian person who was seeking God, believing God, and praying for a particular supernatural breakthrough. I believe God continues to bestow “gifts of healings” much in the same way he most likely did in the early church: rarely, occasionally, etc., etc.

And so, this oft-heard insistence by cessationists that miracles can certainly occur but not through the “gift of miracles” or that healings can occur but not through the “gifts of healings,” is a distinction without a difference that serves only to cloud and confuse people in this debate. May it forever cease (see, I too am a “cessationist” of sorts!).

Well, that’s enough. I’ve enjoyed the dialogue. I hope our readers have been encouraged and edified by this series of blog posts. Blessings to all,

SamSimilar Posts:

• Why I am Not Charismatic (Part 6): Excursus: It's Not About Miracles!
• Why I Am/Not Charismatic: What Does it Mean to Be Charismatic? Response – C Michael Patton
• Why I Am/Not Charismatic: My Story Response – Sam Storms
• Why I Am/Not Charismatic: What Are Spiritual Gifts? Response – Sam Storms
• Why I am Not Charismatic (Part 5): An Argument from History

However, while I believe that the Bible is inerrant, I do not believe this is the linchpin of Evangelicalism, much less Christianity. While I agree with most of the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy, I think I disagree with it when it says that one cannot deny inerrancy without incurring “grave consequences” on his or herself (XIX). “Grave” is a very strong word. Too strong, in my opinion. Nevertheless, inerrancy is important because it speaks to the nature of Scripture being in harmony with the nature of God. I have looked enough into this issue to believe that I probably won’t ever change my stance here. It is one of those issues that is pretty well settled in my theology.

However, if I were to find something that I believed was a legitimate error in the Scripture, I don’t think my faith would be affected too much. Why? Because the central truths of the Christian faith are not affected by inerrancy. I come across so many people who think that if they expose one error in the Bible, the entire Christian worldview will fall apart like the proverbial house of cards. This is simply not true.

Consider this illustration that Mike Licona gives: There were 712 survivors when the Titanic sank. These survivors were divided as to how the ship went down. Some said it broke in half, then went down. Others said it went down intact. There is a contradiction in testimony, right? So what do we do with this contradiction? Of all the options, there is no sane person out there who would say, “Well, since we don’t have consistent testimony as to what condition the Titanic was in when it sank, we have to give up our belief that it sunk altogether.” Yet that is exactly what some skeptics propose we do with the story of Christ and his resurrection. Every testimony that we have in the Gospels says that Christ died on a cross and rose from the grave. Just because we may have some conflicting accounts as to the details does not mean we abandon the consistent testimony about the main event.

Now, I believe that what most people see as conflicting accounts in the Gospels only strengthen their testimony, since the accounts show that they are looking at the same event, from different perspectives, without collaboration among the authors. However, even if they do conflict here and there, there is no rational reason to deny the resurrection of Christ any more than we would deny the sinking of the Titanic due to conflicting accounts.

I think this is a fundamental principle that inerrantists such as myself need to be more vocal in conceding in today’s world. I find many people who wear inerrancy on their sleeve just as prominently as historicity. This can get us into trouble as we tie inerrancy too closely with the Gospel. Historicity is the issue. Did the central events actually occur? If they did, Christianity is true, no matter how many angels John says were at the tomb, not matter whether Abiathar was high priest at the time of David, no matter what Pilate wrote on the sign above the cross, and no matter how Judas died. I believe in inerrancy because I believe in the historicity of the central Gospel message. I don’t believe in historicity because I believe in inerrancy. Christianity is true if Christ historically rose from the dead, period. It is false if he historically did not rise from the dead, period.

Think about this for a moment. I have argued that the central truths of Christianity are not dependent on inerrancy. But I would also say Christianity is not dependent on the inspiration of the Bible either. In other words, the Bible does not even have to be inspired for Christianity to be true. We could just think of the eyewitness accounts in what we call the New Testament as twenty-seven ancient historical documents. Being such, we could simply evaluate their truthfulness like we would any other historical document. If the document passes the tests of history, then that which it records (the resurrection of Jesus) is true. Hence, Christianity is true. No inspiration needed.

