W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc.  Home Page   Volume  What is New

CHAPTER 18

Backing the word of God against all comers,
friends or enemies and the reward

of coherence and reasonableness matched by
no other word to man.

This serves as an Appendix to Ch. 1  above.

It seems good to examine further elements of Christology, with the authentic word of God held beyond and if necessary against the words even of great theologians, knowing that so to singularise them can readily be counter-productive. It is only as seen in their own entire dependence on the Lord and on His word, that their gifts and contributions may safely be appreciated and used; and it is humbling to  all, that  even the great may be carried away here or there; for all are subject to His word. In the end, man is not making a manifestation of God for God to  appreciate, but rather is God making this, and man is the receiver, by all means to relish, appreciate and understand, but neither to contravene or to intrude with his own contrarieties and thoughts. For all that, it is only in the word of God, the Bible, that one finds, as detailed in the 235 volumes on this site. what is able to provide a reasoning together, an answer to the problems of philosophic contest and to the familiar pleadings and troubles of the human mind. It is God who gave us reason, and it is validating as all other options discredit their own wares.

Let us then pursue the current theme.

First , let us hear from Dr F.N. Lee.

In his Institutes II:12:3, Calvin elaborates: "Our Lord came forth very man, adopted the person of Adam, and assumed his name - so that He might in his stead obey the Father; so that He might  present our flesh as the price of satisfaction to the just judgment of God.... As God only, He could not suffer; and as man only, could not overcome death. He united the human nature with the divine, so that He might subject the weakness of the one [the human nature] to death, as an expiation of sin -and, by the power of the other [the divine nature], maintain a struggle against death, [and] might gain us the victory.... Clothed with our flesh, He warred to death against sin." At II:14:2-6, Calvin further explains: "God certainly has no blood [and] suffers not.... For we must put far from us the heresy of Nestorius who, presuming to dissect rather than distinguish between the two natures, devised a double Christ.... On account of His mother, He is called the son of David; so, on account of His Father, He is the Son of God [cf. Romans 1:3-4].... It is no less congruous to refer to His divine nature His being called the Son of God - than to refer to His human nature His being called the son of man."

http://www.francisnigellee.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Did-God-Die-on-Calvary-Dr.-F.N.-Lee.pdf

2)

REVIEW OF THE ABOVE

As a preliminary, we find one writer pointing out that Hodge takes exception to Calvin's view that, by virtue of Christ's divine nature, his human nature possessed a certain vivifying efficacy of life-giving power that was communicated to the believer in the Supper. Each nature, if you wish to use this term, is distinct and sui generis, and sin, it is noted, is not part of human nature except in terms of a pathological fall, which God as man neither makes nor inherits. He is showing Himself in and as man, not in a fallen residue.

A further preliminary point may be made, namely that the affirmation of a contradiction of Acts 20:28 is not very helpful. While it is true that God has no blood, the incarnation of God as to format does have, and when Thomas referred to Christ as "my God", he spoke but the truth. Calvin has a trend to dissociate which is unfortunate, even amidst his strong points. The Son of God, who IS God, had blood, and the term "God" is not to be dismissed when referring to Him, for the Bible uses it thus. It is GOD-SO-FORMATTED. to be sure,  but still God.

In more general terms, if one were a  prince, and chose to enrol as a private  soldier, it would still be the prince who suffered from the narrow stretcher bed. He does not lose His identity when  EXPRESSED he chooses to take that form. He is not bound to it, as inescapable, nor limited by it, as losing his identity, but if choosing so to  live and such a form  for some purpose, He may even fail to draw on powers, whether of twelve legions of angels or knowledge which His messianic role should not share; but  He is still able, as indeed He was to come down from  the cross. The TEST in history showed that He was not so minded, and that God is so united in and as One Being;  but the abstract option was there.

