MIDWESTERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
UNCHANGING BEAUTY: FAITH AS THE APPREHENSION OF THE IMMUTABLE GOD’S
GLORY REVEALED IN THE SON
A PAPER
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE COURSE
DR 01-37395 ADVANCED SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY
BY
SAMUEL G. PARKISON
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
AUGUST, 19 2018
Introduction
Two topics that have generated considerable attention in the field of systematic theology as of late are aesthetics1 and classical theism.2 Though neither topic is new to the Church’s life, each have experienced relative neglect and resurgence. However, notwithstanding how much attention both these theological loci have received, they are not often discussed in relation to one another. This paper seeks to explore their convergence in Christology. To be specific, we seek to answer: is the doctrine of divine immutability compatible with an aesthetic-soteriology, in which
Christological glory elicits faith? This paper will contend for the affirmative: indeed, not only is divine immutability compatible with such an aesthetic-soteriology, it is necessary for it to work.
Christology will thus serve as the gravitational center for this study, pulling these two areas of interest together. The aesthetic interest of saving faith is Christ, the Word made flesh. Likewise, the central challenge to divine immutability is Christ, the Word made flesh. Structurally, this paper will move from an examination of the aesthetic dimension of saving faith, to Christ’s revelatory role of the immutable God in the incarnation, and will conclude with a brief consideration and response to divine immutability’s challenge in light of the incarnation. Thus, we will show that saving faith in Jesus—as a response to his irresistible beauty—results in mediated access to the unchanging, beautiful Triune God.
1 E.g., David Bently Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); Jonathan King, The Beauty of the Lord: Theology as Aesthetics (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2018); Patrick Sherry, Spirit and Beauty: An Introduction to Theological Aesthetics, 2nd Edition (Albans Place: SCM Press, 2002).
2 E.g., James E. Dolezal, God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2011), All That Is In God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism (Grand Rapids: Reformed Heritage Books, 2017); Jordan P. Barrett, Divine Simplicity: A Biblical and Trinitarian Account (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017).
1
Comprehending and Apprehending Christological Glory
We begin our study where new life for a Christian begins: the apprehension of Christ in gratuitous faith. New life begins when those who live in the darkness “receive” the “true light,” and “believe in his name” (Jn. 1:9, 12).3 This apprehension, if it be legitimate (cf., Jn. 2:24), must be glad.4 To sell one’s positions to buy a field wherein lies a hidden treasure out of compulsion will not do; saving faith is the joyous reception of such a treasure (Matt. 13:44).5 The object of saving faith is Jesus Christ.6 Our present interest is the nature of the subjective experience of “believing” and “receiving” Jesus—his person and his message. What is the sinner feeling in his transformation into sainthood as he clings to Christ? Of the many responses that
3 Those who “receive” and “believe” are the very ones who become the children of God, who are “born again” and who experience “eternal life:” “The prologue thus introduces us to the ‘new birth’ theme of ch.3… Those who receive the Word are identical with those who believe in his name, and they are identical with those who are born of God.” D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 126. Cf., Andreas J. Köstenberger and Scott R. Swain, Father, Son and Spirit: The Trinity and John’s Gospel (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 81.
4 “The ‘name’ is more than a label; it is the character of the person, or even the person himself… at its best, such faith yields allegiance to the Word, trust him completely, acknowledge his claims and confesses him with gratitude. That is what it means to ‘receive’ him.” Carson, John, 125-126. Emphasis added.
5 J.C. Ryle makes the point beautifully: “We see, in this simple picture, the conduct of a true Christian explained. He is what he is, and does what he does in his religion, because he is thoroughly persuaded that it is worthwhile… He sees in Christ an endless ‘treasure;’ he sees in Christ a precious ‘pearl:’ to win Christ he will make any sacrifice. This is true faith: this is the stamp of a genuine work of the Holy Ghost.” Expository Thoughts on Matthew (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1986), 122-123. Cf., David Platt, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary: Exalting Jesus In Matthew (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2013), 183.
6 “Faith, after all, is not belief of propositions of truth respecting the Savior, however essential an ingredient of faith such belief is. Faith is trust in a person, the person of Christ, the Son of God and Savior of the lost. It is entrustment of ourselves to him. It is not simply believing him; it is believing in him and on him.” John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 117.
2 can be given, “affectious delight in Jesus” is the most relevant at present. The sinner considers
Jesus, in the moment of saving faith, attractive, desirable, and worthy of devotion. In a word, the sinner considers him beautiful.
One figure for whom this concept was of preeminent concern is Jonathan Edwards. Few theologians in the Church’s history feature beauty in their theological system as much as
Edwards.7 For Edwards, salvation occurred on account of a dialogue between divine beauty and saving faith—the objective display of divine beauty and the subjective apprehension thereof.8
Roland Delattre, identifying these two dialogical elements as beauty (objective) and sensibility
(subjective), explains that they are “essentially and internally related not only as sense of beauty and object of that sense but also together constituting the more objective and more subjective aspects of what Edwards calls the ‘inherent good.’”9 Edwards specifies the enjoyment of this good arises not initially from an apprehension of God in general, rather the “first foundation” of
7 See, Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 93. Cf., Kin Yip Louie, The Beauty of the Triune God: The Theological Aesthetics of Jonathan Edwards (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2013), 13.
8 “Edwards’s teaching on beauty and aesthetics moved back and forth from an objective to a subjective pole... For Edwards, beauty was both objective and subjective. Beauty had an effect, and the effect was an affect (i.e., feeling). Yet Edwards balanced the objective and subjective aspects of beauty so that neither eclipsed the other.” McCymond and McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 99.
9 Roland Andre Delattre Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards: An Essay in Aesthetics and Theological Ethics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 3. Or, in Edwards’ own words, when God imparts a “divine and supernatural light” to elicit saving faith, there “is not only a rational belief that God is holy, and that holiness is a good thing; but there is a sense of the loveliness of God’s holiness. There is not only a speculatively judging that God is gracious, but a sense how amiable God is upon that account; or a sense of the beauty of this divine attribute.” Jonathan Edwards, “A Divine and Supernatural Light” in Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, vol. 17, Sermons and Discourses, 1730-1733 (Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University 2008).
3 this delight is in Christ and “is His own beauty.”10 Edwards is saying, in other words, seeing
Christ in his beauty creates saving faith.
Edwards is not alone here.11 In fact, Paul seems make the very point in 2 Corinthians 4:6:
“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”12 Peter Balla, commenting on this verse, explains “God creates the Christian by showing a person God’s glory on Christ’s face.”13
This verse’s context in 2 Corinthians further demonstrates the experience is soteriologically normative; it is not idiosyncratic to Paul and his Corinthian audience. This creation occurs
10 Jonathan Edwards, Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, vol.2, Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith, 1740, Ed. Paul Ramsey (Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University 2008), 250.
11 Space does not allow us to give a treatment of Owen on this subject, for example. However, it would be a shame to include at least one of his meditations: “And where God shines into the heart, by that faith which is of divine operation—there, with ‘open face, we behold the glory of God, as in a glass;’ or have the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. There is not the meanest believer, but—in the real exercise of faith in Christ—hath more glorious apprehensions of God, his wisdom, goodness, and grace, of all his glorious excellencies, than the most learned and wise in the world can attain unto, in the exercise of reason on the proper objects of it.” John Owen, The Works of John Owen: Volume 1, William H. Goold, Editor (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1967), 77.
