A Critical Review of God with Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of
God
In my previous post I promised to
review a book written by Dr. K. Scott Oliphint, professor of apologetics and
systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. The book is God with Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of
God, (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011). Pp. 319.
As I noted in the previous post Dr. Oliphint has been charged with
violating the confessional standards of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in the
Southwest Presbytery.
In the interim since I began
writing this review my prediction that the Orthodox Presbyterian Church would
not pursue the trial of Dr. Oliphint has come true. Apparently since he has been teaching this
compromise with Open Theism since at least 2011, it is irrelevant if the
theology he espouses is out of accord with the Westminster Standards:
May 3, 2019 —
The OPC Presbytery of the Southwest addressed charges filed against Dr. K.
Scott Oliphint.
The presbytery ruled the evidence
inadmissible citing OPC Book of Discipline III.7.b(4), which refers to “the
apparent authenticity, admissibility, and relevancy of any documents, records,
and recordings adduced in support of the charge and specifications.”
Consequently, the presbytery did not proceed to trial.
While not cited in the minutes, the
applicability of BD III.2 was debated: “No charge shall be admitted by the
judicatory if it is filed more than two years after the commission of the
alleged offense, unless it appears that unavoidable impediments have prevented
an earlier filing of the charge. A charge shall be considered filed when it has
been delivered to the clerk or the moderator of the judicatory.”
The presbytery made no statement as to the
orthodoxy of the views expressed in the documents, records, and recordings
adduced in support of the charges and specifications.
Quoted from the
Reformed Forum: Resources
Pertaining to the Doctrine of God:
Events, Statements, and Reports.
[See also: Waddington
Suspension.]
Sometime later the Southwest
Presbytery gave a perfunctory dismissal of the charges without even bothering
to spend time evaluating what Oliphint has said in the 2011 and 2012 editions
of the book. The link posted at
Westminster Theological Seminary announcing the dismissal of all charges has
disappeared as of today. The article
said that the presbytery did examine the evidence and found no theological
errors on Oliphint’s part.
As a way of general introduction
to the problem, let me say that behind Oliphint’s error of attributing change
to the essence of God is his theology of paradox. The mistake is inherited from his mentor, the
late Dr. Cornelius Van Til. Continually
throughout the book Oliphint upholds the orthodox doctrine as correct. However, he will then contradict the orthodox
doctrine with caveats and attribute the caveats to mystery,
incomprehensibility, the ectypal/archetypal dichotomy, and paradox. It seems to bother Dr. Oliphint greatly that
the Open Theists so harshly attack Calvinism.
Although it is his intention to answer the objections of the Arminians,
Molinists, and Open Theists, Oliphint in the end winds up agreeing with them
while also disagreeing with them. He
goes through many strained arguments to prove that the Bible is true. The problem here is that he both affirms
logical deduction and denies logical deduction throughout the entire book. The outright schizophrenic approach is enough
to make one wonder if Oliphint finds himself conflicted by the Open Theist
arguments or even attracted to the Open Theist arguments? In fact, the opening to the book seems to
imply that there are good arguments to be had from the Open Theists since they
draw their arguments straight from the Bible.
(Hereafter I will refer to the Open Theist argument as OT).
Another reason I believe
Oliphint’s theology went off track is his adherence to the doctrine that God
has anthropopathic feelings, which also implies change in the divine
essences. Couple that with his view that
logic is created as merely human logic and not an attribute of God’s simple
being as affirmed by the doctrine of divine simplicity and you have the
ingredients for what can only be called a Barthian paradox.
In the opening paragraph of the
introduction Oliphint makes reference to the character of God:
The purpose of
this book is to help us to think biblically about who God is. More specifically, I hope to address some of
the conundrums that arise when we attempt to think about God’s character in
light of the fact that he has created and has covenanted to redeem a
people. Our focus, therefore, will be first of all on the character of God, in
order then to focus on that character given
creation. In order properly to
understand the relationship of God to creation, it is necessary, in the first
place, to understand who God is quite apart from his creation. (I cannot give page numbers since I am
utilizing an ebook in the NOOK app format from Barnes and Noble). Position 11 of 319.
The problem here is that Oliphint
never defines what he means by character.