In fact (to take this one step further), we don’t even necessarily need the Scripture at all for Christianity to be true. Think about it. What if God had not given us the twenty-seven New Testament books? Would that mean that historically, Christ did not rise from the dead? Of course not. Why? Because Christ’s advent and resurrection did not happen because the Bible says they did, the Bible says they did because historically, they happened. But what if we did not have the New Testament? Well, we would be in good company, as there have been innumerable Christians throughout the history of the church who did not have access to the New Testament. How did the earliest church receive the Gospel? Through preaching, unwritten tradition, and generally reliable hearsay. God could have used any number of means to communicate the advent, death, and resurrection of his Son other than pen and paper. Direct prophecy, dreams, angelic encounters, or even the mouths of donkeys are all possible means by which the central truths of the Christian faith could have been preserved. The point is that Christianity is not dependent upon an inerrant text.

Again, having said all of this, I do believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. I love the Scripture because I love God. But I worship Christ, not the Bible. I thank God that he gave us an inerrant Bible. I believe that having an inerrant text can make us more confident in not only the central truths, but also the details of God’s will. I do believe that inerrancy is important and that we should continue to argue with some energy that the text is true in everything it teaches. However, this energy needs to be residual energy. Our primary energy needs to focus on the primary issue: did Jesus rise from the dead historically. All dominoes fall from there.

Inerrancy is important, but not cardinal. And while it may be a defining characteristic of Evangelicalism, it is not the defining characteristic of Evangelicalism.

(However, I must admit something: I probably would never hire someone to be a fellow at Credo House who did not believe that the Bible was true in everything it teaches. Maybe this is an inconsistency. I don’t know.)Similar Posts:

• The Danger of Inerrancy
• The Danger of Inerrancy
• "If the Bible is Not Inerrant, then Christianity is False" . . . And Other Stupid Statements
• Evidence for the Resurrection: Part 2 – External Evidence
• A Possible Error in the Bible?

The only real debate in which the virgin birth played a central role was the translation of Isaiah 7:14 by the RSV (Revised Standard Version) in 1952.  The translators rendered the Hebrew term alma (עַלְמָה) as “young woman.”  Conservatives railed against the translation as trying to discredit the virgin birth.  But in point of fact, while the term may refer to a virgin, that is not a necessary nuance of alma.  When the translators of the RSV translated the Matthean passage citing Isaiah 7:14, Matthew chose the Greek term parthenos (παρθένος), which does mean virgin.[2]  Clearly Matthew understood the conception of Christ to have been both virginal and a divine miracle.

The fact of the virgin birth is key in understanding the importance afforded Mary in both the Catholic and Orthodox communions. The Catholic Church has taught the immaculate conception of Mary (that she was born without original sin) to further theologically guard the sinlessness of Jesus, i.e., that he was born into unfallen Adamic humanity.  While Protestants have eschewed the Immaculate Conception, they too have asserted that Jesus inherited unfallen humanity from his mother.

 In general[3], throughout the centuries, only pagan critics of Christianity and rationalists have denied that Jesus was born of Mary without a human father.  Discussions of the virgin birth over the past two centuries have fallen largely in the realm of apologetic defenses of its reality.[4]

For example, Charles Briggs (who, in 1893, was convicted by the Northern Presbyterian Church of denying inerrancy) saw the virgin birth as a touchstone doctrine, the denial of which put one on the proverbial “slippery slope” towards theological apostasy.

It is not merely the virgin birth that is in ques­tion, in the interest of the more complete hu­manity of our Lord; it is also the doctrine of original sin and the sinlessness of Jesus; it is also his bodily resurrec­tion and ascension. . .  It is the whole nature of the atonement and Christian salvation with the doc­trine of sacrifice and propitiation.  All these doc­trines are hanging in the balance in those minds which doubt or deny the virgin birth.  Those who give up the virgin birth will be compelled by logical and irresistible im­pulse eventually to give up all of these. [5]

Indeed, Briggs desired to have A. C. McGiffert, his former student and later President of Union Seminary New York, fired from his post at Union for denying the Virgin Birth.[6]

During the 1930s, J. Gresham Machen published his magisterial The Virgin Birth of Christ, a volume that has never been equaled in comprehensiveness and scholarship on the topic. It too was apologetic in nature.

