**The following quote is a little lengthy, not too bad, but if you want to skip to the bottom, to my “List of Assertions,” and closing paragraph you might just want to interact at that level (the quote substantiates or at least provides fodder for my assertions)**
William Perkins (1558-1602), a Cambridge theologian, and English clergyman can be considered to be one of the founders of what today is known as Calvinism. When people say they are ‘Reformed’ (esp. in America), this is one of your forbears who you are beholden to for the theological categories you think through — to one degree of intensity or another. If you, more popularly, follow the teachings of John Piper, Michael Horton, Carl Trueman, and even John MacArthur, amongst others; then you follow in the trajectory that William Perkins set so long ago.
William Perkins followed the scholastic tradition (conceptually); that is to say, he adopted the Aristotelian framework assimilated by Thomas Aquinas to explain and articulate who God is (ontologically), and thus what salvation entails as corollary. Part of adopting this framework, for Perkins, means that he must cast God in terms of immutability (there have been reifications of this term to fit a more trinitarian understanding — I say this just so that some of you know that I am aware of this); God cannot have any kind of contingency or composition, here is how Perkins says it: “God’s immutability of nature is that by which he is void of all composition, division, and change” [Perkins, Golden Chaine, 1. 11, first cited by: Ron Frost, “Sibbes’ Theology of Grace UnPublished PhD Dissertation,” 61]. This has a drastic impact upon how God’s life is understood, and emphasied to be, viz. as singular (simplicity); furthermore it implies that the Johannine notion of “God is love” to be a figment of God’s disclosure in time, but not a reality of who God is in eternity (since love would imply ‘composition’, ‘division’, and ‘change’). The following is a quote (from Ron Frost’s dissertation) that further elucidates and substantiates my claims thus far:
2. Love and the will. In speaking of God, apart from any one of the triad of persons, Perkins identified a primary essence which is “void and free from all passion” [Perkins, “Golden Chaine,” 1. 25]. Love, if seen as essentially affective, would include an element of contingency, namely, God’s desire that his creation respond to his love as the complement to his own love. If, however, love is a component of the will, God merely requires such a response . In the Golden Chaine, then, love is striking in its absence as a motivation in God; this despite the primacy of love in biblical descriptions of God. As illustrated in the chart of the Chaine [which Frost provides on the previous page], love appears only after the mediatorial work of Christ.
Perkins also believed that if God’s love is perceived as an inherent motivation (that is, as an affection), it would imply the prospect of universal salvation. He raised an “objection” in the Golden Chaine to make the point, a point which illustrates Perkins’ position that love is defined by God’s arbitrary determinations:
Object. Election is nothing else but dilection or love; but this we know, that God loves all his creatures. Therefore he elects all his creatures.
Answer. I. I deny that to elect is to love, but to ordain and appoint to love.
II. God does love all his creatures, yet not all equally, but every one in their place [Perkins, “Golden Chaine,” 1. 109, Cited by Frost, 62].
This reflected Perkins’ synthetic definition of God’s love. In his Treatise of God’s Free Grace and Man’s Free Will, Perkins posed the question “whether there be such an affection of love in God, as is in man and beast.”
I answer that affections of the creature are not properly incident unto God, because they make many changes, and God is without change. And therefore all affections, and the love that is in man and beast is ascribed to God by figure [Perkins, “God’s Free Grace, 1.723, cited by Frost].
Thus, God must be understood to express his immutable will in a manner that accomplishes “the same things that love makes the creature do”. God, then, lacks any inherent affections but he still chooses to do the actions of love or hatred, and uses anthropomorphic language, while working out his eternal purposes: “Because his will is his essence or Godhead indeed.” [Perkins, “God’s Free Grace,” 1.703, cited by Frost] [brackets all mine] (Ron Frost, “Richard Sibbes’ Theology of Grace and the Division of English Reformed Theology [Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of London, King’s College, 1996],” 61-2).
List of Assertions
- This is the origin and framing of contemporary thinking about “double-predestination” (supralapsarianism) and the import of God’s decrees.
- According to Perkins, to sustain the above framing, and as a result of using Aristotle’s “immutability,” God cannot love within Himself — within His own life freely. Thus God is different in eternity (de potentie absoluta) than He is in time as the “mediator” (de potentie ordinata).
- In other words, the decrees of God (absolutum decretum) create space for God, “to love,” without impinging upon His real life, which according to Perkins, cannot love (or there would be change).
