I’m starting with a part of a joint statement on salvation that Alte found,… and I have no argument with.
We confess together that all persons depend completely on the saving grace of God for their salvation. The freedom they possess in relation to persons and the things of this world is no freedom in relation to salvation, for as sinners they stand under God’s judgment and are incapable of turning by themselves to God to seek deliverance, of meriting their justification before God, or of attaining salvation by their own abilities. Justification takes place solely by God’s grace.
The thread in interesting… there is a criticism of the debates Prots have between Arminism (you can have a choice) and hard Calvinism (choice is an illusion. God chooses you from day one. We ended up quoting Spurgeon, and the Catholics systematizers are saying that this is nuts.
There is a second generation problem. Places where the first generation, who had an encounter with Christ, and the spirit moving in the Church, become systematized, made into a routine and then a bureaucracy in the second and third generation. And this has a cost.
17Zion stretches out her hands, but there is no one to comfort her; the LORD has commanded against Jacob that his neighbors should become his foes; Jerusalem has become a filthy thing among them. 18The LORD is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word; but hear, all you peoples, and behold my suffering; my young women and young men have gone into captivity.
19I called to my lovers but they deceived me; my priests and elders perished in the city while seeking food to revive their strength. 20See, O LORD, how distressed I am; my stomach churns, my heart is wrung within me, because I have been very rebellious. In the street the sword bereaves; in the house it is like death.
21They heard how I was groaning, with no one to comfort me. All my enemies heard of my trouble; they are glad that you have done it. Bring on the day you have announced, and let them be as I am. 22Let all their evil doing come before you; and deal with them as you have dealt with me because of all my transgressions; for my groans are many and my heart is faint.
The prophet here is treating Jerusalem as a fallen woman. This is the natural consequence of being unchaste and unfaithful in most societies… you end up abandoned. There were risks in marrying (your husband could die, and you would be left destitute) but greater risks in whoredom — where you were very likely to be destitute.
But the woman (or Jerusalem) was deceived by her priests, who refrained from saying to her the truth because they were afraid of offense. As were the Pharisees.
27Again they came to Jerusalem. As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came to him 28and said, “By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them?” 29Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin? Answer me.” 31They argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 32But shall we say, ‘Of human origin’?” – they were afraid of the crowd, for all regarded John as truly a prophet. 33So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”
The problem with our systematic theologies and neat models of God is that they are not God. God is God, and he will not be tamed by our models of him.
This is why we should be careful and wary around systematic theologians. The safest place to be is close to the text. Like Job, we know, but in part. We can see him, but we are limited. We do not know why we are put through periods of great suffering, nor why we are blessed.
And we cannot comprehend fully our salvation.
____
Now for an aside. Calvin did write a handbook of systematic theology (the institutes). But.. he put the bulk of his effort into writing a series of commentaries. In these, he took a quite conservative position (generally using the Vulgate and the French text, but then referring to the original language) and stayed quite close to the text.
Those who followed him took his ideas and pushed them to the point of ridiculousness.
I’ll let the Catholics contemplate how Thomas Acquinas became Thomism.
__________
The risk for theologians, in their actions, is that they inadvertently follow the Iron Law.
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
We are not about preserving organizations, or taming the Almighty. We are here to glorify God and do good in his name. And we need to beware of those theologians who move away from the word, and into those speculations that preserve their power structure.