Fellowship among evangelicals will always be along a vast theological continuum of spiritual closeness whereas with devout Roman Catholics spiritual closeness is a binary consideration. There is none. Let us not confuse sanctification and fellowship within the body with evangelizing those outside the evangelical church. Our personal spiritual affinity toward other professing Christians should be walled in by their objective ecclesiastical standing, which is based upon baptism and a credible profession of faith before the elders of a true church that preaches the biblical gospel.  In a word, how can evangelicals enjoy spiritual closeness with Roman Catholics when they are not to be admitted to the Lord’s table?

I will interact with portions of this article by Professor Carl Trueman.
A recovery of classical theology also raises an interesting ecumenical question. Why do Protestants, especially those of an evangelical stripe, typically prioritize the doctrine of salvation over the doctrine of God? If an evangelical rejects simplicity or impassibility or eternal generation, he is typically free to do so. But why should those properly committed to the creeds and confessions consider that person closer spiritually to them than those who affirm classical theism but share a different understanding of justification?
I am committed to the catholic creeds and Reformed confessions. Maybe that is why I find it interesting that we are being asked to consider why those committed to the creeds and confessions (like myself) can enjoy more spiritual closeness with those who reject certain tenets of classical theism (like certain evangelicals) than with others who have “a different understanding of justification” (like devout Roman Catholics). In other words, in the context of spiritual closeness we are asked to compare (a) an evangelical’s rejection of “simplicity or impassibility or eternal generation” to, what is framed as, (b) a mere “different understanding of justification”. (Let that sink in.)
Many things jump out at me. First, should we infer that a “different understanding of justification” does not entail a rejection of the true and Reformed doctrine of justification? Such an inference seems unwarranted. After all, how much can we differ on the Reformed doctrine of justification and still hold to the gospel? (Given the later comparative reference to Roman Catholic Dominicans, who are to be considered orthodox in their doctrine of God, it is apparent that what is being called a “different understanding of justification” does not cash out as any mere theological difference but an outright repudiation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.)
Would it not be fairer to evaluate the foundational basis for spiritual fellowship between a confessional Reformed believer (like myself) with either of these two different classes of people: (1) those who cannot accept and, therefore, reject the philosophical underpinnings and subsequent implications of certain constructs of, for instance, divine simplicity (e.g., Alvin Plantinga), and (2) those who reject the simplicity of the gospel as it relates to a Reformed doctrine of justification (e.g., any of the popes since the sixteenth century)?
Before reading on, it might be helpful to internalize that the idea that we should not prioritize the doctrine of justification over the doctrine of God can imply that we should not prioritize God’s grace over the God of grace. Although a worthy reflection in its own right, one can easily miss the point if it’s abstracted from the present context. We aren’t to be prioritizing complementary doctrines in the abstract but rather discerning which doctrines are absolutely essential to understand and embrace for there to be the possibility of “spiritual closeness” in the household of faith.
Back to Basics:
Although the doctrines of simplicity, impassibility and eternal generation are glorious truths to be cherished and defended, we may not deny that the basis for genuine spiritual closeness (i.e., true fellowship in the Lord) is union with Christ by the Holy Spirit and agreement over gospel truth. Accordingly, it is no small matter that entrance into that spiritual oneness is gospel wrought conversion, which eludes official Roman Catholic doctrine according to confessional Protestant standards. In a word, one cannot possibly enjoy spiritual closeness with a Roman Catholic who is true to Roman Catholicism. Therefore, no matter how pristine a Roman Catholic’s theology proper is, there’s no possibility of Christian fellowship for those who truly reject the Reformed doctrine of justification.
Simplicity Isn’t as Simple as the Gospel;
Regarding the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS), some of its loudest proponents have identified and acknowledged different implicit difficulties having to do with (a) God’s absolute freedom as it relates to the necessity of the divine decree, (b) personal properties of divine persons as they relate to a non-composite being, and (c) the intelligibility of divine attributes being one and the same attribute due to the transitive nature of the law of identity (just to name a few conundrums). Others have hedged on certain tenets of DDS while claiming to affirm the doctrine. And even others simply have hand-waved while labeling evangelicals who disagree with them as dangerous if not heretical. (To varying degrees we can cite similar observations about eternal generation and impassibility.)
Surely divine simplicity, impassibility and eternal generation do not just jump off the pages of Scripture. That is not to say these doctrines aren’t imbedded in Scripture and cannot be inferred by careful study. But that seems to miss the point about Christian fellowship. To understand the gospel and be genuinely converted one needn’t understand how God, not being made up of parts, can be three distinct persons yet one divine being. One can be genuinely converted and enjoy spiritual closeness with other regenerate believers without having considered, let alone reconciled (a) orthodox conceptual distinctions about God that are understood analogically with (b) how God cannot be a composite being (either logically, metaphysically, or physically). Moreover, if God is creator and redeemer, then how might we address challenges relating to God taking on accidental properties? And if God is “most free” yet the divine will is timelessly eternal, then how could God have created another world in place of this one? Or is the logical trajectory of DDS that God has actualized all possible worlds? How might the average born again believer in the pew, with whom I can enjoy spiritual closeness in Christ over the forgiveness of sins, answer the question of whether God has unactualized potential?
Of course there’s a difference between not having an opinion on x and having a reasoned rejection of x. However, if one does not believe that a sophisticatedly developed conscious-rejection of these philosophical constructs is sufficient to undermine a credible profession of faith, then why not consider those who mistakenly reject these loftier doctrines, while affirming the evangelical gospel, as standing more solidly on fellowship ground than all the Thomists within Rome who reject the simplicity of the gospel? Yet if it is believed salvation hinges in part upon not rejecting simplicity, impassibility or eternal generation, then we would not have elevated Roman Catholics who decidedly oppose sola fide above such professing Protestants. We would merely have placed them on equal ground! Neither sort would be spiritually closer than the other to a true believer.
Although I have not been satisfied with some of the representations I’ve heard from some of the most vocal defenders of DDS, I do believe there are adequate answers to such questions even though some strident proponents of DDS seem to struggle with arguments levied by the ablest objectors to DDS. But the point isn’t whether divine simplicity, impassability or the eternal generation of the Son are glorious truths over which we can fellowship with other true believers. (Indeed we can!) Rather, the point is merely this. I am much “closer spiritually” with (a) an evangelical who sadly rejects DDS because he has not found the arguments he has read particularly persuasive, than with (b) a Thomist who believes in the transubstantiation of the mass and that his works of piety can assist in meriting his justification. (In this example, the evangelical needs further spiritual understanding, whereas the Thomist is in need of spiritual conversion.)
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by Matthew H. Lee |
Thursday, December 7, 2023