If he means character as related to human behavior and the ethical
behavior of human beings, then he is confusing the Creator with the creature. God’s character is that whatever God does is
good and right because He is the final authority. There is no one higher than God to hold God
accountable for what God does. Even John
Calvin held this view:
2. There is no
such thing as fortune or chance
That this
difference may better appear, we must know that God’s providence, as it is
taught in Scripture, is opposed to fortune and fortuitous happenings. Now it
has been commonly accepted in all ages, and almost all mortals hold the same
opinion today, that all things come about through chance. What we ought to
believe concerning providence is by this depraved opinion most certainly not
only beclouded, but almost buried. Suppose a man falls among thieves, or wild
beasts; is shipwrecked at sea by a sudden gale; is killed by a falling house or
tree. Suppose another man wandering through the desert finds help in his
straits; having been tossed by the waves, reaches harbor; miraculously escapes
death by a finger’s breadth. Carnal reason ascribes all such happenings,
whether prosperous or adverse, to fortune. But anyone who has been taught by
Christ’s lips that all the hairs of his head are numbered [Matt. 10:30] will
look farther afield for a cause, and will consider that all events are governed
by God’s secret plan.
Book 1:16:2.
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion
& 2. Ed. John T. McNeill. Trans. Ford Lewis Battles. Vol. 1. Louisville,
KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011. Print. The Library of Christian
Classics.
Dr. Gordon H. Clark pointed out
that those who accept the doctrine of common grace make other compromises with
Arminianism that amount to what he called semi-Arminian Calvinism. In other words, instead of meeting the
objections of Arminians head on the promoters of common grace seek to reach a
mediating position between Calvinism and Arminianism. In order to accomplish that Dr. Cornelius Van
Til and other adherents to the three points of common grace sought to use a
Hegelian dialectical method to accommodate the apparent contradictions in the
Bible to a theology that could both affirm and deny the Arminian objections to
biblical and Reformed theology.
Ironically, in a recent broadcast I heard from Camden Bucey on the
Christ the Center podcast, Bucey points out that minor theological errors are
like shooting a rifle at a target. If
the target is near a bad shot can still hit the target. But the farther away the target is the more
likely that a slight misalignment of the shot will result in missing the target
entirely. (Reformed Forum: The Creator-creature
Distinction in the Hypostatic Union).
The analogy is fitting because the theology of common grace coupled with
the theology of paradox ends up missing the target both near and far. That’s because to deny the principles of
logical consistency, systematic and propositional revelation, and the law of
contradiction is to invite outright contradictions in one’s theology and the
end result is apostasy, not faith.
As a side note, the discussion in
Bucey’s podcast is fairly accurate and on the mark as far as it goes. What he and Jeff Waddington conveniently
overlook, however, is the problem of definitions. Nowhere in the discussion do they discuss the
definition of what a person is or how Jesus Christ can be one person with two
wills and two natures. Is the one person
of Christ a monophysite person? Does the
divine Logos replace the human soul and human mind of Jesus Christ? That would be Apollinarianism. These kinds of theological questions are the
questions the Van Tilians almost never answer.
Bucey even says that the Nestorian error leads to the idea that Christ
could have sinned as the Arminians and Open Theists insist. Some Open Theists even say that God could
possibly sin. But to the point, Dr.
Gordon H. Clark never espoused the heresy of Nestorianism. Instead he would have affirmed that Christ
incarnate would have to be a genuine human being with a genuine human soul and
a genuine human personality like any other human being. The two persons of the dual nature of Christ
are united by the complex of propositions both think in common. This is a much easier way to explain how
Christ can be both ignorant as a human being and omniscient as the divine
Logos. Since God cannot be changed by
the incarnation it logically follows that Christ is locally present as a human
being while being omnipresent as the divine Logos. In the same way, Christ is ignorant as a
human soul or person and omniscient as the divine Logos, the eternal son of
God. Jesus could not sin because God is
sovereign over the human nature and human person of Christ and His providence
guides all that happens. Jesus Christ
not only would not sin but He could not sin in His human nature because He is
fully God and fully human. Bucey and
Waddington basically affirm contradiction and a spiritual form of the Eutychian
heresy or monophysite heresy when they refuse to dig deeper into the theology
of the issue of Christ being one Person as the Definition of Chalcedon 451 A.D.
and the Westminster Confession of Faith affirms. I do not disagree with the basic proposition
that Christ is God incarnate but that does not mean there are no ambiguities
in the orthodox creeds and confessions that need to be more fully worked out
biblically, logically, and propositionally.
(See also: Review
of The Omnipresence of Christ, by Theodore Zachariades).
Moreover, John Calvin and the
late Dr. Gordon H. Clark both affirm that God’s providence governs the moral
sins of men and angels and the Westminster Confession of Faith does as
well. It seems to me that the new
Calvinists like Dr. Oliphint are so afraid of being accused of promoting a God
who is ruthless and harsh in His judgments that they are willing to go down the
road of compromise with the heresy of Arminianism and now even the heresy of
Open Theism. If God is mutable
whatsosever, including saying that God has emotions, then the doctrine of
divine simplicity—the doctrine that God is not a composite of complex parts—is
contradicted completely.
