Month: June 2016

Some Serious Questions About The Trinity

/ Matt Emerson / 5 Comments

I posted these on Twitter earlier, but I think I’ll leave them here in a more permanent place.

We all need to ask some very serious questions at this point, it appears (although there are 2000 years of work addressing these already…).

  1. Are we now willing, given ERAS/EFS/ESS, to assert three wills in the Godhead? How does “submission and authority” occur in the life of God if not via distinct wills, one for each person?
  2. If yes to #1, are we now willing to either a) deny inseparable operations or b) so alter it that it is a matter of unity in agreement, not unity in action?
  3. If yes to #1, are we willing to so alter the doctrine of God that unity of essence does not equal unity of will?
  4. If yes to #1, are we now willing to posit monothelitism, the Apollinarian position that posits that the Son’s will in Garden is his divine will struggling  with and ultimatley submitting to the Father’s divine will?
  5. If yes to #4, are we willing to assert not only that there are three wills in Godhead but that, in the Garden, they are struggling with one another?

These questions are not merely speculative, only for theo-nerds, and application-less for the layperson. These questions are *vital.* For example, regarding the doctrine of salvation: if we assert monothelitism (Christ’s incarnate will is only his divine will) instead of dyothelitism (the incarnate Christ has two wills, human & divine) we lose the clear connection between Christ’s redemptive obedience and his healing of our *human* wills, returning them to obedience.

Think of your own heart: do you obey readily? Not in your flesh you don’t. Traditional Trinitarian and Christological doctrine says there is one will in the Godhead, two in Christ – human and divine. The *human* will of Jesus obeys *for us* and thereby redeems our own wills. You can obey because Christ, the second Adam, obeyed *in his humanity by his human will* and now restores your *human* will through his Spirit.

Another applicational point – when you contemplate God, who are you contemplating? An accurate portrait or a distortion? If God has one will, but you posit three, you are not contemplating God rightly. Vice versa, if God has three wills, but I posit one, I am not contemplating God rightly. That is no laughing matter, nor is it merely a third order question.

Let’s be very clear about what’s at stake in this debate – a right understanding of Christ’s salvific work and a right contemplation of God.

Further Reflections on the Unity of the Divine Will

/ Luke Stamps / 6 Comments

In my dissertation at Southern Seminary, I sought to provide a dogmatic defense of dyothelitism, the belief that the incarnate Christ possesses two wills–one divine and one human–against several contemporary monothelite (one-will) proposals. Though my thesis related principally to Christology, quite obviously this issue has massive implications for the doctrine of the Trinity as well (a point Mark Jones has recently driven home). I include a brief section of my dissertation here because I think it may be particularly relevant in light of the late Trinitarian dustup within evangelicalism.

One of the themes of this dissertation is the irreducibly dogmatic nature of the decision to be made between monothelitism and dyothelitism. No single biblical text or Christological theme can alone determine the matter. It is a systematic decision based on a variety of factors, including how much weight one gives to the ecumenical councils, how one understands the nature of Christ’s human nature, how one relates Christ’s volitional life to his soteriological task, and so forth. But perhaps the most pressing dogmatic decision to be made is trinitarian in nature: are we to understand the divine will as singular or plural? Is the Godhead monothelitic or trithelitic? This is simply another way of posing the more fundamental philosophical question involved in this debate: do wills belong to persons or natures? If wills belong to persons, then there are three wills in the Godhead, since there are three divine persons. But if wills belong to natures, then there can only be one divine will, since there is only one divine nature.[1]

. . . .

One other Trinitarian issue is worthy of comment. One of the most compelling theological arguments in favor of trinitarian trithelitism (three wills in the Godhead) is the desire to account for the eternal relations of the immanent Trinity. It seems that those who maintain, with the tradition, that the divine will is singular still need to explain how there can be real relations of love within a monothelitic Godhead. They would also need to explain how the divine missions are connected to the eternal relations of origin, why it is that the Son became incarnate and not the Father, and how the economy meaningfully reveals the immanent trinitarian relations.[2] More work needs to be done on these pressing issues, and only a few brief suggestions can be offered here.