For Machen, the great benefit of these school choice reforms was that they would empower parents to oversee their children’s education. As he stated to the Sentinels, the hope is that “we may return to the principle of freedom for individual parents in the education of their children in accordance with their conscience.” School choice policies enacted and expanded this year promote this noble end and serve as an unexpected tribute to Machen on the hundredth anniversary of Christianity and Liberalism.

This year is the centennial of J. Gresham Machen’s magnum opus, Christianity and Liberalism.
Originally published in 1923, Machen wrote the book in response to a rising tide of theological liberalism and modernism in the United States. Machen’s views ultimately led him out of his denomination and out of Princeton Seminary, both of which accepted more liberal and modernist tendencies, and led him to help found two enduring institutions—Westminster Theological Seminary (1929) and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (1936).
While Machen’s achievements are chiefly theological, he wrote and spoke extensively about education, where he observed some of the deteriorating effects of liberalism. One hundred years of policy and research have proven Machen prescient in his views on education policy, which can largely be grouped into three themes: resistance against standardization, opposition to centralization, and insistence on parental choice.
Resistance Against Standardization
First, Machen resisted trends to standardize both the teaching profession and student learning. The Lusk Laws in New York, for example, required teachers to obtain certification from the commissioner of education and made them subject to state visitation. Though repealed in 1923, less than two years after they passed, the spirit of the Lusk Laws endures. Nearly every state requires teachers to obtain some certification, often in addition to holding a degree in the field of education, despite the fact that research fails to document evidence of a meaningful link between certification and teacher quality.
Machen believed the modernist trend of training teachers in the science of education, rather than with content in their disciplines, marked a fundamental shift in the understanding of what teaching is. He lamented that the primary preparation of modern teachers was not “to study the subject that he is going to teach. Instead of studying the subject that he is going to teach, he studies ‘education.’”
In Machen’s view, the great danger in standardization and in emphasizing methodology over content is that it would place the child “under the control of psychological experts, themselves without the slightest acquaintance with the higher realms of human life, who proceed to prevent any such acquaintance being gained by those who come under their care.”
Treating education as a mechanistic process would result in “intellectual as well as moral decline” because in such a context, morality is based “upon experience, instead of upon an absolute distinction between right and wrong,” Machen said in a 1926 address to the Sentinels of the Republic, a libertarian organization dedicated to resisting federal overreach.
To compensate for the meagerness of character formation in modern education, psychological experts instead try to inject civic and moral values into a standardized, secularized curriculum. Machen wrote about such “morality codes” in a 1925 essay titled “Reforming the Government Schools.” He observed that these codes were “making the situation tenfold worse; far from checking the ravages of immorality, they are for the most part themselves non-moral at the root.” Today, morality codes have many faces, but the same empty core. Social and emotional learning (SEL), for example, provides analogs for cardinal virtues promoted by classical and Christian education, but absent the thick moral context of religion.
Opposition to Centralization
Machen was also opposed to the centralization of oversight of education in the federal government, a natural extension of his resistance to standardization. In February 1926, a month after his Sentinels address, Machen provided expert testimony on behalf of the Sentinels for a Congressional hearing dealing with several issues, including the formation of a federal Department of Education, which he predicted that if enacted, would be “the worst fate into which any country can fall.” While he helped defeat the proposal for a federal department, his victory was merely temporary, as a federal department of education would eventually be formed as a cabinet-level department in 1980.
Machen was not being hyperbolic in his assessment. Since the establishment of the first federal agency in 1867, which started with only a commissioner and a staff of three, the federal role in education has ballooned. For 2023–24, the Department of Education budgeted over $270 billion in spending—all the more alarming when one considers that the Department of Education accounts for only three-fifths of all federal spending on education. Again, Machen has been vindicated by research, which has failed to document a reliable link between spending and student outcomes.
A common argument for centralized control over education, both in Machen’s day and today, is easily addressed.
Read More
Related Posts:

