Review: The Biblical Doctrine of Man (Gordon Clark)

Thesis: Gordon Clark identifies the “man” with the “soul, spirit, or mind” (Clark 88). Man is the image (9). Clark doesn’t want to include the body in the definition of the image, but not because he is a rationalist.  He notes that Paul had an out-of-body experience but he was still the image of God (10). Quoting Col. 3:10 and Eph. 4:24, Clark argues that the image is knowledge and righteousness (14).

The Image of God

Clark has a fine section rejecting the Roman doctrine of donum superadditum (8). God pronounced man “very good,” which means he wasn’t created in a state of neutrality.  If Adam’s fall was merely the loss of original righteousness, then he only fell to a neutral level (13).

On the heart

Clark gives an interesting survey of how the term “heart” is used in the Bible, noting that it is normally used in an intellectual of voluntaristic sense and rarely in a touchy-feely sense (81-88). The heart has a noetic function.  Without realizing it, Clark has come very close to a key epistemological insight that many of the church fathers knew.

Clark defends a dichotomous view of the human subject (33-44).

Traducianism

His discussion isn’t as long or analytic as William GT Shedd’s, but it contains a number of penetrating insights.  For example:

(1) It is a fallacy to say that all angels’ souls are immediately created by God, and humans have souls, therefore each soul is immediately created (this seems to be John Gill’s argument).

(2) Souls don’t have to be fissile (Clark doesn’t use that term) since our soul isn’t produced or created by our parents’.  Nor do souls have spatial characteristics. Rather, we should see souls in terms of “functions” (47). If souls are active, and no one doubts they are, then there is no prima facie reason why a soul can’t transmit another soul.

Does traducianism depends on realism?  Maybe, but no one is saying that it depends on Plato’s realism?  But even if it does have similarities, there is no reason why this threatens imputation.  There is no logical “incongruity between the proposition, ‘the souls of descendants are propogated through their parents’ and, the proposition, ‘Adam acted as the legal representative for all men’” (49).

Does Realism necessitate that we hold there is an Idea of x in which one participates?  It can mean that but it doesn’t have to. All that Realism in Clark’s case requires is that there is an Idea in God’s mind and it is a real object of knowledge. Nor is one saying that all men participated in the Idea of Man, which also happened to be the individual Adam.  

Mind-Body Problem

Whatever problems the Christian dualist may have in explaining the relationship between the mind and body, the materialist has more.  How does a causal relationship arise from sensory experience (91)?

Gold Nuggets

Clark was ahead of his time.  He anticipated and exposed many of the dead-ends that philosophers, educators, and scientists face today.  For example:

(1) How do empiricists explain the production of abstract ideas from memory images (19)?

(2) If naturalism is true, then how can one say that the naturalistic process of the brain is “more true” than the process of flexing my muscle?  If naturalism produces both behaviorism in one case and Christianity in the other, and both are merely naturalistic reflexes, why is Behaviorism more true than Christianity (29)?

(3) “The Romish theory therefore locates the source of sin in Adam’s unfallen nature” (58).

(4) Depravity is part of the penalty of sin; therefore, the guilt logically precedes it (67).  As Westminster says, “the guilt is imputed, the corruption conveyed” (68; VI:3).

Analysis

The book kind of “ends” suddenly.  Granted, the last page is part of an appendix, but Clark never actually says his conclusion.  He has a long quote by Malebranche, but we don’t know if Clark is affirming or rejecting Occasionalism.

I’m also none too keen on defining the image as the soul.  Does image = soul mean the same thing as soul = person? The latter leads to Nestorianism if applied to Christology.  To be fair, though, Clark never affirms Descartes’s substance dualism. The book is short and very clearly-written.  There are some underdeveloped areas but on a whole it is outstanding.

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Bringing the nous into the heart

This is from John Mcguckin’s The Path of Christianity: The First Thousand Years, pp. 862-869.  It is very difficult for many people to approach the ancient fathers on prayer.  For some, it looks too much like Buddhism.  And for many activists theologians, it doesn’t make sense to do hesychasm when you can be lobbying on Capitol Hill.  Nevertheless, the “stillness” model rests upon a particularly sophisticated anthropology, one that can help us in our technological age.  Indeed, one that can counter (with God’s help) deep state monarch programming.