During the era of the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, the Virgin Birth attained a quasi-official touchstone status as one of the five fundamentals of the faith.  The rationale was that accepting the virgin birth was a quick and easy test to see if someone believed in miracles.

Surprisingly, despite its professed importance as being foundational to the Christian faith, relatively little profound theological reflection has taken place regarding the virgin birth.  In fact, prominent evangelical theologian Millard Erickson (who does accept the truth of the virgin birth) denies its necessity, as does Wayne Grudem (who also accepts the doctrine), to name just two. Erickson says,

But, we must ask, is not the virgin birth important in some more specific way? Some have argued that the doctrine is indispensable to the incarnation. Without the virgin birth there would have been no union of God and man.³⁸[7]If Jesus had been simply the product of a normal sexual union of man and woman, he would have been only a human being, not a God-man. But is this really true? Could he not have been God and a man if he had had two human parents, or none? Just as Adam was created directly by God, so Jesus could also have been a direct special creation. And accordingly, it should have been possible for Jesus to have two human parents and to have been fully the God-man nonetheless. To insist that having a human male parent would have excluded the possibility of deity smacks of Apollinarianism, according to which the divine Logos took the place of one of the normal components of human nature (the soul). But Jesus was fully human, including everything that both a male and a female parent would ordinarily contribute. In addition, there was the element of deity. What God did was to supply, by a special creation, both the human component ordinarily contributed by the male (and thus we have the virgin birth) and, in addition, a divine factor (and thus we have the incarnation). The virgin birth requires only that a normal human being was brought into existence without a human male parent. This could have occurred without an incarnation, and there could have been an incarnation without a virgin birth. Some have called the latter concept “instant adoptionism,” since presumably the human involved would have existed on his own apart from the addition of the divine nature. The point here, however is that, with the incarnation occurring at the moment of conception or birth, there would never have been a moment when Jesus was not both fully human and fully divine. In other words, his being both divine and human did not depend on the virgin birth^[8]

Clearly, the virgin birth is not a central part of the apostolic proclamation, but I find the lack of theological reflection on the virgin birth to be remarkable. In checking several conservative systematic theologies, I found one, Louis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology (which for half a century was the standard) that didn’t even mention the virgin birth!

I also tend to react to the type of argumentation that Erickson and Grudem put forth – that the issue is not what God might have done, but what he has revealed that he has done - as being specious and pointless at best, and dangerous at worst, since it involves ripping the doctrine out of its larger Christological context.

Biblical Evidence

T. F. Torrance, the premier English speaking theologian of the late 20^th century, in his posthumously published Incarnation, The Person and Life of Jesus Christ[9] stands as one who breaks the pattern.  Torrance argues that while the virgin birth is indeed only mentioned by Matthew and Luke, if we take the time to look more closely we find the virgin birth, lurking beneath the surface in Mark, John and Paul.

For example, while Luke speaks of Jesus as the son of Joseph, Mark in relating the same event refrains from this identification, and instead identifies Jesus in a very non-Jewish way: as the “son of Mary”[10] Luke has already established the virgin birth whereas Mark has not mentioned it.  It appears that Mark is deliberately avoiding any reference to Joseph. Likewise Mark (along with Matthew and Luke) quotes Jesus as saying of the Messiah, “David himself calls him Lord; so how can he be his son?” “How can Jesus be Lord and son of David—that is, how can a divine Christ be born of human stock?”[11]

Moving on to John, 1:13 which has historically been translated: “Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (KJV, ESV, NASB, ASV, etc.) but has more recently been translated “children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God”( NIV, NET, etc.).   According to normal Greek usage the recent translation is more accurate, because the term used by John is andros, i.e. male or husband as opposed to anthropos, i.e man(kind), humanity. But this raises the question: What in the world does this mean? As the text is translated it seems to make no sense.