Was it really because Christians are misogynists? Was it really because men don’t care about the happiness and health of their wives? Was it really because Evangelicals hated black people? Or is it because they—like the rest of the world—are staring into a genderless, plastic abyss wherein women and men are not who God says they are, whereby they must, the cultural law says they must, enact their desires or they will not be whole and healthy?

I made some dear (IRL) friends upset yesterday who have been helped by Gregoire’s previous book. The day was also one of unrelenting frustration whereby I spent the whole of it in the car driving people around instead of doing what I planned. I was not able to respond to anything, nor even beat back my own sink full of dishes, nor walk the dog, nor keep up online. I did manage to read a second chapter of Gregoire’s new book but I’d like to do two chapters in one post, so I’m going to pick that up tomorrow. Instead, I want to try to put words to something that I think is swirling around in the cultural air. This will be hard because I prefer to have a tweet or an article to bounce off of, but, it’s International Women’s Day—so let’s celebrate with a listicle.
One. An alluring and powerful narrative has formed about the plight of women and the reasons things are so bad today. It goes something like this: Christians have irreparably damaged their witness, the Christian faith, and the lives of women by their unacceptable view of marriage and sex; and Christians have damaged the Christian faith by their view of the Bible.
Where did this narrative come from? How did it form? It has two or three sources. The first source, I think, is the culture itself which, in a short time, radically shifted from one view of what it means to be human, to another. It took a whole century for the new view to become entrenched, but I really think contraception was the millstone that sunk a “biblical view of the family” under the sea for most people. Even if they had some idea with their heads about human relationships, what they knew with their bodies radically contradicted that view. In a world where women can control if and when they have children, the biological reality of being a woman is not meaningful or substantive enough to undergird and support a society.
The second source of this narrative was the Christian reaction to this change. Christians reacted strongly, as they should have. But, in many cases, wildly and with a hint of hysteria. As the western world shifted from a positive to a neutral to a negative view of Christianity, it is not surprising that those people who refused to shift away from “traditional” and biblical norms became the bad ones. Moreover, as the defacto conscience of the whole, they are discovering that they ought to be quiet, but that they may not go away. In family systems theory, the “biblical view of the family” is the trap that holds all the toxic fumes of the larger system. The western family needs Christianity as its scapegoat. It needs Christians to occasionally react in sorrow and outrage. But secular culture cannot absolutely get rid of Christianity or it will have to face who it is, and that’s not pretty, so of course it won’t do that.
In the usual way of these sorts of cultural shifts, the outside assault on the “biblical view of the family” was helped by the inside repudiation of it. Many “Christians” now unreservedly accept a secular view of what it means to be a self. Assumptions about the needs and requirements of this new kind of humanity, though largely, I would say (after reading just two chapters of Gregoire) unexamined, drive the internal “culture war” that Christians are enduring. Health—both physical and emotional—are at the center of these assumptions.
It is hard for me to overstate how deeply I feel this shift myself. That is because I came in and out of American culture at key moments and was able to observe how it was changing. Christians through time and space have not had this new assumption of “health” at the heart of their faith. And not just Christians either. Most cultures around the world continue not to pursue this idea of “health.”
Read More

Related Posts: