Berkhof on the community-oriented interpretation of Scripture

Roman Catholic lay-apologists enjoy characterizing Protestant Bible interpretation as an event in which an individual runs into a closet, closes the door and reads the text for himself, coming to whatever conclusions he pleases, without consulting any relevant commentary or individuals in his Christian community, let alone the Church in its authoritative teaching capacity. This, it is said, is what generates the endless multitude of denominations within Christianity, as every Protestant acts as his own little Pope.

What I don't understand about this characterization is how it applies to Reformed Protestantism. Since when have the Reformed been known for promoting an individualistic interpretation of the Bible, the kind practiced by various fundamentalists with strong Anabaptist tendencies? Consider how the highly influential Louis Berkhof describes the formulation of dogma (emphasis mine):

The Church does not find her dogmas in the finished form on the pages of Holy Writ, but obtains them by reflecting on the truths revealed in the Word of God...it is not merely the individual Christian, but rather the Church of God as a whole, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that is the subject of this reflective activity. The spiritual man is the only one that is fit for this work, and even he can obtain a proper and adequate understanding of the truth in all its relations, and in all its fulness [sic] and grandeur, only in communion and in cooperation with all the saints...The formation of dogmas is not always a short process, nor is it a simple one. Its course is frequently determined more or less by long-drawn controversies. These are not always edifying, since they often generate a scorching heat and frequently lead to unholy antagonisms. At the same time they are of the greatest importance, and serve to focus the attention sharply on the question in debate, to clarify the issue at stake, to bring the different aspects of the problem into the open, and to point the way to the proper solution. The Church is largely indebted to the great doctrinal controversies of the past for its progress in the understanding of the truth.¹

Note that these profitable controversies could never, of course, occur in the mind of one individual sitting alone in a closet with his Bible. And Berkhof continues after this point to discuss the role of the Church in formally accepting the formulation of dogma, again rejecting the idea of supremely individualistic interpretations of Scripture holding any sort of higher or final interpretive weight.

Roman Catholic lay-apologists should appropriately characterize the Reformed approach to Biblical interpretation by treating it as fundamentally distinct from other groups with certain Anabaptist tendencies. Perhaps then their appeals to unity arguments can be reworked and taken as credible objections to the Reformation and its principles.

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1. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, New Combined Edition (Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 1996), 23.

Windsor's treatment of Ephesians 2:8-10

Scott Windsor's more recent post on the question of Ephesians 2 is meant to be a response to some interaction we've had about this post I did some time ago. Let's see how it's gone so far.

Rhology: Notice how, again, "works" appears TWICE in the psg. You're proposing that "not as a result of works" = works of the OT Law, while "created in Christ Jesus for good works" is something totally different? Even though they appear one sentence of each other?"
--sw: Yes, but not absolutely. "Works of the Law" CAN be "good works" if one is in the State of Grace FIRST.

This is applying an RC gloss after the fact. Where does the Eph 2 psg give us that idea?
And it doesn't answer the question I've raised. Once again:
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Just for ease of understanding, so we're all on the same page, this is the problem I'm contending Mr Windsor encounters here:

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works of the OT Law, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works of the OT Law, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

If this is inaccurate, why? Show me why from the text.
You had said: It is a command to perform "good works" and the context is specifically opposing 'works of the Law.' and You are mixing "good works" with "works of the Law" again.

It is your position that mixes the two, not mine. In my view, "works" in Eph 2:9-10 refers to any activity that one might otherwise expect to be meritorious towards one's good standing with God, something that God would want us to do. Said works don't save us - they are for those who are "created in Christ Jesus" (ie, born again believers) to do. Not in your view. In your view, you make an arbitrary distinction and make the first "works" into "works of the OT Law". So, why not the 2nd "good works"? You yourself said:

And this fact is made crystal clear by verse 15: 15by abolishing in His flesh the enmity, which is the Law of commandments contained in ordinances, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace...

So why isn't the 2nd "works" also "works of the OT Law"? You're arguing that the OT Law is in the context, after all. We need to get this question answered clearly before we go anywhere else.

Context doesn't matter when you own the book

My Eastern Orthodox debate partner David made an astonishing statement the other day that I would like to share.

The original post was on a different topic, but that's OK. I don't ordinarily mind derailing a comment box, but this one got pretty far afield, and I liked the post and its feeble responses from a couple of atheists, so I'll be diverting the EO-related discussion to this and another future post.

Anyway, what led up to the statement was that David had claimed that EOdoxy offers a better answer to the materialist atheist than my presuppositional approach and argumentum ad absurdum offered in the post. (He still hasn't let me know exactly what that answer is.) I challenged that, naturally, especially given the fact that he is a biblical errantist and accepts the theory of evolution as usually stated by the modern neo-Darwinists (or so he has implied). He pointed in due course to a webpage detailing some experiences EO martyrs have suffered at the hands of Soviet communists. I read some of them, including this one:

The overthrow of the Tsar, "he who restraineth" (2Thes.2:7) opened the way for the servants of Antichrist to exterminate the spiritual powers of Russia, and first of all -- the clergy.

