The Decree of Pope St. Gelasius – The Liturgical Joke of the Federal Vision

April 17, 2010 4 Comments

By: Jay Dyer

Protestants are generally clueless when it comes to the canon of Scripture. Even the best of them act as if the Bible dropped out of heaven into their academic circles, as God, of course, needs their rigorous scientific exegesis. But what’s the real problem with this? The problem is that the Protestants have taken the Bible out of its proper context – that of the Liturgy. And, for all you Federal Visionaries, the Church already has apostolic liturgies – we don’t need you inventing and fabricating your own. But at least the FV guys are moving in the right direction.

As I’ve stated many times in debates and discussions, the formation of the canon, whether new or old Testament, cannot be separated from the context that gave those books meaning – public liturgy. The only way we know the authorship of the texts is from Apostolic Tradition, as I’ve demonstrated many times, and the milieu of that Tradition was the public readings at the local liturgy. Scholars across various denominations have known this for years. This growth in the knowledge of God via liturgy and sacraments is called “mystagogy.” Eastern Orthodox theologian, Metropolitan Isaiah of Denver, explains:

“Strictly speaking, there never was a Bible in the Orthodox Church, at least not as we commonly think of the Bible as a single volume book we can hold in our hand. Since the beginning of the Church, from the start of our liturgical tradition, there has never been a single book in an Orthodox church we could point to as the Bible. Instead, the various books of the Bible are found scattered throughout several service books located either on the Holy Altar itself, or at the chanter’s stand. The Gospels (or their pericopes) are complied into a single volume — usually bound in precious metal and richly decorated — placed on the Holy Altar.” Read more of this post

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Response to a Calvinist on “Fallen Nature”

April 17, 2010 6 Comments

By: Jay Dyer

A Calvinist has asked: how can Christ assume a fallen nature and not be sinful?

 
In Calvinism, the tendency is to say that sin is actually in our nature, almost as a kind of substance, giving it ontological status.  The answer to this lies in the Catholic nature/grace distinction and our view that sin is negation and non-being. For us, sin is, and can only be an act of the will, as 1 John 3:4, 7, says–it’s transgression of the law–an act of the human will.  It’s not a state of being, as in Calvinism.  For the Calvinist, nature is inherently evil and passed on now, due to the fall. This is flat-out Manichaean.  It’s also why Calvinists end up hating creation and images–God cannot have anything to do with matter.
In fact, I often use the question posed to me years ago from one’s reading of Berkhof: when we worship Christ, do we worship His human nature, or just the divine? When you asked me that, I answered as any good Calvinist would–as a Nestorian. I said we only worship the divine nature, as Rushdoony said.  However, the meaning of in the Incarnation according to Ephesus, which most Calvinists profess to hold, teaches that we worship Christ with one adoration which includes his flesh (see the quote below).  This means we do, in some sense, worship something created–namely the deified humanity of Christ.  This the Calvinists cannot grasp.  Read more of this post

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Athanasius Shows the Reformed to be Arian, Pt 2

April 15, 2010 1 Comment

Dramatist Paul Washer

[So stop trying to get the hypostases to split and damn one another, Protestants! -Jay]
Four Discourses Against The Arians, Discourse III:

54. Therefore as, when the flesh advanced, He is said to have advanced, because the body was His own, so also what is said at the season of His death, that He was troubled, that He wept, must be taken in the same sense. For they, going up and down , as if thereby recommending their heresy anew, allege; Behold, ‘He wept,’ and said, ‘Now is My soul troubled,’ and He besought that the cup might pass away; how then, if He so spoke, is He God, and Word of the Father? Yea, it is written that He wept, O God’s enemies, and that He said, ‘I am troubled,’ and on the Cross He said, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani,’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ and He besought that the cup might pass away. Thus certainly it is written; but again I would ask you (for the same rejoinder must of necessity be made to each of your objections ), If the speaker is mere man, let him weep and fear death, as being man; but if He is the Word in flesh (for one must not be reluctant to repeat), whom had He to fear being God? Or wherefore should He fear death, who was Himself Life, and was rescuing others from death? Or how, whereas He said, ‘Fear not him that kills the body Luke 12:4,’ should He Himself fear? And how should He who said to Abraham, ‘Fear not, for I am with you,’ and encouraged Moses against Pharaoh, and said to the son of Nun, ‘Be strong, and of a good courage,’ Himself feel terror before Herod and Pilate? Further, He who succours others against fear (for ‘the Lord,’ says Scripture, ‘is on my side, I will not fear what man shall do unto me ‘), did He fear governors, mortal men? Did He who Himself had come against death, feel terror of death? Is it not both unseemly and irreligious to say that He was terrified at death or hades, whom the keepers of the gates of hades saw and shuddered? But if, as you would hold, the Word was in terror wherefore, when He spoke long before of the conspiracy of the Jews, did He not flee, nay said when actually sought, ‘I am He?’ for He could have avoided death, as He said, ‘I have power to lay down My life, and I have power to take it again;’ and ‘No one takes it from Me. ‘ Read more of this post