- Furthermore, Perkins’ view implies that there is another God behind the back of Jesus.
- At bottom, Perkins’ God cannot love, He cannot (in His real life in eternity) have compassion, or greive; He is only able to do this in time because His decrees allow Him to do so (in other words, God becomes subserviant to His decrees — so in the end He really is contingent on Human history, He is determined by His decrees — He is thus, not truly free!).
I wonder if any of this causes any contemporary Calvinists of today any kind of pause. If your view of double-predestination is framed by Perkins’ view (which it is, if you follow Westminster Calvinism), then I wonder what that further says about your view of God. Are you willing to take on the same assumptions on God’s immutability that Perkins does? Or, because you know scripture won’t let you, are you going to say: “I don’t believe that nonsense,” and move on, assuming that what Perkins and Westminster articulated has no bearing on your own “biblical viewpoint?” Enquiring minds want to know!
P. S. For further reflection and insight on this problem for Perkinsonian Calvinists, see: Universal Election in Christ
The Face Of Christ 
This may be an interesting moment where, if Frost’s analysis is correct, Perkins is siding with Aristotle against the Christian appropriation of Aristotle found in, say, Aquinas.
This is because Aquinas says that there is love in God’s essence in Prima Pars, Q. 20.
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1020.htm
And it is interesting that Aquinas’s objectors focus not upon God’s immutability (which, incidentally, also has clearly biblical roots: James 1:17, Hebrews 13:8) but the fact that He does not have a body.
But now that I think of it, even Aristotle says that God loves himself. So…this is even messier… Hmmmm…
Also, I wonder if you reject that God Is One in His essence. As you say (and I certainly agree), we don’t want a Monod standing behind the persons of the Trinity. God’s essence is certainly “personal,” etc. At the same time, we also don’t want to collapse into Tri-Theism or some even stranger view where “God” is 1/3 the Father, 1/3 the Son, and 1/3 the Holy Spirit. I am not characterizing your view here; I am just trying to understand the implications of what Frost is advocating for when he says that we cannot speak of God apart from one of the persons. This may be true from an epistemic point of view (though I think it probably isn’t, based on our conversation from months ago); my question is what this may or may not indicate about God’s being.
Indeed, the doctrine of simplicity is not in conflict with the doctrine of the Trinity unless, to put it too briefly, one believes that God is an aggregate of the persons of the Trinity, which is hugely problematic, of course.
Well…many of these comments are somewhat incomplete. I’d be happy to clarify. If you don’t want the conversation to move in this direction, I’d entirely understand.
Hey Matt,
When I was putting this post together, I thought it might be the “kind” that you would comment on — and I appreciate your points. I’m going to have to make my response quicker than I want right now (getting ready for work); so maybe I’ll be able to provide more comment later.
On Aquinas and Aristotle. In what sense do they love? The “Calvinists” under consideration claim the same thing. Aristotle’s pure being certainly could not love in a trinitarian way, and Aquinas’ assimilation of Aristotle needs to frame love and essence language in a way both consonant with Aristotle and Christian trinitarianism . . . but is he successful? That’s what Frost is getting at. But we are even further down the line here, with Perkins assimilation of Aquinas and Aristotle; and so he is unique in his own endeavor.
Certainly we don’t want to end up with a tritheism; and what Frost is describing does not lend itself in that direction (contra Perkins). Basically and simply God’s Oneness is shaped by his Threeness, so that the ousia shapes the hypostasis, and the hypostasis shapes the ousia in perichoretic interpenetrating relation. So this is, in a nutshell, and rather anecdotally, how one avoids trietheism or even self replication thrice repeated (so to speak). So there is no rejection of God as one in essence, but that the shape of that oneness is provided by the intrarelating of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (one in three, three in one).
And I realize that simplicity can be framed trinitarianly, but I need to look at that further.
As far as using love language, and Aristotelian causality; I think what Frost is getting at with Perkins, for example, is that indeed what we end up with is an aggregate that subsists as an abstraction in God’s decrees. So that the decrees end up taking an ontology of their own, such that God, in the end becomes contingent upon His own decree (so we end up with a competing dualism of sorts, internal to God’s ontology in eternity and time). Basically then, Aristotelian causality allows for God to love (in historic time) and to “determine” sin without actually being affected by such things. In other words, God’s relationship to “love” and “sin” are the same; they reside in His decrees, but not actually in His being (which really does not find support in scripture).
