Church Doctrine, Volume 4: Reconciliation

By Paul C. McGlasson

The present volume is the fourth in a five-volume study of church doctrine. The multivolume set covers the major parts of church doctrine: Canon, God, Creation, Reconciliation, and Redemption. The first volume begins with an introduction to the entire project on why doctrine matters, which stresses the ecumenical, global, and above all biblical horizons of church doctrine as a primary expression of Christian witness.
The purpose of this fourth volume is to celebrate the gospel of Jesus Christ as the treasure of the church and the power of God for the reconciliation of the world. The gospel bears witness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and calls for faith in him as the free gift of forgiveness and new life. The gospel is constantly in motion, tearing down every barrier of human bigotry and prejudice, not only forming a new society, but reforming the church itself.
Church doctrine is not a luxury, but a necessity for the living community of faith, by which its witness in word and deed is tested against the one true measure of Christ the risen Lord.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: May 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532632037

Paul C. McGlasson

Paul C. McGlasson received his MDiv from Yale Divinity School, and his PhD in Systematic Theology from Yale University. He is the author of numerous books, including the multi-volume work, Church Doctrine. He currently resides with his wife Peggy and their dog Thandi in Athens, Georgia.

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CHURCH DOCTRINE

The Faith and Practice of the Christian Community

VOLUME IV: RECONCILIATION

Paul C. McGlasson

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CHURCH DOCTRINE

Volume Four: Reconciliation

Copyright © 2017 Paul C. McGlasson. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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paperback isbn: 978-1-62032-697-8

hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-8721-0

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-3203-7

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: McGlasson, Paul C.

Title: Church doctrine: volume four: reconciliation / Paul C. McGlasson.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017 | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: isbn 978-1-62032-697-8 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-4982-8721-0 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-3203-7 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: 1. Theology, Doctrinal. | I. Title.

Classification: BT75 M154 2017 (print) | BT75 (ebook)

Manufactured in the U.S.A. June 15, 2017

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction

Part IV: RECONCILIATION

Chapter 1: The Incarnation

a. Chalcedon

b. Confessing Christ

c. The Mediator

d. The Prophetic Office

Chapter 2: The Cross

a. The Light of the Cross

b. The Blessed Exchange

c. Affirming the Atonement

d. Jesus our High Priest

Chapter 3: The Resurrection

a. Easter Faith

b. The Resurrection Narrative

c. God’s New World

d. Christ the King

Chapter 4: Justification and Sanctification

a. The Gospel of Grace

b. Forgiveness of Sins

c. Newness of Life

d. On the Way

Chapter 5: Faith

a. The Grammar of Faith

b. Faith in Jesus Christ

c. Absolute Trust

d. From Faith to Faith

Chapter 6: Prayer

a. Calling on God

b. God in Action

c. Human Need

d. Praise of God

Bibliography

In Memory of Brevard S. Childs

Teacher, Mentor, Friend

Preface

The gospel is the treasure of the church, without which we cannot live in the world. The gospel is the beauty of divine love, through which we find grace upon grace. There is only one gospel. Yet the one gospel enters time, shapes time, transforms time, because the gospel is Jesus Christ himself, the risen Lord of time. And for that reason, the gospel necessarily speaks in a new way to each new generation of the community of faith. There is no method by which to make this happen; it is a miracle of grace, for which we in gratitude can only eagerly anticipate the joyous new reality of faith.

The sheer miracle of our time is the global reality of the church. The command of Christ to go forth to all nations, and the promise of the Spirit, have now come to fruition in a way never before realized in the life of the community of faith. The gospel embraces all nations, all humanity, encompasses all creation. In this volume, our primary task is to celebrate and seek to illumine this gospel.

Yet as always in the life of the church, change never comes in times of ease, but in times of crisis. From the world, there is resistance. There are voices of anger, fear, and hatred spoken harshly against the outsider, the foreigner, the immigrant, the refugee. Of far greater concern—infinitely greater concern for church doctrine—is the recognition that those voices gain their support often enough from within the Christian communion.

The gospel fashions a new society; we will come to speak of that in our next volume. But here our concern is more immediate: the gospel forms and reforms the church itself. Judgment begins in the household of God, as the record of church history amply shows. We, in the church, must first learn our lessons, before we can teach others. And it is voices of anger, fear, exclusion, prejudice, bias, arising from within the church, which are the stumbling block which must be first removed. In God’s new world, we are all immigrants.