Dr. Oliphint constantly uses
contradictions in his book. In the
introduction he claims that he is not going to write a book on the doctrine of
God proper and then he completely contradicts himself a few sentences later:
As we will see,
to begin with God-in-relationship (with creation) is to begin in the wrong
place. We must first understand who the
triune God is before we can begin to grasp who he is as he relates himself to
creation. Thus, God with Us will explore
God’s character in order, first, to argue and reaffirm that he is independent as the triune God. Then we will begin to see what is involved
when this independent God condescends to relate himself to his creation, as God
with us.
So, this is not,
in the first place, a book on the doctrine of God (what is sometimes referred
to as theology proper).
. . .
On the other
hand, given certain biblical and historical truths with respect to the
character, attributes, and properties of God, it is incumbent on the church to
think about such things carefully in order more adequately to worship him. The primary purpose of this book, therefore,
is that the church might more biblically “think God’s thoughts after him”—that
we might understand better just who God is, what he has told us about himself,
and how best to think about him. In that
sense, the doctrine of God, or theology proper, will be the subject of every
page.
Oliphint,
position 11 of 319, Nook ebook edition.
This example of Oliphint’s
constant equivocation between two contradictory propositions is evident
throughout the book. Needless to say,
two contradictions cancel each other out.
So is Oliphint dealing with the doctrine of God proper or is he not
dealing with the doctrine of God proper?
Methinks he is dealing with theological issues and he wishes to soften
up the reader to what he is about to introduce in the subsequent pages.
As I have stated many times on my
blog, the problem of evil provokes those who object to God's absolute sovereignty to continually attack the biblical teaching
that God is the primary cause of all things including both natural disasters or calamities and the kinds of calamities instigated by moral evil. But Dr. Oliphint’s response to the problem of evil and God’s sovereignty
is simply to assert that God has character.
But what does that mean? Does it
mean that God is finite and can do nothing about evil? Not once in this book does Oliphint refer to
the doctrine of providence or mention that God providentially governs both the
good and evil actions of moral agents whether the agents are humans or angels. He seems to find it embarrassing that the
Westminster Confession of Faith affirms that God’s control and sovereignty
extends to all the sins of both men and angels:
The almighty
power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God so far manifest
themselves in His providence, that it extendeth itself even to the first
fall, and all other sins of angels and men, and that not by a bare permission,
but such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and
otherwise ordering and governing of them, in a manifold dispensation, to His
own holy ends; yet so, as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from
the creature, and not from God; who, being most holy and righteous, neither is
nor can be the author or approver of sin. (WCF 5:4 WCS)
Implied in the statements on
God’s character is that somehow God is held to some standard higher than Himself. But who would hold God accountable to this
higher standard? (Job 40:1-14).
To carry on with the review, in
chapter one Oliphint affirms the authority of Holy Scripture as the basis for
what we know about God. He wants to say
that the Bible teaches the doctrine of divine aseity and the doctrine of divine
simplicity. But hidden in his assertion
of God’s aseity and biblical theology is a foreshadowing of his doubts about
the sovereignty of God and his need to respond to the criticisms of the Open
Theists who claim that God is constantly changing and adjusting His responses
to creation. Of course the Bible does
say that God interacts with His creatures and creation. But does this mean that God changes or that
God somehow adds new properties to His immutable nature as Oliphint will argue
later in the book? To say so is to
affirm outright contradictions. To be
sure, there are apparent contradictions or paradoxes in the Bible that need to
be logically explained. Even Dr. Gordon
H. Clark admitted that during his interview for ordination by the Orthodox
Presbyterian Church in the 1940s. But
Clark’s view was not that all Scripture is apparently contradictory but rather
that since Scripture is God-breathed it cannot contain any actual
contradictions and that with enough effort most if not all paradoxes in the
Bible have propositional answers that fit with the system of propositional
statements deduced from the Bible. (WCF
1:6). The Van Tilian approach, however,
is that all Scripture is apparently contradictory and only in God’s archetypal
knowledge are there any solutions to these apparent contradictions.
Oliphint makes passing mention of
WCF 1:6 and logical consistency in his book but as is the case with Van
Tilians, he refers to this as mere human logic and that propositional and
deductive logic is both true and false.
Oliphint quotes Richard Muller:
The Reformed
Orthodox understood the text of Scripture as providing prinicipia or axiomata
[that is, foundational principles] from which conclusions could be deduced, as
indicated in the hermeneutical principle of the Westminster Confession, “The
whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s
salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may
deduced from Scripture.”