Reality does not disappear because there is a change of form, and Philippians 2 is very explicit, He took a form, despite the actualities of His own endless existence. The blood of Christ, who far from ceasing to be God in incarnation,  expressed it thoroughly, in word and deed, enduring all that a man must, using what God desired, not to  lessen the reality of the incarnation, but as an additive FOR and IN the service that was Messianic, enabling people to have identification of who it was, in this role, so that through faith they might be saved. Let us pursue

While it is true that Christ, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, existed outside infancy in maintaining the universe, we must avoid the simplistic thought that this imposes some kind of tension in His incarnation. The limits on God do not exist, and our imaginations are not their bounds. Nevertheless, it is pointless and confusing to create problems. The Second Person of the Trinity was incarnate. His entire power, thrust, status was present, but in a format which disclosed it in a way appropriate to the vehicle chosen,  that is revealed as the growth reality enabled. That this actual incarnation meant that  the  Second  Person of the Trinity was certainly aware of the intimations of the incarnate Christ, for after all, they were His own though He did not suffer them as there, in His own form, being Eternal Spirit: that is, as the incarnate Christ did. That was suffered by the INCARNATE Christ in a way suitable to the incarnate format chosen. Luther is right in that there was a full incarnation, not some accommodating talk which lacked truth and could even contradict the Father, a horror of Christology for all time (for example, in his counter-Christ reference to Matthew 23:37), as if He who IS the truth could categorically misstate it!

Thus Christ both retained His eternal form of God qua eternal and spirit, and  gained His human form of man, qua incarnate for sacrifice; and as both, He suffered, each in the mode appropriate. We do not need to investigate intrusively in what way the form of God suffers; and the scriptures on the point have been examined closely in various Chapters*, but that the Lord wishes to intimate His own suffering is for anything short of a truncation and  replacement of statements which however well taught, remain the truth, is not robustly clear in His written word, but impellingly manifest.

In the  Last Supper, as now practised, there may indeed be a miracle, if by that you mean an invasion or insertion or meta-natural, indeed supernatural thrust, which nature by itself has no means to perform,in spirit only, to the spirit of man, an augmentation of the memorial as defined. The presence of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer, and the specific exposure of the wonder of what was done, so that  graphically and in some  extent empathetically, and certainly in terms of personal (for man) and divine (for God) significance can be intimated by a power not of man or flesh. This is yet able to be working within the believer,  in the first place by nature, through memory of earlier exposures in reading the word and being given understanding of it, and in the second, by such spiritually investing and so miraculous  intimations from the Lord. ALL direct intimations of the Lord, being beyond nature, may be defined as miraculous, though usage may make the term supernatural better. 

However, since it is a MEMORIAL feast, noxious attempts to invest it with something experimental rather than experiential, sacrificial instead of memorial, physical instead of spiritual,are out of place in any case.

3)

Let us consider it once more, very simply.

Calvin held God could not suffer (far less death), hence it was only the human nature and not the divine (as the divine nature) expressed as in Christ, that died. Hence Luther was concerned at his tendency to exclude deity.

In fact, apart from theological constructions as a base, and returning to the biblical words of testimony themselves, it was Jesus Christ who died. He who is God did so, AS man God in that format died for sinners. It was nothing less (Philippians 2). The eternal word of God became formatted, functional and fittingly presented (Hebrews 1:8 - 3:6). That fittingness must never be lost sight of, or manipulated in any way; and if for convenience His divine and human natures may be  spoken of, these two do not become independent sources of wisdom, but simply analysis, so that they cannot control proceedings. Though Chalcedon was a masterful presentation, these discernible natures do not as analysed in their distinctness become direct source material, which is found in the Bible only.

As in Romans 5:8, 14:9, I Cor. 15:3, II Cor. 5:14, Luke 1:35, the Son of God died for sinners, even He begotten by the Spirit of God, so that He as directly stated in  Luke, therefore is named Son of God.

This same Jesus thus is neither separate from, nor unconnected with  the Second Person of the Trinity.