Have you ever prayed and felt dead?  Like the prayer wasn’t real?  Maybe it’s because you carried into prayer the mindset you had when you were watching the Kardashians ten minutes ago.  The Fathers teach us how to develop a mindset for prayer.  This mindset is important because it prevents us from having a “fractured psyche.”  Jay Dyer quotes Strategopoulos , noting,

 

 

” the human nous (the “eye of the heart”) will see God’s uncreated Light (and feel God’s uncreated love and beauty, at which point the nous will start the unceasing prayer of the heart) and become illuminated, allowing the person to become an orthodox theologian….

“They became vain in their reasonings, speculations”. Please pay attention to the choice of words. Almost always, especially in the New Testament, the term (“dialogismos” in the original Greek) is used in a negative sense. When He is about to heal the paralytic, Christ is aware that people “are reasoning within themselves” (Mark 2:6). So Christ says: “Why are you reasoning about these things in your hearts?” You see, the word in the Greek text is not “logismos” (thought, contemplation), it is “dia-logismos”, i.e. fragmented, scattered thinking: The fragmentation of the nous. You might as well apply this knowledge when you are confronted with cults, heresies and similar issues, [considering that the same word is used today for “meditation”]. There is a direct link. Reasoning, speculation [of a fragmented nous]: terms which are always used in a negative sense in the Holy Scripture. Thus, man ends up in a state of ignorance, although he is created with a predisposition towards God, with a nous that is meant to turn to God for help: “Love the Lord your God”. This is faith, the movement towards God, and it is something that we have overlooked….

St Gregory of Sinai clearly states that forgetfulness of God is a disease of the soul and of the faculty of reason. It has a direct impact on human memory, which ends up divided, diffused and fragmented, a prey to tempting thoughts. If I forget God, my memory will crumble into pieces, resulting in scattered, wayward thinking: “Dia-logismos”.

Now, on to McGuckin: “The heart is the inner place where the creature stood before God” (Path 865).  Heart isn’t quite the same thing as nous.

• It is a biblical cipher for the whole spiritual personality.
• It is sometimes expressed by the word wisdom (Prov. 19.8).
• It is a synonym for the innermost self (Rom. 7.22).

So how does this apply to prayer?  Where does the doctrine cash out?  The fathers practiced the monologistos prayer.  It was a short phrase from Scripture that was repeated over and over until it soaked the consciousness (870).  That sounds like it violates Jesus’s command not to pray over and over like the heathen, but several things need to be noted:

• He probably meant pagan incantations.
• You are going to have something soaking your mind anyway.  Your mind is never neutral.  You will either soak it with God or with Katy Perry songs.  Take your pic.  Would you rather wake up in the middle of the night singing, “Romeo save me/I can’t ever be alone” or with

McGuckin notes the effect of this practice, “Charging and reorienting the human  consciousness, focusing it, as it were, like a lens on the singleness of the idea of the presence of God” (871).  The ancients knew that our minds wonder during prayer.  This trained us to begin the struggle of prayer.

The Anthropology of Prayer

We have a body (physical impulses), soul (feelings and desires), and nous (spiritual intellect). If the body was agitated, the other two “ranges” of consciousness would be pulled down as well (871).  Therefore, the monks knew that bodily needs are controlled by redirection.

That takes care of the body.  What about the soul?  Our prayer lives are usually by default rooted in our soul (consciousness).  This is where we live habitually. The monologistos prayer quiets down our soul. McGuckin succinctly points out, “Thoughts generate thoughts.  Words make words.  Monologistos prayer kills those unnecessary words” (872).

When the soul is finally quieted, the nous descends to the heart and one reaches stillness. This is what the hesychasts knew.  You aren’t just doing funny breathing.  At this point when you slow down the breathing, your body calms even more.

Everyone wants to claim that the human person is a body-soul unity, or some kind of unity.  I think it is the genius of Palamas to see how the person is a unity.  There is a dynamic interplay between body, soul, and nous.

And while I think Fr John Romanides overshoots his target, there is at least an aspect of “healing the nous” in theology.

Extra Resources

Fragmentation of the Psyche and the Nous

Lady Gaga ‘Raped’ – Victim of Mind Control?