This notion of
“good and necessary consequence” is crucial; it is even an obvious and natural
component of the way in which we rely on Scripture as our authority, but it may
need a little explanation. Simply put,
the “good and necessary” consequences by which we conclude what Scripture says
and what it requires of us carry all of the authority of Scripture with
them. Thus, they themselves are scriptural conclusions, in the fullest
sense of that word. But what the divines
had in mind, at least, is that the consequences of the truth of Scripture, in
order to glorify God, must be both good and
necessary. If a consequence is only good or only
necessary, then it does not qualify as something that carries Scripture’s
mandate.
Oliphint, position
52 of 319, Nook ebook edition.
Did you catch the shift of
emphasis that Oliphint makes? He
completely reinterprets the phrase “good and necessary consequence” in WCF 1:6
so that good and necessary are two separate definitions with two different
qualifications needed to meet the condition of glorifying God. But there is another possibility. That possibility is that good and necessary
are one and the same thing and therefore the proposition stands as a
hendiadys. At this point Oliphint goes
off into anecdotal examples of deciding what to do in particular
situations. But he completely misses the
point that the WCF is speaking to doctrinal issues, not situational ethics or
other such nonsense. We know that Jesus
Christ died only for the elect because the Bible is propositional truth and we
can deduce that doctrine from the various proof texts in Scripture; we can make
that deduction by using reason, logic, the law of contradiction and good and
necessary consequence. The same can be
said for the doctrine of the trinity. The Bible nowhere says specifically and
verbatim that God is three persons nor does the Bible use the term trinity
anywhere. Yet we can by good and
necessary consequence deduce from the Bible that God is three persons because
God is referred to as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The only way to reconcile logically the
passages that affirm the oneness of God and the passages that distinguish
between three persons is the doctrine of the trinity. Furthermore, the only way to distinguish
between the human nature of Christ and the divine nature is by way of the
doctrine of the trinity. It is the
eternal Logos, the eternal Son of God who becomes incarnate, not the Holy
Spirit or the Father. (John 1:18; 2
Corinthians 13:14; Matthew 28:18-20; 2 Peter 1:1; Hebrews 1:1-3). If the trinity is not true then the logical
implications of the incarnation would be modalistic and the conclusion would
inevitably lead to a denial of the deity of Christ.
Another problem I have with
Oliphint’s book is his glowing appraisal of Clark Pinnock and the Open
Theists. Although he purports to refute
and oppose Open Theism, it seems obvious to me that he has a difficult time
rejecting what they are saying. That’s
because Oliphint reads the incarnation back into the doctrine of God so much so
that he actually compares the incarnation to God’s interaction with
creation. As I said before, he never
once mentions the doctrine of providence.
In the older Evangelical theological works there was a distinction drawn
between God’s transcendence and God’s immanence. Some went so far as to say that God was
totally transcendent. Gordon H. Clark
strongly disagreed with this contradiction, although Clark plainly admitted
that he did not know how a completely immutable God could begin to create; but
Clark did strongly refute the proposition that God is totally transcendent
because this would render God unknowable and neo-orthodoxy would be the result.
An example of Oliphint’s
opinion in regards to Open Theism is that he thinks that his analogy of the
incarnation applies equally to the doctrine of God and answers the challenges
of Open Theism:
If we begin to
think in this way—that the person of Christ gives us a proper way to think
about who God is and how he relates himself to his creation—then we are more
adequately equipped not only to think about God according to his own
revelation, but also to meet some of the challenges that have arisen, historically
and of late, with respect to God’s character and attributes.
To mention just
one example of those challenges: Clark
Pinnock, commenting on the classical view of an immutable and impassible God,
notes the following: “For most of us
today (h), however, this immobility of God is by no means attractive . . . . I admit that modern culture has influenced me
in this matter. The new emphasis upon
human freedom requires that I think of God as self-limited in relation to the
world.” This notion of God, sometimes
called open theism (in that God is thought to be open to, and not in control
of, the future), has gained a hearing and is even argued to be within the
confines of evangelical thought. John
Sanders, commenting on this view, emphasizes the newness of open theism: Modern theology has witnessed a remarkable
reexamination of the nature and attributes of God.” This reexamination, for open theists,
includes the denial of virtually all of the classic, essential attributes of
God.
Oliphint,
position 12 of 319, Nook ebook edition.
The problem, as we will see later
in this review, is that Oliphint’s solution to the apparent contradiction is to
affirm both the classical doctrine of God and the Open Theist doctrine of God
by redefining God’s eternal will or eternal decree in such a way that the
eternal covenant of redemption and the eternal covenant of justification become
“covenantal properties” instead of God’s divine and eternal plan. The problem is that Oliphint’s view of the
doctrine of divine simplicity is adjusted so that God can add extra properties
to His essence that God did not have before.