12 George H. Guthrie writes, “This light, moreover, is ‘the personal comprehension of God’s glory.’ Here we read the genitive τῆς γνώσεως (tēs gnōseōs, the knowledge) as epexegetical, meaning ‘the light, which is the personal comprehension’; and the sense of ‘knowledge’ has relational overtones, rather than mere cognative assent to God’s existence… this ‘light, which is the personal comprehension of God’s glory,’ is found ‘in the face of Christ’ (ἐν προσώπῳ Χριστοῦ, en prosōpō Christou), whom Paul has proclaimed as ‘the image of God’ (4:4).” 2 Corinthians: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 245-246.
13 “2 Corinthians,” 763-764. Emphasis added. Likewise, Jonathan Hoglund observes “From this text soteriological illumination is understood as a personal encounter with the authority and transforming glory of the risen and exalted Christ. God shows Christ glorified as the light that overwhelms sinful human darkness.” Jonathan Hoglund, Called by Triune Grace: Divine Rhetoric and the Effectual Call (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2016), 88.
4 whenever “one turns to the Lord” and “the veil” of unbelief is removed (2 Cor. 3:16)—whenever the “gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:4) is proclaimed by “ambassadors of God” who implore sinners to be “reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20).14
Admittedly, equating Edwards’ soteriological system of beauty and sensibility with the salvivic apprehension of Christ’s glory in 2 Corinthians 4:6 is a justifiable move only insofar as
Christ’s beauty and glory relate. Fortunately, that “glory” and “beauty” do relate bears the weight of biblical (Ps. 27:4; Is. 62:2-3; Zech. 9:16; 2 Pet. 1:17) and historical testimony.15 In his recent work on the topic, Jonathan King summarizes the relationship between divine beauty and glory this way: “the beauty of God manifested economically (pulchritude Dei ad extra) is expressed and perceivable as a quality of the glory of God inherent in his work of creation, redemption, and consummation. The display of God’s glory is thus always beautiful, always fitting, always entails an aesthetic dimension to it.”16 When one is drawn to the beauty of God, one is drawn to his glory through a particular economic manifestation—or “perceivable quality”—thereof. Further,
14 “The objective light is the ‘glory of God in the face of Christ’ (2 Cor 4:6), or the ‘gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God’ (2 Cor 4:4). The ‘face’ of Christ and the gospel are roughly equivalent… While for Paul this took place through an overwhelming visionary experience, the parallel between these verses indicates that the proclamation of the gospel is significantly similar to that vision.” Ibid., 89-90.
15 In addition to Edwards, the witnesses we could call to this point’s defense includes, though is not limited to: Anselm of Canterbury, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Owen, Herman Bavinck, Hans Urs von Balthasaar, and more recently, David Bentley Hart and Jonathan King (see Herman Bavinck, “Of Beauty and Aesthetics,” published in Essays on Religion, Science, and Society, ed. John Bolt, trans. Harry Boonstra and Gerrit Sheeres [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008] and Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2: God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004], 252–55; Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen, ed. Theological Aesthetics: A Reader [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004]; King, The Beauty of the Lord; Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite.)
16 Jonathan King, The Beauty of the Lord, 51.
5 because God is simple, and his glory is “the splendor of brilliance that is inseparably associated with all of [his] attributes and his self-revelation in nature and grace,”17 where his glory is revealed, there also is his beauty revealed. Nowhere is this glory revealed more fully than in
Christ.18 If the glory-beauty relationship explored above holds true, this statement on “the glory of God in Christ” is therefore, fundamentally, an Christological-aesthetic statement. To be drawn by the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ is to be drawn by the beauty of Jesus Christ.19
Here we see the interrelated nature of systematic categories, for even the mention of the word “drawn” draws the doctrine of effectual calling to the fore.20 God calls those he predestines
17 Bavinck, RD, 2.252. Emphasis added.
18 King writes that the “glory that God formerly had to obscure from Moses’ gaze would, in the fullness of time, come to its perfect expression in the glory of God in Christ.” King, The Beauty of the Lord, 150.
19 Of course, this whole notion of Christ’s beauty being the object that draws saving faith is interrelated to the Holy Spirit’s role in conversion to exegete the Son’s glory, open the eyes sinful man’s heart, and implant the seed of saving faith. Such a discussion, as crucial as it is, is beyond the scope of this particular paper. Jonathan Hoglund gives significant attention to this activity of the Spirit in Called by Triune Grace, 79-122. Cf., Graham A. Cole, He Who Gives Life: The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007), 262. Cf., “The work of the Spirit was required then just as it has been ever since to impart such optics to those who would ‘perceive’ Christ in the form of his humanity for who he truly is—Lord and Savior of all.” King, The Beauty of the Lord, 171.
20 In addition to the linguistic connection between our discussion of “drawing” and “effectual calling,” we may just as well identify the logical connection between our discussion of “drawing” and regeneration. Regeneration, as the convert’s first subjectively experienced step in the ordo salutis, is the Holy Spirit’s sovereign activation of the spiritual sight which elicits the convert’s comprehension of Christ’s beauty. As Sinclair Ferguson points out, the “threads of regeneration and faith are inextricably intertwined.” Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Holy Spirit: Contours of Christian Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 116. Jonathan Edwards explains the unique aesthetic appreciation for God and his holiness which is acquired in regeneration, “There is not only a rational belief that God is holy, and that holiness is a good thing; but there is a sense of the loveliness of God’s holiness. There is not only a speculatively judging that God is gracious, but a sense how amiable God is upon that account; or a sense of the beauty of this divine attribute.” Jonathan Edwards, “A Divine and Supernatural Light” in WJE, 6 unto belief effectually. What makes effectual calling effectual is the beauty of Christ, who is the object of faith to which God calls the elect.21 The irresistible tug of Christ’s beauty which elicits saving faith is effectual calling. God calls effectually, in other words, by calling with an irresistibly beautiful Christ. Thus, the Canons of Dort can describe the experience of effectual calling as a “most pleasing” and “marvelous” experience:
But this certainly does not happen only by outward teaching, by moral persuasion, or by such a way of working that, after God has done his work, it remains in man’s power whether or not to be reborn or converted. Rather, it is entirely supernatural work, one that is at the same time most powerful and most pleasing, a marvelous, hidden, and inexpressible work, which is not lesser than or inferior in power to that or of raising the dead, as Scripture… teaches.22 The idea of Christ’s beauty as saving faith’s impetus, however, creates an uncomfortable tension: the “gospel of the glory of Christ” centers on a grotesque crucifixion scene (1 Cor. 2:2;
Gal. 6:14).23 “Surely,” one might argue, “such a spectacle cannot be reconciled to any notion of beauty.”24 Yet, according to Edwards the very essence of saving faith’s aesthetic impetus is
vol. 17, 414. Our purposes here are not to elaborate fully on the aesthetic relationship between regeneration, effectual calling, and saving faith, but rather to highlight that there is one.
21 Matthew Barrett, commenting on the Westminster Confession of faith, points out the Westminster Divines’ influence from “the biblical metaphors by stating that the Spirit enlightens the mind to understand (Eph. 1:17-18), takes away the heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh (Ezek. 36:26), renews the will, and effectually draws the sinner to Jesus Christ (John 6:44-45).” Matthew Barrett, Salvation By Grace: The Case for Effectual Calling and Regeneration (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2013), 34.