Mind-Controlled Alters Documented

Psychological Warfare and Media

Satanic High Fashion & Weinstein Hollywood & Vegas COVERUPS – Jay Dyer & Boiler Room

The Fragmented Psyche, The Nous & The Osiris Complex- Jay Dyer (Half)

The Ghost in the Machine and Mass Mind Control

Masculine Wisdom/Feminine Matter: the Drug-Fractured Psyche

Review: What Sort of Human Nature?

Medieval analytic philosophy gets to the heart of the problem:  If Christ has two natures, one of which he assumed as a human nature, and if he is consubstantial with us in our humanity, yet our nature is sinful, how is Christ not sinful?  Saying he chose not to sin doesn’t answer the question, as merely possessing a human nature tainted by sin makes one guilty. 

The short answer to the question is that we only need to show that Christ is fully human, and a tainted human nature is not necessary to the definition of what it means to be human.  Yet this reveals the deep octopus of questions that occurs at the intersection of anthropology and Christology.  Marilyn McCord Adams sets forth several questions on this topic and shows how (and why) the medievals answered the way they did.

Themes

(1) Metaphysical size-gap between God and man.
(2) There is a top-down pressure to regard Christ’s human nature with maximal perfection.
(3) Christ assumes something from each of man’s fourfold states. He has to have something to guide human beings into Beatific glory.

Adams interprets Chalcedon as defining person: Per 451, Person = supposit = individual substance (Adams 8). Other questions that arise: how much did the human soul of Jesus know?  Did it experience defects? If so, what kind?  Was it impeccable?

Anselm denies Christ is born in original sin. If he were, then he would be personally liable.  Anselm says Christ’s human soul was omniscient, yet he doesn’t explain how a finite human mind could have infinite cognitive capacity (17).

Lombard on Christ’s human knowledge: “Once again, Lombard charts a via media: the scope of Christ’s human knowledge matches the Divine, but the created act by which it knows will not be so metaphysically worthy or furnish the maximal clarity of knowledge found in the Divine essence. Even so, it will enable the soul of Christ to contemplate each creature clearly and as present and will include a contemplation of God as well” (21).

Conclusion:

The book admirably serves as a fine example of analytic theology. Adams plumbs the issues and shows the tensions and advantages in each theologian’s position.  I do feel the book’s conclusions were rushed at times, but given that it is actually a lecture and an essay, I suppose that can’t be helped.

 

Review: Hoppe, A Short History of Man

This is a “For Dummies” version of his groundbreaking *Democracy: The God that Failed.* While it has some serious limitations, it’s last chapter, on Aristocracy and Democracy, is brilliant. And even in the earlier sections of the book there are neat insights.

The author is committed to a Darwinian scheme of evolution, so I question his methodology at points. Still, he does a good job explaining how if one is going to escape from the Malthusian system one must have an economic and technological breakthrough to produce enough food.

The last chapter, the one on democracy, while summarizing his conclusions in his magnum opus, also takes the argument one step forward. It’s not simply that the untermenschen that democracy creates are the ones that negate civilization. They certainly do that. Even more so, it isn’t simply the “Government” that attacks liberty. That’s true, also. Rather, and this is Hoppe’s key insight, it is a subgroup within the government that is actively opposed to liberty. He calls this group the Plutocrats. We know them as the Deep State.

You can find this book online for free. I would save your money and get his larger book on Democracy instead.

Notes on Berkouwer’s anthropology

From his Man: The Image of God

On the broader/narrower distinction: man, despite his fall, was not beastialized (38).  By narrower man lost his communion with God.

• the broader sense reminds us of what was not lost in the fall.
• Perhaps better to speak of a duality between Old and New.

Should image of God be read as “active” (conformitas) or ontic (essence)?

Berkouwer on Eastern Orthodoxy

• He doesn’t give the best discussion of EO, either in what they believe or in how to critique it.  Though he does hint that EO thinkers aren’t always able to clearly state the connection between inheriting Adam’s curse of death and why we always do sinful things, but yet refusing to call it Original Sin.

Klaas Schilder

Schilder sees man’s creation as the pre-condition for the image, but not the image itself (Berkouwer 54).  The actual image lies in the officium created man receives (I don’t think this is the full picture, but there is some truth to this, especially if we connect the imago dei with man’s dominion, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism hints at).

• Thus, the image is dynamic and is rooted in the Covenantal God’s Relation with man.
• the word “image” implies “making visible.”
• Schilder resists any abstracting the image.
• The glory of the image shines forth in service to God (56).