This in and of itself is problematic because it makes God mutable
instead of immutable. The doctrine of
divine simplicity implies immutability because if God is not composed of
complex parts then He cannot add anything to himself, including ad extra covenantal properties.
One of the major problems with
Oliphint is that his starting point denies that God is Logic. Dr. Gordon H. Clark affirmed the doctrine of
divine simplicity; since God is logic divine simplicity holds that logic cannot
be separated from God as God is not complex but simple. Logic is not created by God for human beings
because this would imply that God didn’t know mere human logic prior to
creating it. It would be a contradiction
to affirm that God did not know some things prior to creation. Oliphint seems to agree somewhat with Alvin
Plantinga’s distinction between necessary being and contingencies that are not
realized until creation. What is
problematic then is Oliphint thinks God has contingencies in His mind and that
God does not think necessarily in logical propositions or logically and
systematically:
We should also
see that, to construe the argument differently, if God is identical with his
properties, it may be (and in fact is the case) that, rather than God being a
property, the “property” is first of all a person, or personal, and only afterward a property. The main reason Plantinga wants to force the
identity in the direction of properties is that he is convinced that (at least
some) properties are necessarily what they are whether or not God exists. So, (at least) conceptual priority is given
to properties, rather than God, at the outset.
This priority, however, gets things backwards. If we begin our reasoning with God as a se, then we should recognize that,
before God created, there was only God.
There were no necessities along with God that were not themselves
identical to him. Thus, for example,
there were no necessary propositions that had to obtain. There was only God—Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit—the one God. There was no “2 + 2
= 4,” no “all things red are colored”; there was God and his triune, essential
character—nothing else.
Oliphint,
position 72 of 319, Nook ebook edition.
I think I can confidently say
here that while Oliphint perhaps does not intend to say that God is not
omniscient, the logical conclusion of his assertion that “there was no ‘2 + 2 =
4’” is that the triune God did not know that 2 + 2 = 4 until after
creation. If God is simple and God is
eternally immutable and eternally omniscient then obviously there was no time
when God did not know that 2 + 2 = 4 because God is simple, not complex. God’s knowledge is forever immutable and God
never learns anything new. Dr. Clark
affirmed that God thinks intuitively. He
knows everything that can be known in one timeless now. Man, on the other hand, learns things
sequentially and discursively. Oliphint denies that 2 + 2 = 4 is
part of God omniscience and therefore in effect denies that God eternally knows
that 2 + 2 = 4 as applicable to the doctrine of divine simplicity:
How do we know .
. . that two plus two equals four? One
way is to look at the meaning of the terms.
Four consists necessarily of two and two. So, it simply could not be four unless two
and two were included in it (in some way).
But what kind of necessity is this?
Is it the same necessity that we apply to God’s existence? It cannot be the case that God and creation,
including the necessary laws of creation, are subject to the same necessity.
What seems to be
a better, more biblical affirmation is that necessity and possibility are all
determined by God himself. . . .
Regarding the notion of necessity, therefore, we must maintain a distinction
between God and everything else.
Oliphint,
position 73 of 319, Nook ebook edition.
In other words, Oliphint believes
that God has contingencies and possibilities in His mind. While it is true that God knows all the
counterfactuals in every situation, it is also true that God has predetermined
the actual outcome of every possible situation.
Thus there can be no contingencies in God’s mind since He is eternally
immutable in His knowledge and eternally omniscient. There was never a time when God would not
have determined to create the world as it is because of the fact that God is
simple and immutable. Creation is a
necessary event because God never changes His mind. But even Gordon Clark
acknowledged there are philosophical and theological problems with the doctrine
of creation and the doctrine of providence.
If God is immutable, how could God begin to create?
But of course,
creation can perplex us too. If God is
immutable, how could he change from a state of inactivity to the act of
creation?
Dr. Gordon H.
Clark, What Do Presbyterians Believe? 1st edition 1965. (Unicoi, Trinity Foundation), p. 57.
The problem with Oliphint is his
constant inconsistency. Later in the
same book he in fact says that God did know logic and that 2 + 2 = 4 was in God’s
mind prior to creation:
As I have said,
we should recognize that, when God created, that which was created resided
first in the triune God’s mind (Heb. 11:3, Rev. 4:11). What God made, therefore, came from the
original, his own thoughts. He did not
create those very thoughts, but what he thought was spoken into existence, and
from that speaking, what he thought was created. That creation, however, was a translation of
God’s thoughts. It could not be
identical with his thoughts, in part because thoses thoughts partake of his
eternal character in a way that creation could not. Rather, it was taking the original as it
resided in his mind and “carrying it across” as, and into, creation
itself. Creation, then, is God’s
translation of what was in his mind from eternity.