Our point is simple: the new global reality of the church has sadly posed a threat not only to the world, but to elements within the church itself. We have no interest in pointing fingers at people; as Luther himself admitted, Johannes Tetzel was merely the catalyst for a confrontation that was bound to happen one way or another. We celebrate the treasure of the gospel, rather, in such a way as to critique a particular set of theological ideas on the religious right as false doctrine. That is a far lesser, secondary concern of this volume, but one made necessary by the times in which we live.

The gospel itself reforms the church, and remakes the whole world, for the gospel is none other than Christ the crucified and risen Lord, the one Head of the church and Ruler of all creation. That is our thesis. Our opening question is straightforward, and guides the whole study: what is the gospel?

Abbreviations

ANF The Ante-Nicene Fathers

BTONT Brevard Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments

CD Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics

CCFCT Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss, eds., Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition

CNCT John Calvin, Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries

DP Otto Ritsch, Dogmengeschichte des Protestantismus

HDThG Handbuch der Dogmen-und Theologiegeschichte 1–3, 2nd Edition

LCC Library of Christian Classics

LW Luther’s Works (American Edition)

NPNF The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers

ODT Dumitru Staniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology 1–6

PPS Popular Patristic Series

Summa Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation, edited by Timothy McDermott

TCT Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition 1–5

Introduction

What do we proclaim when we proclaim the gospel? That is the question constantly now before us in the church doctrine of reconciliation. Every point of church doctrine is of equal importance; yet here we observe with dramatic force that our eager joy, our striving for precision, our attention to detail to the best of our ability (such as it is), our earnest desire to serve the church and the world, are all somehow gathered together from above into a movement of divine grace far greater than we can imagine. Why is that?

The gospel we profess in the church to the world has two dimensions. On the one hand, it is, as the treasure of the church, a human word, spoken and heard in a human community. It has a characteristic pattern, a voice, and our efforts in this volume will be devoted to discerning the logical shape of the living voice of the gospel, the logic of faith. Yet on the other hand, in the mystery of God’s free grace, the gospel is the eschatological power of God for the redemption of all humanity. Not another gospel; not another word; the same gospel, the same human word is, at the same time, by God’s act of power, the divine eternal will for the reconciliation of the whole world.

The gospel is the power of God, yet at the same time allows reasoned reflection concerning the inner logic of faith. The content of this volume will seek to unfold the logic of faith; the purpose of this introduction is to provide a brief meditation on the gospel as the power of God.

The gospel is the power of God for redemption, which goes forth to all humanity. The gospel recognizes no boundaries; it breaks down every wall erected by human prejudice and bigotry. The gospel itself is in constant motion throughout the world. Those who believe in the gospel can never see a fellow human being the same, ever again. Nowhere in the Bible is this more clear than in the story of Peter and Cornelius.

At a moment in time, the world of the early church, the history of humankind itself, radically changes. Two people have a dream. One of the two is Peter the apostle; the other is Cornelius, a distinguished Roman soldier. Their dreams will bring them together, and the gospel will cross a threshold that changes the world. A Gentile, a non-Jew, now, for the first time, believes. A massive wall of separation between human beings comes crashing to the ground. The power of the gospel is in motion.

Jesus himself commands the disciples to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. If that commission is to be fulfilled, a major boundary will have to be crossed. And that is the boundary between Jew and non-Jew, between Jew and Gentile. There is personal, institutional, cultural, social, and religious resistance to this very possibility. Jews will not even eat with non-Jews, much less celebrate the same faith. Yet the power of the gospel is in constant motion.

The Apostle Paul will carry the message of God’s love in Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, on his missionary journeys. But it is the Apostle Peter who is given by God himself the role of first crossing the line that cannot and must not be crossed. It all begins with two dreams. The book of Acts records the dreams and the events that follow twice; the first time as they happen, and the second in Peter’s defense before the church in Jerusalem (Acts 11:1–18).

The fact is, what happens when this line is crossed is so dramatic, so radical in its implication, that the whole church is troubled. Gentiles, non-Jews, have now welcomed the gospel. How is this new mission to the Gentiles to be explained, much less accepted? Even Peter, the leading spokesperson of the twelve apostles, must defend himself. Christians in Jerusalem are deeply bothered that Peter would dare even to eat with a non-Jew. In reply to their reaction, Peter simply tells the story of what happened. The facts simply speak for themselves. He sets out the events in exact order for them from the beginning.

He, Peter, had a dream, given to him from God. In that dream, the heavens open up, and a giant container filled with animals is lowered from heaven. Representatives from the entire animal world are there. A voice from heaven commands Peter to make a meal of these animals he sees in the vision. But there is a massive problem. Some of them are ritually clean, according to the Old Testament, some unclean. Clean can be eaten; unclean cannot. So Peter tells the voice—clearly God himself—I will not eat, not on your life! I have never broken laws of ritual purity! The voice replies: God has made them clean, you must not call them profane. The dream, the argument, happens not once but three times; this is no easy line to cross. The dream ends. For now, it is about food; soon Peter will learn it is about much more.

Peter continues his recitation of events. As soon as the dream ended, representatives arrived at the place where Peter was staying in Joppa from the home of Cornelius, the Roman soldier, in nearby Caesarea. There is no doubt; the Spirit of God himself commands Peter to go with them without hesitation, and indeed to make no distinction whatsoever between himself and them. Whatever is about to happen will be at God’s initiative, not Peter’s. They enter the Roman soldier’s house; Peter makes no apology to his fellow Jews for entering the house of a non-Jew.

Peter continues his story by recounting a second dream, this one told to him by Cornelius. This distinguished Roman soldier also had a dream from God. Peter summarizes the heavenly message given to Cornelius, of how Peter himself should be sent for in Joppa. And when he arrives, he will bring a message of salvation. This is not just about different kinds of people getting along, though that is implied; this is about the mission of the gospel, the redemptive love of God for the whole world.

Two dreams, both from God, now bring two human beings together living on different sides of a line that cannot be crossed. Peter relates now to his fellow Christians in Jerusalem the dramatic story of what happens next. Already defenses and shields have gone up; only the truth, told step by step, can bring them down.

As Peter proclaims the gospel to Cornelius and his household, the Spirit of God descends upon them all. Just as at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes down from heaven upon these Gentiles, Cornelius, and his gathered friends. There can now be no doubt; this is God’s event, at God’s initiative. These Gentiles have been baptized with the Spirit, as promised by Christ himself. They now have the same exact gift as we—that is Jewish Christians, for whom and to whom Peter is speaking. They now believe in Jesus Christ, just as we do. Peter concludes: so what was I supposed to do—try to stop God?

The explanation ends, and there is silence. Where there was criticism, now there is understanding. What has happened comes from the authority of God. No more criticism; only praise and glory to God can now come from the church gathered in Jerusalem. God graciously gave the gift of life-giving repentance to Israel; now he has given it to the whole world. So the story from the book of Acts.

The gospel is in constant motion. It tears down walls erected by human bigotry and prejudice. It crosses boundaries once thought impossible to cross. The gospel makes all things new. Why? The gospel is God’s own event of redemptive love for the whole world. God’s word and Spirit are more powerful than all human resistance. Who can—who will—resist God?

The God of the Bible shows no partiality. He does not divide up the world into acceptable people and unacceptable people; into superior, successful people, and inferior, unsuccessful people. The God of the gospel gathers the whole of humanity into his arms through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. His love is not just neutral; it does not say merely, come who will. His love is passionate and all-embracing; it moves ever outward into the world, and says, where you are, I will now come to you.

The gospel in motion brings a new vision of the church. We are not an inward-looking community, erecting barriers to keep people out; we are always an outward-looking community, ever inviting new people to come in. The invitation is open, without restriction. Whoever comes is welcome; because it is God himself who brings us to others, and brings others to us. We not only welcome, we invite everyone into the fellowship of the church, for here alone is the gospel of salvation made known to all the earth.

The gospel in motion brings a new vision of society. If God shows no partiality, neither should we. Laws which discriminate between human beings run counter to the fundamental truth of the gospel and the church that professes it should stand up and take notice. We do not learn this truth from the times in which we live; we learn this truth from the Bible that we read, and in which we believe. What God has made clean, we must not call profane. Write those words on the cornerstone of a new society.

The gospel in motion brings a new vision of oneself. Like Peter, like everyone on this earth, everyone grows up with preconceptions, with biases, with presumptions. We did not choose them; we were born into them by being born in our time and place. We can continue to live with them. Or, as disciples of Jesus Christ, we can make the radical choice to live in a new way. One thing is for certain. Biases and preconceptions do not simply go away. It takes a decision, an act of discipleship, to make that happen. We do not choose to have them; but we must choose to leave them behind, for the sake of the gospel.

We do not proclaim the gospel in a historical vacuum. Few would deny that we are living in extraordinary times. Yet it is clear from the Bible: God himself holds our time, and all times, in his hands. Above all else, the way ahead for the church in all the earth is marked out for us in the Scriptures. We live in our often troubled time; but we learn how to do it from the Lord of all time, Christ the risen Lord, who speaks to us in the Bible. With the early church; with the church of all times and places; let us forever glorify him.