The danger with Schilder’s approach is that it makes the image too “dynamic” with an emphasis on conformitas.

What is the relationship between man’s humanness and God’s Image?  Berkouwer wants to deny that fallen man images God (57).  He says he can do this without rejecting what it means for man to be man.

• Passages like Genesis 9:6 are not proof-texts for some abstract view of the image analogia entis.  They deal with a humanness in the context of God’s plan of salvation.
• The truth of the matter is Scripture doesn’t focus that much on the distinction between wider and narrow, important though it is.
  • traditional discussions have always focused on image as defined by person, will, reason, and freedom.  Scripture, on the other hand, is concerned with man-in-relation-to-God.
• A synthesis between the ontic and active aspects of the image is impossible when using concepts like “nature” and “essence” (61).

Analogia Fides

• The danger in abstracting the imago dei is that the body is usually not included in what it means to be God’s image.  This means that only part of man is creted in the image of God.
• Such discussions lose focus of the humanness of man.  They forget that man is man-in-his-apostasy.

The Meaning of the Image

Origen expounded the view that man was created in God’s image but grows into God’s likeness (De Principiis, 3.4.1; Bavinck calls this the naturalistic view).

Calvin, on the other hand, sees the two terms as an example of Hebrew parallelism.  Berkouwer gives the best critique:  “And if God’s plan for man (that man should have both image and likeness) was only partially realized by man’s creation in his Image (As Origen and others claimed), then it is difficult to explain Genesis 5, which speaks of man’s creation in God’s likeness (demuth) and after his image, tselem (Berkouwer, 69).

The image-concept and the Second Commandment

2Comm. deals with a prohibition against arbitrariness which man tries to have God at his beck and call (79).  The 2C is not primarily trying to protect the “spirituality” of God but to show that God is not at man’s beck and call (though, of course, God is spiritual).

The creation of man is directly related to the prohibition of images:  “For in worshiping images, man completely misunderstands God’s intentions and no longer realizes the meaning of his humanity (84).

Biblical usage:  The NT speaks of humanity as whether it is the “New man in Christ” or not.  To the degree it speaks of conformitas, it speaks of the new conformitas in Christ.

While the analogia entis is certainly wrong, we need to be careful of speaking of an analogia relationis, pace Barth and Dooyeweerd.   Berkouwer wisely notes that Scripture doesn’t speak of a “relation” in the abstract, but of a “relation as it becomes visible in the salvation of Christ” (101).

Even if one were to speak of an analogia entis, the biblical presentation of “being like God” has nothing to do with the natural state of affairs but rather shows forth the wonder of the new birth (1 John 3:9).  The “imitation of God” forms the pendant of our witness to the world, in which word and deed are joined in an unbreakable unity (102).

The Corruption of the Image

How do we reconcile language of corruption with hints of “remnants?”  There is a difficulty in saying that sin is “accidental” to man.  It cannot mean that sin is merely peripheral to man’s existence.  Rather, it affects all that he does.  The Formula of Concord says that sin is an accident, but one that produces man’s spiritual death (133).  When Flacius Illyrius saw the term “accident,” he interpreted it as meaning that sin is relative and external.

The problem is that substance/accidents language cannot do justice to the NT reality of sin. Berkouwer suggests we can rise above the dilemma “only when we see man’s nature, his being man, in his inescapable relation to God” (135).

We also need to be aware of positing “any remnant in man which can escape divine indictment” (135).  Whatever else we may think of substance/accidents, “Scripture constantly makes it clear that sin is not something which corrupts relatively or partially, but a corruption which full affects the radix, the root, of man’s existence, and therefore man himself” (104-141).

• Gen. 6:11-12; the sin is referred to as “great.”
• Gen. 6:5; man’s heart is evil
• Gen. 8.21 (man’s imagination is evil from his youth)
• Life outside of Christ is pictured as “under God’s wrath” (

“The power of sin since the fall is like an avalanche, and it results in the intervening judgment of God” (141).  The Old testament gives us a picture of total corruption but a limited curse (God doesn’t wipe us out completely).

“The jubilation of salvation corresponds to the real condition of lostness” (144).

Humanness and Corruption

Discussion about common grace.  When Calvin says man has “no worth” he means no merit before God’s judgment.