Oliphint,
position 132 of 319, Nook ebook edition.
I would like to know how something
that exists solely as a thought in propositional form can be both uncreated and
created at the same time? Oliphint says
that logic and mathematics are merely created along with humans and the
universe. Yet he acknowledges that prior
to creation God in His unknown being somehow had ectypal knowledge prior to
creating it. Would this not mean that
ectypal knowledge in God’s eternal mind is therefore part of God simplicity and
His omniscience? I could develop this
further but in short it boils down to another apparent contradiction in the Van
Tilian methodology of apologetics and theology.
Oliphint is now asserting that there is a two-fold truth in God’s mind
as if God knows things we know just as we know them and only as He knows them
in His omniscient and uncreated mind. So
how could this be ectypal and yet proceed from God’s archetypal knowledge which
no man can know if in fact this ectypal knowledge is part of God’s immutable
omniscience and therefore inherent in God’s divine simplicity? The Van Tilian view that there is a twofold
view of truth contradicts special revelation of any kind and absolute truth of
any kind since humans cannot know anything God knows archetypally. A better distinction I think is Clark’s view
that all knowledge is propositional and systematic. We cannot know everything God knows but we
can know some truths that God knows but only discursively and partially, not
without measure or intuitively.
In lieu of going into too many
details and writing a book in response to Oliphint I will now go to the heart
of the matter and show why I think Oliphint wants to affirm both Open Theism
and Calvinism as mutually complementary to each other rather than two opposing
and contradictory theological systems.
Oliphint continually affirms that God is simple, immutable, a se or
self-existence being, etc. The problem
is that he then hedges and insists that something is added to God’s being in
creation. As I pointed out above, it
also implies that God knows ectypal and created knowledge prior to actual creation
in time. How this works is unclear to me
since God’s knowledge never increases or decreases prior to or subsequent to
creation.
It is a
translation (from God’s thought to creation) not simply of things and essences,
but of being as well. . . . According to W. Norris Clarke, the medievals objected to the notion
that, in creating, God would have created more being. If such were the case, then God’s infinity
would not reach to His being, since “more being” would be at the point of
creation. . . .
Oliphint,
positon 133 or 319, Nook ebook edition.
Unfortunately, Oliphint’s
assertion cuts against his own position in regards to God’s simplicity and God’s
immutable omniscience. If logic and
mathematics are created then it logically follows that God must be somehow
creating additional knowledge that He did not know before creation. Yet Oliphint in direct contradiction says
that God had ectypal or created knowledge prior to creation that somehow
proceeded from God’s archetypal knowledge into the realm of derived being and
ectypal knowledge. Yet this alleged
derived being exists in God’s eternal mind prior to the beginning of created
time. This in and of itself implies that
God has some sort of added properties or complexity in His being prior to creation. Oliphint seems to be saying that God’s univocal
being has something extra to His being prior to creation. (Position 133 of 319, Ibid.). Oliphint then bifurcates God’s being into two
parts which he identifies as the eimi [aseity]/eikon [image] distinction. He asserts that after God creates there is
dependent being and beings. But how this
fits with God’s eternal knowledge is a difficulty he avoids by simply affirming
outright contradictions:
That which God
thought from eternity, “comes across” at a point in time—“in the beginning”—such
that it becomes something that it was not prior to “the beginning.” What it becomes is not identical with the
original; that would be impossible. The
thoughts of God could not be, by definition, created. But it becomes a proper and true translation
or interpretation of that which has always been, that which God has eternally
thought.
Oliphint,
position 134 of 319, Nook ebook edition.
So how could an immutable God
think mutable and created thoughts prior to creation? Oliphint apparently never thought of this
contradiction.
I cannot deal with all the
problems of this book here so I will save those problems for future posts. But to be clear Oliphint tacitly agrees with
Open Theism when he says things like the following:
It may be best,
therefore, at least in these discussions, to drop the locutions of literal and anthropomorphic when
referring to God and our knowledge of him, as if some of what we know of God
has a direct reference point, and other things that we know are simply
metaphorical. When Scripture says that
God changes his mind, or that he is
moved, or angered by our behavior, we should see that as literal. It refers to God and to his dealings with
us. It is a literal or as real as God
being the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
But we should also see that the God who really changes his mind is the
accommodated God, the yaradcum-Emmanuel
God, while remaining the “I AM,” nevertheless stoops to our level to interact,
person-to-person, with us. His change of
mind does not effect [sic] his essential character, any more than Christ dying
on the cross precluded him from being fully God. He remains fully and completely God, a God
who is not like man that he should change his mind, and he remains fully and
completely the God who, in covenant with us, changes His mind to accomplish his
sovereign purposes.