David defended this:

Do you disagree that the Czar restrained the Atheist Communists? Or that Atheist Communists are the servants of the AntiChrist? 1&2 John are very clear about who the AntiChrist is... And Atheist Communists fit the bill.

My reply set up my favorite statement from him so far:

Nice leap there. Context much?
2 Thess 2:1 Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, 2 that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. 3 Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God. 5 Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things? 6 And you know what restrains him now, so that in his time he will be revealed. 7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. 8 Then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming; 9 that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, 10 and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. 11 For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, 12 in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.

It's pretty reckless Left-Behind-type eisegesis to apply those contemporary events to 2 Thess 2's prediction. I didn't think Tim LaHaye had a lot of pull in the EO community.

Then the kicker from David:

Their use of this particular phrase from Scripture is not somehow "official Orthodox doctrine." The Scripture is a living document and the possession of the Church; they chose to use a phrase from our Book.

Now, I presume that the Bible is a "living document" to David b/c, as all organisms have evolved from a common ancestor, the Bible itself is evolving as well, hopefully in the direction of perfection (depending on the mutations it suffers and the natural pressures it experiences that will govern whether it survives or not), but it's not there yet.

No response to the obviously bad exegesis performed by the author of the blurb who was no doubt expressing EO popular piety unto one of her martyrs. All this preceding talk about the unity of the Church, but when an EOdox expresses a view that David apparently doesn't feel like defending, and all of a sudden, the site is a private individual expressing a private opinion, not Orthodox doctrine. Whom am I to believe is a more reliable purveyor of Orthodox doctrine - David the layman 20-something-year-old errantist or the website of the ROCOR parish All Saints of North America?

Even more pointedly, David is evidently vicariously sidestepping an EOdox's responsibility to properly interpret Scripture. Why? Because it's "our Book" - we'll thank you not to lecture us on how badly we used it, since it belongs to US, not you! If we want to take 2 Thessalonians ludicrously out of context and ape Hal Lindsey, we're gonna do it and we don't need no guff from youse guys.
Given this mentality, is it really any surprise that it's nearly impossible to find any actual biblical support for most EO distinctive dogmas?

Preservation, part 3. An objection - freewill.

Continuing our series on preservation, we come to a frequent objection to the concept of the perseverance of the saints, raised here and elsewhere.

"If, when we are saved, we don't have the choice to turn away from God again, doesn't that mean we have less free will than before, when we were sinners?"

There are numerous angles from which to tackle this. I'll focus only on the internal inconsistency of it here. Such a question is asked b/c of an unbiblical definition of freedom and slavery.

Romans 6:17-23 - But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death.
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Answer 1:
What is freedom? Biblically, it is living in Jesus. "My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."
To return to sin after having been set free from sin and made Christ's is not more freedom, it is less. The objection is caught in the vise of advocating that one has the free choice to return to a state of less free choice.

Answer 2:
Biblically, our nature is transformed upon justification.
2 Cor 5:17 - Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Ezek 36:27-28 - And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

We no longer desire to sin, to do evil. So is the objector telling us that we will return to the previous state of heart? God did the transforming, can we undo it?

Answer 3 (and most pointedly):
The objector himself also believes that we lose any ability to "choose freely" to walk away from God at a certain point in time. That is, at time of death, I know of no self-called Christian system that would say that a person can, after death and going to Heaven, subsequently turn away from God and go to Hell. Why? Don't they have free choice? Apparently not.
This leads to the question why the objector would say, therefore, that it is contrary to the idea of freewill that one will not turn away from God once converted. The objector obviously has no moral objection to such an idea, since he believes it as well. All that is left to him is to make a biblical objection, and we've seen how a few of those have failed already.

I'm still trying to decide whether more posts will follow, but that was fun enough!

Preservation, part 1. Warnings.

My friend David Bryan, an Eastern Orthodox blogger, has made a statement in a recent post that bears analysis, since I see it all too often. The post's comments have been taken down temporarily, but they should return in a little while and I'll quote from it sufficiently here. Anyway, this is a question that needs to be answered when thinking about what we do in biblical exegesis.

-When I asked about how we determine which passages of scripture get "interpretive precedence" over others -- for example, say that Romans 8 keeps us from reading any kind of warning into Romans 11 -- Rhology told me that I "can't do that b/c John 10 says that we will never perish."
...Why could I not say that Romans 11, with its warning against those truly grafted into Israel being cut off by not continuing in the belief that originally saved them, could not color our view of John 10?

This illustrates why discussing things like the perseverance of the saints can be so important, so revelatory. It might not be a primary doctrine, of the most central importance, but it can bring out and shed light on other problems that underlie and surround it.
Now, it's a good question, but it's not that good once you think about it.
Why is it not that good? B/c I already answered the premise in a comment:

-Well, OK, but I'm sure you would agree that one's position on Issue X must be able to take into account all that the Bible has to say on the subject. If it can't, it does not earn the label "biblical" and I would say needs to be rejected.