The Whole Man

Scripture doesn’t talk about man in the abstract, but man in his relation to God (195).

Biblical use of the word “soul.”

Sometimes it is “nefesh,” meaning life and can refer to man himself.  Berkouwer rejects that “soul” is a “localized religious part of man” (201).  The Bible’s interchangeable usage between soul and life should draw attention to the fact that the “heart” is of primary importance:  “The heart shows forth the deeper aspect of the whole humanness of man, not some functional localization in a part of man which would be the most important part” (202-203).

Concerning anthropological dualisms

Such a view sees the soul as the “higher” part, closer to God.  Leads to ascetism.  However, evil in the bible is never localized in a part of man.

Bavinck attacks trichotomy because Scripture knows of no original dualism between spirit and matter (209).    The trichotomist sees the soul as mediating between body and spirit (find Damascene’s comment that the soul is higher point, cf Bruce McCormack, Engaging the Doctrine of God).

Dualism and duality are not identical (211).  We can speak of a duality in God’s creation man and woman, without positing an ontological dualism between them (this is where Maximus and Jakob Boehme err).  “Duality within created reality does not exclude harmony and unity, but is exactly oriented towards it” (211).

Does soul and body involve a tension, and if so that would make it a dualism?  If it does involve a tension, we must reject not only trichotomy, but dichotomy.

Per the confessions and creeds, “there is a great difference between non-scientific references to a dual aspect of human nature and a thesis that man is composed of two substances, body and soul” (213-214).

The Dooyeweerdians

It opposes the idea that all the rich variation of humanness can be forced into two substantial categories.

Stoker defines substance as the “systatic core of man, that which functions in all spheres” (H.G. Stoker, Die nuwere Wijsbegeerte aan die Vrije Universiteit, 1933, 40ff.).

For the Dooyeweerdian critique, matter can never be an independent counter-pole to form.

Immortality of the Soul

Genuine and real life in Scripture is life in communion with God.  The philosophical notion of “immortality of the soul” calls death a lie and misunderstands the judgment of God (250).

The main contention of Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd whether there was a natural immortality based on an essence abstracted from its relation to God, from which we can draw further conclusions, such as the soul’s “indestructibility” (249).

Per Van der Leuw, there is no continued existence of the soul as such after death, “but a continuation of the contact point by God even though death” (Onsterfelijkheid of Opstanding, 25 quoted in Berkouwer 252).

• The problem of what happens when we die does not involve a purely spiritual salvation but can only be answered in the context of death and the Day of Judgment (Althaus).

Is immortality of the soul correlative with the substantial dualism of mind-body?  This dichotomy raises substantial (pun?) problems and questions (255):

• When the “soul” is separated from the body, what activities is it still able to carry out?
• If the body is the organ of the soul (as in Aquinas), and the soul needs the body to carry out its functions, how can the soul know or do anything after death?
  • Dooyeweerd notes that the psychic functions are indissolubly connected with the total temporal-cosmic relationship of all modal functions and cannot be abstracted from this relationship.
  • Thus, we have a “living soul” which does not live.
  • Rather, with Dooyeweerd we should speak of a duality which is supra-temporal in the religious center of man (heart) and the whole temporal-functional complex.
  • Dooyeweerd does say that the soul continues as a form of existence with an individuality structure (Berkouwer 257n. 33).

Does Dooyeweerd’s school give us a “psychology without a soul?”

• No, for Dooyeweerd says we cannot view man’s essence “in itself” and then tack it onto a relation with God.

The Reformed confessions’ use of soul and body is not to give a systematic anthropology but to show that expectation of salvation surpasses death (271).

Creationism and Traducianism

Berkouwer sees the problems with Creationism:

• it finds the soul’s origin in another dimension than the “other” part of man, which finds its origin…from its parents (294).

Human Freedom

Freedom in the New Testament is not a “possibility,” but an actuality, the actuality of being free (Gal. 3:13, 4:4). Defining freedom as “double possibility,” as freedom of choice, arises from an abstract and irreligious and neutral anthropological analysis of human freedom (334).

irony and tension: if freedom is defined as choice, then we see that the choice for sin becomes a manifestation of human freedom–though we (and the Bible!) then go on to speak of sin as actually being slavery (335)!

