Old Testament Lection, Trinity 4

I've been pretty inactive with this blog for a while, so something I would like to start doing is sharing some of my thoughts on the readings for the week. The Revised Common Lectionary is what I'll be using, and I will reflect from time to time on the different passages from the Sunday that starts the week.

This last Sunday was the 4th Sunday after Trinity Sunday, and the Old Testament reading was from Isaiah 55:10-13 (ESV here):

¹⁰ “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
    and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
¹¹ so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
    and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

¹² “For you shall go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
    shall break forth into singing,
    and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
¹³ Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
    instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall make a name for the Lord,
    an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”

 There is a connection here between the natural order of things and the spiritual order of things. Verses 10 and 11 compare the two - the natural order provides an illustration for the spiritual, but this isn't because there is some necessity that the spiritual conform to the natural, or because the natural order objectively reveals something about the spiritual order, but rather because the spiritual order is prior to and foundational for the natural order. Nature looks the way it does because the model set for it is based on who God is.

What difference does that make? In verse 11, the Word of God has efficacy. Everything that is the Word achieves the purpose set by God - and we know of whom we speak when we talk about God's Word. The divine origin, divine commision, and divine power of the Word presuppose here (in personification) the divine nature of the Word. The deliverance from exile in verses 12-13 are also a type of our deliverance from subjection that the Word unfailingly brings. This is an anticipation of salvation offered in Christ.

The natural order shows us God, when we have the eyes to see, because if we know the One who sets the standard, we can see the echoes in nature.

On Heresy

So generally, I assume that there is at least some connection between faith as being salvific and the propositional content of faith. As a friend of mine put it recently, you can't have a relationship with God without knowing certain things about God. I tend to think in the older categories of notitia (factual knowledge), assensus (assent that the factual knowledge is true), and fiducia (trust and reliance). These seem to presuppose one another, i.e., I trust and rely on a God about whom I know certain things and hold those things to be true. For example, I know the fact of God's omnipotence, and I hold to be true that God is omnipotent, but the real faith bit is my reliance on God's omnipotence as sufficient to steer the world, deal with my stuff, etc.

So what happens when one of the first two categories (or propositional knoweldge at all) is untrue?

Here's a simple example that most would accept: Someone who "comes to faith" in a Jesus who is not divine has the wrong object of faith (false propositional content). But does that prevent faith in the sense of relying on and apprehending the promise of God?

Also stirring the pot is that I hold fides apprehensiva: the idea that faith is a created gift of God that then apprehends or takes hold of God's promise, resulting in the application to the subject. So can we have a created gift of faith taking hold of a promise when the promise is greviously misunderstood?


Obviously, we didn't do the easy one first, though. Take another example: Someone hears the Gospel and responds, but shortly thereafter is taught e.g. modalism. It's not at all clear that the initial faith is in the wrong object, but subsequent propositional content (as well as subsequent notitia and assensus) are heterodox. This individual has been taught heresy, but we don't want to place the efficiency of proclamation with the one who proclaims, or we're all in trouble. A possible heresy in a sermon doesn't preclude God's activity in Word as a means of grace. So is the subsequent heterodox belief a fall? Then we have to allow for a lot of back-and-forth. One possible solution here is to have a proleptic grace based on present (correct) faith and yet-future correct doctrine, but I worry that this hamstrings the impulse to correct heresy, either polemically or irenically.

Now we get more complicated: An individual who comes to living, fruit-producing faith, and who after a longer period of time, engages in theological reflection and is intellectually convinced of a heretical position. I'm pretty sure this was me at one point. I'm prepared to accept that this entailed a fall from grace, because of theological reflection (even if mine was naive, I had the obligation to know better). Someone who assumes a heretical position after theological reflection is consciously (or at least culpably) rejecting orthodox faith, so I am pretty sure that this imperils the soul. (By the way, I am talking about actual serious heresy, not adiaphora. My example before was modalism, in my case it was full-on Pelagianism) So there seems to be something about intellectual heresy changing the object of relying faith to move one outside of Christ.

A worry: how in the world can anyone differentiate between individuals of the second type and those of the third type until after the fact? On one hand, we are not a particularly theologically educated society. On the other, in modern societies with such an emphasis on education, we may all be culpable in the "should have known better" sense. And if you are standing on the outside looking at this, how does one correct heretical doctrine in (pastoral) love?

Hey, I don't have any answers, I just come up with problems.

News for a (belated) New Year

After a series of pretty crazy things at the end of last year and beginning of this year, I finally have time and opportunity to continue this blog. In the intervening time, I've completed and submitted my dissertation for the DA in Philosophy and Religion at Harrison Middleton University, and we've moved - we're back in the United States, and I have been accepted as a candidate for ordination with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

On the academic front, I hope to be able to make another announcement here soon. Those interested in the current debate on ramified natural theology can read a contribution of mine here.

I'm hoping to have a bit more activity on here in the near future - I have some stuff in the pipeline that I've been thinking about, so if you haven't given up yet, dear reader, your patience will be rewarded (or, you know, the fact that you forgot the blog existed and you didn't delete it, that will be rewarded too...)