First, contemporary theologians should avoid equivocation when comes to the trinitarian term “relation.” Relation does not equal relationship when it comes to the Trinitarian persons, just as person does not equal personality. Instead, the traditional understanding of “relation” is tied to the relations of personal origin, namely, unbegottenness, begottenness, and procession.[3] To distinguish the persons of the Trinity in terms of “relationships,” which require distinct personal wills, is to take a step away from Trinitarian orthodoxy.

Second, when it comes to the relationship between the economic and the immanent Trinity, perhaps we would do well to remember the Augustinian notion of the divine missions. For Augustine, the missions—the sending of the Son and the Spirit—are a part of the economy but they accurately reveal the eternal relations of the Godhead. The Son’s being-sent does not imply inferiority or subordination, but it does reveal the truth that he is from the Father from all eternity. Keith Johnson explains Augustine’s position,

In short, because sending merely reveals the generation of the Son, the Son is not in any way inferior to the Father. One of Augustine’s central insights is that the economic missions of the Son and the Spirit both reflect and reveal the natures of their eternal relation to the Father. The temporal sending of the Son reveals his eternal generation by the Father while the temporal sending of the Spirit from the Father and Son reveals his eternal procession from the Father and the Son. In this sense, the missions ultimately reveal the Father.[4]

So the taxis (order) of the economy reveals something that is true of the eternal relations, but not everything that obtains in one obtains in the other. The Son is eternally from the Father in his generation, and he is temporally from the Father in his being-sent. There is a fittingness to the sending of the Son, but this fittingness does not necessarily imply that the authority/submission structure that obtains in the economy should be read back into the immanent relations. Indeed, because of the doctrine of inseparable operations, we can speak of the Son as being involved in his “sending,” no less than the Father, a truth born out by several biblical texts (2 Cor 8:9; Phil 2:6-7; Gal 2:20; John 10:18).[5] In sum, those who hold to a singular divine will can still explain the fittingness of the sending of the Son (and not the Father) without resorting to an eternal functional submission of one divine will to another.

Finally, one possible solution to the problem of relations in a monothelitic Godhead lies in a rare distinction drawn by some of the Reformed orthodox with regard to the divine will. Theologians such as Leonard van Rijssen distinguished the voluntas essentialis—that is, the singular will of the divine essence—from the voluntas personalis—that is, the necessary expression of the divine will in the ad intra eternal processions of the Godhead.[6] So there is only one divine will, but the three persons relate to it in distinct ways tied to their distinct personal properties. This distinction might provide a theological mechanism by which we can affirm both the singularity of the divine will and the reality of eternal relations of love in the immanent Trinity. In any event, it is clear that a theologian’s position on the monothelite-dyothelite debate has important entailments for his understanding of the volitional life of the Godhead.

[1]This assumes that there is at least an analogical relation between human and divine persons, an assumption buttressed by the Second Council of Constantinople’s application of Trinitarian categories to the incarnation. The person of Christ is none other than “one of the Holy Trinity.”

[2]Some of these concerns with the traditional view are expressed in Bruce A. Ware, “Equal in Essence, Distinct in Roles: Eternal Functional Submission among the Essentially Equal Divine Persons of the Godhead,” in The New Evangelical Subordinationism? Perspectives on the Equality of God the Father and God the Son, ed. Dennis W. Jowers and H. Wayne House (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012),13-38.

[3]Steve Holmes has demonstrated that these and these alone are the traditional distinguishing properties of the divine persons. See Holmes, The Quest for the Trinity, esp. the summary on pp. 144-146.