You have to watch Calvin's Christology, here and there - a good illustration of the wisdom of I Cor. 3:20-23, which alas Calvinists, Wesleyans and Lutherans all breach in their self-naming. In Mathew 23:37 you have what is even a bathetic treatment, explicitly turning God aside from this lamentation and emphasis of Christ, as if the Son of God were other than divine. Here it is man who instructs God, contradicts Him and falls into the travail of confrontation. So much for theology taken to its own fealties beyond the word of God, if not in intent, very much in direct assertion; for Calvin here has God as if wandering away, or rather Christ as if wandering away from fact, while God does not do so, and knows better than what Christ is saying, Christ a man who "told you the truth" !  We however are not subject to theologians but to the word of God, not to their dicta, but to His dictation, not to their modes, however useful some  formulations may be, but to His statements.

4)

Backing the Bible

Consider then Christ Himself. Thus there are certain enablements of the flesh, which while indeed supernatural endowments, are not merely episodic, but intrinsic, and appropriate in that He is not a miracle worker alone, but IS the Second Person of the Trinity. In His self-imposed humiliation, His choice, Psalm 40, in concurrence with His Father, He may systematically decline to use many of His powers, but never such as would deny His deity, or abuse His humanity, as if it were a mere mirage. It is a purposive, a delegated, a vocation matter, and the point here is not what He is here or there, in this nature or in that, though it is true that they are distinct and not confused, but rather of what He chooses to use and for what purpose, not to escape evil, but to achieve the purpose of His coming.

Having the divine nature, He deploys it as is fitting in His Messianic manifestation, whether to show that deity, that He be believed and His magnificent action fully appreciated and so given due response, just as He deploys the human nature to show He is indeed man, and not cheating in some appearance, as He suffers. HE does not cease to be THE PERSON who being God took the form of man. Both are real and remain so; and He is presented, so He remains Himself, in fidelity experiencing the realities that man must face, short of sin, and the wonders he may be given, but these as His own, and eternal. He thus MAY COMMAND a man paralytic to be raised, and not strive to have it happen; whereas even in terms of "greater works than these" (John 14:12) , a man is always a suppliant. That is because this was necessary as part of the purpose of showing who it was who did these healings, and that as God He  even forgive sins. So great was the so great love of the only God.

The two natures must not be made as if two sovereigns; it is all He, showing what as man the Lord makes of the set up and situation HIMSELF, when not as the judge, but come as One even  subjected to judgment. Christ as God in the incarnate form, suffered as man while retaining deity in His Being, and it was PRECISELY the divine nature if you wish to use that term, or the  reality of His divine Being, which made that suffering so incredibly magnificent. It was indeed God who died for us, albeit in human form, and while this did not prevent, as if He were a limited being, His remaining functionally intact over all, it equally did prevent as He committed before departure, His Spirit into  the hands of His Father, any thought of its being LESS than full involvement with a love as embracive as that of a mother, scorching while she rushes her babe through the flames. Rather it is the more in this, that it was not 'necessary' in any way for Himself and He could have avoided the entire format function and change.

In that Christ died for sinners, and before Abraham was still He (John 8:58), as He declares of Himself and not of some 'nature' which some like to essentialise and abstract out of His statement, and He is the Son of God by incarnation, being by the Holy Spirit directly implanted in the womb, then in the FORM of a servant, yet in the BEING of God: thus the divine nature of Christ was forcibly, because permissibly, separated from His body.

Paul does not say in Philippians 2, that Christ's human nature died, but that Christ died. If for this purpose, you define 'death' as necessary separation of spirit from body, then that God as man accomplished, He even " tasted it" in a way that can have application to man; and God as man does not mean man formerly God, but God now made manifest AS man. It is the exaltation of the one so made manifest which indeed is the major thrust of the peace, as in the hymn Amazing Grace, which may be wrongly criticised for its very due emphasis, 'that Thou my God should die for me.'

God AS SPIRIT "HAS NO BLOOD" but God incarnate does have that substance, just as He permitted Himself to be equipped with hands and feet, that they might be pierced, as well as do many glorious things. There is thus a false division made by Calvin, as in Matthew 23:37 where in his Institutes his treatment of this passage amounts to flat contradiction of what Christ is saying relative to His nature as the Son of God, and hence as God incarnate. His accommodation theory, there shown, is made a seemingly humble interpretation of what in fact a denial of what Christ affirmed concerning Himself. Accommodation, which equals enablement of some the more readily to grasp truth, when the Truth is in view, is not liability to contradiction because of a straight error, misstatement or incorrect announcement. Those are two very different things. Here humility is the robe of the interpreter, but vagrancy is the mode. NEVER contradict the Lord.