There is also a textual problem in the verse: should the “who” be singular or plural. Without going into too much detail, the early church fathers all cited this “who” as being singular.  In fact, Tertullian, the late 2^nd early 3^rd century theologian and apologist tells us that the gnostic teacher Valentinius corrupted the text at this point changing the singular to a plural.[12]  Such a change was theologically motivated to get away from the idea of the virgin birth! If indeed the text is to be read as a singular rather than a plural, then it makes much more sense. The  “who” refers to The Word /Jesus, “who was born . . . by God.”  T. F. Torrance says, “If the text is to be read in the singular, then we have in the fourth Gospel quite explicit direct reference to the virgin birth of Jesus.”[13] 

Turning our attention to Paul, we again find the virgin birth behind his language in Romans 5 with his Adam-Christ parallel.   In discussing the origin of both Adam and Jesus, Paul uses the term gínomai (γίνομαι, to become, or come into existence).  He does not use the normal Greek terminology for human birth: gennáo (γεννάω).  Like Adam, Jesus comes into existence: he is not generated.  But while the first Adam came into existence from earth, the second Adam’s existence is from heaven, “sent of God, he came into existence of woman, but from heaven.”^[14]

In Galatians 4 we see the same sharp distinction.  Three times in this chapter Paul uses the term gennáo (γεννάω) speaking of human birth. ^[15]But when he speaks of Jesus’s earthly origin he eschews the uses of gennáo (γεννάω) and opts again for gínomai (γίνομαι).^[16]This would appear to be a conscious effort on the part of the Apostle to clearly distinguish the method of Jesus’ origin/birth from that of all other humans born since Adam’s  “coming into existence.”  While Bloesch suggests that Paul does not know of the virgin birth,[17] it seems far more likely that in the closely reasoned passages of Romans 5 and Galatians 4 that explicit mention of what seems assumed by the very wording Paul adopts, would add topic that is on the surface extraneous to his argument.

The Doctrine of the Virgin Birth[18]

Preliminaries

• The Virgin Birth is not a theory of explanation

We do not think of the virgin birth properly if we understand it to be a theory explaining the incarnation. It is rather an historical fact indicating what happened. We recognize that the source of the virgin birth is an act of creative divine grace that took place within our human existence. We must draw the distinction between apprehending the reality of the work of God in the birth of Christ and comprehending it.

The virgin birth has two sides to it, one side visible and the other invisible: Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary and conceived by the Holy Spirit. This presents us with two questions: What? and How? It is at this point we see clearly that there is no natural understanding of the how that corresponds to the what. The how: the work of the Holy Spirit is an in-breaking of God into our human nature.

In a very real sense the virgin birth is related to God’s creative activity of Genesis. By means of his creative act the creator himself has stepped into his creation and is re-creating fallen humanity.

When confronted with the issue of the virgin birth we as Westerners who think in scientific categories immediately ask questions that are biological in nature seeking a scientific explanation.  I have in my younger years engaged many times in these kinds of discussions/debates:

“Procreation requires both a male and a female.”

“Scientists can manipulate an egg to start the process of development.”

“That may be true, but then the egg always develops into a female because there is no Y-chromosome.”

“But the Holy Spirit must have somehow supplied the X-chromosome.”

And so goes the conversation. Another variant on these types of debates is as follows:

“Jesus had no human father. He was born through a special work of the Holy Spirit and God is his father.”

“So Jesus is both God and man? Doesn’t that mean that he is some kind of a demigod like the children of the gods in Greek mythology?– That he is half man and half God?”

“Christianity has always insisted, on the basis of what the Bible says that he was fully God and fully man.”

“100% God and 100% man and we have just one man?  That is really bad math!”

Again, so goes the conversation. The problem is that in focusing on the mechanism of the virgin birth and trying to understand how the Holy Spirit accomplished it, we lose sight of the theological reality because biological questions yield only biological answers or in this case non-answers.

In the case of the virgin birth this is a unique event in which God chose to act and take on our humanity, our creatureliness and although he was not a creature he voluntarily bound himself for eternity to our created fleshly state.

It is a new creative act, but unlike the original creation this creation does not take place out of nothing (ex nihilo) but from within our human existence.