22 “The Canons of Dort,” [Article 12] as quoted in Barrett, Salvation by Grace, 28.
23 A fuller treatment of what follows can be found in John-Mark Hart, “Triune Beauty and the Ugly Cross: Towards a Theological Aesthetic” in Tyndale Bulletin 66.2 (2015) 293-312. This is the central tension featured in Hart’s article.
24 An example of this kind of rationale may be found in the work of Brian Zahnd (Beauty Will Save the World: Rediscovering the Allure and Mystery of Christianity [Lake Mary: Charisma House, 2012]; Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News [Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2017]). Though Zahnd is perfectly content with identifying the crucifixion as a display of divine beauty in some respect, the notion that 7 cruciform beauty: “It is by seeing the excellency of Christ’s Person that the saints are made sensible of the preciousness of His blood, and its sufficiency to atone for sin; for therein consists the preciousness of Christ’s blood, that it is the blood of so excellent and amiable a Person.”25
The fourth evangelist connects Jesus’ revealed glory and his crucifixion as well. At the close of the Book of Signs in the gospel of John, the evangelist gives an account for the widespread rejection of Jesus’ ministry (which will eventually culminate with crucifixion), quoting two passages from Isaiah (Jn. 12:36-43; cf., Is. 6:10, 53:1).26 Speaking of both passages (i.e., the heavenly throne room scene of Isaiah 6 and the suffering servant scene of Isaiah 53), John writes,
“Isaiah said these things when he saw his glory and spoke of him” (Jn. 12:41).27 According to
John, the same glory Isaiah describes seeing in the heavenly throne room is manifested in the
retributive justice, whereby Christ satisfies the wrath of the Father on the cross, is, for him, appalling. Thus he writes, “The cross is a cataclysmic collision of violence and forgiveness. The violence part of the cross is entirely human. The forgiveness part of the cross is entirely divine.” Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, 101. Also, “In the parable of the prodigal son, the father doesn’t rush to the servants’ quarters to beat a whipping boy and vent his anger before he can forgive his son. Yet Calvin’s theory of the cross would require this ugly insertion into Jesus’s most beautiful parable.” Ibid., 103.
25 Edwards, WJE 2.274-275. Similarly, see King’s reflections on the apparent challenge of Isaiah 53:2b to his argument in The Beauty of the Lord, 205-211.
26 For a full treatment on John’s use of these Isaianic passages, see, Andreas J. Köstenberger, “John” in G.K. Beale and D.A. Carson, eds., Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 476-483.
27 We are not immediately concerned with whether the glory Isaiah sees in chapter 6 is Jesus’ glory, or if the glorious one sitting on the throne is in fact Jesus. For more on this topic, see Ibid., 479-480; Carson, John, 449-450; Herman N. Ridderbos, The Gospel According to John: A Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 445-446, Andreas J. Köstenberger, John: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 390-393. What primarily concerns us at present is the relationship John sees between the glory of Jesus, his crucifixion, and the Jews’ rejection.
8 sufferings of the Messiah in Isaiah 53.28 The grotesque crucifixion is what divine glory
(including beauty) looks like when grace towards sinners is in view.29 Furthermore, this cruciform display of glory seems to be the very thing the Jews reject.30 In this way, the crucifixion not only displays divine glory, it results from divine glory; God blinds the eyes and hardens the hearts of unbelieving Jews by sending a Messiah whose divine glory they reject as apparent un-glory.31 Only with the eyes of faith, therefore, can one reconcile the seeming contradiction of Christ’s beauty and his grotesque death on the cross.32 This is nothing new.
Perception judgment is typical in God’s saving economy. The natural man cannot consider the bloody cross beautiful any more than the natural Greek can consider the gospel wise, or the
28 “In the wake of the two Isaianic quotes in 12:38 and 12:40, the evangelicst concludes that ‘Isaiah saw Jesus’ glory.’” Ibid., 391. Emphasis added.
29 See King, The Beauty of the Lord, 220. Cf., Ibid., 222.
30 Thus a parallel seems to be drawn with Jesus’ prophetic message and Isaiah’s, in that both serve as the judicial hardening instrument God uses. See Carson, John, 448.
31 “The unveiled glory he displayed during his earthly career, I have argued, was in the form of a slave because this was the form that was most fitting for him to assume as the Messiah in the state of his humiliation. Christ crucified takes the display/revelation of his glory to a whole other level because in this event of the theodrama the form of his humanity on the cross was literally cruciform--the form that was most fitting as Sin-bearer.” King, The Beauty of the Lord, 220.
32 See footnote 20.
9 natural Jew consider it a powerful sign.33 The apparently ugly, foolish, weak gospel is considered beautiful, wise, and powerful only to “those who are called” (1 Cor. 1:18-25).34
Saving faith is therefore an aesthetically motivated apprehension of Christ occasioned by a comprehension35 of Christ’s beauty. The Spirit opens the eyes of the sinner’s heart to see Jesus, displaying his beauty, and such a sight elicits saving faith. In this way, saving faith is a natural acquiescence to Christ’s irresistible beauty—the fitting response to glory revealed.
33 Here, again, we feel the temptation to digress into an exploration of interrelated theological loci. What makes the unbeliever unable to see Christ rightly (i.e., as beautiful)? Idolatry; he considers that which is ugly and unworthy of worship, beautiful and praiseworthy. Why is it the case that a person is always either a worshiper of God or an idolater? At least part of man’s being made in God’s image implies an inescapable, fundamental impulse to worship. How is the feedback loop of fallen man’s idolatry—in which he engages his worship-faculties on that which cannot satisfy in an ongoing act of self-destruction—broken? Regeneration, in which the Holy Spirit restores fallen man’s faculties to see beauty rightly—that is, by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, he perceives that which he once considered beautiful (idolatry) as horrifying, and that which he once considered horrifying (God) as beautiful. Though beyond the scope of this paper, these various loci highlight the interrelated nature of theology. In the end, identifying aesthetics as a major theme in any one part of the ordo salutis implies its prominence in every other.
34 For a fuller, outstanding treatment on this counterintuitive notion of glory, see Timothy B. Savage, Power Through Weakness: Paul’s Understanding of the Christian Ministry in 2 Corinthians (Edinburgh: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 103-163.
35 Though, “ever-apprehension” might be more fitting, for as Gregory of Nysa and Augustine point out, Christ is never fully comprehended. The beatific vision is not punctiliar; the act of grasping Jesus in doxological faith begins in the moment of conversion and continues forever. Summarizing Gregory on this subject, Khaled Anatolios writes, “But if the trinitarian God is radically active in his own being and inaccessible apart from his self-presencing activities, then the encounter with God must stretch out toward an infinite embrace, beyond any pretensions of a comprehensive and exhaustive grasp. The proper human stance, rather, is to ceaselessly act into the infinite trinitarian divine activity, never encompassing, always traveling.” Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 240. Along these same lines, Anatolios writes about Augustine’s theology: “Ultimately, the kind of knowledge we can have of the trinitarian God is not so much an enclosing of God within the grasp of a radically damaged human aptitude for certainty but an unrestricted openness to Father, Son, and Spirit.” Ibid., 279.