Oliphint,
position 129 of 319, Nook ebook edition.
So how would a simple God be both
simple and complex at the same time?
Either God changes His eternal mind or He does not change His eternal mind. If God literally changes His mind in anyway
it would imply that God is schizophrenic and that God’s ectypal knowledge is
mutable and contingent while God’s archetypal mind is completely unknowable and
immutable. While we cannot pry into the
omniscience of God and know things intuitively as God does, we can know
univocally at certain points of coincidence the exact same propositions God
knows because some propositions are deduced from absolute necessity. There never was a time when God did not know
that 2 + 2 = 4 or that the law of contradiction applies equally and eternally at
every single point. If we say that God
cannot lie we know that from Scripture and that is an absolute truth that
assures us of God’s eternal promises in the eternal covenant of
redemption. The so-called covenantal
properties according to Oliphint’s view would not be part of God’s immutable
and eternal purposes but rather something God adds extra not only in creation
but in God’s so-called ectypal knowledge that somehow proceeds from God’s
original and archetypal knowledge prior to creation. But how can God add ectypal and created knowledge
to His immutable omniscience in eternity prior to creation? These are the paradoxes that Oliphint
conveniently ignores or purposely glosses over.
I have more to say about what
Oliphint espouses on the doctrine of creation and his remarks on the doctrine
of the incarnation of Christ. But
suffice it to say that Oliphint acknowledges that Aquinas affirmed that there
were two minds in Christ:
74. For God to “change his mind” in this context
would entail that, included in his covenantal properties, is a covenantal “mind”
such that he condescends to us, even with respect to his knowledge and the
actions that proceed from it. This, again, would be analogous to a “two minds”
theory of the incarnation, as argued, for example, by Aquinas (e.g., Summa theologica [sic] 3.5.4). [Footnote is from chapter 4, (The Son of) God
with Us, C. Slow to Anger See also Summa Theologica 3.5.4
from the New Advent website.]
This is stunning since in an
episode of the Reformed Forum a few years back Oliphint accused the late Dr.
Gordon H. Clark of nestorianism. Now we
see Oliphint affirming that there are two minds in God’s triunity: an eternal mind and an ectypal or created
mind that “literally” changes and “literally” has anthropopathic emotions. But it would appear that Oliphint is
inconsistent if he accuses Dr. Clark of nestorianism because even Aquinas affirms
that in the incarnation Christ has two minds.
A human person must have a human mind:
Objection 1. It
would seem that the Son of God did not assume a human mind or intellect. For
where a thing is present, its image is not required. But man is made to God's
image, as regards his mind, as Augustine says (De Trin. xiv, 3,6). Hence, since
in Christ there was the presence of the Divine Word itself, there was no need
of a human mind. . . .
I answer that,
As Augustine says (De Haeres. 49,50), "the Apollinarists thought
differently from the Catholic Church concerning the soul of Christ, saying with
the Arians, that Christ took flesh alone, without a soul; and on being overcome
on this point by the Gospel witness, they went on to say that the mind was
wanting to Christ's soul, but that the Word supplied its place." But this
position is refuted by the same arguments as the preceding. First, because it
runs counter to the Gospel story, which relates how He marveled (as is plain
from Matthew 8:10). Now marveling cannot be without reason, since it implies
the collation of effect and cause, i.e. inasmuch as when we see an effect and
are ignorant of its cause, we seek to know it, as is said Metaph. i, 2.
Secondly, it is inconsistent with the purpose of Incarnation, which is the
justification of man from sin. For the human soul is not capable of sin nor of
justifying grace except through the mind. Hence it was especially necessary for
the mind to be assumed. Hence Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iii, 6) that
"the Word of God assumed a body and an intellectual and rational
soul," and adds afterwards: "The whole was united to the whole, that
He might bestow salvation on me wholly; for what was not assumed is not
curable." Thirdly, it is against the truth of Incarnation. For
since the body is proportioned to the soul as matter to its proper form, it is
not truly human flesh if it is not perfected by human, i.e. a rational soul.
And hence if Christ had had a soul without a mind, He would not have had true
human flesh, but irrational flesh, since our soul differs from an animal soul
by the mind alone. Hence Augustine says (Qq. lxxxiii, qu. 80) that from
this error it would have followed that the Son of God "took an animal with
the form of a human body," which, again, is against the Divine truth,
which cannot suffer any fictitious untruth.