[4]Keith E. Johnson, “Trinitarian Agency and the Eternal Subordination of the Son: An Augustinian Perspective,” in The New Evangelical Subordinationism? Perspectives on the Equality of God the Father and God the Son, ed. Dennis W. Jowers and H. Wayne House (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012), 117.

[5]Ibid., 126.

[6]Richard A Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 3:453.

The Trinity Debate and the History of Interpretation

/ Luke Stamps / 5 Comments

 

One of the lessons I’m learning from this intramural evangelical Trinity kerfuffle:

Evangelicals (myself included) have a lot of remedial work to do in the history of interpretation.

What do we learn when we read biblical commentaries, polemics, and theological treatises from the patristic, medieval, and Reformation eras?

Rarely are our “simple,” “straightforward,” and “plain” readings of Scripture simple, straightforward, and plain.

Evangelicals are a people of the book, and rightly so. I’m not arguing for the displacement of Scripture with tradition. Nor am I arguing against the Reformation doctrine of Scripture’s perspicuity (though I do believe it has to be carefully nuanced). The point is, as Matt has already argued in this space, the Fathers were no less committed to grounding their theological concepts in the text and narrative of Holy Scripture. The pro-Nicene Fathers believed that the homoousion was manifestly consistent with the biblical portrayal of God’s only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. They also believed that the oneness of God was irrefutable. There are not three gods but one God whose external works are invariably carried out in an inseparable unity. And so they read specific New Testament texts in light of these more general, but no less biblical, theological constraints.

We need to keep this in mind when we read certain texts in the New Testament that sound as if they stand in some tension with Nicene orthodoxy. For example, what do we make of Paul’s teaching that “God is the head of Christ” in 1 Corinthians 11? Does this text necessitate some kind of authority and submission structure in the eternal life of God? Well, before we reach that conclusion and seek to make room for eternal submission in the immanent Trinity, perhaps we should stop to read how orthodox interpreters in the past have understood this passage. Perhaps we could start with one of our “own” interpreters: the great Reformer John Calvin, who wrote about this text:

God, then, occupies the first place: Christ holds the second place. How so? Inasmuch as he has in our flesh made himself subject to the Father, for, apart from this, being of one essence with the Father, he is his equal. Let us, therefore, bear it in mind, that this is spoken of Christ as mediator. He is, I say, inferior to the Father, inasmuch as he assumed our nature, that he might be the first-born among many brethren (Source: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom39.xviii.i.html).

So Calvin reads the headship of the Father over Christ only in terms of the incarnation, not in terms of the divine persons’ eternal triune life. His is a reading explicitly dependent upon the church’s consensus that the Son is “of one essence with the Father.” Calvin believes that to make the Son subordinate to the Father would be to threaten their coessential Godhead. Now Calvin may be wrong about this. Calvin is not sacrosanct; his voice is not inspired. But he is hardly alone in interpreting the text this way, and he can’t be said to be motivated by some late modern egalitarian bias against authority/submission relations. His voice deserves to be heard before we jettison or recalibrate received Trinitarian orthodoxy.

Another example: Christ’s words in John 6:38, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” Does this passage teach, as some have argued, that the Father and the Son possess two distinct personal wills quite apart from the incarnation? The Christian tradition has, of course, affirmed the distinct human will of Christ, which he assumed in the incarnation, but does the Son also possess a discrete divine will which is distinct from the Father’s? Perhaps taking John 6:38 in isolation from the rest of the New Testament and from the theological parameters set forth above (monotheism and the homoousion) one could make a case for distinct divine wills. But again, shouldn’t we consult the history of interpretation to see how the great luminaries of the past have dealt with this text before we suggest an interpretation that is out of step with the pro-Nicene tradition (the unity of the divine will was a non-negotiable for the orthodox during the fourth century controversies).

Take for example, the interpretation of Gregory of Nazianzus. I quote it at length and it will need some unpacking:

Let [the heretics] quote in the seventh place that the Son came down from heaven, not to do his own will, but the will of Him that sent him. Well, if this had not been said by himself who came down, we should say that the phrase was modeled as issuing from the human nature, not from Him who is conceived of in his character as the Saviour, for his human will cannot be opposed to God, seeing it is altogether taken into God; but conceived of simply as in our nature, inasmuch as the human will does not completely follow the divine, but for the most part struggles against and resists it. For we understand in the same way the words, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless let not what I will but thy will prevail.” For it is not likely that he did not know whether it was possible or not, or that he would oppose will to will. But since, as this is the language of him who assumed our nature (for he it was who came down), and not of the nature which he assumed, we must meet the obligation in this way, that the passage does not mean that the Son has a special will of his own, besides that of the Father, but that he has not; so that the meaning would be, “Not to do mine own will, for there is none of mine apart from, but that which is common to, me and thee; for as we have one Godhead, so we have one will.” (Oration 30.12)

Gregory tackles two biblical texts here: Jesus’ words in John 6:38 (“not my own will but the will of him who sent me”) and Jesus’ Gethsemane prayer in Matthew 26:39 (“not my will but thy will be done”). Gregory is convinced that we have to interpret these texts in different ways. We have to discern carefully the sense in which each of these statements relate to the incarnate Christ: do these statements of Jesus issue forth from “himself who came down” (that is, the person of the Son simpliciter) or “as issuing from the human nature” (that is, the person of the Son in and through his humanity)? For Gregory, Gethsemane must be interpreted as an instance of the latter. Jesus’ prayer in the garden is cast in the language “of the nature which he assumed.” In other words, Gethsemane points in the direction of the Son’s human will, which is ontologically distinct from (though functionally one with) the divine will. [It is interesting to note that, while Gregory predates the monothelite controversy by three centuries, he anticipates the very kind of exegetical argument later employed by the dyothelite party in the lead up to the Sixth Ecumenical Council. I think we are justified in seeing Gregory as a proto-dyothelite, as I argue in my dissertation.]

But Gregory is convinced that we cannot interpret John 6:38 in a similar fashion. Why? Because this statement “is the language of him who assumed our nature (for he it was who came down), and not of the nature which he assumed.” These words are placed, as it were, on the lips of the preincarnate Son, not merely the Son in terms of his human nature. So we have to “meet the obligation” of demonstrating the Son’s essential unity with the Father in a different way.

So does this text provide evidence that the Son’s will is eternally distinct from the Father’s? Does it demonstrate that the Son is eternally submissive to the Father’s will and authority? Gregory does not think so. Indeed, he interprets it the other way around. So far from demonstrating a discrete will in the Son, this text shows that the Father and Son share one will. Gregory suggests that Jesus’ words are a kind of figure of speech—a way of speaking about a non-reality by way of negation. Gregory explains that Scripture often speaks in this way:

For many such expressions are used in relation to this community, and are expressed not positively but negatively; as, e.g., “God giveth not the Spirit by measure, for as a matter of fact he does not give the Spirit to the Son, nor does he measure it, for God is not measured by God; or again, “Not my transgression nor my sin.” The words are used not because he has these things, but because he has them not. And again, “Nor for our righteousness which we have done,” for we have not done any. And this meaning is evident also in the clauses which follow. For what, says he, is the will of my Father? That everyone that believes on the Son should be saved, and obtain the final resurrection. Now is this the will of the Father, but not of the Son? Or does he preach the gospel, and receive men’s faith against his will? Who could believe that? Moreover, that passage, too, which says that the Word which is heard is not the Son’s but the Father’s has the same force. For I cannot see how that which is common to two can be said to belong to one alone however much I consider it, and I do not think anyone else can. If, then, you hold this opinion concerning his will, you will be right and reverent in your opinion, as I think, and as every right-minded person thinks.