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James White’s Open Trinitarian Error

April 14, 2010 Leave a comment

By: Jay Dyer

Granted, this is vintage Alpha Omega Ministries, and maybe James White has changed his position since then, and if so, I will gladly retract this post. However, as it stands, it’s pretty bad. White tries to explain the Trinity in this post and says much that is good (even citing St. Gregory of Nazianzus at one point), but due to an incomplete understanding of classical Trinitarian orthodoxy, he makes a fundamental error. White argues as follows:

“One of the characteristics of personal existence is will. Few would argue the point in relationship to the Father, as He obviously has a will. So too, the Son has a will, for he says to the Father in the Garden, “not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39) The ascription of will to the Persons indicates the ability to reason, to think, to act, to desire – all those things we associate with self-consciousness. As we shall see later, there is a difference between nature and person, and one of those differences is the will. Inanimate objects do not will; neither do animals. Part of the imago dei is the will itself.” Read more of this post

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Reflecting on Various Errors in Calvinsm

April 11, 2010 3 Comments

And Why I Wouldn’t Go Back

Many practical and observational reasons could also be given, but this will focus on the central doctrinal errors I see.

By: Jay Dyer

I believe that Calvinism is an erronrous system that, while containing much that is true, must be abandonded because of several serious flaws:

1. Sola Scriptura cannot be the foundation of true religion because the Protestant Bible has the wrong canon and therefore sola scriptura cannot be true (since it presupposes a correct canon). The process of the formation of the canon in the early church as described by myraids of Protestant scholars makes it also impossible, as well as ahistorical. Read more of this post

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More on the Manichaean Gnosis of Luther and Calvin

April 10, 2010 Leave a comment

By: Jay Dyer

Still trudging through the voluminous Books Against Eunomius by St. Gregory of Nyssa, there is a literally a treasure trove of lucid argumentation and points that can be applied to many modern errors, especially as they are found in “reformation Christianity.” Almost every other page finds St. Gregory refuting some error found in Luther and his heirs. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the Manichaean error often attributed to Luther and the reformed, who believe that human nature has itself become evil. This has been repeated ad nauseam by reformed friends and others I have debated, such as Turretinfan.

In their view, nature was good until the Fall, after which, it became alienated from God and totally depraved. Corruption, for them, is equivalent to evil itself, and evil is given a reality–evil becomes created being. Most of them would not affirm that God created evil as some kind of entity, but they hold that after the Fall, both angels (that fell) and men are now evil, inherently. Their very being–to its very core, is evil by nature. So, evil is given a substantial reality, and is in fact identified with God’s creation. Some Protestants may want to demur here, and insist that it’s not God’s creation, but how is it that nature “is evil,” with the is of identity, given that God is the author of nature?

Again, Luther argued in The Bondage of the Will that humanity had lost its capability for free will. Calvin said the human will could will nothing good before God, whatever “civil righteousness” might be performed. The point that these reformed guys still aren’t getting is that evil is not a thing: it is not a substance. Turretinfan tried to come up with some argument that I treated human nature as a “thing,” when this is his failure to understand enhypostatized–that human and divine nature only exists in the mode of persons. But this doesn’t make nature the same as or necessitate collapsing it into person as the reformed do, all day long. Read more of this post

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Christ’s Assumption of Fallen Nature: Calvinism’s Pelagianism

April 8, 2010 1 Comment

By: Jay Dyer

One of the best ways to distinguish the Protestant, and particularly the Calvinist,view of anthropology and soteriology is to consider the way both systems view pre-lapsarian man (or, man before the Fall). In classical Calvinist theology, man in the garden was not in need of any grace, but was placed by God under a so-called “covenant of works,” whereby he and his posterity could attain eternal life contingent “upon perfect and personal obedience to the law of God” (Westminster Confession of Faith, Ch. 7:2). It goes on to state that man failed in this covenant and was later given another, the covenant of grace.

The flaws in this view are manifold, not the least of which pertain to christology and soteriology as a whole. This will be fleshed out later, but remember: the Logos assumed human nature. In fact, as I will argue, and as many Catholic theologians since the time of the reformation have observed, the reformed Calvinistic view is actually a Pelagian view of pre-lapsarian man, the Calvinist and the Pelagian differing only in how they see the results of the fall. For Pelagius, as well as for the Calvinist, man did not need grace in the garden. In fact, as one well-read Calvinist recently told me, it all goes back to the garden, and “man did not need grace before the fall.” Read more of this post

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How Calvinistic (Created) Imputed Righteousness is Refuted

April 8, 2010 Leave a comment

By: Jay Dyer

Basically, the argument is that in the reformed view of imputation, the “righteousness” Christ earns via His keeping of the law is *not a righteousness based on His divine energy (since that is denied in reformed theology). So there are two options for what this “righteousness” He merits in fulfillment of the covenant of works is.

1) Generally, as conceived in reformed theology, it is the works proper to His human nature that are done perfectly in accord with the Law, which legal status is then transferred to us. In reformed theology, as you well know, this is the sole basis for our salvation. Christ is the new Adam who fulfills the covenant of works in which Adam failed. The problem is that all of these works must be the works of his humanity, and therefore are created and temporal – thus the righteousness He earns in this view is a created reality – similar to western Catholic notions of “created grace.” The works Christ does, then, are not strictly and solely the works of a single divine Person. This is seen clearly in the normative reformed doctrine of the Father’s damning of the Son, which is anti-Trinitarian to the core. Read more of this post

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Refutation of the Protestant Canon of Scripture, Pt. 1

April 6, 2010 3 Comments

By: Jay Dyer

Many reformed Protestant acquaintances have, on various occasions, sent me different challenges relating to the canon of Scripture. One of these was a list of arguments proposed by reformed theologian Dr. Ian Paisley against the canonicity of the 7 Deuterocanonical Books (or, the “Apocrypha,” from here on titled “DB”). Another challenger stated the traditional Orthodox arguments for the necessary involvement of a Spirit-led Church in the formation of a definitive canon is not a valid argument, since the Old Testament believer needed no extra-scriptural, infallible authorities, in any sense, to recognize the veracity of the OT books. This second objection is true in principle, but I have decided to kill two birds with one stone. If it can be shown that the Protestant canon of Scripture itself is erroneous, then both of these non-Orthodox challenges fall to the ground, since the question of who has the right canon is obviously prior to one’s right to quote this or that text.

Thus, if 2 Maccabees is part of Scripture, then prayer for the dead is a biblical doctrine: but almost no Protestant holds this doctrine, thus demonstrating for “sola scriptura” the implications of rejecting books of the Bible. It will be shown, then, that the Protestants are the real violators of the written Word of God, having cut out books that did not fit their preconceived notions. This is ironic, since Protestants are always accusing those that do not adhere to sola scriptura, of violating the “Word of God.” One reformed acquaintance of mine likes to think his grammatico-historico syntax arguments cannot be defeated. Rather than go into their maze of texts (as Tertullian recommends against), since they puts on a show of appearing to follow the written Word of God alone, this erroneous position will actually be shown to be violating the Word of God. Just as the Protestant follows a man-Luther-in hypocritically cutting out 7 books of the Word that didn’t fit with his heretical presuppositions, we will cut out from under this view its foundation—the wrong Bible. Until the serious-minded Protestant deals with this question, the sola scriptura claim has no force. Read more of this post

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R.J. Rushdoony Was Nestorian

April 6, 2010 6 Comments

By: Jay Dyer

Lately, I have been re-reading some old reformed Protestant materials I read several years ago. One of these books is by a very respected reformed thinker named Rousas J. Rushdoony. Rushdoony wrote and did some good things, like defending homseschoolers and giving that movement an initial impetus. However, these things don’t magically make him orthodox or erase his denials of the Incarnation. In my many dealings with reformed pastors and theologians, I’ve learned that it generally doesn’t matter what heresies their heroes have, nor does it matter how serious the heresies are. No, reformed thinkers have their demi-gods and none dare challenge them. So it doesn’t matter that Rushdoony also promoted the Jewish food laws, which is condemned by St. Paul. It doesn’t matter that Van Til said the essence of God was a Person. It doesn’t matter that Bahnsen thought one could have pictures of Christ and that he celebrated Christmas, which John Knox thought worthy of death. And none of this stuff would be so bad if the reformed didn’t claim to hold to the ecumenical councils.

No, if the reformed thinkers decide you’re a hero, you can, in fact, get away with quite a bit. Forgiving men for errors and passing them over is one thing, and it’s an aspect of love. However, when it comes to the point of excusing men or ignoring their substantial heresies on Christ and/or the Trinity, that’s another story. The reformed thinkers and pastors that have despised and blasted me, fail to realize that whatever errors I have held, I haven’t promoted serious Trinitarian and Christological errors like Van Til and Rushdoony. And none of this would be so bad if Rushdoony’s foundation wasn’t named “Chalcedon.” Other men in these circles also name their publications and churches after Chalcedon. Read more of this post

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