Thomas
Aquinas. Summa Theologica. 3.5.4.
Dr. Gordon H. Clark defined a
person as the complex of propositions that he thinks. Therefore, Dr. Clark’s view is not nestorianism
but is rather an affirmation of what Aquinas says in Summa Theologica
3.5.4. If Oliphint wants to accuse Clark
of nestorianism he should include himself in the accusation. For Dr. Clark a rational soul is the same
thing as a person since the Person of the Logos, the eternal second Person of
the trinity, is eternally immutable, it logically follows that He cannot be
separated from the Trinity because that would change the eternal being of God
the Trinity. It logically follows
therefore that the incarnate Christ had both a rational soul and was limited in
every way as we are and that the incarnate Christ was in union with the second
Person of the Trinity by means of assuming the human nature and the rational
human soul into an hypostatic union with Himself without either of the two
natures being changed, confused, mixed or separated. Oliphint’s application of the incarnation as
analogous in some ectypal way to the eternal trinity fails ultimately because
the incarnation is a one time even in historical time and providence while God’s
essence is forever eternal. Thus his bifurcation between aseity and ectypal
being is just another paradox that he cannot explain. The problem is that Oliphint’s paradox is an
actual contradiction for the simple reason that there are no contingencies and
no ectypal distinctions within God’s omniscient being. As Dr. Clark once said there are no
contingencies in God’s eternal mind:
What the
Reformation theologians meant by these terms may be fairly well surmised from a
passage in Jerome Zanchius’ book, Absolute
Predestination. The Will of God,
Position 11. He writes:
Position
11. In consequence of God’s immutable
will and infallible foreknowledge, whatever things come to pass, come to pass
necessarily, though with respect to second causes and us men many things are
contingent, i.e., unexpected and seemingly accidental.
Thus the term
contingent refers to man’s way of
looking at events, or more explicitly to man’s incomplete knowledge of how the
events were caused.
Dr. Gordon H.
Clark, Ibid., p. 64.
Apparently, Oliphint both affirms
and denies contingencies in God’s mind because part of God’s eternal mind is
eternal and archetypal and part of God’s mind is temporal, changing and
ectypal.
I disagree strongly with Calvin
Beisner who said that the Clark/Van Til controversy was a big nothing. The fact remains that Clark was right and the
Van Tilians have gone off in dialectical directions in the theonomic camp, the
Westminster California camp, and particularly the Westminster Philadelphia
camp. (See: E. Calvin Beisner, “Reflections on the
Christian Apologetics of Gordon H. Clark.”). Ironically, even a few of the students of
Oliphint—who are also admirers of Cornelius Van Til’s apologetics—also agree
that Oliphint has gone too far in this book.
(See James Dolezal: “Objections
to K. Scott Oliphint's Covenantal Properties Thesis”). Even Westminster Theological Seminary,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania tacitly acknowledged that something is wrong with the
book since sales of the book were ceased and outstanding stock was purchased
from Crossway publishers by the seminary in order to give Dr. Oliphint time to
revise the book and try to remove the problematic passages that affirm that God
somehow added to himself ectypal knowledge before creation and after creation
that God added incarnational properties to Himself so that God is both
essentially immutable and covenantally or creationally mutable with literal
changes in temperament, emotions, and will.
In 2018 even Camden Bucey acknowledged that Oliphint’s book implies
dialectical theology:
My primary
criticisms of Dr. Oliphint’s first edition pertain to the application of
incarnational categories to theology proper. In my judgment it is neither
theologically appropriate nor tenable to speak of God assuming properties
unless we’re speaking about the hypostatic union of the divine and human
natures in the person of the Son. In my view, such would lead to a two-nature
theology proper or some form of dialecticism. I think it’s better to speak of
divine simplicity, immutability, and the older terminology of relative
attributes or perhaps even new modes of relation that God sustains by virtue of
his free will. In short, covenantal condescension is relational/covenantal, not
ontological. I think we’re forced to make unnecessary theological formulations
if we affirm the latter.
And the worst fallout of the
controversy is that Jeff Waddington, an ordained minister with the OPC, was
fired from his adjunct professorship position at Westminster Theological Seminary
after he and another minister filed charges against Oliphint in the Southwest
Presbytery of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
While I have problems with Waddington’s Van Tilian theology, he is
generally a competent theologian and I do not think his dismissal was
justified. (See: Twelve
OPC Ministers And Elders Ask Westminster Board To Lift Waddington’s Suspension).
I will in a future post give a
more complete critique of Oliphint’s christology as it relates to the issue of
Dr. Clark’s final book, The Incarnation,
(Jefferson: Trinity Foundation, 1988).
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