Choosing Ba’al is not an ontological freedom of the will, but an endangering of freedom and the acceptance of an enslaved will (Deut. 30:18). How can we speak of a neutral and autonomous freedom of will when Jesus commands us to accept his yoke and his burden? (348)

Man of God

In the Old Testament it refers to a relationship with God (349).  Such a term can never be one of an abstract and neutral man.  It is man drawn out of darkness and into light.

“The magnalia Dei does not exclude true greatness, but calls it forth” (352).  [Think Stonewall Jackson]

 

 

Notes on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on grace

Obviously, this is not a full endorsement.

Can we know God without grace?

The act of the intellect depends upon God in two ways: it has its form by which it acts from God

Preparing the human will

The preparation of the will cannot take place without habitual grace.

Man incurs a triple loss by sinning: stain, corruption of natural good, and debt of punishment (ST 1-2, q. 109, art7).

Christ restores us in the mind but not entirely in the flesh (Thomas is working upon a faulty spirit-flesh dichotomy).

Grace is located in the essence of the soul (q. 110).

Cooperating with God (q. 111)

There is a twofold act in us: interior act of the will, which is moved by God, and the exterior act which is moved by us.

Miracles: q. 111 art. 4.  They happen today.  Thomas is most certainly (and rightly) a continuationist.

Justification

Right order in man’s act (ST 1-2, q. 113 art.1)

Infusion of grace: the logic is that God must change something in our soul for us to be right with him, since sin is a disordering of the soul.  “In the infusion of grace there is a certain transmutation of the soul” (ST 1-2, q. 113 art. 3).

Merit

It is the effect of cooperating grace (q. 114).

Merit exists on the grounds of God’s ordination (art 1).  

Man merits everlasting life condignly (art. 3).

Augustine, Spirit and the Letter

Initial argument: to respond to Pelagius’s claim that one can live a sinless life.

Other topics addressed: justification by free grace, spiritual interpretation, the nature of human willing and choosing.

Observations:  There are many important topics in this book, yet it is neither an easy nor a pleasant read.  Augustine jumps from point to point, only to return without warning to an earlier point.

1. The Law as Letter that Killeth
   1. Without the Spirit, the Letter (law) inflames concupiscence.
   2. Whoever obeyed the law without the Spirit, did only because of reward/fear (c.14).
2. Justification by free grace
   1. Our soul wants to attribute to itself that which it freely received from God (c. 18).
   2. Law: what we do, not simply “external ritual markers” (c.23).
   3. Works do not precede justification, otherwise it is pointless to say we are justified freely by his grace (c. 45).
3. Human nature and grace
   1. Grace restores nature (c. 47).
   2. Grace establishes free will
      1. When we say we do something “in our power,” we presuppose two things:
         1. Will: the assenting to of something
         2. Ability: the capacity to do it.
      2. The Free Will of man is an intermediate power–it can incline towards faith or unbelief.
      3. The very will comes from God but that is not the same thing as saying, “God made me will it.”
      4. The will probably follows the intellect.  Augustine isn’t clear on this point (c. 60) but it seems to be his argument.

Augustine: Baptism and Forgiveness

These are some notes from Augustine’s treatise Baptism and the Forgiveness of Sins.  Once you get passed the grim assertions that unbaptized babies aren’t saved (which guaranteed that the Catholic church would come up with theories of Limbo), there are some important points on concupiscence.

Book II

1. Infants are born with concupiscence (II.4).
2. God works…
   1. God works our salvation in us, but not in the manner of external working on stones (II.6).
   2. Regeneration:  Augustine says the term doesn’t have a univocal sense.  When we speak of “baptismal regeneration” we don’t mean the same thing as “regeneration of the Spirit” (II.9).
3. Perfection:  A Relative term (II.18).
   1. I can be perfect in one sense (as a scholar) but imperfect in another (giving wisdom).
4. Does God command the impossible?  Sort of.
   1. This is how God measures righteousness to himself.
   2. Why does man not live without sin?
      1. Because of both ignorance and unwilling.
5. Concupiscence
   1. First movement of the will is a desire for power, disobedience through pride (II.33).
   2. Man did not have concupiscence before the fall (II.36).
      1. This is the law of sin in my members (pudenda).
      2. primal righteousness: my members did not fight against the law of sin
      3. Old carnal nature = law of sin (II.45).
      4. Concupiscence remains even if the guilt is gone.  
   3. If there is the “likeness of sinful flesh” then there must be the reality of sinful flesh (II.58).

The Scandal of the Incarnation

This is the most accessible treatment of Irenaeus’s works. Hans urs von Balthasar provides a fine introduction, discussion, and brief critique of Gnosticism–showing how Irenaeus’s theology is relevant today. Further, von Balthasar provides a matrix for interpreting St Irenaeus (von Balthasar 9ff):

 

(1) Unity of Old and New Testament: God’s Logos.
(2) The crossbeams are the world’s true center–it is here where creation is renewed (13). The four points of the cross match the “four corners/dimensions” of the world (Irenaeus 16).

Doctrine of God

By God’s simplicity, Irenaeus means he is non-composite. God is “wholly mind, wholly thought, wholly reason, wholly hearing, wholly seeing” (Irenaeus 19, quoting AH II 13, 3). Since God is rational, he produces things by his Logos and orders them through his Spirit. The Spirit manifests the Word (Defense of Apostolic Preaching, 4-10). God’s thinking is His Word and the Word is Mind (AH II.28.5).

God is not a Groundless Void, for where there is a Void and Silence, there cannot be a Word (II.12.5). Irenaeus offers several reductios: can a void fill all things? How can he be a spiritual being if he does not fill all things? (II.13.7)

Irenaeus affirms the analogia entis

“He is rightly called the all -comprehending intellect, but he is not like the intellect of man. He is most aptly called light, but he is nothing like the light we know” (AH II 13, 3). God confers proportion and harmony on what he has made (II.25.2).

Incarnation as Recapitulation

“The second Adam is the repetition, in divine truth, of the first Adam…The second Adam repeats the whole natural development of man at the higher level of divine reality” (von Balthasar 53). Indeed, “what was bound could not be untied without a reversal of the process of entanglement” (AH III.22.4).

Anthropology

(Redeemed) Man is body, soul, and spirit (AH V.6.1). Without the spirit man may have the image of God but not his likeness. The Spirit saves and forms the flesh and the soul finds itself mid-point between the two. The breath of life (ruach) is not the same as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). The former makes man a psychic being; the latter makes him spiritual (V.12.2).

Conclusion:

I think this is the best entry point for Irenaeus. True, the complete text of Against Heresies (such as it is) is too important to ignore, but most beginning readers will get lost in the Gnostic genealogies. Until, of course, one sees their modern counterparts, listed below:

Gnosticism today:
(a) Hegelianism
(b) Marxism
(c) Idealism
(d) Romanticism
(e) Freemasonry
(e) The American University System
(f) Hollywood (the symbolism is there, if you know where to look)

On God and Man

Review of On God and Man: The Theological Poetry of St Gregory of Nazianzus (SVS Press)

{1} Some have compared this work to Augustine’s Confessions, but that’s misleading. True, Gregory does open his soul to outsiders, and the literary skill is magnificent, but it isn’t nearly as introspective as Augustine’s work. But echoes certainly remain. One theme in this book, similar to that of Ecclesiastes, is the evanescence of life. Gregory ties this with our materiality. Yes, matter is good and created good, but matter’s fallen mode is one of change and flux.

{2} Only eternal things remain.

{3} Of particular importance are Gregory’s stirring accounts of the human soul. The soul has mind and reason (Gregory 82). It is superior to flesh (96). Indeed, it is the very breath of God (lit. “the efflux of the divine Mind, 103 passim).

{4} As we would expect with St Gregory, he displays a high and holy view of God. The Father is “Mind” and the Son is the Father’s intellect (53, 38). The Son is the archetype’s image. Echoing some Neo-Platonic themes, man, indeed creation, proceeds from God and returns to God (157). While he rejects the eternality of creation, nonetheless creation was an idea in the mind of God–and God’s ideas are eternal per the doctrine of simplicity.

{5} Gregory combats pagan ontologies, Paganism is agonistic. If two forces struggle (light/dark; God/chaos), then who/what is the third term that brings harmony (49ff)?

{6} This work ends with one of Gregory’s most famous poems, including the prophetic dream he had of the Two Virgins. (Incidentally, if you are a cessationist then you will have problems with Gregory).

Conclusion:

This work is magnificent. In many ways it is better than “On God and Christ.” Because it is poetry, it is more accessible (if occasionally incomplete in thought). Some lines, even in translation, are simply sublime.