Let us treasure the gospel.

Part IV: RECONCILIATION

1

The Incarnation

We come now to the central theme of the entire content of the Christian message, which is the person and work of Jesus Christ. We proclaim Christ crucified . . . (1 Cor 1:23); that is the sum and substance of our every word and deed as followers of Jesus Christ. God’s reconciliation of the world through Jesus Christ is the whole of the gospel, the good news by which we live and die, the one comfort and encouragement we share with all in the community of faith, the one hope we proclaim to every listening ear in the world, the one joy to which we cling with every fiber of our existence. We can and must distinguish the person and work of Christ for the purposes of rigorous and coherent theological reflection. Yet in the end, the work of Christ is identical to his person, and the person of Christ is identical to his work. We cannot know the true identity of Jesus Christ apart from his redemptive action for the salvation of the world; nor can we fully comprehend his redemptive action apart from a true understanding of his mysterious identity.

Moreover, neither his person nor his work can be reduced to, or abstracted from, a christological or messianic principle. Rather, the subject matter of Christian faith, indeed the entire content of both Testaments of Scriptures is not a principle, but the living reality of Jesus Christ himself, the Lord of all creation, the one Reconciler of the entire cosmos. Jesus Christ himself is the gospel; Jesus Christ is the content of the Christian faith; Jesus Christ is the faith we believe. We reflect in fragments upon the person and work of Christ, but with the earnest and hopeful prayer that our dispersed fragments will be gathered up by the grace of the risen and exalted Lord into his own glorious unity. Nor can Christology be captured in the neat form of a logically deduced set of true propositions, even if the attempt is honestly made to discern those propositions in the pages of the Bible. The biblical witness does not yield logical propositions; it points rather to the living reality of Jesus Christ himself, who is attested with truthfulness only in the dynamic and unfolding doctrine of the church, based on the witness of Scripture.

Scripture as canon is based upon the authority of the risen Christ. Only now, in our volume on reconciliation, is the crucial connection between canon and Christology brought into its clearest light. Theological reflection on the person and work of Christ from a canonical perspective will mean several things, each proven only in the actual results. Fully to grasp the mystery of Christ depends upon turning to both Testaments of Scripture, which, each in their own way, bear witness to the same true reality: which is Jesus Christ himself. Theological reflection means following the witnesses of the Bible to the reality of which they speak, and then returning to those same witnesses in the light of that reality, through the guidance of the Spirit. The canon of Scripture, on the one hand, sets clear boundaries outside of which the gospel is not rightly preached, the true life of discipleship not genuinely pursued. Concerning these boundaries, the creeds of the church, especially Chalcedon, will be brought to bear on a fresh search for contemporary witness to Christ. Yet at the same time, canon allows a great deal of flexibility within those boundaries, and theological reflection must be careful not to say yes here and no there too quickly, as has so often happened in the life of the church, as for example in the great reformation controversies of Lutheran and Reformed Christology. Above all, canon means that there can be no retreat into the past, even here in this most sacred precinct of Christian witness. Even here, the risk of faith must be ventured. Even here, the word of Scripture requires a fresh response of faith in a new generation.

What does it mean to confess Jesus Christ in our global society today?

a. Chalcedon

As we have seen,¹ in the Nicene Creed the early church, on the basis of Scripture, confesses the unique and majestic reality of God as unity in diversity, diversity in unity. While using concepts drawn from Greek philosophical terminology, the creed in fact affirms with crystal clarity the astonishing biblical view: that the one God is an eternal relationship of love, a living communion of mutual love and mutual interpenetration. To use the technical vocabulary of the creed, God is one essence in three persons, or modes of being: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. An arid, Greek philosophical transcendental theism was thereby rejected, in favor of the biblical-based reality of the triune God. While the doctrine of the Trinity as attested by church doctrine is not to be found with exact expression in the Bible, the triadic formula of the biblical witness points to the triune reality, and as Calvin in particular stresses, non-biblical words are perfectly legitimate—even essential—when they are used cautiously and prudently to draw out the clear teaching of Scripture into the light of day. The creed is not set alongside Scripture as a second source of divine revelation (Tradition II); rather, the creed is the church’s living answer to Scripture, echoing the rule of faith that is in fact the genuine content of Scripture itself (Tradition I).Thus, Scripture and tradition are joined together in the service of divine truth for the sake of church and world.