•  Virgin Birth is not to be separated from the mystery of Christ

The Virgin Birth cannot be understood alone and apart from the mystery of the union of deity and humanity in the one person of Jesus Christ. It is a sign that God is doing something . . .  something that is mysterious, something that can be apprehended but not comprehended. It is a sign of the union of deity and humanity and of God’s radical identification with the crown of his creation.

• The Virgin Birth is not to be separated from the resurrection

The Virgin Birth must be seen in conjunction with the Resurrection as concrete signs bracketing these 33 years of history in which God himself has acted in incomprehensible  solidarity with us, sharing with us on this earth a common humanity  while  at the same time sharing it  in such a way that by his sharing in our humanity we are liberated from the bondage, decay,  corruption and  sin, and as a result freed us to life from the bondage of that common humanity and now participate in the new humanity of Jesus Christ, the last Adam.

As Thomas Torrance has said:

The birth of Jesus tells us that God acts in Jesus Christ in such a way that his birth does not fall under the power of man, under the arbitrary forces in human history, or under the causal determinisms of this world, but that in his birth God the son freely and sovereignly enters into them from without. The resurrection tells us that the life and person of Jesus are not held under the tyrant forces of this world, that though he was born of a woman and made under the law, Jesus Christ was not dominated and mastered by our fallen flesh in its judgment, but is triumphant over all, in achieving his redeeming purpose of reconciling our humanity to fellowship with God.[19]

•  The Virgin Birth and empty tomb as pointers to the mystery of Christ

The virgin birth acts as a pointer to the mystery of God’s self-revelation within the life of fallen humanity, and that this revelation veils itself in our humanity.

The resurrection of Christ points to the fact that God unveils himself, reveals himself within human life.

Positive teaching

• The reality of Jesus’ humanity

As 21st century Western Christians we often think of the virgin birth as a sign of Jesus deity. From the perspective of the biblical writers in the early church it signified something very different – his true humanity. Even within the lifetime of the apostles we find professing Christians denying the humanity of Jesus. This is one of the key reasons for the writing of John’s first epistle: members of the church were denying that Christ had “come in the flesh.” As the church moved out of its early Jewish worldview and confronted the Greco Roman world steeped in dualism particularly a dualism that saw the spiritual in stark opposition to the physical and who scoffed at the idea that God become man, the virgin birth was truly offensive to the point that it had to be rejected. The apostle calls this rejection “the spirit of antichrist.”

Jesus did not appear on the scene full-grown and out of nowhere. Even a cursory reading of the Gospels makes clear that he was a Jew, from Nazareth, one whose parentage and relatives were well-known. The explicit accounts of the virgin birth given by both Matthew and Luke make it clear that he is the son of Mary. His birth is unique, but he is human.

The addition of the words born of the Virgin Mary to the earliest creeds were in direct opposition to the claims of the docetic teachers (prevalent during the late first and second century) who argued that Christ only appeared (dokew, δοκέω ) to be human while in reality he was a spiritual being without physical substance. On the other hand the virgin birth also testifies to the fact in uniting himself with humanity the second person of the Trinity did not simply come upon an already existent man — that is God did not simply adopt a human, who then became the “Son of God” but rather vitally united himself with humanity.[20] The virgin birth also gives the lie to any teaching that would make God and man co-equal partners in redemption. God joined himself with true and complete humanity by his own sovereign decision. Of course humanity is involved, that is the contribution of Mary but as has been said humanity “is the predicate not the subject, not Lord of the event.”[21]

• Disqualification of human capabilities

The virgin birth is an act of divine grace coming into humanity but in such a way that it denies any possibility of an approach of man to God beginning inside humanity itself.

The virgin birth signals a move from God to man not man to God. Human powers and abilities are not in play. The fact that Mary was a virgin disqualifies her from active participation in the even the conception of Jesus. The incarnation is not a cooperative effort between God and man. It is in no sense a product of human activity. With this in mind John’s statement in chapter 1 verse 13 of his gospel makes sense. The birth of Jesus the Messiah marks a unique entry of eternity into time.  As such the virgin birth marks off this supernatural event is utterly unique. The virgin birth is a signal of an internal unconditional act of pure grace on the part of God apart from any human activity.