For Gregory, any reference to an eternally distinct will in the Son cannot be taken positively; it must be taken as a way of negatively expressing the unity of the one divine will. So Gregory, similar to Calvin, is reading a difficult text in light of orthodoxy. He is offering a “ruled” reading of John 6:38, one that takes seriously the homoousion and God’s essential unity.

Again, Gregory and Calvin may not be right. We might quibble with their interpretations. We might reconcile these difficult texts with Trinitarian dogma in different ways. My point is not that modern theologians and biblical scholars should simply mimic the history of interpretation (which would be an impossible task, given the lack of unanimity on many texts). My point is simply this: texts that seem to run counter to Nicene orthodoxy are not new. Christians down through the centuries have known about them and wrestled with their implications for God’s triune life. So shouldn’t we listen to their voices carefully and deferentially before we stake out on our own in search of new interpretations and doctrinal innovations? Perhaps many in the current debate have examined these historic interpretations and have simply found them wanting. But I confess that I don’t see much sustained engagement with the history of interpretation on this front.

 

 

 

The Trinity and Theological Method

/ Matt Emerson / 10 Comments

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve most likely seen the debates on the blogosphere and social media about something called the “Eternal Functional Subordination” (EFS) of God the Son and God the Spirit to God the Father, or, alternatively, “Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission” (ERAS). To my knowledge and in my reading, the former is posited by the likes of Wayne Grudem and Bruce Ware, while the latter is a phrase used by Owen Strachan  and Gavin Peacock in their new book on complementarianism. These theologians believe Scripture teaches that the Son (and, by extension, the Spirit) eternally submits to the Father. This submission therefore occurs not only in the act of salvation, and particularly in the incarnation, but in the inner life of God as he has existed from eternity. In Ware, Grudem, and Strachan’s understanding, this relationship is what distinguishes the three persons of God; they are all equally God in essence, but differ from one another as persons through how they relate to one another, and particularly in the Son and Spirit’s submission to the Father.

It is no secret that this is a departure from the traditional means of distinguishing between the persons; Ware and Grudem cast doubt upon the traditional doctrines of the eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Spirit (I do not know where Strachan is on this). In the Christian Tradition, and in fourth century pro-Nicene theology, the pro-Nicene theologians, like Ware et al., affirmed that the three persons are homoousios – that is, they each share in the one divine essence. But unlike Ware et al., instead of distinguishing between the persons via relations of submission and authority (an idea to which the Fathers were allergic, to say the least), the pro-Nicene theologians argued that the persons are distinguished via their eternal relations of origin. The Father eternally begets, or generates, the Son, and the Father and Son (in the Western tradition) both spirate, or process, the Spirit. This is eternal, so it is not the same as creation, and it is a communication of the divine essence, not a creation of a new god or a hierarchical relationship where one turns into three. Both Ware and Grudem posit EFS as a more clear, biblical means of distinguishing between the persons, rather than through eternal relations of origin.

All of this has been summarized far better and far more clearly elsewhere; I’d recommend Darren Sumner’s post for a more detailed summary of the issue. My point here is not to provide more of the same but instead to bring to light a point that I think has been overlooked. Owen, in his rejoinder this morning, asked that we “reaffirm Scripture as our authority and avoid a New Scholasticism,” because, ” philosophy and history must ultimately kneel before exegesis-and-theology.” Amen to that. I am not sure if Owen is here saying that proponents of the traditional distinctions between the persons are relying on philosophy and history instead of exegesis and theology, or if he is merely cautioning all of us going forward. In any case, he is right that exegesis and scripturally-derived theology, for Protestants, always trumps history and philosophy. But there is more to be said on this point.

