finitum non capax infiniti

The following is the second part of an essay written by Dr. Bruce McCormack. I am posting it here at his request. The first installment can be found here.

An All Too Brief History of the Reception of Chalcedon with Particular Focus on Representative Figures in the Reformed Tradition and their Antecedents

A. Leontius of Byzantium and John of Damascus

I am not going to devote much space to Leontius. His importance in the history of theology lies in coining the terminological anyhpostasia-enhypostasia distinction. In truth, he was not really an innovator and what he meant by the terms is subject to debate – a debate which I will not seek to resolve here. Suffice it here to note the conclusions drawn by Aloys Grillmeier where Leontius’ understanding of the “person of the union” was concerned. “For Cyril and Severus the determination of the subject of the incarnation was already given with John 1, 14; the Logos is present in the flesh. A remnant of Antiochene schooling seems in contrast to have remained in Leontius. As B. E. Daley concedes, in a series of texts the monk begins his theological analysis not with the eternal Logos and the history of his works among human beings, but with the divine fait accompli ‘Jesus Christ’, who is for him both God as well as a human being. How would he respond to the question: who is the real personal ‘you’ in Jesus of Nazareth, whom you confess as God and human being? It is as if Leontius would have answered: the hypostasis, the concrete person ‘Jesus Christ’ is neither simply divine nor simply human, although his Christ exists and acts wholly as God and wholly as human being; to be human and divine is the business of the natures and not of the person or hypostasis. In fact Leontius never identifies explicitly and virtue of logical deduction the ‘one hypostasis with the Logos as Logos” (Grillmeier, II/2, p.187). In making the “person” to be the whole Christ, the divine and human natures in their combination, Leontius had taken a significant step away from Cyril in the direction of Leo the Great. And he had opened the door to making the “recipient” of the communication of the attributes of both natures not the Logos as such but the “concrete” Person in both natures. No longer is the unity the unity of a single pre-existing subject (as with Cyril); the unity is the result of a “synthetic union” (synthesis henosis) (see Grillmeier, p.207) of divine and human “substances” – a substantial or essential union in other words. It should be noted that this is not a retreat to Nestorius or even to the two hypostatsis theory of Theodoret of Cyrus. It would be more accurate to describe Leontius’ view in terms of compound hypostatis. What has happened, though, is that the attention of theologians in the East had (in some cases, at least) shifted from the pre-existent Logos to the relation of the natures, from the act of uniting to problems surrounding the lived existence of the God-human. To put it this way is also to suggest that the introduction of the anhypostasia was intended to give an answer to the question of how the concrete divine-human Person was constituted, how His being was made real. It was not intended to give a precise answer to the relation of the natures to the “person” or to each other.

Leontius’ legacy lay in the fact that he had opened the door widely to the emergence of the full-blow dythelitism in Maximus and John (though many convolutions lay in between). He also made it clear that an affirmation of the anhypostasia-enhypostasia doctrine was compatible with understanding the “person” as the Logos made flesh, rather than the Logos as such. It was compatible because the anhypostasia had to do with how the “person” is made real (how the categories proper to the two natures are instantiated and made concrete). It did not have to do with the question of how the natures related to each other in the lived existence of the one God-human. This is, perhaps, the most appropriate place to offer a response to Dr. Tipton’s critical remark on the anhypostasia

Third Objection. In footnote 4 of an on-line article (found on the webpage “Ordained Servant”), Lane Tipton offers up a series of definitions of the word anhypostasia (from works by Louis Berkhof, Francis Turretin, Herman Bavinck, John Murrary and John Owen. He concludes “Revisionists, who are impacted by actualistic ontology and deny the Logos asarkos and extra Calvinisticum (e.g. Bruce McCormack, “Grace and Being: The Role of [God’s] Gracious Election in Karl Barth’s Theological Ontology” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000], 97-102, may assert that the quotations above do not express the historic Reformed view on the matter. Such a position, however, would prove indefensible if primary sources were properly understood.” The implication seems to be that I have misunderstood primary Reformed sources on the anhypostasia.