Okay, my comment is rather dangling as well; hopefully I’ll have more time to come back to this later this evening.
Good hearing from you, Matt. If I ever want to talk to you, I know that all I have to do is waive the Aristotle/Aquinas carrot, and I know you’ll show up — and I’m glad you do 🙂 .
It’s always good to chat. I do imagine that I come off as a broken record… 🙂 What are you going to do?!
Anyway…I’m going to leave aside the Trinitarian problems for the time being (since we discussed some of them before and because the Trinity is really, really hard :-)).
I do want to talk more about God’s love. Before I move towards any sort of defense of Aquinas, I’d ask if you could spell out for me (maybe I’m just dense?) what exactly you want from, say, Perkins.
In his discussion of love, he is asking the question about whether God loves in the same way as man or the beasts. Perkins says no. Would you say yes? Thomas would say that God does not have passions in a strict sense or affections because (and this might be just semantic?) these things are linked to bodies or to human imperfections (like desire in its strict sense comes from “lacking something” and God lacks nothing, right?). Now, the immutability question is an interesting one, but the key really for Thomas (and, it seems, for Perkins) is that referring these sorts of things to God just doesn’t make sense given the fact that He is incorporeal.
Anyway, as I said, I’m still unclear about what kinds of “feelings” we want God to have, esp. without reference ad extra.
Matt,
Just to clarify, where do we find (anywhere) that God does not have passions are affections? Wouldn’t this be kind of circular to say such a thing, I mean, doesn’t one have to assume Aristotelian categories for God before he is ever able to ask these kinds of questions about God?
The key for Thomas may be incorporeality, but ultimately (and I don’t mean this to be rude or crass); the key that is determinative to me is the categories that scripture speaks in, and what it discloses about Jesus (and thus God’s life).
Since I’m still learning this stuff too, and from secondary sources — Ron’s dissertation — let me quote (maybe in a few days from now) what Perkins is getting at with his love and grace language mediated through Ron’s articulation . . . in fact the immediate context, and following paragraphs (relative to the ones I quote here), deal directly with how and why Perkins’ is speaking and framing love the way that he is.
As far as your question:
In his discussion of love, he is asking the question about whether God loves in the same way as man or the beasts. Perkins says no. Would you say yes?
I would want to take a look at verses like I Jn 4:19, and even Rom 5:5. I would say there is a univocality between God’s love and our love prototypified in Christ — through His vicarious life for us. But we could talk more about this . . . maybe when I provide some more quotation on Perkins and love.
Good heavens, don’t think I’ve ever had to use my desktop dictionary so much in such a short time… thanks for forcing me to expand my vocabulary guys.
Bobby, I really enjoy your writing, even if it is way over my head. I’ll be tagging along trying to keep up from time to time on your blog. I recently enjoyed your comments on the Spurgeon quote from the Pyromaniacs blog — good word. Speaking of that as well as speaking of “love,” my pastor once said “Grace makes Christianity livable and God lovable.” Overly simplistic, perhaps, but no less true. I’d go so far as to say this is a good litmus test for the authenticity of the grace we profess.
“So that the decrees end up taking an ontology of their own, such that God, in the end becomes contingent upon His own decree.”
I’ve discussed this issue in a different arena several times recently. Someone asked “If God has a ‘Plan’ already, what difference does prayer make?” Without launching into a huge discussion on that topic, I think it suffices to say that God’s plan is not the sovereign entity. God is in control of HIs plan, and not the other way around. Again, thank you for the good word.
Josh,
Welcome. I try to write in clear ways, but sometimes the subject matter that I am trying to interact with may presuppose a little knowledge of “technical” language — if you ever want clarification on something, let me know, and I’ll try to do that . . . or at least point you to a book that might do that for you.
That’s right, on the “plan,” in fact I would want to say that He is the plan; and that we are brought into that plan in Christ. So we are brought into His plan, as we are brought into His life (the trinitarian life) in Christ. That’s why I think discussion on union with Christ by the Holy Spirit is so important in this regard . . . it reframes the discussion around the relationality of God’s life vs. orienting it around decrees (hope that makes a little sense, I really need to develop that a little further).
Thanks again for stopping by! What is your relationship to the teachings of John MacArthur? Are you sympathetic to his approach?
Matt,
I didn’t mean to cut you off, by my last comment; I still don’t mind talking about your questions on immutability. But if you want to wait until I provide the rest of the quote on Perkins, that’s cool!
Hey Bobby,
A superficial response to your point about how Scripture determines how we must talk in this area would be to refer to passages about God’s eye or His hand or any other sort of body part. (I know you know all of this; I just wanted to throw it out there to say if it affects your response to my initial point…) These things are referring to human parts to understand God’s attributes; they are certainly not literal, as you know. Similarly, when we think about God being full of sorrow or angry or things like that, these passages are saying something true, but we need to be careful about how to understanding these things for the kind of incorporeal, omnipotent, etc. being God Is. That’s all I was saying.
What I really wanted was to better understand your definition of passions and affections, so that I could might consider how (in my interpretation, of course) the “classic” theologians like Thomas (and Perkins?) would respond.
Thomas says that sorrow and anger and some of these other things, though, are understood of God in a fundamentally different way than we understand love and joy for God. Love and joy imply no imperfections and though God doesn’t have the sorts of bodily interactions with these “feelings”, He loves and “joys” in a preeminent sort of way. Instead of reading love and joy off of our human interactions, we come to understand through revelation that God not only loves; He Is Love! In that sense, we need to understand love analogically (though not metaphorically). It is different to love than to BE love, though (I would argue) we are not equivocating in the use of the same term here.
But I would want to agree with you that, esp. when it comes to the love from grace (true charity in classic terms), this is a gift of the Holy Spirit or, indeed, the Holy Spirit Himself. So…to share in this love of God is to share in the divine life, as you have said (God Is Love). But this kind of love and, by extension, joy, are not within the reach of natural man. They are not simply human emotions, affections, actions, etc. They are divine gifts…so whatever univocity may be present here is the result of their divine origin rather than deriving our view of God’s attributes from our experience…
I hope that clarifies somewhat, though I still feel that I am missing something. Those passages will help I am sure as will our coming to some agreement about the definition of the key terms we are using. 🙂
Thanks for making me feel welcome.
I will take you up on asking about “technical” language, and will do it often. Count on it! Although I do appreciate the listing of definitions you have begun posting (earlier post). That’s a great idea and helpful.
Okay, so – my area of ‘expertise’ centers more around missiological issues (please don’t ask me to define that), and not around the deep details of various theological positions, so I’m in Kindergarten here. But I’m working to catch up. When you use “decrees” (“…it reframes the discussion around the relationality of God’s life vs. orienting it around decrees”), whose do you mean? God’s ( “…the decrees of God (absolutum decretum)”), or man’s? If God’s, what exactly do you mean by “God’s decrees?” Do you mean what He has spoken into existence? What He has said about Himself?
Sorry, I know I’m asking you to slow down a lot — if this bogs down the conversation too much, “save yourself” and leave me behind. I’m reasonably content to follow from a distance (it’s less embarrassing that way).
Likewise, at the risk of sounding naive, I’m not 100% sure what I make of the teachings of John MacArthur at this point — I’m still trying to work out what I think. In addition, I’ve listened to and read very little of what he has said, which doesn’t help. The most exposure I’ve had has been through the Pyro blog, which I’m assuming is similar in bent to what MacArthur teaches, and theological systems aside, I’m finding the edge a little hard there.
I’ll stop before venturing too far beyond what I know.
Thanks again Bobby.
Matt,
What I would want to get at is framing this question about how we know what love is, and such, is to bring us back to the incarnation. I don’t think we can speak of God “objectively” without first meeting Him “subjectively” by the Spirit in Christ. So in other words, in Christ we have both the object under consideration and the subject in hypostatic union. So I am not really so concerned with establishing an ontology of God prior to meeting Him in Christ (which speaks to both ontology and epistemology at once).
As far as thinking of love as analogical, as you have described it, I don’t think we need to go that route (unless we follow Thomas, which I know you do, and I don’t 😉 ). I would want to argue, in some sense in agreement with you, that we understand “love” and such through revelation; which gets us back to Christ (He is revelation). So we only understand love (God’s love) as we know Him, and enter into union with Him (it is as our “affections” are re-created by His that we come to “know” what love is by viewing the cross — we see God’s life of “giving” and “pouring out” on display). To me, to place “love” in the category of analogical, in a sense, creates another and distinct ontology of love. I would rather speak (thinking of love in terms of I Cor 13, “we see through ‘rose colored’ glasses now'”) of the distinctiveness of how we appreciate love, and how God does (in His life, intratrinitarianly) in terms of intensity rather than in terms of analogically. In my mind, then, there is univocity between “love” (our experience of it, and God’s) since we are talking about the same thing — categorically — just not the same experience relative to its full intensity (as experienced in God’s life and as demonstrated at the cross).