In the creed of Chalcedon (451), a different question is raised and answered: namely, what is the relationship between the humanity and divinity of Christ?² While Christology may have preceded the confession of the Trinity in the early development of Christian thought, the full implications of the true divinity and true humanity of Jesus Christ were not drawn out until after the doctrine of the Trinity received its comprehensive formulation. Now, there are obviously profound similarities in the creeds of Nicaea and Chalcedon. Once again, the issues raised in Chalcedon are clearly found in Scripture, yet the creed makes use of non-biblical concepts to reach essential theological results. Or again, the creed rests upon the authority of Scripture, and makes no claim to revelatory status (Tradition II), and yet the creed offers itself as the church’s clear affirmation of the rule of faith concerning the vital issue of the identity of Jesus Christ as testified in Scripture (Tradition I). Yet there is also a basic difference in the logic of the creed, a difference that reflects the multifaceted theological role of Scripture as canon. The Nicene Creed quite simply draws a line, a boundary, which completely excludes the teaching of Arianism. Arian teaching is heresy. The issue is simply: yes or no. By contrast, the Chalcedonian creed, while it clearly draws boundaries excluding two extreme positions (Eutychianism and Nestorianism) as heretical, is largely based on the effort to build a consensus between three equally legitimate alternative christological schools of thought in the early church: the Alexandrian and the Antiochene in the East, and that of the West. The creed effectively and clearly says no to the two extremes, but then allows for a measure of flexibility within the one rule of faith. Just as canon protects against false doctrine, yet with equal importance and legitimacy protects the inherent complexity of divine truth, so too must the creeds of the church honor the inherent logic of the content of Christian witness. In that sense, the role of the creed is more heuristic in nature: seeking to protect the mystery of Christ, without offering a final and exclusive definition, which only comes through renewed encounter with the risen Christ through the witness of Scripture in each new generation of the community of faith.

A very brief outline of the issues raised by the Chalcedonian creed is now in order. Numerous passages in Scripture bear witness to Jesus Christ in a simultaneous twofold movement from above to below, and from below to above. Paul summarizes the basic content of the gospel of God which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 1:1–4). Three issues are instantly raised by the passage: the humanity of Christ (according to the flesh), the divinity of Christ (Son of God with power), and the unity of the two in one person (Jesus Christ our Lord). Now, that is not to say that Paul is espousing the Chalcedonian definition; it is rather to say that the theological concern evidenced in the Chalcedonian definition is accurately discerning a twofold movement in the one identity of Christ that is repeatedly found in Scripture. Or again, John 1:14 declares: And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. The same christological dynamic appears: a movement from above (the Word became flesh), from below (and lived among us), and the unity of the two (and we have seen his glory). Once again, this is not Chalcedonian Christology, but biblical witness. Nevertheless, the creed is struggling legitimately to understand that to which the biblical witness points, the true subject matter: Jesus Christ himself.

The creed of Chalcedon is as follows: "So, following the saintly fathers, we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body; consubstantial with the Father as regards his divinity, and the same consubstantial with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects except sin; begotten before the ages from the Father as regards his divinity, and in the last days the same for us and for our salvation from Mary, the Virgin God-bearer (theotokou) as regards his humanity; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures (in duo phusesin) which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation; at no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the union but rather the property of both natures (tes idiotetos hekateras phuseos) is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single subsistent being (eis hen prosopon kai mian hupostasin); he is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as the prophets taught from the beginning about him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ himself instructed us, and as the creed of the fathers handed it down to us."³ Known henceforth as the two-natures doctrine, the creed affirms that Jesus Christ is both truly divine and truly human, yet in one person. The union of the natures in one person (the hypostatic union) is such that it does not destroy in any way the integrity of the two natures, and yet there is only one whole person, the Lord, Jesus Christ.

As we have said, the logic of the creed points in two very different directions at the same time. On the one hand, the creed aims to exclude heresy, that is, theological positions that fall outside the rule of faith as encompassed within the sovereign authority of Scripture. Two extremes are identified clearly within the creed. The first extreme, held among others by Eutyches, was able to confess the divinity of Christ, but fell short of the true humanity of Christ. In fact, for Eutyches there are not two natures, but only one: the humanity of Christ is simply one nature with the Godhead. Christ did not have a rational soul, an ordinary human psychology; rather, the divine Word took the place of normal human existence. Indeed, even the body of Jesus was rendered divine flesh by its contact with the divinity. Why is this view considered a heresy? According to the early church, to speak of only one nature unravels the mystery of Christ by simply