Let me just begin by saying that my own comment on the HTFC’s statement “Orthodox Christology affirms that the human nature of Christ has no personality or subsistence of its own, but subsists only in its union with the Logos” was at most a side-bar discussion for me. It was not the central issue raised by HTFC’s use of the so-called “Christological analogy.” That analogy, in the hands of the writers of the HTFC report, requires that there be an asymmetry in the relation between divine agency and human agency in the production of Holy Scripture because, on their view, there is an asymmetry in the relation between divine and human action in the lived existence of the Logos. That is the issue with which I have principally contended. The question of how the God-human came into existence, how He was made real, does not, in and of itself, resolve the issue of the relation of the natures in the lived existence of Jesus Christ. To explore that issue, one must go on to speak of the communication of attributes and the communication of operations. Moreover, I have already shown that the anhypostasia is compatible with more than one account of the identity of the “person” (a question which is dialectically related to how would handles the communication) So we have not resolved the latter issue when all we do is make reference to the anhypostasia – unless we are Cyrilline without reservation (with all of the instrumentalization of the human nature which that entails).

But, secondly, I only brought this up at all because I thought it curious for modern Christians to say that “the human nature of Christ has no personality or subsistence of its own…” In the modern world, of course, the word “personality” is commonly understood to refer to psychological traits, individual characteristics that find their root in the ways in which individual self-consciousness is formed through the life-history of the individual in question. For that reason, when D.M. Baillie translated the term anhypostasia as “impersonal humanity” in his well-known work God Was In Christ (1948), he gave the impression that the term had been intended to say that Jesus had no human “personality” (i.e. no human self-consciousness). That particular misreading has given rise to all manner of misunderstandings and proven to be injurious to Christological orthodoxy in the long run. But that was not the intention of those who first used the term. In the ancient world on through the post-Reformation period, to be a “person” simply meant to subsist – to have been made real or concrete. Even the word “personality” was used in this way. As Francis Turretin puts it “Personality is not an act, but the mode of a thing” Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol.2, p.324). To say then that the human nature was “made personal” or “personalized” in the Person of the Logos simply meant it was given subsistence or made real in Him. It did not mean that the God-human lacked a human self-consciousness. By the same token, divine self-consciousness was understood to be proper to the divine “nature” and was not predicated of the Logos as such but because both divine and human self-consciousness as we employ those concepts today were treated by the ancients on the level of natures, not of the person. In sum, to simply cite ancient and post-Reformation theologians without calling attention to the fact that they used “personality” and “subsistence” as synonyms is, at best, to fail to communicate accurately and, at worst, to be confused oneself.

That’s all on the one side. But the problems surrounding the use made today of the anhypostasia do not end there. As I have said, the Western church in the Middle Ages and the Reformed Church tended to follow Leo, Leontius and the later dythelites in using the concept of “person” to describe the whole complex of the two natures, rather than the Logos simpliciter. To simply appeal to the anhypostasia today as providing a complete explanation of the “person” is to side nolens volens with the Cyrillines. Though there is much to be learned from Cyril (and every reason to regard him as a church Father for all the churches), his Christology cannot be adopted wholesale. Too much is at stake for Reformed Christians.

Seen in this light, Louis Berkhof (whose Systematic Theology was the central text during my days at Covenant Seminary) shows the greatest understanding of what was at stake in the ancient Church and in the Reformation and how to articulate it clearly (i.e. without creating unnecessary confusion) in his own day when he says “It would not be correct…to say that the person of the Mediator is divine only. The incarnation constituted him a complex person, constituted of two natures.” And he goes on to define what he means in speaking of the human nature as “personalized” in the Logos by saying that the human nature “did not exist by itself.” That, I would submit, is the proper understanding of “person” in the ancient world – and it is the only appropriate way to explain the ancient view in the modern world. Any statement to the effect that Jesus had no human “personality” which is not qualified in this way is rightly called “sloppy” (as I said earlier in relation to the HTFC report). I would say exactly the same of Tipton’s footnote 4. It is not at all clear to me that Tipton rises to the heights of a Louis Berkhof in his understanding of the anhypostasia, in spite of having quoted him.