We have several choices when we face a difficulty between two or more psgs of Scripture.
1) They contradict each other.
2) They are mysterious and we don't know.
3) They are harmonisable, reconcilable.
4) One is to be ignored.
5) Appeal to another authority, which diverts and may or may not even answer the question, but at least the pressure is off, kind of (if you're into that kind of thing).

It should go without saying that option #3 is that which is to be sought after. If you disagree, have fun living life that way.

Romans 11: Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry 14in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. 15 For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? 16If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches. 17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, 18 do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. 19Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” 20 That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. 22 Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. 23 And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again.



Now, why did I paste such a large portion of the text of each, especially Romans 11? Well, for one thing, if someone proposes a biblical interp that disagrees with another possibility (say, Jesus' discussion of His preserving His people in John 10:25-28 [whose discussion is next in line]), then the 1st place we check is the context of the passage(s) in question, as opposed to throwing brief phrases at each other "The Bible says 'Otherwise you too will be cut off!'", etc, closing the Bible, and being done with it.

Here David Bryan proposes that Romans 11 teaches that an individual can be at some point in his life in such a state that he would go to Heaven forever if he were to die at that moment, and later in life be in such a state that he would go to Hell forever if he were to die at that later moment. Which I deny.

Look at Rom 11's whole topic - Paul is completing his 3 chapter long discussion of the Jewish people as a whole and now introduces the idea of 'competing' peoples - Jewish and Gentile.
The Jewish people in general have received a hardening from the Lord such that most will not come to Jesus in faith (v.7). This has occurred in order that the "fullness of the Gentiles (might) come in" (v.25) and in order to make Israel jealous (v.11).
V. 17 begins Paul's thought about the branches, where some branches (the Jews) were broken off in order that wild branches (Gentiles) might be grafted in. And yet the Gentiles (to whom he's writing, after all) must not become prideful but fearful, reverent that they were grafted in by God's favor and not b/c of anythg good that they were or had done.

The warnings are for the group as a whole. Do not think that you (all) (y'all) have anythg to offer to God. Just as in Deuteronomy 7, God has chosen the GentileS (as a group) to receive salvific blessings. Let's follow Paul's thoughts through the previous chapters:

Rom 9:5-8 - They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.

22-24 - What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory — even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

30-32 - What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works.

10:16-21 - But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have, for

“Their voice has gone out to all the earth,
and their words to the ends of the world.”

But I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says,

“I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation; with a foolish nation I will make you angry.”

Then Isaiah is so bold as to say,

“I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.”

But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”
Then the psg I cited above (13-23), then v. 25 seems to be tying up the thought:
Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.
Alternatively, we must also remember that warnings in Scripture are for real consequences -

1. of suffering consequences of sin in this life
2. of losing assurance of God's presence in our lives and our forgiveness of sin (how ironic that we have the least assurance of forgiveness when we are the most in sin!)
   
3. to warn us that falling into unbelief/disobedience would prove that we were never of God to begin with but had been deceiving ourselves all along.
4. to warn us against losing our heavenly rewards, which are based at least partly on our actions after we are justified.
   

Further, such warnings are part of the means God uses to preserve His saints. Consider what another blogger recently had to say:

Calvinism doesn’t take the position that God would never cast us away under any circumstances. The warnings are conditional. If we did such things, God would cast us away. It’s just that those circumstances will not eventuate. And the warnings are part of what restrains us from doing such things. They serve as a disincentive to apostasy. So the worst-case scenario does not play out—thanks, in part, to the fear of consequences. It’s easy for Christians to take revelation for granted. After all, we have divine revelation. So we know what’s expected of us. But suppose we didn’t? We do not enjoy an inborn knowledge of everything that’s expected of us. So we depend on divine revelation to inculcate some of our duties to God and man. Suppose I don’t know that a certain type of mushroom is poisonous, but you do. So you warn me not to eat that type of mushroom. As a result of your warning, I refrain from eating that type of mushroom.

The warning was hardly superfluous. It furnished me with some important information I wouldn’t otherwise have—information which enabled me to act prudently in that situation. ...the road signs would only be bogus if the bridge wasn’t washed out. But if the bridge is, indeed, washed out, and you disregarded the cautionary signage, then your car will plunge into the river below and you will drown.

--“Thus even if fear and coercion unto holiness were the sole intent of the consequences in God's warnings to the saints, the teaching of a doctrine that absolutely no saint can fall away directly contradicts such an intent.”

This is like saying that if I tell you not to eat those mushrooms because you’ll die of food poisoning should you do so, and you refrain from eating them as a result of my advice, then the warning was meaningless.

The statement "God uses means to preserve His children" might be more easily understood if reworded: God warns that Action X would result in loss of justification, so that the person would be condemned if he died thus. Thus God preserves him who is truly justified (whom God alone knows with infallible certainty) by preventing that person from committing the action warned against. As an example, Rom 11:22: "...provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off."
Thus, God protects the elect from not continuing in His kindness. Works by means, as opposed to by an invisible, 'magical' power by which He snaps His divine fingers and zaps the guy who just sinned his way out of justification back into justification in the blink of an eye.

My discussion of John 10's application to this question will follow soon.