•  A re-creation out of the old creation

The virgin birth is a creative act of God which is in a real sense parallel to the original creation.  But this creative act has a specific focus. It is not a creation ex nihilo (out of nothing) as was the original creation; it was a creation ex virgine and signifies both a new creation in one sense but a re-creation in another.  It is the fountainhead of a new humanity out of the old humanity and a humanity that now participates in the very life of the triune God.

Western Christendom has from its early centuries insisted that the human nature of Jesus was unfallen, because only as a person with an unfallen human nature as well as being a person who had actually  never sinned could he have been the perfect sacrifice. Over the past century numerous New Testament scholars and theologians have challenged this assumption on both exegetical and theological grounds.   Exegetically we find in Luke, in Paul and particularly in Hebrews language that asserts that Jesus’ humanity was like ours in all ways, but that he never sinned.  Theologically if Jesus’ humanity was unfallen, he certainly was qualified to be the perfect sacrifice, but his humanity did not touch our humanity in its fallen condition.  The patristic dictum “that which he did not assume, he did not heal” expresses the ancient faith of the church—that Jesus assumed a humanity like our own and sanctified it from within through his divine union with it.  Luke says that he grew (the Greek term here,  prokoptw, προκόπτω,  speaks of hammering hot iron on an anvil) in favor with God and man. This sanctification of fallen humanity involved a lifelong struggle of beating back, blow by blow the fallen condition which was twisted and in opposition to God and required a constant reliance upon the Father through the Spirit throughout his life.

The result of this process was that Jesus became the Last Adam who put to death Adamic humanity reconciling it from within in his death and was raised the progenitor of a recreated humanity. This recreated humanity participates in this new humanity of Christ.

• The setting aside of human autonomy

We have mentioned this above but to reiterate.  The virgin birth is a sovereign act of Almighty God which bypasses all human autonomy. Had Joseph been Jesus’ human father, Jesus would have indeed been born of a husband’s will, but Joseph was in fact left “sitting on the bench,” so to speak. He is not consulted until after the divine work has begun. His only part is to provide human care for Jesus and his mother. He excercises no autonomy, he like Mary adopts the role of a servant in the great drama of the incarnation.

The necessity of the virgin birth does not put any stigma on marriage, human sexuality and birth. The entry of God incarnate into the human condition sanctifies human nature and joins it to God in his purity.  Mary herself was not immaculately conceived but she too was sanctified through her calling as the mother of our Lord.

• ·The Virgin Birth, the pattern for grace, the model of faith

The virgin birth is a sign (semion) of the gracious act of God, which becomes a pattern for understanding God’s working in grace.  It is God who takes the initiative through the appearance of the Angel Gabriel to Mary announcing to her that she has been elected by God in his grace for this unique task. She receives the word, the announcement and believes. But this belief is not of herself but of the strength given by the Lord—and for that she is blessed (not because of her virginity).[22]

Mary becomes the pattern for our faith: 

  . . . it is not of our self-will or free will that we are born from above,  ‘But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become the children of God.’ Here there is a ‘become’ dependent on the  ‘become’ of the Word become flesh.’, grounded in it and derivative from it..  What happened once and for all, in utter uniqueness in Jesus Christ happens in every instance if rebirth into Christ. . . . Just as in the birth of Jesus there was no preceding action on our part, or human co-operation, such as the co-operation  between a human father and human mother. Just as there was no prior human activity there, so in our salvation and our knowledge of God . . .[there is] no human presupposition, no Pelagian, semi-Pelagian or synergistic activity.[23]

• Demonstration of the virgin birth only through the Spirit

The virgin birth like its twin doctrine, the resurrection, is not demonstrable by the rationalistic canons of historiography. These canons rule out a priori the possibility of the in-breaking of God into the created order to work miracles. The only demonstration possible is through the work of the Holy Spirit (see 1Cor 2:1).

The virgin birth has archetypal importance for all other acts of grace. While it is true that the reality of the virgin birth is not an explicit part of the apostolic proclamation, it forms a vital place in the substructure upon which the apostolic proclamation and all other Christian doctrines stand.