I turn then, briefly, to John of Damascus. John is a very significant figure. He is the last Church Father of an undivided church and thus an authority in both East and West. His importance for my purposes here lies in the fact that he has both Leo’s emphasis on the “two natures preserved in their original integrity subsequent to their union” and Leontius’ interest in the God-human subsequent to the union, rather than in the act of uniting. In relation to the first of these elements, he says, “…we confess one Person of the Son of God incarnate in two natures that remain perfect, and we declare that the Person of His divinity and of His humanity is the same and confess that the two natures are preserved intact in Him after the union” (John, Writings, p.273). And lest it be wondered what he means by the “Person of His divinity and of His humanity”, he tells us explicitly – and this is the second, Leontian element – “…He both is and is said to be of two natures and in two natures. We say that the term ‘Christ’ is the name of the person and that it is not used in a restricted sense, but as signifying what is of the two natures” (ibid., p272) and “thus Christ – which name covers both together – is called both God and man, created and uncreated, passible and impassible” (ibid., p.276). Clearly, John understands the “person” to be the composite of both natures together, which is why he repeated refers to “the composite Person of the two natures” (ibid., pp.274, 275, 276, 277) and even of a “synthetic hypostasis” (synthetos hypostasis – ibid., p.282). John is not without his difficulties. He affirms this in order to attain to a communication of the attributes of the human nature to a “person” which is not directly identical with the Logos asarkos, so that he can then also preserve divine impassibility. But he also has an inter-penetration of the natures so that he can explain the “divinization” of the flesh – which leaves one wondering how an inter-penetration would not have consequences for the divine nature. What is clear, nevertheless, is that he identifies the “person” with the Logos in His two natures, not the Logos as such – and that clearly anticipates the stance taken by Calvin.

I should add, before turning to Calvin, that I am not trying to make a case for historical influence here. It is sufficient for the case that I am making that Calvin’s Christology be more nearly like John’s (and Leo’s and Leontius’) than Cyril’s. For the demonstration of that, I turn to Calvin.

B. John Calvin

Calvin is not inclined to readily and happily engage in metaphysical reflection. He does not address the question of the right ordering of the metaphysical concepts of “person” and “natures”, even though he presupposed the adequacy of the Chalcedonian Formula as an appropriate interpretation of Scriptural teaching. Instead, he takes up the problem of the unity of the “person” in the context of reflection upon the differing ways in which Holy Scripture ascribes particular activities or conditions to the Mediator. In other words, his treatment of the “communication of attributes” intends to be first and foremost a Scriptural account. The metaphysical consequences were left to his later followers to deduce, something which they did with a great deal of success in my view.

According to Calvin, when the Scriptures speak of Christ “they sometimes attribute what belongs uniquely to his divinity; and sometimes what embraces both natures but fits neither alone” (ibid, emphasis mine). In the first class is to be found a statement like that found in John 8:58: “Before Abraham was, I am.” Such a statement applies exclusively to Christ’s divinity. In the second class belongs the affirmations that Christ “increased in age and wisdom” (Lk.2:52) and that He does “not seek his own glory” (Jn.8:50) and that He does not “know the Last Day” (Mk.13:32). “…these refer solely to Christ’ humanity” (Institutes II.xiv.2). Most interesting is the final class for it is here that Calvin’s concept of the “person” emerges into the clear light of day; in fact, I suspect that it was reflection upon this problem which led him to this particular concept. “…the communicating of characteristics or properties consists in what Paul says: ‘God purchased the church with his blood’ [Acts 20:28], and ‘the Lord of glory was crucified’ [1 Cor.2:8] John says the same: ‘The Word of life was handled’ [1 Jn.1:1]. Surely God does not have blood, does not suffer, cannot be touched with human hands. But since Christ, who was true God and also true man, was crucified and shed his blood for us, the things that he carried out in his human nature are transferred improperly, although not with reason, to his divinity. … [B]ecause the selfsame one was both God and man, for the sake of the union of both natures he gave to the one what belonged to the other” (ibid.). For Calvin, the ascription of the attributes of the human nature to the divine or the divine to the human is improper and the only possible justification for it lies in the attempt to speak of the whole Christ (i.e. the union of both natures) by reference to the characteristics or properties of one nature only. Such an attempt will inevitably embrace the other nature as well, but it is to be understood that those properties apply strictly only to that nature to which they are natural. The “communication of properties”, in other words, is for Calvin a figure of speech in which that which is true of a part is ascribed to the whole of which it is a part. From this flows his concept of the “person.” “For we affirm his divinity so joined and united with this humanity that each retains its distinctive nature unimpaired, and yet these two natures constitute one Christ” (Institutes II.xiv.1, emphasis mine). And “Now the old writers defined ‘hypostatic union’ as that which constitutes one person out of two natures” (Institutes II.xiv.5). In truth, of course, Calvin is too optimistic. Not all of the “old writers” did this; certainly Cyril did not. But Leontius and John leaned quite far in this direction. And the difference which remains between Calvin on the one side and Leontius and John on the other has to do with the fact that Calvin drew back from affirming an inter-penetration or perichoresis of the natures. It is that element which makes his understanding of the “communication” to be verbal (a figure of speech) rather than real.