In the human form, format, humiliation, God indeed suffers Himself to have such features, as He unveils His qualities, using them. It is His divine nature which makes these so appalling and magnificent, that He so humbles HIMSELF as to allow His form so to be rendered vulnerable. But it is not metaphor, which says He as God, was His equal, nor that He humbled Himself. WE must humble OURSELVES into recognising this, and not make His humility a means of distortion of what He is giving. "Nothing," says Calvin in his commentary on this verse 28 of Acts 20, "is more absurd than to feign or imagine God to be mortal or to have a body. But in this speech he commendeth the unity of person in Christ; for because there be distinct natures in Christ ... because again two natures are so united in Christ, that they make on person, that is improperly translated sometimes unto the one, which doth truly and in deed belong to the other, as in this place Paul doth attribute blood to God."

Yet this is not to divide and conquer but to divide and annul.

God, who has His own nature, chose to adopt a form, which has its own nature (including vulnerabilities); and when God, according to His own vicarious choice, moves to suffer death in the chosen form for exact manifestation, He is by no means evacuating from the situation to some 'nature', but expressing through the impact and input of His own nature into that nature, His form into that one, His own bearing of this penalty. It is the DIVINE AS HUMAN which so suffers, and meets this (self-enabled) death. Having made substantial concessions concerning the divine 'nature' of Christ, it is not enough for Calvin next (in his treatment of Acts 20:;28) so to make that very divinity inapplicable to the flesh.

There is wonder in this, that God who made man in His own image, could so incarnate, and enable the growing form of mankind in the advancing babe and youth to man, but if that is what He declares of Himself, then there is not only no need to alter this but every need not to instruct God. When indeed Thomas finds through the body that it is indeed a body, it is THEN that He addresses Christ as "My Lord and my God," this becoming with the authority of Christ, a criterion as He responds (John 20). The apostle's acknowledgement becomes a criterion for others, and is so manifested. Blessed are those who not having seen, yet believe. Thomas had stated clearly enough, indeed dramatically just WHAT was believed. This bodily criterion made the episode, AND the Master's enshrinement for others.

If for analytical purposes you want two natures, divine and human, then, it is not well to use this formulation to hide the wonder of their union. Totally distinct in form, the movement of the one into the other makes a unique entity which is to be interpreted by base textual material, not philosophic enhancement and advances.

God in the man form and format, did die, so expressing the prodigy of His love. God in the divine form does not do those things which are apt for Him in the human form, into which He poured Himself that He MIGHT precisely suffer such things. He does not suffer in Himself in His own form, that is, this as decline, but as voluntary enduring: while incapable of becoming final or determinative BECAUSE in His divine form He is not even subject to such things (Acts 2:24). What He voluntarily admits Himself to be in format, however, this He does NOT suffer to avoid suffering, but to receive it!

So He may choose to endure them for a purpose in some other form, such as the one which He made in His own image. Having so exalted the potential of man, for closeness to God in communication and relationship, though man is a mere creation in status, and in so doing, does not cease to be God, but is God at work. Some things He made; this He endures.

It is in this mode, in Jeremiah, that you find the Lord Himself speaking of His suffering for Israel (Jeremiah 8:17-20 cf. Gratitude for His Glorious Grace Ch. 2, parallel in kind to Isaiah 63:9, 48:15ff), where the Lord 'suffers' both anger and pity concerning Israel). If at times human terms are used, it is not to exclude the very thing being affirmed, that God has pity and anger, can lament and feel the hurt of them in Himself,  and may choose to suffer even more intimately (without deterioration but in love). Thus to translate them into a just exhibit by implicitly using human modes of expression of these very things, not only apt, but wholly intimate with the reality, and that incarnate meta-empathy to come.