• The necessity and importance of the virgin birth

While even some evangelical theologians seem to relativize the importance of the virgin birth (see above), it is vital to note that denials of the virgin birth (and/or the resurrection)  have historically inevitably been accompanied by heresies that undercut an orthodox understanding of the person of the incarnate Christ. In other words the sign of the virgin birth cannot be separated from the thing signified, a true incarnation of God in human flesh.  Attempts to do so empty the Incarnation of its content and with it the possibility of salvation which is anchored fully in the grace of God.

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• Heresies: Nestorianism – A Divided Christ
• Could Jesus Have Gotten a Math Problem Wrong?
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• Why Didn’t Christ Know the Time of His Coming? or “How Can Christ Really Relate to Us?”

I remember in seminary, sitting under Dr. John Hannah. He was out of this world (although some would say, “No, Michael, you mean ‘out to lunch’!”). Students would purchase a special “Hannah quote book” just to write down the “Hannahisms.” There were so many. The things he would say… The paradigms he would cause you to question… The language he would use! Let’s just say this: everything was unexpected. One day during class, we were talking about a certain heretic in church history. As a green student of theology, all I knew was that I hated heretics. Whoever was the “heretic” of the day, he was the anti-hero. The self-righteous theologian in me was glad that he was burning in hell. However, Hannah said something that did not fit in my puzzle. He suggested (even implied?) that this certain heretic would be in heaven. A heretic in heaven? He said that this heretic was “just doing the best he could.” He said he loved Jesus! What? Quickly, the students raised their hands. “Ummm…do you mean that this heretic was saved?”

Believe it or not, I have been called a heretic many times. The charges vary. One time it was simply because I did not believe someone else was a heretic! (In this case, I think it was Rick Warren). Don’t worry too much. I have about twelve more layers of skin than I used to have. Whether it has been my view of Bible, the Trinity, my stance on Roman Catholics and their eternal destiny, or my understanding of Christian freedom, I get in trouble with someone. To someone, I am always a heretic. Don’t get smug. So are you! Sometimes it will be because people think you are too liberal. Sometimes they will think you are too conservative. I have even had my orthodoxy questioned because of my sympathy for those who doubt their faith. There are always going to be people to the left of you and to the right of you. There are always going to be those people who think your beliefs and teachings are destructive. There are always going to be people who believe you are doing more harm than good. There are always going to be people who think you are a heretic.

But here is my question today: How does one determine if someone is a heretic? What is a heretic anyway? And, most importantly, can a heretic be saved?

The word “heretic” comes from the Greek hairetikos. It speaks of causing divisions. It is used in Titus 3:10 for those who divisively fracture the church. Throughout church history, it became a word used to describe those who divided the church due to doctrinal departures.

Here is a definition of heretic/heresy that I have used elsewhere: “A taught opinion, belief, or doctrine that is in variance to an established cardinal Christian belief. In Christianity, a heresy can have a historic value (more serious) or traditional value (less serious). In other words, a belief can be considered heretical to Baptists (e.g. paedeobaptism), but it is not heretical in the historic sense. To be a historic heresy, it would have to be in variance to that which has been believed by the majority of Christians of all places and all times and touch on a cardinal issue (e.g. the deity of Christ).”

And a heresy is not just an error. It is more serious than that. The puritan writer Thomas Adams distinguishes between mere error and heresy:

“There is difference between error, schism, and heresy. Error is when one holds a strong opinion alone; schism, when many consent in their opinion; heresy runs further, and contends to root out the truth. Error offends, but separates not; schism offends and separates; heresy offends, separates, and rageth… . . . Error is weak, schism strong, heresy obstinate. Error goes out, and often comes in again; schism comes not in, but makes a new church; heresy makes not a new church, but no church. . . . Error is reproved and pitied, schism is reproved and punished, heresy is reproved and excommunicated. Schism is in the same faith, heresy makes another faith. Though they be thus distinguished, yet without God’s preventing grace, one will run into another.”

Because many use the words heresy and heretic in a cavalier way, they have begun to lose their value. At least once a day, it seems, I hear someone calling someone else a heretic for something that is not really deserving of the designation. These will say someone is a heretic for being too strong of a Calvinist, for believing theistic evolution, for saying that drinking alcohol is not a sin, for denying inerrancy, or for being charismatic.

