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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Theos sesarkomenos: The First Response to Turretinfan on Nestorianism

April 17, 2010 1 Comment

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” –St. John’s Gospel, 1:14

“Why do you incessantly call Mary ‘Theotokos’?” –Julian the Apostate, (Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, Vol. I, pg. 241)

“With all reverence let us praise the light of the world, the great orator and champion of the Mother of God; for by his fiery teachings he burned the heresy of Nestorius. Wherefore let us cry to him: O divine Cyril, intercede with Christ to strengthen the orthodox faith.” “Thy teaching has reached to the ends of the earth. For from the wellsprings of the Savior, O blessed one, thou hast poured forth a flood of doctrine which engulfs all heresies.”

 –Eastern Troparion and Kontakion of St. Cyril of Alexandria, Patriarch and Doctor

By: Jay Dyer

Calvinist polemicist Tur8infan of Dr. James White’s Alpha & Omega Ministries has written what he perceives to be a response to the accusation I made that Calvinists are Nestorians, in that they end up denying the henotic union. He has issued an informal challenge, intending on doing a 13-part response to all of my claims about the implications of Calvinist theology, which I showed were Nestorian when brought to what Van Til called “epistemological self-consciousness.”

I couldn’t have dreamed of a better statement from him of his views, since he has admitted two of my accusations in his first response. This will not be difficult to dissect, and I hope for readers with an open mind to pay close attention, and by God’s grace, better their theology.

Tur8infan begins: Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh (Romans 8:3). Christ, however, (and only Christ) was immaculately conceived. He was like the sinful flesh of Mary from whom he (after the flesh) came, but his flesh was not itself sinful. He was a true human, but he was the second Adam. He was not under Adam’s federal headship and he did not inherit Adam’s fallen and depraved nature. This is, of course, not only the Calvinist position but also the position of at least most of the major early church fathers who addressed the subject. 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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Al Qaeda Doesn’t Exist (BBC)

April 14, 2010 Leave a comment


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Pagan Dualism, the Occult and the Trinity

April 14, 2010 3 Comments

By: Jay

A common thread in non-Christian religions and worldviews is that of dualism. In fact, nature itself does exhibit all forms of dualities, such as night and day, masculine and feminine, black and white, etc. In philosophy there has been the problem of mind versus body, while in physics there is the wave versus particle debate. In one sense there is a legitimate duality, in that these entities and things are not, of course, evil in themselves. No thing is inherently evil, as all things are created by and have their summation and meaning in the Logos (Col. 1:15). Thus what has being has it’s being and meaning or archetypal predetermination (logoi) in the Logos. The many logoi are one in the one Logos of God.

Non-Christian systems of thought, and paganism in general, never transcend the dualities that are prevalent in nature, however. In fact, dualism is itself a hallmark of those religions. Think, for example, of the dialectic of matter and spirit in gnosticism, where matter was viewed as base and grotesque. Gnosticism in general is defined as:

“A collective name for a large number of greatly-varying and pantheistic-idealistic sects, which flourished from some time before the Christian Era down to the fifth century, and which, while borrowing the phraseology and some of the tenets of the chief religions of the day, and especially of Christianity, held matter to be a deterioration of spirit, and the whole universe a deprivation of the Deity, and taught the ultimate end of all being to be the overcoming of the grossness of matter and the return to the Parent-Spirit, which return they held to be inaugurated and facilitated by the appearance of some God-sent Saviour.” (Catholic Encyclopedia, “Gnosticism”) 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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MP3 – Review of Benedict’s “Introduction to Christianity” (4 pts.)

April 12, 2010 2 Comments

In this second episode, I review Benedict XVI’s scholarly Introduction to Christianity and elucidate it’s Eastern emphasis, as well as the influence of Maximus the Confessor and the Logos/logoi exemplarism, Greek philosophy and Hellenism, epistemology and problems in Thomism, as well as Benedict’s refutation of the Anselmian (and by extension, classical Protestant) view of the Atonement via Cur Deus Homo.

Read more of this post

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Quotes From Calvinist Theologians Proving Arian/Nestorianism

April 12, 2010 3 Comments

By: Nick

I would hope that anyone reading the title of this post would consider the suggested question nothing short of blasphemy. For those who don’t know, there are Christians who do give an affirmative answer to this question. While you might be thinking this is some fringe group, you will probably be shocked to find the groups who affirm this are Protestants of the Lutheran and Reformed (Calvinist) traditions.

The following quotes are from well respected Protestant teachers, going all the way back to Luther Himself:

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We should remember that Christ’s suffering in His human nature, as He hung on the cross those six hours, was not primarily physical, but mental and spiritual. When He cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,” He was literally suffering the pangs of hell. For that is essentially what hell is, separation from God, separation from everything that is good and desirable. Such suffering is beyond our comprehension. But since He suffered as a divine-human person, His suffering was a just equivalent for all that His people would have suffered in an eternity in hell.
(Boettner, Loraine. “The Reformed Faith.” Chapter 3.) Read more of this post

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Definitions of Various Relevant Theological Terms

April 12, 2010 Leave a comment

By: Jay Dyer

Many are confused about the meaning and terminology of the debates that have been occurring lately in regards to Calvinism, the Trinity, Nature, Person, etc. So, an explanation of what these terms have come to normatively mean in theological discourse is appropriate. If we grasp these terms, the rest falls into place in a cogent system for talking about the Trinity, Incarnation and soteriology. If we are to have fruitful debates and dialogues on these points, the terms need to be grasped.

(1) Persons- or Hypostases (also subjects). answering the question “Who is doing it?”
(2) Energies answering the question What is it that They are doing?”
(3) Essence or Nature or ousia, answering the question what are the they, that are doing these things.
(4) Manichaeanism is an ancient heretical system influenced by Persian Zoroastrianism where there are two eternal principles good and evil, ever at odds.

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Gregory of Nazianzus Vs. Thomistic ‘Analogia Entis’

April 11, 2010 Leave a comment

By: Jay Dyer

“…The Divine Nature cannot be apprehended by human reason, and…we cannot even represent to ourselves all its greatness.” -St. Gregory the Theologian

St. Gregory of Nazianzus is one of only two Doctors/theologians to be called “The Theologian” (if you’re a westerner), as was bestowed upon him by the Fifth Ecumenical Council. The purpose of this note, however, is not to cite him as an “authority prooftext.” I want to examine the Second Theological Oration, which, having re-read it last night, literally blew me away with several things I had not previously noticed.

The “Five Theological Orations” are some of the most important patristics texts ever written on the formation of the dogma of the Trinity (and the Incarnation). They are not very long and are a must-read for real students of theology. No one who reads and loves the Fathers should be unfamiliar with these 5 treatises (although all the dozens of St. Gregory’s Orations are awesome).

That being said, I want to use him as the paradigm for the Doctor who is saying everything I keep saying and arguing. We will see him reject analogia entis as an application to the divine nature. We will see him reject “natural theology” as conceived of by Thomas and we will see him utilize the essence/energy distinction (later on) as did St. Basil his fellow Cappadocian, since both are writing with Eunomius in mind. I have included Protestantism in with Thomism in the title because western Christianity holds the same view of simplicity as Augustinian-Thomism, and that across the board.
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