Historical Theology

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1. 

   Richard C Ross – December 15, 2024

   These important volumes allow the reader to relish the style of theology echoing through ‘New College’ under Principle William Cunningham. That style was dense, cerebral and forensic. This latter quality is most evident in Cunningham’s review of the doctrine of the Trinity, in volume one. This is, of course, by far the most important subject in Cunningham’s survey of ‘historical theology’. Not that you’d guess it from his treatment, anymore than you would from a majority of ‘Reformed’ systematic theologies produced in the last couple of centuries.

   John ‘Rabbi’ Duncan, with characteristic perception, observed, ‘You will never find a Roman priest wandering from the catholic faith on the Person of Christ, or in reference to the Trinity’ (Just a Talker, 154). Sadly the same cannot be said of every ‘Reformed’ theologian. Inevitably, true to type, Cunningham offers no recognition of the fact that the Christian Church owes the developed doctrine of the Trinity above all to the church of Rome, her early bishops and popes. This must not be assumed to be a piece of propaganda; it is a fact of historical theology.

   Cunningham works on the ‘democratic’ principle, rather than the ‘ecclesiastical’ principle; his assessment of early Christian opinion is concerned with counting witnesses, rather than focusing on the settled position of the Church with regard to this doctrine, a position that never wavered from the Scriptural truth, and has not wavered from it since. His forensic approach is essentially rationalistic; we find no recognition of the spiritual principle that the believer, enlightened by the indwelling Holy Spirit, is not merely pre-disposed to accept trinitarian truth but is granted, in a form of pre-conceptual knowledge, the replete doctrine, which then he struggles to articulate. Cunningham notes that certain statements of the fathers are ‘not easy to reconcile with the orthodox doctrine’, and unwarrantably and unhistorically, accuses the fathers of writing ‘loosely and carelessly’. The fact is trinitarian vocabulary and grammar evolved only slowly through decades of controversies (but see page 293f).

   Most important in Cunningham’s response is his unreserved endorsement of Nicene trinitarian theology, specifically the generation of the Son (see page 320). He mistakenly relegates the importance of this aspect of trinitarian theology; the fact is there is no element of trinitarian theology of greater importance: the Christian’s whole understanding of God’s nature and character hinges on his response to the mystery of the Father’s begetting of the Son.

   The Nicene theology attributes to the Father, in his eternal begetting of the Son, the generation of the Son’s entire being, expressed simply in the creedal statement, ‘God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God…’. This Calvin rejected. Following Calvin’s eccentric response to Nicene orthodoxy, a string of later ‘Reformed’ theologians harden their objections to its principles, in at least one case, falling into heresy. The trend is conspicuous in the writings of the ‘Princeton School’, Charles Hodge, Loraine Boettner, (the early writings of) Geerhardus Vos, John Murray, and also adopted, for example, by Robert Reymond, Donald Macleod and Wayne Grudem. Disastrously, this deviation has gained wide acceptance among many who consider themselves ‘Reformed’ but understand little of the doctrine. On the other side of this gapping divide stand, for instance, Cunningham himself, Urasinus, John Owen, Turretin, Van Mastricht, Witsius, Thomas Boston, Jonathan Edwards, Gill, Dabney, Shedd, Bavinck, Hoeksema, Berkhof, Dr Robert Letham, virtually the entire body of Puritan opinion, and The Westminster Confession of Faith.

   Princeton neo-Reformed trinitarian theology is fundamentally at odds with Nicene orthodoxy. Two conflicting concepts lie at the heart of two irreconcilable theologies. On the one hand, the assumption that sovereignty is the primary divine attribute – an attribute, it may be noted, with no direct trinitarian implication; on the other, the presupposition that love as self-diffusive good is the primary divine attribute – a quality replete with trinitarian implications. In the former case, the eternal generation of deity is a logical impossibility, implying a loss of sovereignty. In the latter instance, eternal generation within deity is the foremost and most absolute expression of the divine dynamic of generative love. The importance and significance of the theological differences that follow from these two utterly diverse and opposed positions cannot be over-estimated. These are fundamental divergences, flowing from fundamentally conflicting conceptions of the divine nature, leading to fundamentally different theologies.

2. 

   Richard C Ross – January 13, 2025

   I must add:
   Cunningham’s article, ‘The Apostles’ Creed’, claims the Church of Rome holds, as a doctrine, the Apostles’ Creed to have been written ‘under the guidance of the Holy Spirit’ by the apostles and with ‘the same direct authority as the canonical Scriptures’. (83-84) The same is said of J. H. Newman.

   This is a fiction. Such was not the position of Trent, of either Vatican Council or the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The written form of the Creed is understood to date from the third and fourth centuries (Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Introduction to Christianity’, 83-84). Cunningham produces no evidence from Newman’s works.

   The case against the clause, ‘He descended into Hell’, is also weak, relying only on the absence of ‘proof texts’. The New Testament doctrine is ignored – that, after the Saviour’s sin-atoning death in Godforsaken, he remained in that state as dead, passive but conscious, until his Resurrection ‘from the dead’; not a half-life or triumphal ‘harrowing of Hell’. One Peter 3.19 is irrelevant to this doctrine; Luke 23.43 no obstacle (John 1.18): ‘Who can say it is a priori impossible for God simply because it contains an inherent impossibility?’ (Balthasar)