The fact and the reality is this, that because of His loving character as Being, He suffers in pity, lamentation, and says so, and is ALSO willing to die by actually adopting a human format, IN THAT FORMAT, His Spirit proceeding to His Father as His body is forced into a voluntary death. He COULD have called legions of angels, but His PURPOSE was not to do so, and therefore He did not DO so. That would have been  contrary to His purpose as Messiah. God never fails; nor did He fail to do this, or to reject the invitation to come down from the cross, which would have nullified His intent.

 It is useless to try to exclude  part of a speech being made by the Lord because it offends your theology. Theology worth its salt LEARNS, before it teaches, and learns to relay, not resist what is given in the Bible. So in the matter of the deity of Christ, it is not set aside in some now this nature, now that, substantial  deviation  from  what is written, but endures in all cases, as apt to maturity, and then is fully expressed in maturity in the chosen form, which far from distorting, attests it in this very mode.

Luther is right to demand  realisation, and to object to such a degree of differentiation in Calvin, as he affirms, for it is indeed the Lord of glory whose memorial is made in the Supper, though wrong to seek to make memorial a carnal  participation in the citedly memorial Last Supper (consubstantiation); Calvin is right to insist on the work of the Holy Spirit and the absence of the physical in any sense*1. It is terribly easy to  lack that perfect comprehension which Christ exhibited, especially with that glorious apparent ease of expression; and that is only one reason why people should not call themselves after the names of apostles or theologians. Why can we not be more child-like, and gladly receives what comes, without elevating the speaker past the post that can almost feature  as that of mentor and source!

NOTE

*1

Christ virtually mocks the misconception of actually eating, ingesting something physical, in His clarification of John 6:60-64. Are they offended by the mode of expression to be found now in John 6:50-54 for example ? WHAT IF ... ? He proceeds.

In other words, He puts any alleged offence some might find in the eating and drinking references into an historical setting. They should not misunderstand and so be needlessly upset. IN FACT, He is about to leave this earth altogether, so that any misuse of His words as if He really meant them to start some kind of cannibal action, becomes ludicrous as well as distasteful in the extreme. True and to be  sure, the Passover Lamb was eaten, but in this case, it was an animal, symbolic depiction of what really mattered, the significance always being the main point; and so to act was to learn a deep lesson.

However, a short transition now had to be made from the pictorial, the symbolic, the preliminary, the prelude to the substantial reality of God as man dying for them, not in a constraint of some overpowering thrust against Him, but under the sacrificial love of One for whom even that was not too great. And what satisfaction would be felt indeed, for love's fulfilment, when the achievement became redemption and the result pardon for those who received it, as one receives bread, or sacrifice, personally, willingly and with inward assurance (Luke 12:50, Hebrews 12:1-2).

He Himself, the actual and effectual sacrifice was about to leave for heaven, so that Christ exposes any material misconception of the meaning of His depiction in John 6:50ff., for any such idea becomes utterly impossible. He is close, in His irony, to mocking such foolishness. Thus, if you find it strange or offensive to speak in this way, then be corrected, He intimates, for such distortion is not even a POSSIBLE meaning. He would not be available even for mile long teeth; He would not be physically available at all or in the least, for heaven is separated from this earth by no small gulf (Acts 3:19ff.); and it is there that He is till the time of the regeneration of all things comes.

For the believer it is a gulf that grace covers, but this is for faith, not for mastication. For the record, the eating refers to the parallel to the Passover, when symbols are surmounted, and actuality in ONE sacrifice, ONCE made by ONE Person, now in heaven following resurrection, is that with which all dealings are to be made, till returning, the formal reality is again available in the direct presence of the One whose hands were pierced, eternal ambassador of life over death, which cannot conquer at all in His midst, so that "he who lives and believes in Me shall never die!", as in John 11. Do you believe this ? He asks. This is to the point (cf. Romans 10:9). Her reply to whom He spoke, discerning, was this: "Yes, Lord, I believe you are the Christ, the Son of God who is to come into the world."