In sum, Calvin understands the “person” to be composite. That should occasion no real surprise or chagrin on the part of anyone. For though it was not the view of Cyril, it clearly falls within the range which the actual wording of the Chalcedon Formula allows to be “orthodox.” To be more precise, the phrase, “one person in two natures” admits of more than one acceptable interpretation. “Two hypostases” would be ruled out by it, but not a “synthetic hypostasis” of the kind advocated by a John of Damascus. Calvin falls into the latter camp.

Calvin composed the original draft of the French Confession in 1559, the very same year that he published the definitive edition of his Institutes. A.C. Cochrane tells us that the “Genevan draft had thirty-five articles. The French Synod [which adopted the French Confession and made it their own] recast the first two and expanded them into six, with the result that the Confession now has forty articles” (Cochrane, Reformed Confessions of the 16th Century, p.138). This means that Calvin definitely had a hand in the composition of Article XV (on Christology). Given the timing, there is no reason to believe that the formulations employed were intended to promote anything other than the views we have already seen. “We believe that in one person, that is, Jesus Christ, the two natures are actually and inseparably joined and united, and yet each remains in its proper character: so that in this union, the divine nature, retaining its attributes, remained uncreated, infinite, and all-pervading; and the human nature remained finite, having its form, measure, and attributes; and although Jesus Christ, in rising from the dead, bestowed immortality upon his body, yet he did not take from it the truth of its nature, and we so consider him in his divinity that we do not despoil him of his humanity” (Cochrane, pp.149-50). Here, it should be noted, the “person” is denominated “Jesus Christ”, the God-human in His entirety, rather than the Logos as such.

Fourth Objection: Scott Clark seemed to be surprised that anyone would seek to find a “composite person” in the Chalcedonian Definition. I am surprised that he is surprised since Calvin did just that. But again: this is within the bounds of “orthodoxy.” So I have no problems with Calvin on this score. Does Prof. Clark?

C. Francis Turretin

I have already treated the problems resident in the original form of the Second Helvetic Confession. I will not treat the Christology of Heinrich Bullinger again here but will turn instead to that master of late Reformed scholasticism, Francis Turretin.

Turretin fascinates for two reasons: first, because he understands quite well what was at stake in the sixteenth century debate over Christology carried out by Reformed and Lutheran theologians in their efforts to support their differing understandings of the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper and, second, because he is able to translate Calvin’s Christology into the metaphysical categories of the ancient church and the middle ages without detriment to that Christology.

As with Calvin before him, it is the answer given to the question of the nature of the communication of attributes which controls Turretin’s understanding of the identity of the “person.” Turretin argues against the Lutherans that “what is communicated is not proper” (Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol.2, p.325). There can be no communication of attributes from one nature to the other because whatever is shared in common cannot be said to be “proper” to either the one or the other. And so, the human nature of Christ cannot be given a share in divine attributes (not even by an act of grace) because the result would be that the divine attributes in question are no longer “proper” to the divine.

