On today's program, I answered two listener questions. The first was about Unitarian interpretations of John's gospel; this launched into a discussion of the eternal generation of the Son as well as the communicatio idiomatum. The second question was about assurance in the book of 1 John.
Here is the essay from Lee Irons that I referenced.
11 comments:
I enjoyed your program. I am going to quibble just a little with vocabulary. I don't think we should speak of the "aseity" of the Son. This was of Calvin's innovations and departures from Nicene language. Calvin mocked the language of Nicea and refused to subscribe to it and some were accusing him of being an Arian and that's when he started talking about the aseity of the Son. Both Lutheran and Roman Catholic polemicists attacked Calvin for speaking of the "aseity" of the Son and some even accused him of tritheism. To be fair, I don't think Calvin was a tritheist or an Arian but I do think that this shift in vocabulary laid the groundwork for later Calvinists to engage in real heresy especially among the followers of guys like Gordon Clark. Calvin's mistake was to start his doctrine of God as being an uncreated Creator and then try to work his way out to the Trinity rather follow Nicea and start with Begettor, Begotten and Proceeding.
In some ways I think that Calvinists can rightly be thought of as hyper-Nestorians. As far as we know, Nestorious never denied that we receive Christ's body and blood in the Lord's Supper. But it was the fear of his opponents that his teachings would lead to that.
Oops. That last comment was written by Charles Wiese.
Thanks Charles. Can you point me to any sources that deal with this issue? I confess that when I studied Trinitarian theology pretty extensively, I was Reformed.
I wrote an article about this on my blog which has some links to other resources both for and against Calvin's doctrine: http://lambonthealtar.blogspot.com/2013/01/calvinists-and-trinity.html
Roger Beckwith's article is pretty balanced. Warfield's defense of Calvin that I link to in my blog post provides some quotes from Gerhard critiquing Calvin's doctrine.
Hi Jordan,
Thanks for your thoughtful podcast reviewing various Trinitarian errors and on Forde's theology. You mentioned that Peter J. Leihart questioned Reformed dogma that "the finite cannot contain the infinite." Where did you read that. Would like to read that if possible. Thanks.
Regards,
Martin
Martin I will try to find the source and get back to you.
I think it might be useful to discuss how Lutherans understand Chalcedon as that is often a point of contention between Reformed and Lutheran, particularly when we get to things like Luther's doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's physical presence.
Hi Jordan,
Concerning the critic and defense of Calvin's Trinitarian concpts, this article discussed about it
http://calvinistinternational.com/2012/05/02/is-there-a-calvinist-doctrine-of-the-trinity/
Regards,
Martin
Martin,
Thanks for that great link...
Found this interesting link regarding Peter J. Leihart on the "finite cannot contain the infinite." See http://www.leithart.com/2012/07/09/finite-and-infinite/
Apparently he was misunderstoood and remains Calvinistic in his view.
Oh ok. Thanks for posting!
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