First, the pro-Nicene theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries were profoundly biblical in their doctrinal formulations. If you’ve read Athanasius or the Cappadocians or Cyril or Augustine you will know that when they talk about, say, the eternal relations of origin, or the taxis of the Trinitarian persons, they do so under the assumption that what they say must be derived from Scripture. Further, they do so with particular theological assumptions in place, namely, that the scriptures have a particular shape, or economy, to them that dictates how we read passages that speak about the Son. Does a passage refer to the Son in his humanity, or in his divinity? This is not an a-scriptural assumption; the Fathers took care to show that this “rule” is a scriptural one (e.g. their use of Phil. 2:5-11). So when Owen says exegesis and theology rule the day, I say “Amen!” But I also want to note that so did the Fathers, and so do modern day defenders of Nicene-Constantinopolitan Christianity.

The second point worth mentioning here is the relationship between exegesis, theology, and history. While the former two are most certainly the norma normans non normata, history and tradition  cannot and should not be merely cast aside – yes, even for us Protestant evangelical Baptists. The weight of tradition should at the very least give us pause in our hermeneutical endeavors when we think that exegeting a single passage, or a handful of them, can overturn almost two millennia of doctrinal teaching, and particularly when that teaching relates to theology proper and historic Trinitarian orthodoxy.

The Creator/Creature Distinction and Gender Debates

/ Matt Emerson / Leave a comment

Given the recent posts and Twitter conversations surrounding the topic, and also given that I taught a course this past semester on fourth century theological interpretation in the Eastern Fathers, I have classical Trinitarianism and its relationship (or lack thereof) to the debates on gender roles on my mind. While I am a classic complementarian and hold to classic Trinitarian orthodoxy (the three persons are one in essence and only distinguished ad intra via their eternal relations of origin), I do not see anywhere in Scripture where these two types of relationships ought to be or are related to one another.

This distinction is in fact rooted in the created order. To put it in terms the Fathers used in formulating Nicene and subsequent positions, there is an unbridgeable gap from the creature’s side between the creature and Creator. This divide, known as the Creator/creature distinction, is applicable here, I think. The relations between the persons of the Trinity ad intra  are totally other from relations between creatures, even creatures of the same kind (i.e. male and female human beings). The relations between the persons of the Trinity are mysterious and incomprehensible to finite creatures like us, and to compare them to the relationship between human beings, or  to the mechanisms of church polity, or any other type of human relationship is to bridge the Creator/creature distinction.

I hope that we’ll refrain from employing Trinitarian relations to bolster our positions on gender roles in the future.

Heresy Hunting and Eternal Relations of Origin

/ Matt Emerson / 5 Comments

I’m a classic complementarian who affirms classic orthodoxy regarding the eternal relations of the persons of the Trinity (i.e. that the eternal relations of origin distinguish the persons, not a social schema). I also believe that what the Bible says about gender is enough to support complementarianism without comparing the relationship between male and female to the inner life of the Godhead. Additionally, I don’t believe the relations of the persons of the Godhead are comparable to relations between male and female. I therefore disagree with those who wish to bolster their position on gender with a social Trinitarian schema, whether it be from an egalitarian or complementarian perspective. I thus disagree with Bruce Ware, Wayne Grudem, and other complementarians who attempt to support complementarianism via the doctrinal innovation known as eternal functional subordination. I disagree not only with tying in gender roles to God’s inner life but also with the social Trinitarian understanding of the relations between the persons of God upon which such a claim is based.

That being said, I’ve seen many on social media and on blogs willing to throw around phrases comparing Ware, Grudem, et al.’s position to heresy. This is unfair, careless, and a straw man. If you read Ware’s Father, Son, and Holy Spirit or Grudem’s systematic theology, both of these theologians strongly and clearly affirm the unity of the Godhead in essence. According to them, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all equally and fully share in the one divine being. They are homoousions. They also, though, posit that the Son willingly and volitionally submits to the Father ad intra. While I have serious disagreements with this latter position, both biblically and historically, this is not a classic heresy by any means. It is an innovation, in my opinion, but one that incorrectly understands eternal relations rather than one that departs from classic orthodoxy regarding the unity of the Godhead.

