finitum non capax infiniti

The following was written by Dr. Bruce McCormack in response to R. Scott Clark’s criticism. It is posted here by the request of Dr. McCormack.

An Open Letter to R. Scott Clark

Scott,

Your response interests me – both in terms of what it says and also in terms of what it does not say.

I was more than a little puzzled as to why you would bring up my own constructive work in Christology since it played no role in what I wrote in my previous “comment.” I was working in that essay strictly as a historical theologian (which is the field I first trained in) and I did so because I knew that WTS values classical sources highly. If I got anything wrong, I am happy to be corrected. But my motivation in writing was not to move people to adopt my own Christology. My motivation was very simple. I care about the witness of the Reformed family of churches and I care about Pete Enns. My hope was to create a conversation on the basis of shared ecclesial authorities.

You give the appearance of raising two material objections - though I am not really sure that the first is material at the end of the day. You accuse me of an “idiosyncratic” reading of the Chalcedonian Definition and say that I have read something into it that isn’t there. But you offer no evidence for this. Instead, you content yourself with suggesting that I am reading my own Christology back into Chalcedon. So let me ask you: if the Chalcedonian Definition is so problem-free, so straightforward in its meaning, then why do the very best patristic scholars (Grillmeier, Daley and McGuckin) disagree with regard to its meaning and significance? Why does there continue to be debate on this? If you really wanted to demonstrate that my reading of Chalcedon is “idiosyncratic”, it strikes me that you would have to show that it finds no warrant in the very best patristic literature. You would also need to explain what John of Damascus (in a text well known to Zwingli and Bullinger) means by “compound person.” If I misunderstood John, I would be happy to learn where I went wrong.

You do raise a material question, however, with respect to the proper translation of the Second Helvetic Confession. The text of Bullinger’s original manuscript can be found in E.F.K. Müller’s Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche (BSRK). There, at chapter XI, line 38f. we find: “Agnoscimus ergo in uno atque eodem Domino nostro Iesu Christo, duas naturas aut hypostases vel substantantias, divinam et humanan…” Wilhelm Niesel, whose text Cochrane translated, tells us that the Müller text is “original”, but adds that the phrase “aut hypostases” should be stricken on the basis of the “Subnotata.” I am not altogether sure myself what “Subnotata” he has in mind but I suspect that the Bullinger’s original 1561 manuscript may already have been altered at the time of its first publication in 1566. If so, that would probably mean that Bullinger himself realized his error – for which I am glad.

By the way, when I said that “the same idea can be found in Calvin”, I was not referring to Bullinger’s talk of “two hypostases” but rather, as the sentence immediately preceding this one says “What led Bullinger to this conclusion, however, was something that is to be found in the Definition, viz. that the person of the union is formed out of the coming together of the two natures.” That and that alone is the “idea” which is also to be found in Calvin, as the statement I cite from the Institutes clearly demonstrates. Finally, to say that an idea is “also found in Calvin” (as I put it) is not at all to say that he followed Bullinger in adopting it. That would be rather difficult, seeing as the definitive edition of the Institutes was published in 1559 and Bullinger’s Second Helvetic was first penned in 1561. But then, I didn’t say that anyway.

You conclude by citing the Belgic Confession – and the lesson you draw from it is that it teaches “two natures, one person.” But that was never in question. The question I raised had to do with the identity of the “person.” Is it the Logos as such (as Cyril believed)? Or is it the God-human in His divine-human unity (as, in my view, the Reformed believed)? That is a hard question to answer on the basis of the confessions alone (which are often quite spare in their language). That is why I looked first to Calvin and then to Turretin and Owen, to try to get a sense of what lies in back of the formulations employed in the Reformed confessions. But you simply ignore what I bring forward from Turretin on the gifts of created grace bestowed by the Spirit upon the man Jesus and the strong statements from Owen on the Spirit’s ministry in the life of Jesus. You have nothing to say about those themes or their implications for a Reformed understanding of the person of Christ. So let me ask you: why does the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus at the Jordan? Why isn’t the Spirit “superfluous to requirements,” if, as the HTFC report seems to suggest, the Logos simply acts through His human nature? If that were true, wouldn’t the explanation for the miracles simply be: the Logos did them? Why introduce the Spirit at all? My point is that it will not do to focus on the assumptio carnis (the act of uniting) to the exclusion of the hypostatic union and what followed from it, so as to be in a position to defend the thesis of an asymmetry in the relation of divine and human. Of course the Logos acts unilaterally in assuming the human nature! But that proves nothing with respect to the relation of the natures. The fact that the Holy Spirit had an important ministry in the life of Jesus was taken by the old Reformed theologians to suggest that the relation of the natures was more nearly symmetrical than asymmetrical. Again: an asymmetrical relation would render the Spirit’s ministry in the life of Jesus superfluous. That, I would submit is the genius of Reformed Christology and its most significant gift to ecumenical discussions of the person of Christ. But, hey, if you aren’t convinced by what I say about the Spirit’s ministry in the life of Jesus, then I would simply recommend that you read Sinclair Ferguson’s lovely book, The Holy Spirit (IVP, 1996), chapter 2.

Yours in the Lamb,

Bruce

P.S. If you think that my book on Barth “vindicated” Van Til’s reading, you should read it again. Van Til’s understanding of Kant and of his legacy in Christian theology and my own could not be more widely divergent. So to agree on the influence of “Kant” is not really to agree at all.