Settling the Annual Debates

On the Incarnation, Natural Law, Calvin, &tc.

Dear Friends,

I hope you are having a blessed Advent Season. Perhaps God is even blessing you with a respite from the hustle and bustle and irritations of life in a fallen world, giving you a taste of heavenly, eternal glory. That’s the season at its best. Warm cider or mulled wine, candles and lights, Christmas music, joy and laughter. I hope that for all of you.

Mostly, I am irritable and irritated. A little bit because I just went to pull out my vinyl record of Anne Murray’s Christmas album and the record was not in the sleeve. Sigh. Now I have to go through all of the sleeves to see where it “was misplaced” (by someone other than me, of course.) I sound like pre-conversion Ebenezer Scrooge. Bah-Humbug! But my real problem is not that people are celebrating the Christmas Season full of joy and warmth. My problem is that people aren’t. At least not most of the people who spend their time on social media.

Okay, I will admit: the problem is partly mine. I continue to peruse “X” and Instagram. I do this because if I want to provide commentary on current events and issues of the day I really ought to be informed. But I will tell you that the law of diminishing returns is setting in for my use of social media. There is just less and less juice from the squeeze.

In addition to all the usual nonsense, the people who really are into the Christmas spirit have decided that it is fruitful to rehash the tiresome annual debates. So I’ll try to help you navigate the pressing issues of the day:

Is that one painting of pregnant Mary comforting Eve a heretical distortion of the biblical message? No. It’s an amazing image comprehending a great deal of orthodox biblical theology.

Did Mary remain a perpetual virgin? With apologies to Calvin and late-Medieval piety, there are few reasons to think so and many, many reasons to think not.

Is it a suspect or deficient doctrine of God to call Mary “The Mother of God”? On the contrary, if you have trouble calling Mary “Theotokos,” the “God-bearer,” it is a sign that you have a suspect or deficient doctrine of God. Mary bore in her womb the Person of the Eternal Son of God in the flesh.

Didn’t Mary already “know,” and therefore that song is stupid? Only if you hate good songs and great music, are a complete pedant and have no appreciation for the richness of human language and the fullness of human experience. One can intellectually “know” a fact, which is a very different sort of knowledge than actually experiencing the fact, watching its implications unfold, and discovering that it is so much greater than you thought. The song means, Mary, did you really know just how awesome your Son was going to be? That’s an honoring thing to say to a mother, and an honoring thing to say about the Son. Enjoy! Here is the best version.

If you really want to deepen your understanding about Christmas, Mary, the son of God, the mystery of the Incarnation, the hypostatic union of two natures in one person, I recommend devotionally reading St. Athanasius’s classic work, On The Incarnation. You can find e-versions in varying translations all over the Internet, or you can order yourself a copy. When you are done with that, I recommend reading Leo the Great’s Letter 28, or “Tome,” a fifth-century defense of the Council of Chalcedon on Christ’s two natures. That’ll keep you busy and off of social media.

---

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Professor Andrew T. Walker has a new book out about natural law. I haven’t read the book, but I have followed Walker’s promotional campaign for the book and related endless flogging for its themes and I find myself underwhelmed. Allow me to briefly show you what I am talking about.

Posts like this:

This is a fun game. My turn: If you affirm Reformed theology but deny the sacrament of baptism to infants, your Reformed theology is discordant with the Reformed tradition. Ahem.

More seriously, everything in this post depends on what is the “role” and “value” of Natural Law. Calvin thought the “role” and “value” of natural law was to condemn human beings in their very consciences and to render them inexcusable. I don’t know of any Reformed theologian who disagrees with or denies this. But Walker is putting his own content into “role” and “value” here and, presumably, he has a far more positive and ambitious role and value in mind than that of Calvin.

The very next day he posted this lengthy bit:

First, I agree with all of this. Second, I find this post exasperating. If Natural Law Theory means anything—anything at all—it means the human capacity and ability to ground objective, moral norms from natural principles alone. This is the whole point: there is no need for recourse to “special” revelation or the Bible. Nature and our reflection on nature reveals to us objective moral norms.

And one day after celebrating the “role” and “value” of “Natural Law,” he gives an extended commentary telling us that it is, in fact, useless in establishing objective moral norms like, say, “the Holocaust was evil.” For that, he boldly says, we need Christianity and the God of the Bible. I couldn’t agree more. I just wonder if he ever gets intellectual whiplash.

The sales blurb from his new book says that he “develops a robust framework of natural law ethics, guided by biblical and theological evidence.” That seems to me pretty much completely incoherent. If it is “guided” by biblical and theological evidence, it is not “natural law” ethics. And if, as it appears, he is wanting to transform natural law ethics into something else entirely—like, say, biblical ethics—he should just Stop. Using. The. Term.