Okay, I have more thoughts Matt, but I also have other things to do in life 😉 (like respond to Josh, and write another post for tomorrow).
Josh,
As far as decrees I’m thinking of God’s decree of the “Fall,” God’s decree of “Election/Reprobation,” etc. So in terms of His “decrees” not ours. I.e. what He did in eternity past (logically speaking not necessarily temporally), which so to speak determines reality in time/space and His interaction with it (thinking in terms of His “causation”). Maybe Matt could provide more thought on God’s decrees.
Yeah the Pyro guys are a little “edgy,” and I’m not really too keen on their theology; but it’s fun to go over and bug’m every now and then (my approach used to be much more edgy as well . . . but I found it wasn’t very Christian 😉 ).
Are you a missionary?
As far as where you’re at in your theological development . . . please don’t feel intimidated; I only try to pretend like I know what I’m talking about — “fake it til you make it” (that should make Matt happy, that’s an “Aristotelianism” [habitus and actus] 😉 ). I’m not really that disingenuous about it though, I think all Christians should try to think thoughts, theologically, that cause them to throw themselves at the feet of God’s grace . . . and that’s usually what all of this talk does to me.
I’m glad you’re here, and appreciate your feedback!
I think we are equivocating in this conversation about the meaning of “analogy” which is kind of funny… 🙂 But I’ll put that aside for now.
Two things on the first point, though (no need to respond right away):
1) The first point is that, well, I still haven’t seen how it is that we can’t say anything about God before our encounter with Christ. As we discussed before… I know you are working on that. But the problem has, of course, arisen again.
2) I think you are pushing my comments too far. Is there a passage in Scripture that uses the terms “passion” or “affection”. If so, then we might have a different sort of conversation, though we might have to apply the same hermeneutical strategies used for talking about God’s body. Maybe/maybe not?
But certainly without those clear passages, I just want a basic definition of the terms. This isn’t “framing an ontology”–this is basic semantics and is essential to having any sort of conversation about things, no? 🙂 I don’t think there are huge theological presuppositions at stake in making this request, are there?
Maybe I’m missing something…
Thanks for the engagement!
Matt,
You’re right, I’m probably over-thinking this.
As far as knowing God apart from Christ’s mediation, I think that will have an impact upon our discussion, in the end; but I think it goes beyond the “time” that I have to try and develop (maybe in future posts).
As far as “affection” I’m thinking in terms of “heart” language, and “love” language (II Cor 5:14, Rom 5:5, etc.).
Affections=Motivation
Love=What we see at the cross (and in Phil. 2:5-8). There is a mutual and outward moving action that does not think of itself that defines God’s life ad intra and ad extra.
Does that help?
Life is busy, so this discussion may be drawn out for awhile (i.e. I don’t have the time to engage as in depth as I would like 😦 ).
I totally understand that we can only do so much in this forum and given the fact that we must do other things, alas!, besides talking about the love of God. I’m grading papers! 🙂 If only… Well, in eternity, right!
But as you are defining affection here, I don’t see any reason that it would be excluded by the “classic” theologians. But we’ll continue this, I’m sure! Pax. God is genuinely acting in the world, out of His Love Which, indeed, Is Himself. That is not a problem for God’s immutability or transcendence, etc.
Matt,
Indeed. So I’m assuming you’re a TA (or are you faculty now). Remind me, are you a PhD student, or Masters? And what is your primary focus of study (is it Thomas?).
Yeah, eternity is going to be great . . . no more space/time limitations (we’ll be able to talk face to face [even with Paul] or how about Jesus Himself 🙂 ]).
I know that these things can be framed with the “classic” stuff, and have read those accounts . . . I’ve just come across other ways (primarily with T.F. Torrance) that I find more appealing (and he doesn’t trash the classic categories, just expands on them 😉 ).
Be in touch . . . not sure when I’ll be posting that follow up quote on Perkins.