Turretin’s understanding of the nature of the “communication” follows directly from this claim. “This communication is not only verbal, but is rightly called ‘real’; not indeed with respect to the natures (as if the properties of the one nature were really communicated to the other), but with respect to the person, which consists of two natures really unified and claims the properties of both natures for itself” (ibid, p.324). Turretin understands the “person” to be the whole Christ; therefore he can say that the communication to the “person” is real because he understands clearly that saying this much does not lay upon him the requirement to ascribe divine properties to the human or human properties to the divine. In making a real attribution of both sets of properties to the whole Christ, he can then affirm the ascription of divine properties to the whole Christ (but only with respect to His divine nature). And he can affirm the ascription of human properties to the whole Christ (but only with respect to His human nature). In other words, the difference between a real attribution to the “person” and a merely verbal one disappears because the outcome is the same.

It is against this background that we are enabled to understand why Turretin defines the person of the union as he does. “The whole Christ is God and man, but not the whole of Christ. Whole in the masculine (totus) denotes a person in the concrete, but whole in the neuter (totum) a nature in the abstract. Therefore it is rightly said that the whole Christ is God or man because this marks the person, but not the whole of Christ because this marks each nature which is in Him” (ibid., p.321). In other words, the ascription of divine attributes to the “whole Christ” is an ascription to the “person” (understood as compound) with regard to His divine nature only; the ascription of human attributes to the “whole Christ” is an ascription to the “person” (understood as compound) with regard to His human nature only. But at no time may we ascribe either set of properties to the “whole of Christ”, which would entail the ascription of divine attributes to the human nature and vice versa. It is only because he understands the person to be “compound” in nature (whether he uses the term or not) that Turretin can restrict the ascripton of attributes to the whole Christ to that nature alone to which the attributes in question are “proper.” Had he defined the “person” as the Logos as such, he could not have made this move. And so, Turretin can say “it is rightly concluded that the divine and human nature[s] in Christ constitute only one person concerning which are correctly predicated whatever things belong to the divine and human nature[s]” (ibid., p.319). Clearly, Turretin understands the “person” as compound so that he can then maintain the understanding of the communication which he inherited from Calvin (among others).

I will stop here. I do not think it is necessary to treat John Owen again until someone explains to me why he says that the only act performed by the Logos with respect to His human nature is the assumption itself – all other activities being carried out in the power of the Holy Spirit rather than as the consequence of the Logos acting through the human nature. So far, my appeal to that passage has simply been ignored.

The “Christological Analogy”

The HTFC report took exception to Pete Enns’ use of a Christological analogy between the divinity and humanity of the God-human and the divinity and humanity of Holy Scripture. The report quotes Enns as follows. “…as Christ is both God and human, so is the Bible… Jesus is both God and human at the same time. He is not half-God and half-human. He is not sometimes one and other times the other… Rather, one of the central doctrines of the Christian faith, worked out as far back as the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, is that Jesus is 100 percent God and 100 percent human – at the same time… In the same way that Jesus is – must be – both God and human, the Bible is also a divine and human book (Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation, p.17, emphasis original to Enns)” (p.19 of the report). The writers of the report take exception to this formulation, not because of its appeal to a Christological analogy but because of alleged imprecision in its use. They write “That is basically true (although the language of ‘100 percent’ can be confusing). But statements of this kind do not even begin to stipulate precisely how Christ is both God and human and further how the divine and human relate. Therefore, even the statement that Christ is ‘both God and human’ is insufficiently precise to help us apply such an analogy to Scripture. What is troubling in the discussion of I & I is that the relation of the divine and human in the Incarnation , and thus analogically in Scripture, is confusing at best. What is not affirmed in I & I is that the locus of the unity of the divine and human in Christ is the essential divinity of the person of the Logos” (ibid.). It is clear from the foregoing interaction that a shift in topics has taken place. That is not impermissible, of course. The writers of the HTFC are asking for greater clarity with respect to the relation of the natures. Enns had used the terms “divinity” and “humanity” adjectivally, as descriptive of a final product of two forces cooperating together; the HTFC writers would like to talk about the relation of the agencies and activities involved. Again: fair enough. But it is not as though the Christological explorations set forth in the HTFC report are all that precise; they are not.