10
Christ: the Beautiful Image of the Immutable God
Having established saving faith as the glad-hearted comprehension and apprehension of
Christ’s beauty, we must now consider such beauty in its relation to the divine nature.36 In the incarnation, Christ reveals the glory of God.37 Note, Christ’s glory is the glory of the Triune
God38—it is the invisible θεός that Christ makes known (Jn. 1:18, Col. 1:15).39 The glory he manifests is not simply unique to his person, it is the glory of the divine nature,40
36 “And thus Christ—in his incarnation, life, and resurrection, and in the linguistic and aesthetic radiance that shines out from him—reveals the essential truth concerning God’s infinity: its determinacy, dynamis, and power to cross every boundary.” Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, 321.
37 “John thus portrays Christ as the ‘revealer’ whose glory consists of revealing God the Father (cf. John 12:44-45). The unveiled and unobscured glory of God that Moses yearned to see, and about which he would have to settle for seeing merely its ‘aftereffects’ (Exod 33:23), was fully composed in the person of Christ.” King, The Beauty of the Lord, 151.
38 Carl F. H. Henry is helpful on this point, “The Logos, or Christ the eternal Son, is the agent in divine revelation given not only in created reality, both in nature and mankind… God’s revelation rests in Jesus Christ alone—not simply in his incarnational activities between 6 B.C. and A.D. 30, but also in the participation of the eternal Son within the divine Triunity, in the universal cosmic and anthropological revelation and in the final eschatological revelation.” God, Revelation and Authority: Volume III: God Who Speaks and Shows: Fifteen Theses, Part Two (Waco: Word Books Publisher, 1979), 206.
39 “The divine revelation in Jesus of Nazareth is not to be taken independently of all other divine revelation but stands in an inseparable and intimate relationship to the totality of God's disclosure.” Ibid., 207. See also Athanasius of Alexandria, “On the Incarnation,” ch.15 in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church: Volume IV: St. Athanasius: Select Works and Letters, 2nd Series, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Grand Rapids: WB. M. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1957); and Gregory of Nazianzus, “Select Orations,” Oration 30.20 in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church: Volume VII: S. Cyril of Jerusalem and St. Gregory Nazianzen, 2nd Series, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Grand Rapids: WB. M. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1957).
40 “He is the complete image and perfect representation of the Divine Being and excellencies.” Owen, WJO 1.69.
11 epistemologically mediated.41 “The self-revelatory nature of God's actions in Christ during his earthly career,” King points out, “means that the essential nature of God—and thus the glory of
God—is in fact revealed.”42 Since God’s glory is the majesty and perfection of all divine attributes,43 one cannot associate it, in an idiosyncratic sense, with a single divine person; it is constituent to the divine nature.44 Thus, when Christ reveals glory, it is not Christ’s glory alone, but rather the Trinity’s glory—the glory of the divine nature the Father, Son, and Spirit share (Jn.
17:5).
One may acknowledge this much, but the Word’s being made flesh raises the question: is the divine nature’s glory, revealed in the incarnation, a result of the incarnation? Is this a glory that did not exist prior to the incarnation? In short, “no.” We will unpack this answer in the form of a meditation on the doctrine of divine immutability45 in light of the incarnation.
41 “Unto such a representation two things are required:—(1.) That all the properties of the divine nature… be expressed in it, and manifested to us. (2.) That there be, therein, the nearest approach of the divine nature made unto us, whereof it is capable, and we can receive. And both these are found in the person of Christ, and therein alone.” Ibid., 69. Cf., Henry, GRA, 3.203.
42 King, 168. Cf., Henry’s affirmation that “the incarnate Christ is the revelation of God's essential glory and redemptive grace.” GRA 3.205-206.
43 See footnote 17.
44 The incomprehensibility of God and analogical use of language must here be acknowledged, for language is intrinsically unable to communicate this point in full. Even the term “constituent” is misleading, since it denotes being part of the whole—an idea unbecoming of the Triune God who is simple, as we shall explore below.
45 Of course, we could easily substitute this section for a defense of the doctrine of divine simplicity. A challenge (or defense) of divine immutability is a challenge (or defense) of divine simplicity. Anselm seems to make this very point of refusing to separate divine attributes (i.e., simplicity) in his meditations on eternity: “Monologian,” ch. 24, in The Major Works, edited by Brian Davies and G.R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 40-41.
12
On the Immutable God
The divine glory Jesus Christ reveals is no new glory of God because God’s glory cannot be new; there is no development in God. This doctrine of divine immutability, though having enjoyed axiomatic status for the majority of the Church’s history,46 has fallen on hard times. An exhaustive defense of divine immutability is beyond the scope of this paper,47 but germane at present is a consideration of the doctrine in light of the incarnation. First, we must at least establish that the doctrine has biblical and logical precedence.48 That immutability has biblical precedence is clear from passages like Numbers 23:19, Malachi 3:6, James 1:17, and Hebrews
6:18, where God stakes his covenant promises upon his unchangeableness.49 Of course, no shortage of counterexamples exist, which speak of God “repenting” and “regretting” and acting
46 E.g., Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, Stephen Charnock, John Calvin, John Owen, Herman Bavinck, Carl F.H. Henry, and more recently, Paul Helm, Stephen Duby, James E. Dolezal and others. Though even this point has been contended. E.g., Joseph M. Hallman, “The Mutability of God: Tertullian to Lactantus,” in Theological Studies, Volume 42, Issue 3 (1981), 373-393.
47 For excellent defenses of the doctrine of divine immutability, see Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Change?: The Word’s Becoming in the Incarnation (Still River: St. Bede’s Publications, 1984); Paul Helm, Eternal God; Dolezal, All That Is In God; Richard A. Muller, “Incarnation, Immutability, and the Case for Classical Theism,” in Westminster Theological Journal 45 (Spring 1983): 22-40.
48 We might also say historical precedence. See footnote 42.
49 Dolezal, on these specific passages, writes: “This clearly indicates that immutability signifies more than simply God's covenant faithfulness since the assurance of His covenant faithfulness is itself staked on His unchangeable being. If faithfulness itself should be that which constitutes God's immutability, then why offer an oath staked on His own self/life in order to strengthen the assurance of His promise will remain constant? The plain sense appears to be that God's unwavering covenant faithfulness is worthy of our hope precisely because it is rooted in His unwavering and unchangeable being. One reason that change in God, no matter how small, is theologically devastating is that it would signify some alteration in His being or life and thus, to the extent that such change occur, destabilize human confidence in His covenant promise.” Dolezal, All That Is In God, 19. Cf., Dolezal, God Without Parts, 81-82.
13 and reacting and moving towards his creatures in covenant.50 Critics of immutability do not hesitate to marshal such counterexamples against it.51 Indeed, evangelical attempts to reformulate divine immutability seem to be motivated by these very counterexamples.52 It should be stressed that advocates for divine immutability have felt no need to ignore or minimize the reality of passages that seem to presuppose a certain kind of mutability in God. Thus, Herman
Bavinck, the same theologian who can go so far as to say, “If God were not immutable, he would not be God,”53 can in the same breath grant, “At first blush this immutability seems to have little support in Scripture.”54 How is the apparent biblical contradiction resolved? Bruce Ware, in a reformulation of the doctrine, proposes such a resolution is available in the distinction between
50 E.g., Gen. 6:6; Ex. 22:24; 32:11; 1 Sam. 15:11; Is. 12:1; 43:24; 44:22; 63:9-10; Eph. 4:30 and Phil. 1:6. Cited from Dolezal, All That Is In God, 20.
51 E.g., Bruce A. Ware (“An Evangelical Reformulation of the Doctrine of the Immutability of God” in Journal of Evangelical Theological Society, 29.4 [1986], 431-446), Donald Macleod (Shared Life: The Trinity and the Fellowship of God’s People [Ross-Shire: Christian Focus, 1994]), J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig (Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2003]), John S. Feinberg (No One Like Him: The Doctrine of God [Wheaton: Crossway, 2001]).
52 E.g., Ware, “An Evangelical Reformulation,” 438-446. Cf., “This is just an example of what might be called the ‘relational mutability’ of God, a change not of his essential nature, nor of his word or promise, but of his attitude and disposition toward his moral creatures in ways that are commensurate to changes that happen in them.” Bruce A. Ware, “A Modified Calvinist Doctrine of God,” in Bruce A. Ware, ed., Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: Four Views, (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2008), 91. Isaac A. Dorner makes this same point in his important work, Divine Immutability: A Critical Reconsideration, trans. Robert R. Williams and Claude Welch (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 180.
53 Bavink, RD, 2.154.
54 Ibid., 153. He can grant this because “At the same time the Scriptures testify that amid all this alternation God is and remains the same. Everything changes, but he remains standing. He remains who he is... He is YHWH, he who is and ever remains himself. He is the first and with the last he is still the same God... He is who he is... in the incorruptible who alone has immorality, and is always the same.” Ibid., 153.
14
God’s ontological and ethical immutability on the one side, and his relational mutability on the other.55 This, however, is problematic, as James Dolezal points out, since “it is incoherent to say that God is ontologically immutable while denying that He is absolutely immutable…” because
“every state of being, whether essential or nonessential [i.e., metaphysical or relational], is an ontological state.”56 Instead, contra Ware’s proposal, the classical response to the apparent contradiction is to “regard these as yet further instances of the Bible’s anthropomorphic (or anthropopathic) language, revealing something true about God… progressively under a modality
(viz., change) that is improper to His plentitude of being.”57 The so-called “mutability” passages do not intend to communicate any kind of metaphysical mutability on God’s part (be it
“relational” or otherwise), but are rather highlighting certain immutable attributes with mutable language as accommodation.58 God uses mutable language to describe himself to his creatures because mutable language is the only language they have.
In truth, every theological position must appeal to Scripture’s analogical nature of language at some point or another. Objecting that the classical position gives “short shrift”59 to
55 Ware, “An Evangelical Reformulation,” 434-446.
56 Dolezal, All That Is In God, 26.
57 Ibid., 20.
58 “It is true, indeed, that as he is incomprehensible, he fills the earth also, but knowing that our minds are heavy and grovel on the earth, he raises us above the world, that he may shake off our sluggishness and inactivity… For who is so devoid of intellect as not to understand that God, in so speaking, lisps with us as nurses are wont to do with little children? Such modes of expression, therefore, do not so much express what kind of a being God is, as accommodate the knowledge of him to our feebleness.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2008), 1:13.1.
59 This is what Michael S. Horton seems to insinuate about the classical position, when he writes, “There is an appropriateness to analogies that must not be given short shrift in order to save God from his own revelation, and yet analogies are not an exact fit between sign and 15
Scripture when appealing to such a concept in the face of passages that speak of God as if he were mutable is unwarranted. If one can call God’s “nostrils” anthropomorphic, why can one not call his “repentance” anthropopathic?60 The ontological Creator-creature distinction61 and its epistemological corollary (i.e., the archetypal-ectypal distinction of Creator-knowledge and creature-knowledge)62 necessitates a linguistic corollary: a distinction between univocal and analogical language (i.e., Creator-language is univocal, and creature-language is analogical).63 In a real sense, all our language about God is analogical, since God alone can speak of God (and to
God) in an absolutely univocal sense. This means all his self-disclosure is accommodated and mediated through analogical speech.64 The burden of proof thus lies with critics of immutability
reference.” Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 46.
60 Paul Helm is instructive on this point: “This seems to be the only alternative; it does not seem to be feasible to distinguish between body-language and passion-language and to classify the former as ad hominem and the latter, along with eternity and immutability, as the literal truth about God.” Paul Helm, “The Impossibility of Divine Passibility” in The Power and Weakness of God, ed. Nigel M. de S. Cameron (Edinburgh: Rutherford House Books, 1990), 128-129.
61 “We cannot raise ourselves higher and dominate the constituative structure, we cannot subsume it under an all-embracing notion of being. It involves a real duality, non-symmetrical: absolute independence on one side, total dependence on the other.” Henri Blocher, “Divine Immutability” in Power and Weakness, 16.
62 “This distinction between archetypal and ectypal knowledge is the epistemological corollary of the Creator-creature distinction.” Horton, Lord and Servant, 17. See also Vern Sheridan Poythress, Logic: A God-Centered Approach to the Foundation of Western Thought (Wheaton: Crossway, 2013), 134-142; and Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 2nd Ed. (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2007), 319-347.
63 “[I]n each of these terms we find a particular idea which by thought and expression we rightly attribute to the divine nature, but which does not express what that nature essentially is.” Gregory of Nyssa, “On Not Three Gods,” in Edward R. Hardy, Editor, Christology of the Later Father (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1954), 259. Cf., Bavinck, RD, 2.128.
64 Thus Dolezal writes, “The only creaturely language suitable to express the simple God is a complex language since the only language that can be used by us to refer to God is drawn 16 to prove that passages describing God changing (even if only “relationally,” which, as Dolezal has shown, is an artificial qualifier) should have theological privilege for defining the doctrine of
God over those that speak of God’s inability to change. Indeed, the latter, by virtue of their remoteness to any creaturely experience, imply something closer to a self-disclosure of God’s essence than the former.65
In addition to enjoying biblical precedence, the doctrine of divine immutability is also logical. How could God change if not to his advantage or disadvantage? 66 If God could stand to be advantaged or disadvantaged, he would not be the Bible’s God (Psalm 50:12). This logic’s snugness, however, is not intuitive in light of God’s activity ad extra. Divine action within creation (indeed, creation itself) appears problematic for divine immutability. If God is unchangeable, how can he act in time? The traditional response to this quandary is God’s timeless eternity and his “divine ideas.”67 These concepts relate thusly: “divine ideas belong to
from the world of finite, complex being.” Dolezal, All That Is In God, 77. Cf., Jordan P. Barrett makes a similar point in Divine Simplicity,155.
65 Again, Helm states the matter plainly: “The metaphysical or ontological or strictly literal data must control the anthropomorphic and anthropopathic data, and not vice-versa. The alternative is quite unacceptable, namely, a theological reductionism in which God is distilled to human proportions.” “The Impossibility of Divine Passibility,” 129.
66 “Only God is altogether unchangeable; creatures can all change in some way or other. For one must realize that there are two possible grounds for calling a thing changeable, its own potentiality, and something else’s power.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiæ, trans. The Fathers of the English Dominican Fathers (Westminster: Christian Classics, 1983), Ia. 9.2.3. Cf., “God is a necessary being; he is necessarily what he is, and therefore is unchangeably what he is. Mutability belongs to contingency; if any perfection of his nature could be separated from him, he would cease to be God; what did not possess the whole nature of God could not have the essence of God; it is reciprocated with the nature of God.” Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God in The Complete Works of Stephen Charnock, B.D. Vol. 1 (1864; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2010), 1.381.
67 This concept of “divine ideas” is developed by Aquinas in ST, Ia. 14. Stephen Duby has also helpfully develops this point, “Divine Immutability, Divine Action and the God-World 17
God’s simultaneously whole presencing (totum esse praesens) by which he is perfectly, intelligently, and creatively present to all things.”68 As Bavinck explains, “God is as immutable in his knowing, willing, and decreeding as he is in his being... Neither creation, nor revelation, nor incarnation (affects, etc.) brought about any change in God. No new plan ever arose in
God.”69 God’s will, from eternity past, was to be Creator of, and economic Actor within, the cosmos.70 Though the analogical nature of language once again calls attention to itself: “from” and “past” and “was” are unbecoming time-bound words we now use to describe the time- boundlessness of God’s eternity.71 Paul Helm is also helpful when he points out that “if God is the timelessly eternal cause of the universe, then it can make no sense to ask at what time God created the universe.”72 This is because there is no duration of time that preceded the creation of the universe; creation—and time with it—originates within the timeless eternity of God’s will.73
Relation” in International Journal of Systematic Theology, Volume 19, Number 2 (2017), 144- 162.
68 Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of Creation: Cosmos, Creatures, and the Wise and Good Creator (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 55-56. Cf., Paul Helm, Eternal God: A Study of God without Time, 2nd Ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 234-250.
69 Bavinck, RD, 2.154.
70 Louis Berkhof, in his tidy description of divine immutability, explains it like this: “The purpose to create was eternal with Him, and there was no change in Him when this purpose was realized by a single eternal act of His will. The incarnation brought no change in the Being or perfections of God, nor in His purpose, for it was His eternal good pleasure to send the Son of His love into the world.” Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1958), 59.
71 See Levering, Doctrine of Creation, 58.
72 Helm, Eternal God, 234.
73 Of course, as Duby points out, this does not mean that there is no distinction between the idea of creation and it’s temporal “egression,” in which his eternal actuality “breaks forth in time,” though “this egression is not to be taken as a distinct ‘thing’ in its own right in an ontological register; instead, this noun is used to distill the fact that God, who is present with his 18
In this way, it is proper to identify God as the timelessly eternal Creator, since “God timelessly creates with time, not in time; and, as Augustine put it, he eternally wills changes without changing his will.”74
Eternity, though, for creatures, is ultimately incomprehensible. Highlighted here is the
“difference between the Creator and the creature,” which “hinges on the contrast between being and becoming. All that is creaturely is in process of becoming.”75 For creatures, to interact is to become. Were an interaction not to yield a sense of change, we would consider such an interaction impotent, or such a creature deficient (or lifeless). Demanding that God change for his interaction with creation to be genuine, however, is an illogical projection; creaturely experience does not bind the Creator.76 Indeed the Creator-creature distinction seems to demand that, in any transaction between creature and Creator, the creature alone changes.77 God’s inability to change in such an interaction is not owing to any deficiency in him (relational or
creatures in the temporal world, applies his eternal actuality with temporal diversity.” Duby, “Divine Immutability,” 158.
74 Helm, Eternal God, 236.
75 Bavinck, RD, 2.156
76 Helm explains this point well: “Not every kind of change is ruled out by immutability or impassibility… But, as one quickly realizes, the change is not ‘in’ God but ‘in’ one of his creatures who has now come to fear God. This distinction between a ‘real’ change and one that is a mere relational change is hard to make precise, but that there is such a distinction is obvious.” Helm, “The Impossibility of Divine Passibility,” 120.
77 Which is good for the creature, as Bavinck points out: “We humans can rely on him; he does not change in his being, knowing, or willing. He eternally remains who he is. Every change is foreign to God. In him there is no change in time, for he is eternal; nor location, for he is omnipresent; nor in essence, for he is pure being.” Bavinck, RD, 2.156.
19 otherwise),78 but rather to a superabundance of sufficiency. “God is unchangeable not because he is inert or static like a rock,” Thomas Weinandy points out, “but for just the opposite reason. He is so dynamic, so active that no change can make him more active. He is act pure and simple.”79
All this has crucial implications on our thesis. If God’s inability to change is owing to his superabundance of sufficiency—his being pure and simple act—it means that the beauty of his glory is infinite.80 God’s immutability means that his beauty cannot wane or diminish; it blazes undeterred in the timeless eternity of God’s existence, and is therefore what it means for God to be God. True sight’s response of such a beauty cannot but be submission; glad-hearted acquiescence in idolatry-defeating saving faith.
On the Immutable God “Becoming Man”
One may swallow what has been said up to this point about God’s economic involvement in relation to his immutability, but what of the incarnation, wherein the second person of the
Trinity “became” man?81 Surely the incarnation must denote mutability in the divine nature,
78 This is why, if analogy is to be used to illustrate this concept, a plurality of analogies is better than a single one. “None of these comparisons is perfect, but they do suggest how a thing may change in its relations while remaining the same in essence.” Ibid., 159.
79 Weinandy, Does God Change?, 79.
80 Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, 192-201. “God is the perfect completeness of what he is; the boundaries of bounty, power, life, wisdom, goodness are set only where their contraries are encountered… but God is without opposition, as he is beyond nonbeing or negation, transcendent of all composition or antinomy; it is in this sense of utter fullness, principally, that God is called simple.” 192-193.
81 Graham A. Cole helpfully frames this discussion in his work, The God Who Became Human, in this way, “If we indeed live on a visited planet, then did that even change God, and if so in what ways? After all, John 1:14 claims that the Word (logos) became (egeneto) something other than the Word, namely flesh (sarx). There are several logical possibilities here. One is that the incarnation changed the very being of God... The better answer is the classical one.” The God Who Became Human: A Biblical Theology of Incarnation (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 20 must it not?82 The answer to this quandary is, in truth, mere Chalcedonian Christology.83 Central to a Chalcedonian conception of Christology is Christ’s two-nature distinction predicated upon the one person.84 The divine nature did not add to itself a human nature, rather, the divine Son— who has a divine nature—added to himself a human nature.85 This means, while the Son reveals the shared divine nature of the Trinity in the incarnation (i.e., the glory and beauty of the
Trinity), the assumption of a human nature was predicated on the person of the Son, and not the divine nature he reveals. In other words, the incarnation added nothing whatsoever to the divine
2013), 145. Though on this matter, we should do as Cole says and not as he does, for the answer Cole adopts cannot be properly understood as the “classical” one: Ibid., 145-146.
82 Jüergen Moltmann certainly seems to think so (Jüergen Moltmann, The Crucified God, translation by John Bowden and R.A. Wilson [London: S.C.M., 1974]).
83 See, “The Chalcedonian Decree” in Christology of the Later, 373. Weinandy summarizes, this point in Does God Change?, 64. Thus, in response to Moltmann, Henri Blocher writes, “The force of Moltmann's argument really hinges on his rejection of the Chalcedonian two natures. He obviously distastes the distinction in the Symbol: unconfusedly, unchangeably. For him, the human history of Jesus enters God’s being and thus determines Trinity. We would maintain the Chalcedonian scheme as not only indispensable if deity and humanity are to be confessed with their Scriptural value, but, as such, already discernable in the New Testament… the Person of the Son, the Logos, became flesh, took on human nature, and not deity as such, has solid biblical foundations.” “Divine Immutability,” 120.
84 “…one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, unique; acknowledged in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation—the difference of the natures being by no means taken away because of the union, but rather the distinctive binding in one Person and hypostasis—not divided or separated into two Persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ…” “The Chalcedonian Decree.”
85 This theme of two natures seems to be the very thing Isaac Dorner rejects, “[I]f the economic Logos had taken on himself that kenosis, whereas as immanent in God he remained undisturbed by that act and persisted in his absolute actuality, we would have two Logoi instead of one, and he who alone is the absolute reality of the divine would not have become man at all; the incarnate Logos, however, would be an extra-divine subordinate being, over which the ano Christos (higher Christ) hovered until the consummation of the God-man.” Divine Immutability, 159.
21 nature.86 Rather, the Son humbled himself by taking on a human nature87 in addition to his untouched, immutable, eternal divine nature in such a way that the two remain “without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation.”88
Further, it is not as though the Son switches back and forth between his divine nature and his human nature, as if they were vehicles, one he leaves vacant while occupying the other. For the divine nature to be vacant of a divine person—or, conversely for a divine person who neglects to act within a divine nature—is an incoherent concept.89 A divine person is “divine” by virtue of his divine nature. Since the divine nature is, by definition, simple and pure act, it cannot be anything other than itself at all times.90 It is self-defeating to suggest that a divine person can voluntarily suspend the very attributes (e.g., immutability, impassibility, omniscience, etc.) that
86 Again, Weinandy is informative, “God’s immutability then as actus purus is no longer a stumbling block, but the primary prolegomenon for a true Incarnation. It specifies God's incarnational potential. Only if God is immutably and unchangeably perfect can he establish a relation in which he personally comes to exist as man.” Does God Change?, 188.
87 Thus Bavinck concludes, “The unity of the two nature, despite the sharp distinction between them, is unalterably anchored in the person.” Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 3: Sin and Salvation in Christ, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 259. For a splendid and concise treatment on the Son’s “emptying” by “assumption” of a human nature, see Stephen J. Wellum, God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), 174-182.
88 “The Chalcedonian Decree.”
89 This seems to be the implication of the proposal some evangelicals make, who argue that Christ, while retaining access to his divine nature during the incarnation, chose not to exercise divine attributes through it. E.g., Bruce A. Ware, The Man Christ Jesus: Theological Reflections on the Humanity of Jesus (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012); Cole, The God who Became Human; John C. Clark and Marcus Peter Johnson, The Incarnation of God: The Mystery of the Gospel as the Foundation of Evangelical Theology (Wheaton: Crossway, 2015).
90 Bavinck is helpful in this discussion, “A deity or a divine attribute that is purely a ‘potentiality’ and not ‘actual’ is inconceivable; and a human being who by development can appropriate the divine nature ceases to be a creature and passes out of time into eternity, the finite into the infinite.” Bavinck, RD, 3.303.
22 make him divine. Such would compromise either (a) his divine personhood or (b) the divine nature itself. For on the one hand (a), he cannot be called a divine person if his essential attributes are not eternal act.91 On the other hand (b), if a true subject of the divine nature can suspend attributes of said divine nature (e.g., immutability), such attributes would not be essential. This, however, is an oxymoron since the divine nature cannot be a composite of essential and accidental properties.92 From the incarnation onward, then, Christ operates fully through both his natures.93 Stated differently, the communicatio idiomatum (communication of attributes)94 consistent with Chalcedon is inseparable from the extra calvinisticum.95 What can be said about either nature of Christ can be said about his person precisely because he does not
91 Charnock, Attributes of God. Cf., Aquinas, ST, I.3. Cf., Anselm, Monologion, ch. 17. Cf., Dolezal, God without Parts, 31-66; “The reason God actively operates is because all that is in him is perfect and thus actual.” Ibid., 39
92 See Anselm, Monologion, ch. 25. Cf., Dolezal, “because God’s essence is pure act (existence and essence being identical in him) nothing can be superadded to it. Pure and unreceived being is necessarily incapable of having further actuality added to it, even accidental actuality.” God without Parts, 59.
93 This seems to be the prime pill Kenotic theologians are unable to swallow, for theologians of both strict Kenoticism from the Ninteenth-Century such as Gottfried Thomasius and P. T. Forsyth, and those who promote a softer, functional Kenoticism such as William Lan Craig and J. P. Moreland. Wellum responds to both groups well in God the Son Incarnate, 355- 393.
94 Wellum summarizes this “communication of attributes” in God the Son Incarnate, 424- 425.
95 This is the concept that the Son of God, while assuming a human nature, never ceased to utilize the fullness of his divine attributes; he never ceased to have a “purely actual” divine nature. Calvin, Institutes, 2.12, 13. Although, as E. David Willis points out in Calvin’s Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-Called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1966), this term is a misnomer. The doctrine did not originate with Calvin. Indeed, it is identifiable as far back as Athanasies (On the Incarnation, ch. 17). Andrew M. McGinnis also gives a thorough treatment of the doctrine with a historical survey and theological analysis in The Son of God Beyond the Flesh: A Historical and Theological Study of the extra Calvinisticum (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014).
23 cease to occupy his divine nature when he assumes his human nature.96 The incarnation, then, poses no threat to the doctrine of divine immutability. In fact, without immutability, the incarnation would denote a blended-natured God-man (i.e., tertium quid) who is neither God nor man.97 Such a being would be impotent for the work of salvation on account of its failure to represent God or any actual human.98 This has serious implications on the aesthetic soteriology sketched above. If the incarnation does not denote a true man, the epistemological mediation of divine glory—an essential element in saving faith—is impossible. The “fullness of deity” dwelling “bodily” (Col. 2:9) in a tertium quid body is of no aesthetic-soteriological value to human-body-dwellers (i.e., all humans). Such a glory would be unrecognizable, and would contradict the significant point of the incarnation as the Word’s act of “tabernacling” among us
(Jn. 1:14). It would rather be God’s act of translating glory into a non-human language, which
96 As Wellum summarizes, “This is why Scripture can say, in reference to the person of the Son, that he is almighty, omniscient, eternal, and so on (all attributes of the divine nature), since he as the Son, subsits in the divine nature and all the attributes of that nature are predicated of him. Yet, Scripture also says that this same Son is weak, ignorant, embodied, and even mortal (all attributes of the human nature).” Wellum, God the Son Incarnate, 325.
97 “Even the very idea of a ‘God-man’ in whom the union of two nature has been replaced by the mingling of the two is an anomaly, with which no one can make any association whatever. Such a being cannot be the mediator between God and humankind, since he is neither.” Bavinck, RD, 3.303.
98 McGinnis shows how the doctrine of the extra functioned for Cyril of Alexandria and Thomas Aquinas to protect the divinity and humanity of the Son respectively: “Cyril stressed the Son’s existence beyond the flesh as a way to guard the Son’s complete deity, which is central to the Son’s work of redemption of assuming humanity to its ultimate goal of communion with God. Aquinas, while not denying what Cyril teaches, appeals to the extra carnem idea as a way of preventing a Valentinian spiritualization and dehumanization of the incarnate Son… Christ is like us and beyond us, united to our nature and not limited to it, incarnate and transcendent.” McGinnis, The Son of God Beyond the Flesh, 71. Thus, as Weinandy points out, “God’s immutability must be maintained not only for theological reasons, i.e., in order to protect God as God; but also for incarnational reasons, i.e., God must remain immutable in becoming man if it is really and truly God who is man.” Weinandy, Does God Change?, 187.
24 may be accommodation of some kind, but not the kind that is of any use to man. Furthermore, even if such a tertium quid were to communicate its glory effectively to humans, such a glory would still fall short of salvific value since it would not be the eternal glory of the divine nature.
In other words, the revealed beauty of a tertium quid is a beauty that humans, as humans both (a) could not comprehend (since it would be entirely alien to anything else in the created order), and
(b) should not apprehend by faith (since it would not be the beauty of the divine nature, and faithful apprehension thereof would be idolatrous).
We are therefore now in a position to restate our thesis with fuller force: soteriology’s aesthetic dimension, wherein Christ’s revealed glory elicits saving faith as the apprehension of comprehended divine beauty, hinges on divine immutability. This is because Christ cannot reveal a glory other than the divine nature’s immutable glory. The only glory God has is immutable, therefore the only glory Christ can reveal must also be immutable; it cannot in any sense be new.
No Other Way
Having argued positively for our thesis by exploring both the aesthetic dimension of soteriology and divine immutability in light of Christology, we will now conclude with a negative argument. That is, we will insist on our thesis by arguing the impossibility of the contrary: the rejection of the thesis advanced here is disastrous. We will limit the implications for such a rejection to two: if the faith-eliciting glory that Christ reveals is not the immutable glory of God’s nature, and instead results from the incarnation, then saving faith places confidence on that which is undependable, and/or it runs the risk of idolatry.
A Fading Glory
25
If God changes, and the glory Christ reveals in the incarnation constitutes such a change, faith elicited by such a glory would be faith in that which is not dependable. If such were the case, the God whom Christians worship today is, in a real sense, different from the God whom saints before the incarnation worshipped. The former worship a God whose glory includes an actuality that was mere unknown potentiality to the latter (i.e., the new glory that includes the incarnation).99 He is no longer the same God, for he has changed from the God of glory A to the
God of glory B through the process of becoming.100 Some form of process theology101 seems unavoidable if Christ’s glory, which elicits saving faith from those who see it, has any new shade added as a result of the incarnation. Such a glory is necessarily subject to potential change since it itself has resulted from one.
Even if one avoids process theology with some innovative reformulation (or rejection) of the doctrine of divine simplicity to create space for accidental attributes in God—with this faith-
99 Henry points to this important relationship between divine immutability and creaturely worship: “Directing our adoration and reverence from the transient world of creaturely change and uncertainty to the reality of the unchanging God, it shows us to be but perishable creatures except as the Creator preserves us from nonbeing. Our confidence rests in God whose decrees are unchanging and whose promises are unfailing. Yahweh is an ‘everlasting rock’... whose enduring support is pledged to all who trust him. His changelessness spurs us to greater constancy in worship, fellowship and service. God's immutability allows us no hope that God will change his holy intention for the universe; to escape doom sinners must change their ways.” Henry, GRA, 3.289.
100 One may contend that this scenario is describing the same God whose glory changes over time, just like a husband whose appealing characteristics to his wife change over time. But even with such a scenario, there is a sense in which the composite husband thirty years into marriage is a different man than the one who stood at the alter thirty years prior (he now has x- rather than a-number of hairs, y- rather than b-number of wrinkles, and a z- rather than c- size waistband). Process theology follows from such an ontological construction.
101 For a helpful overview of process theology, see Stanley J. Grenz and Roger E. Olson, 20th-Century Theology: God & the World in a Transitional Age (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 130-144.
26 eliciting glory being one—saving faith still remains a gamble. If the attribute that makes Christ the object of saving faith is accidental to God’s nature, it is something God could shake off or morph into something else with no consequence to his essential self. In such a case, the distinction between his “ontological” and “ethical” immutability from his “relational” mutability offers little comfort. If his “ethical” immutability is predicated on his “ontological” immutability, and his “ontological” immutability applies only to his essential attributes and not his accidental ones, creatures who cling to Christ by faith as a result of his accidental glory find themselves outside of God’s necessary ethical constraint.
The Impending Threat of Idolatry
Another implication of rejecting this paper’s thesis is that the alternative is a Christ whose faith-eliciting glory runs the risk of being sub-divine. If the glory for which Christians worship Jesus is not immutable, it cannot be the glory of the divine nature, which means the worshipped occasioned by it is idolatrous.102 The communicatio idiomatum assures us that our worship103 of this human Christ is safe from the charge of idolatry only insofar as we can affirm that we worship him not merely for manifesting the best of humanity, but for manifesting divine glory in so doing.
102 This, of course, is a line of argumentation that requires that our previous arguments for God’s immutability are sound. It should be noted that figures, like Bruce Ware, who disagree with this formulation of divine immutability cannot be easily dismissed as “idolaters.” We use “runs the risk of” as intentional language to guard against such brash accusations.
103 Note the equation of “worship” and the kind of “saving faith” outlined in the first section of this paper. If saving faith is the glad-hearted apprehension of God for the glory he reveals in Christ, it is worship—the appropriate response of creatures who recognize the worth (or worship-worthiness) of their Creator.
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Only two options remain if the status of Christ’s revealed glory is not the immutable glory of the divine nature: it is either the innovative glory of a tertium quid—a new God-man- mixture—or else it is merely the glory of humanity at its best. Both these options are idolatrous because neither can claim God as their true object of—or inspiration for—worship. Relevantly,
Bavinck writes: “The dignity and the works of the mediator can and may be motives for worship and adoration, just as all sorts of benefits prompt us to worship God. They may also be called
‘grounds’ for worship insofar as the divine being works and reveals himself in them. But the foundation is the [mediator’s] being God alone.”104 Our point is not that motivation for worshipping Jesus is never occasioned by his humanity—as if his humanity were a substance- less window to divine glory, and nothing more—but rather that motivation for worshipping Jesus is occasioned by the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures in the single person of
Christ. When we worship him, even when we are drawn by admiration of certain human characteristics (i.e., characteristics we can also embody), we worship God, because such human characteristics (unlike characteristics we can embody) are always the mediation of divine glory.
Our worship of this human is not idolatrous only because he is no mere human, and because his beauty is not merely human.
Conclusion
The doctrine of divine immutability’s relevance on aesthetic-soteriology should come as no surprise since “all reflections of the beautiful expressed in God’s outward works... are perceivable as an aesthetic quality of God’s extrinsic glory.”105 If God is beautiful and
104 Bavinck, RD, 3.259.
105 King, The Beauty of the Lord, 209.
28 immutable, and his beauty and immutability are facets of his glory, then any manifestation of his glory is a manifestation of his beautiful immutability (or immutable beauty). We have argued that a crucial component in soteriology is saving faith’s aesthetic dimension; Christ reveals divine glory for the sinner to comprehend, and the sinner apprehends this glory in glad-hearted response. We then argued this faith-eliciting glory was the glory of the immutable divine nature—indeed, that no other glory but an immutable one could properly be called divine. We concluded by briefly examining the implications of rejecting the thesis advanced here. Far from being at odds with aesthetic soteriology, immutability shores up Christological beauty with an eternal foundation. Even further from being a hindrance to a vibrant faith, the doctrine of immutability serves to bolster Christian worship. As Henry observes, “[b]ecause Christ is ontologically changeless his salvation is permanently reliable; a changing Christ is no sure ground of hope.”106 The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ is compelling enough for a lifetime—indeed an eternity—of worshipful faith precisely because it is a beauty that remains unchanging. Thus, the Christian’s anthem can forever be: “To the only God, our Savior, through
Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen” (Jude 25).
106 Henry, GRA, 3.294.
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