As is evident in
conversations with both unenlightened Catholics and Calvinists (but
especially Calvinists), the starting point of theology – the ordo theologiae is
radically different. The West starts with the nature and “attributes” of God
for the most part, which are attributes of God’s simple essence. This is clear
in Berkhof, Hodge, Reymond, Dabney and the various confessions. Apparently,
some Calvinist buds of mine were not aware that this is standard western
theology. I have yet to see a Calvinist theologian who doesn’t hold to the
standard western views of divine simplicity.
The basis of all of this is
the confusion of nature and Person in God and all the multifarious implications
that flow from this. The implications flow out into Christology and soteriology.
It should be obvious that our soteriology has to match up with our view of
Christ and our view of the Trinity. But my western friends don’t seem to catch
on to this. In other words, I cannot accept some view of the Trinity and the
Incarnation, and then come up with a soteriology that does not comport with
that.
Eastern theology does not
begin with 17th century polemics about “justification” (as does the West). The
starting place for theology is the Trinity and Incarnation as exemplified at
the Ecumenical Councils of the first 1,000 years. All theologizing then flows
from this. This is the reason for the vast dfference in Trinitarian theologies
between the two. The west’s universal acceptance of the Augustinian filioque is
proof of this, and the filioque is based on ADS. No western theologians accept
the Cappadocian/Ecumenically accepted theology on this matter. And they are two
different views.
When St. Athanasius debated
with the Arians, his Discourses Against the Arians make it clear that the way
we do theology is to see what the Christological/soteriological implications
are. In the west as a whole, and Calvinism and Thomism in particular, there are
numerous absurdities that arise from these presuppositional starting points,
and the starting point and common ground between the two is a faulty
Trinitarian view and a faulty Christology.
Here’s the proof. Calvinism
says that in the garden, man was placed in a covenant of works where his nature
was righteous and he could potentially “merit” his salvation for his seed. When
man sinned, he became inherently corrupt, with all of the motions of his heart
and actions being in some form evil. This is the language of the Westminster
Confession. Evil is necessary and some aspect of man’s being. The image of God
was lost to the degree that man’s heart produces only evil, we are told.
So a new man had to come and
fulfill this covenant, and reverse the determinate power of evil passed on
through natural conception. This man is Jesus of Nazareth, who in time and
space perfectly kept all the laws of Moses, and thus “meritted perfect
righteousness” from the Father as a human subject (Nestorian). Our debt and sin
have provoked the hatred of God for the human race, which is our *natural
state* (which God creates, and immediately hates – which is Manichaean!) and
this infinite wrath is imputed to Christ, while the legal state He earned is
imputed to us. There is no Calvinist theologian who has ever proposed that this
imputed state – something clearly created – is a divine energy. There is no
Calvinist theologian who has ever proposed that Christ’s humanity was deified
by divine energy. But these doctrines are the teaching of Scripture and the 6th
Ecumenical Council on the two wills of Christ.
So what we have is a Nestorian
system where a human subject keeps the covenant of works and merits a created
legal state. It is NOT a real theosis. It is a moral conjunction theory of both
the Incarnation and our salvation – word-for-word Nestorianism, as the Letters
of St. Cyril Against Nestorius make clear.
The Arians were
proto-Nestorians and differed little in their theory than Nestorius. In their
view, Jesus is a lesser creature who was damned by the Father at the Cross.
They realized what the Calvinists don’t – that it’s senseless to say that God
damns Himself. So they came up with a polytheistic view where the dude Jesus is
an apotheosized man-god who underwent the rejection of God. Nestorius taught
Jesus was a human person/personal subject who, through being a totally righteous
dude, achieved union with the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity. The
Calvinists, when they give this some thought, usually opt for saying the
humanity of Christ was damned – that human subject who meritted the
righteousness and suffers under the “infinite wrath” as the Larger Catechism
says. So this is just a variation on the Nestorian view. What all of these
views have in common is that Jesus is not a divine Person. The Orthodox view of
Scripture and the Councils is that the sole subject of all the Incarnate
actions is the Logos. There’s no one else there.
If they admitted that, there
is no sense at all which a human person can be there, “meriting righteousness”
because “Jesus” is a divine Person and is righteousness. His humanity can only receive
participation in the divine energies as communicated from the energy of His
divine Person. His humanity never participates in the divine ousia, as that would
be pantheism. His humanity is also never separated from or cut off from the
divinity, but is deified/raised by the divine energy of the Persons. Calvinists
often object to this “deification” language, but to do so would mean His
humanity was not raised from the dead. Look at Mt. Tabor (the Transfiguration
in Mt. 17) – what do you see? You see the divne energy (not the essence)
blasting through the veil of His humanity. Only the Eastern view makes sense of
this and always has.
Jesus has to be consubstantial
with us, for all aspects of our humanity to be raised/saved. If He lacks a
human will, our wills are not healed. If He lacks a human soul, our souls are
not healed. He must be fully human, and as many Calvinists deny, He assumed our
lowly state. He assumed our nature bereft of divine life. It was precisely to
communicate to that humanity His glory and eternal life that He assumed our
fallen state. But Calvinists object to this because they assume human nature is
now evil, if it is fallen. That is not so. Nothing God creates is evil, and
clearly God still creates human nature as well as holding it in being (Col. 1).
Calvinists often say that His humanity was “unfallen.” Then why did He suffer
and die? This is docetism. The docetists taught that the suffering and death
were phantasms and that His flesh was “heavenly” unfallen flesh. This is a
gnostic view: just as gnostic as Calvinism, in that it gives evil some kind of
determinate being. Nature is determined and our nature is determinately evil.
Human persons are frozen in their evil nature which God creates and then hates
(?) because, just like in Christ and in the Godhead, nature and Person are
identified. Hebrews says He was tempted in every way as we, yet without sin.
Yet, bizarrely, Calvinist think temptations themselves are sin. This text
proves both that He assumed our fallen state, since temptation is a result of
the fall, and that temptation itself – concupiscence – is not itself sin, as
Calvin and the WCF say.
In Calvinism, then, the only
reason there needs to be a representative as a man is simply because God wills
it. But God’s will is not bound by anything in Calvinism/theological
voluntarism. Thus, God cancelling out God’s infinite wrath is not only
senseless, but makes the Incarnation needless.
Calvinism, then, is not at
all predicated on an orthodox Christology, but a quasi-Nestorian approach that
makes Jesus a human subject in order to salvage their Pelagian covenant of
works doctrine and the imputation of sin doctrine. This is also why many of
them get up in arms when they hear Theotokos, not having a clue what that
means. They think referring to Mary as “Mother of God” means she caused His
divinity, when what it means is that the Person she gave birth to is a divine
Person. Calvinists who reject this reject it precisely on the same grounds as
Nestorius. The Word became flesh. The Word – already a Person, did not assume a
human Person. He did not change into man. He did not change man into the divine
nature. He assumed human nature and redeemed it. That is why all human beings
will be resurrected. There is no other basis for resurrection that union with
Christ. But in the Calvinist scheme, Christ is not in any sense connected to
the nature of the non-elect. Why, then, are the non-elect raised from the dead?
Is resurrection a natural phenomena, as Pelagius taught? Of course not.
Clearly, then, limited atonement falls as well.
As I mentioned, the
classical scholastic version of the doctrine of the filioque is
undeniable proof the West has followed Augustine’s doctrine of Absolute
divine simplicity. This filioquism is predicated on the notion that the locus
of action in the Godhead is not personal, but impersonal. The Spirit is said to
proceed from a *relation* of two Persons (Father and Son) and is then
subordinated to an impersonal operation/attribute – “love.” The “love” between
the Father and Son is supposed to produce a Person, but not only is this
nonsensical and subordinationist, it already presupposes what it is trying to
show: the “love” (which *is* the H.S.) between Father and Son produces the H.S.
Did you catch that? So the Holy Spirit produces Himself, and is simultaneously
said to do so because He comes from the Father and Son. This is because a
Person is identified with an energy (love). What Person does the love of the
Spirit and Father produce? What Person does the love of the Spirit and the Son
produce? This is ludicrous. In other words, Nature and Person are all one in
God. But as St. John of Damascus and every Eastern Father have noted, “the
heretics (modalists) say nature and person are the same in God.” As
stated, it’s modalistic plain and no Calvinists reject the classical
formulation of the filioque to my knowledge.
The filioque is, as I said,
proof the West as a whole holds ADS because the entire basis for the notion is
Augustinian simplicity. Augustine and the Spanish Catholics thought
Arianism could be combatted through ADS and the Spirit being the glue between
the Father and the Son. But it is evident why this is so bad. Western ADS then,
confuses nature and Person in Godhead, makes Persons operations, and
then posits an Incarnation of this divine nature. The typical western formula
is like an addition problem:
Divine nature + human nature
= Jesus Incarnate. But a divine nature (impersonal and shared by all) is not,
strictly speaking, what became Incarnate. A single divine Person (with a divine
nature) became Incarnate. The impersonal essence of God does not “act.” It does
not enter into a mode of being which the other Persons do not. The Son,
however, does. He became Incarnate, and not the Father and not the Spirit. The
Logos, the Second Person, assumed impersonal, fallen human nature. That is the
only way to cut it, and no one in the West really believes this.
In short, if Jesus is a
divine Person, the entire Calvinistic scheme falls. (Jay Dyer, “How Calvinism is Nestorian and
Pelagian,” in Essays on Theology and Philosophy [Samizdat Press, 2019], 296-99)