To begin with, the writers take as the starting-point for elaborating their own Christology the rejection of Enns’ claim that Christ “is not essentially one [their emphasis] and only apparently the other” (ibid.). Against this, they want to say that “the divine is essential and the locus of personality, and the human is contingent, dependent on the divine (yet real).” The aim in this rather confused response is clear. The writers wish to give pre-eminence to the divine side of the divine-human relation in Christ – and they will use the anhpostsasia to secure this point. The confusion at this stage of their analysis lies in the fact that Enns has not called the anhypostasia into question with his formulation. His point seems quite straightforward on the face of it. He simply wants to say that Jesus Christ is “essentially” divine and “essentially” human.[1] And that is precisely what Chalcedon said in affirming of our Lord Jesus Christ that He is “consubstantial with the Father as regards His divinity, and the same consubstantial with us as regards His humanity…” (Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol.1, p.86). The twofold use of the word homoousion in this clause was intended to say that Christ participated in the divine “essence” with the Father and in human “essence” with us. The word “essence” or “substance” embedded in homoousios is abstract; it speaks of the catalogue of properties which make a thing to be what it is. And Chalcedon “locates” that abstract noun on the level of the “natures” – not of the “person.” Chalcedon is saying simply that divine “essence” and human “essence” (the “natures”) subsist in the one Person, which is variously described as “God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ” (thereby maintaining the tensions I described earlier). Enns’ point in this context, as I understand it, is simply that nothing proper to deity is lacking to Jesus Christ and nothing proper to humanity is lacking to Him. He is not only “apparently” human; He is truly human. Again: Enns is only describing the results of the hypostatic union. He is not dealing with the act of uniting – which seems to be the interest of the writers of the HTFC report. It is fair to say in response that such a claim does not answer the other question of the relation of the natures in the lived existence of the Mediator. But it is unfair – a category mistake really – to try to find an answer to the question of the relation of the natures in a statement that never intended to offer one and then, having not found the “right” answer to that question, to judge him for it.

But the HTFC construal of the relation between the natures is problematic in its own right and this for two reasons. First, the writers say that “the divine is essential and the locus of personality, and the human is contingent, dependent upon the divine (yet real)”. Here again, we are confronted by a category mistake, this time not in their reading of Enns but in formulating their own position. The contrary of contingency is not “essence” but “necessity.” The contrary of “essential” is “accidental” or properties which are added on to a thing but are not essential to it. Again: it is clear what the writers are trying to achieve, however clumsily. They want to say that the hypostatic union comes about by means of a sovereignly free act of the Logos in which the human nature plays no role. The human nature is given subsistence in this act in the Person of the Logos. That is the point. But, then, if that is the case, if what they really want to talk about is simply the anhypostasia, then it is not at all clear that they have given an answer to the question of the relation of the natures either. And this leads to my second point.

The anhypostasia is rightly employed, on Reformed soil, to speak of the act of uniting; i.e. of that initial (ontologically basic) act by means of which the human nature of Christ is made real or given concrete existence. It is not made by the old Reformed, however, to be the key for understanding the relation of the natures. When we think about the relation of the natures, we are thinking (among other things) about the way in which divine agency and human agency interact in producing a single, united Mediator activity. We are no longer thinking solely about how this human nature came to be; we are thinking about how it functioned in the lived existence of the one God-human. Reformed theologians were, for obvious reasons, deeply committed to the dythelite position. And they believed that the power by means of which Jesus performed his miracles and works of love was the power of the Holy Spirit, poured out upon Him at Jordan to equip Him for the exercise of His mediatorial office. As a consequence of these convictions, they understood every act of the God-human to be fully divine and fully human (according to the communicatio operationem). Put another way: if there is a complete and total asymmetry in the relation of divine and human where the initial act of uniting is concerned (since God alone is operative), there is a symmetry in the relation of the natures where the ongoing life of the Mediator is concerned.. The Logos does not simply act through the human nature, thereby instrumentalizing it. The Logos acts and the human Jesus acts (two wills) in order in every instance to produce a single “effect” (i.e. a single, unified action). And the symmetry in question is not removed by the fact that Jesus freely subordinates Himself to the will of His Father. For that subordination is itself a freely willed human activity, performed in the power of the Holy Spirit. Again: there would be no reason to pour out the Spirit upon Jesus if the Logos simply acted through and upon Him. It was in order to say that the latter was not the case that the Reformed laid so much emphasis upon the Holy Spirit. Theirs was a pneumatologically-driven two-natures Christology.

