One of the challenges with the EFS debate was the tendency by those critiquing Grudem Ware and others was to get frustrated with their failure to follow classical theist formulations. They would then accuse those who held to EFS of either being in outright heresy or straying into heresy. The problem was that they ignored the ways in which EFS advocates were careful to protect their position from such a slippery slope by the way they affirmed, distinguished and denied key things where it mattered. This did not mean that their language wasn’t at times clumsy or that they could have said things better. There again, the same could be said of the Neo-Classical=Theists. However, it should have been clear there wasn’t a danger of heresy.
I can see the same happening again with discussions about other issues around classical theism such as a current discussion concerning “Divine Impassibility. In particularly, some people have attempted to do two things.
- To give serious weight to Scripture language that talks about God being responsive to circumstances in time and the human condition.
- To understand how the infinite and eternal God relates to creatures in time.
These two points are important because Scripture does point us towards a responsive God. Staying away from language about emotions or passions think about how Scripture talks about God hearing prayer. Do we simply want to say that this is anthropomorphic? Of course God does not have literal ears to hear us. Does that mean though that all our prayers do is help us to work through our issues as though God is the silent therapist as we lay back on the couch? What about the atonement itself? We don’t want to leave that as a metaphor that effects no real change. Because Jesus died on the Cross for my sin, my relationship to God changes and it isn’t just a matter of me moving from old life to new. The relationship changes and it is something God has done that makes the change.
At the same time, we don’t want to imply that God changes because we do not want to suggest that God either is imperfect and becomes perfect or that God suffers loss in himself and becomes imperfect. Theologians like Aquinas following Aristolean philosophy talked about God as being Pure Act. This was another way of saying that God was perfect. Finite beings were referred to within that metaphysic as act plus potential. They had potential to become something else but weren’t there yet. The divine entity for Aristotle (and I don’t think he was alone in this when it came to Greek philosophy) was already perfect, so did not need the potential to become something else. The risk with that kind of thinking was that it could, and did, lead to people thinking of this “unmoved mover” as being so independent from creatures and creation as to be impersonal and utterly unknowable.
Now, here is the question. When some contemporary reformed writers and speakers talk about God genuinely responding to us in an emotional manner, does this mean that they are denying that God is pure act and so, perhaps unwittingly committing heresy? Well I’m not convinced. That’s not to say that their formulation is correct and unchallengeable, but it does give us cause to pause before playing the heresy card.
First, before we start accusing people of potential heresy because they don’t speak the same way or use the same formulations as Aquinas, we need to remember that they are not functioning within the same world view and so the same formulations may not be necessary and may not themselves be heard rightly by a moder audience.
Secondly, as alluded to above, there are clear distinctions in place to guard against error. These include the insistence that God is independent (A-Se) and unchanging (immutable). This means that God has all of his perfections within himself and so there is nothing being added from the outside, he is self-existent. We also emphasise that Gid himself predestines, so that even as he responds to our prayers of faith and our sinful actions, he responds to tings he has ordained.
Thirdly because we do want to give serious attention the fact that the eternal and infinite God does engage with us who live in time and space. We don’t want to be left with a detached, disconnected and distant God. I don’t think that the Neo-Classical Theists have really paid attention to this. There are dangers with attempting to find the language but at least some are attempting it. This doesn’t mean that they don’t need to think carefully about their
formulations. It does mean that we should think twice before playing the Heresy card.
Faithroots 