Calling a person the “h” word should be done with great fear and deliberateness. I don’t think we should call a moratorium on the word just because it can be very offensive or because it is so often misused. I think it can carry with it an important rebuke with the implications of grave consequences. However, here are the qualifications I suggest:

Distinguish between two types of heresy which people reference

Traditional heretic: those who depart to some degree from the faith of a particular tradition (e.g., Catholic, Protestant, Reformed, Dispensationalist, etc.) or denomination (Baptist, Anglican, Methodist, etc.). Actually, this type of departure should never be labeled “heresy.”

Historic heretic: Those who depart from the faith with regard to a belief that has been held by Christianity from the beginning (i.e., an orthodox belief). There can be two different types of historic heresy:

1) Departure from an essential belief (which should be limited to the person and work of Christ);
2) Departure from a non-essential belief.

In this case, we may do as some and say that only a historic departure from an essential or cardinal belief qualifies as a “heresy.”  A “heretic” is one who not only believes in the heresy, but actively and progressively teaches the heresy.

If this is the case, then a departure from a non-essential historic belief might be labeled “heterodoxy” (“different teaching”) rather than “heresy.” Heterodoxy, while bad, is not as bad as heresy.

Here is how I would designate some common errors:

Modalism (denies the distinction between persons in the Trinity): Heresy – any departure from the basic historic definition of the Trinity would make it into my heresy book.

Open Theism (denies that God is transcendent to time and, therefore, does not know the future): Heterodoxy – to deny God’s transcendence in favor of immanence is a departure from the church’s understanding about God, but I don’t see a belief in God’s timeless transcendence as being central to the faith.

Preterism: (believes that the second coming already happened and that we are living in the New Heaven and New Earth): Heterodoxy – definitely outside of any accepted historic eschatology and borders very close to dismantling the Gospel (i.e. what’s the good news if redemption is not complete?). Many would think it goes beyond heterodoxy because of this. They may be right. I am not sure here.

Universalism: (believes that all will eventually be saved): Heresy – denies the need for the proclamation of the Gospel, thereby completely replacing its hope with a false hope.

Annihilationism: (believes that hell will eventually be vacated with all those who reject God ceasing to exist): Heterodoxy – outside of what the church has generally always accepted about the duration of hell, but I don’t think it is destructive to the essence of the Gospel.

People can advocate heresy in a few ways:

1. Ignorance – some people have simply never been exposed to the orthodox teaching about a particular issue. They need to be educated.

2. Misguidance – some people have been taught wrongly their whole life. They need to be corrected.

3. Obstinance- some people have been taught the truth, but still refuse to conform their thinking accordingly. They need to be rebuked.

When one obstinately believes and teaches something contrary to the essence of Christian orthodoxy, he is a heretic. Someone who is ignorant or misguided is not.

Can heretics be saved?

I don’t know if I want to always connect salvation with orthodoxy. I don’t know how to always disconnect it either! Many people ask this question: What heresy is damnable, evidencing that the person is not saved? I don’t really like that question. Dwight Pentecost used to say that we are all entitled to just one pet heresy. That is Dwight Pentecost from Dallas Theological Seminary saying that! I do believe that one can be a saved heretic. I think we all are saved heretics to some degree. But we need to understand that our “pet heresy” cannot come in an area that is central to the core Gospel message…so be careful which pet heresy you choose! A denial of personal sinfulness, for example, necessarily and completely makes the Gospel ineffective in one’s life. A denial of salvation through Christ necessarily and completely makes the Gospel ineffective in one’s life. In the end, it is the act of unrepentance and unbelief in Christ (who he is and what he did) that keeps us from God, not whether or not our doctrine is perfect. However, I don’t have all this worked out by any means. I have never met anyone who does. Ironically, I don’t know of an historically “orthodox” position on what makes a heresy and which heresies are ultimately damnable.

All heresies are terrible. All need rebuke. While I think that all Christians are, to some degree, saved heretics, we dare not find our heresy in those areas in or around the heart of the Gospel.Similar Posts:

• Heretics
• Calling someone a heretic—thoughtfully!
• Are You Orthodox or Heretic?
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