One can, of course, carry the asymmetry entailed in the initial act of uniting over into the relation of the natures if one is willing to go as far as Cyril did in instrumentalizing the human nature. But that would be the move which would make a Christology to be more nearly Eastern than Reformed.

So which of these options do the writers of the HTFC select? Again, the answer is not clear. What is clear is that they would like to find in the anhypostasia the basis for an analogy with the way in which Holy Scripture comes into being. But can such a parallel be established? In the case of Christ, the human nature was created specifically for the purpose of assumption and in the act of assumption. In the case of divine inspiration, we are talking about the relation of a divine activity to human beings who already exist and are already active and, indeed, self-activating. The parallel, if there is one, would have to lie between how the divine agency proper to the divine nature and the human agency proper to the human nature co-operate in producing a single, unified work throughout the life of the Mediator, in His lived existence. The writers seem to acknowledge as much in that they make appeal at the decisive point to the scholastic doctrine of concursus – which rests upon a distinction between primary and secondary causation (ibid., p.20). Here clearly, the writers are conceding the fact that inspiration has to do with the relation of divine agency and human agency. But if then they still wish to make use of a Christological analogy, they would have to elaborate a clear understanding of the relation of the natures, so that the analogy between the agencies proper to the natures in Christ could be meaningfully discussed. This they never do. They speak only of the anhypostasia – thereby leaving the impression that they find in it the key to understanding the relation of the natures And if that were the case, the Christology which resulted would be more nearly Eastern than Reformed.

Conclusion

It has been shown that Reformed Christology, in its originating forms, had the following characteristics. First, attention to the relation of the natures to the person and to the relation of the natures to each other was everywhere a function of a primary interest in the problem of a communication of properties; they had no independent significance. Second, the attribution of the properties of the natures to the whole Christ led directly to the conception of the “person” as “compound” (or, as the Reformed typically put it, as “constituted” by the union of the natures). Third, positing an inter-penetration or perichoresis of the natures was not necessary in order to be in a position to affirm.the understanding of the communication sketched here. On the contrary: the Reformed typically showed themselves quite reticent to take up this ancient idea, laying emphasis instead on the formula “two natures unimpaired in their original integrity subsequent to their union.”

If there are exceptions to the picture I have painted here among those who called themselves “Reformed” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it would only mean that the Reformed tradition knew of sufficient diversity that no one who fits broadly within the parameters established by these differences should be judged to have departed from the tradition.

Readers interested in knowing where I personally stand on the issues raised in this post will have to wait until the publication of my Christology, sometime in 2010 (if all goes according to plan). In the meantime, I have much work to do and will only respond to questions or comments I regard as having merit. Readers will be right to conclude that those allowed to pass by in silence are regarded by me as irrelevant and/or uninformed.

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[1] It is worth pointing out that Enns claim is completely misread by the writers of the HTFC report. To say that Christ is not “essentially one and only apparently the other” is not to say that Christ is not essentially divine; it is to say that he is not only apparently human. Enns’ point is that Christ is essentially both. The writers completely miss the point when they say, “It is not helpful, even if qualified, to assert that the Son of God, as Christ incarnate, is not essentially divine, since that is precisely what he is. A denial that the Son of God is essentially divine is a fundamental tenet of kenotic Christology…” Suffice it to say that this is a rather strong misreading of Enns’ position.