Tag: Jesus

Here is John Calvin commenting on Colossians 1:15: The sum is this — that God in himself, that is, in his naked majesty, is invisible, and that not to the eyes of the body merely, but also to the understandings of men, and that he is revealed to us in Christ alone, that we may behold him as in a mirror. For in Christ he shews us his righteousness, goodness, wisdom, power, in short, his entire self. We must, therefore, beware of seeking him elsewhere, for everything that would set itself off as a representation of God, apart from Christ,…

The thing about being a co-heir with Christ is that you are not looked upon as a mere instrument in God’s hand anymore than the Son is. That is, you aren’t simply some dispensable tool the Lord uses and tosses away. No, He has adopted us into His very life, by grace; such that when we suffer, He first suffered for us; when we are in turmoil, He first was in turmoil for us; when we die, He first died for us; when He first resurrected and ascended, we now too will resurrect and ascend to be with Him forevermore….

I remember a particular Sunday in October 1962. It was the first anniversary of me being blind, and I was pretty proud of myself. I had made the transition from sight to blindness with some degree of competency. I had learned Braille well enough to continue with my class. I had learned how to write with a slate and stylus, a process of writing Braille that requires learning how to write from right to left and backwards. I was adjusting to living in a residential school during the week, only coming home for weekends, and I was learning to live…

What is it about the decretum absolutum (absolute decree i.e., predestination in determinist mode) that sinks the classical Calvinist understanding of a doctrine of God in a God-world relation? It’s that it operates from an instrumentalist understanding of the Son’s relationship to the Father; it ruptures the eternal bond between the Father to the Son by the Spirit as the Son incarnates and becomes human. Under such conditions the work of Jesus is no longer essential to the being of the Son (and thus the Father), as such He simply becomes so much a demi-urge carrying out the dictates of…