I’m not sure evangelicals can disagree without someone throwing out a heresy bomb at some point, but we should at least give it a good old college try.

The Son’s Light and Biblical Understanding

/ Matt Emerson / 1 Comment

I don’t think it’s any secret that I subscribe to an Augustinian understanding of how we approach and comprehend Holy Scripture’s message to God’s people. Commonly known as “faith seeking understanding” (from the Latin fides quarens intellectum), this view says that we come to the Bible and understand its message not as blank slates, without presuppositions and with complete objectivity, but in faith. Those who read Scripture with the eyes of faith in Christ Jesus most fully comprehend what it is saying. Or, to put a finer point on it, only those who read in faith can fully understand its message.

When I espouse this epistemological approach to comprehending Scripture, I am usually asked the same question: “But what about unbelieving biblical scholars/readers from whom I (or we in the discipline) gain knowledge about the Bible’s message?” While I understand the impetus behind that question, I also think it arises from a misunderstanding about the Bible’s ultimate purpose. The Bible, as an historical document, has a series of messages written by specific people at a specific time and for a specific audience – it is in one sense, therefore, for information. But the Bible is not just for information; it is for transformation as well. Again, this aspect has an historical aspect to it, one that is particular to each book contained within the biblical canon, but the Bible’s ultimate transformative purpose, as a covenant document inspired by God the Holy Spirit, is to point to the consummate revelation of the Triune God, Jesus Christ, the incarnate person of God the Son, so that we might know him and be transformed into his image, and, through this transformative knowledge, know and love God the Father. In other words, the ultimate purpose of the one Bible, in all of its diverse parts, is to help us know God and love him. Only those who have confessed Christ as Lord by the power of his Spirit to the glory of his Father can do that.

Along these lines, I have just finished Matthew R. Crawford’s fine monograph, Cyril of Alexandria’s Trinitarian Theology of Scripture (Oxford: OUP, 2015; I’d recommend that you drop what you’re doing and read it now – it’s brilliant). In it Crawford notes (see esp. pp. 184-205) that Cyril also held to this view of biblical interpretation, and dealt with the question of how both believers and unbelievers can in some sense understand the Bible. According to Crawford, Cyril used John 1 and John 9, both instances in which Jesus is referred to as light, to distinguish between two types of illumination. The first, what Crawford calls “creative illumination,” is given to all humanity and is a function of all of creation’s participation in God, and particularly in the Son’s wisdom. (“Participation” here is not salvific, but only intended to communicate that anything that exists only exists because it is created and therefore participating in the one life-giving essence, the Triune God.) The Son is Light, and all of creation as creation necessarily lives in that light. They may reject the light, but that does not vanquish, extinguish, or turn off the light. Crawford glosses Cyril’s thoughts on this type of illumination by referring to it as “generic rationality.” As image-bearing creatures, human beings are capable of basic reasoning, and therefore of understanding Scripture in its historical sense.  In other words, because human beings can reason logically and utilize the tools of historical research, the whole Bible is to one degree understandable to all people.

But there is another type of rationality according to Cyril, a pneumatic, or spiritual rationality, that is only afforded to those who have confessed Christ and been renewed by his Spirit. It is this “redemptive illumination” (Crawford’s term) that allows readers to not only comprehend the details of individual passages and books but to see read them in light of their divine intention. By the help of the inspiring and now illuminating Spirit the Scriptures show readers Christ, and thereby they transform them into his image and make known to them the Father. There is, in other words, a creative illumination that is common to all humanity by virtue of their participation in the Son’s Light, and there is a redemptive illumination that is only given to those who have confessed Christ and received his Spirit. When we read the Bible, therefore, those who read it with us, believing and unbelieving, can come alongside and assist us in our understanding of its historical sense. But only those who confess that Jesus is Lord and receive his Spirit through repentance and faith can see him, know him, be made like him, and through him know and love the Father, when reading his Spirit-inspired Word.