Amillennialism and the Age to Come—A Critical Review # 11

Amillennialism and the Age to Come—A Critical Review # 11

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10

The Test Case of Isaiah 65:17-25

In previous posts I have challenged Waymeyer’s hermeneutical priorities.  I have argued that notwithstanding his refusal to do so, hermeneutical priority must be given to the New Testament over the Old Testament.  I also argued that the more literal New Testament passages must be given priority over the more figurative prophetic genres of much of the prophetic literature of the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation.

In this post those hermeneutical priorities must be tested in relation to one of the Old Testament prophetic passages on which Waymeyer believes he can build a case for what he calls “the intermediate kingdom” of the millennium.  That passage is Isaiah 65:17-25.  As he says in his treatment of this passage, I have stated in the End Times Made Simple that this may provide one of the most plausible passages in favor of a future millennial kingdom which falls short of the eternal state.

This is so because taken literally and interpreted in terms of the naïve hermeneutics Waymeyer espouses it seems to teach that a period of time is coming which far surpasses the present, but which still contains the reality of death.  The key verse is Isaiah 65:20: “No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, Or an old man who does not live out his days; For the youth will die at the age of one hundred And the one who does not reach the age of one hundred Will be thought accursed.”  Similar are the words of verses 22-23a: “They will not build and another inhabit, They will not plant and another eat; For as the lifetime of a tree, so will be the days of My people, And My chosen ones will wear out the work of their hands.  23 “They will not labor in vain, Or bear children for calamity …”

I have several responses to the use Waymeyer makes of this passage.

First, the figurative genre of prophetic literature may not be ignored in the way that Waymeyer does in interpreting this passage.  If such a verse occurred in historical narrative I would admit that its meaning would be clear.  It does not, however, occur in such a literal genre of Scripture.  It occurs in prophetic literature which is composed of what Numbers 12:8 calls “dark sayings.”  This means that a naïve literalism is out of place in interpreting such a statement.

Waymeyer cites and criticizes Richard Bauckham who says that “Prophecy can only depict the future in terms of the present.” (38).  I admit that this statement goes a little too far.  The Old Testament does predict the resurrection.  In fact, Isaiah himself predicts the resurrection world in Isaiah 25:8—as Waymeyer points out.  Still, it remains true that in terms of actually apprehending, deeply understanding, or “getting a feel” for what the age of resurrection might be like, there is still a necessary place for depicting the future in terms of the present.  Even we who live in New Testament times grope for understanding about such a future.  This is where the vivid, figurative language which depicts the future in terms of the absence of the miseries of the present has an important place.  Storms makes this point in a more balanced fashion: “The best and most intelligible way the original author of this prophecy could communicate the realistic future glory of the new heaven and new earth, to people who were necessarily limited by the progress of revelation to that point in time, was to portray it in the hyperbolic or exaggerated terms of an ideal present.” (39).  I would only add to Storms that in an important sense we also are so limited.  We really do not know what living in the glory of the world of resurrection will be or feel like.  We ourselves have a difficult time having a right and proper sense of it.  And if we do—who have the light of the New Covenant—, then how much did the Old Testament saints who lived before life and immortality was brought to light through the gospel!  That brings me to my second point.

Second, when interpreting such figurative passages of Scripture, we must pay close attention to the real intention of what is said.  Let me say this very clearly.  The true purpose and deepest intention of Isaiah 65:20 is certainly not to affirm the presence of death in the future state.  At best, this is a secondary implication, and when it comes to figurative passages such secondary implications must be evaluated very critically.  The true intention of these verses is to affirm the absence of the great and terrible tragedies that fill the present age with such deep sorrows.  Some of us know the terrible sorrows of which Isaiah 65:20 speaks.  We know the deep sorrow of burying our children.  We know the painful frustration of laboring and toiling only to see our work destroyed.  We know what it means to work hard for something and then see what we have built inherited by someone else.  We know what it means to “bear children for calamity.”  Isaiah’s clear purpose and true point is to affirm that all such sorrows and tragedies will be banished from the age of which he is speaking.  It is a sad trivializing of Isaiah’s words to find in them a proof text for death in the millennium.  It really constitutes extreme callousness to his glorious affirmation.  Such a hermeneutical response to Isaiah 65:20-23 is incredibly insensitive.  Given the figurative genre of these words, it is also wholly unnecessary.

Third, such an interpretation is also incredibly insensitive to how this passage is interpreted in the New Testament.  This is, of course, the other hermeneutical principle and priority upon which I have insisted in previous posts.  There are clear interpretive statements made about Isaiah 65:17-25 in the New Testament.  We do not find anything in any of them about a millennium where death still exists.

Granted, Waymeyer acknowledges that there are certainly allusions to Isaiah 65:17-25 in the New Testament which apply it to the eternal state.  He seeks to explain these references by way of “prophetic conflation.” (42-45).  By way of such prophetic conflation, Waymeyer believes that he can meet the Amillennial polemic based on the way in which the New Testament applies the words of this passage.  He can, thus, have the best of both worlds:  the Premillennial interpretation he favors and the application to the eternal state found in the New Testament.

The reader should note, in the first place, that Waymeyer has actually granted the central point I want to make here.  He appears to agree that the allusions to Isaiah 65:17-25 in the New Testament understand it to speak of the eternal state and, therefore, of a period in which there is no death.  He is certainly right to agree with Amillennialists about this.  For there are clear references throughout Isaiah 65:17-25 to conditions which can only be fulfilled in the perfection of the eternal state.  Its joy is eternal (Isa. 65:18).  Weeping is banished (Isa. 65:19).  No evil or harm is done in God’s holy mountain—the New Jerusalem (Isa. 65:25).  It seems to me, however, that Waymeyer’s use of the idea of prophetic conflation in this matter is misguided and finally futile.  This is true for at least two reasons.

In the first place, it ignores the hermeneutical priority of the New Testament over the Old Testament.  This means that we are bound to interpret the Old Testament as the New Testament does.  What needs to be pointed out, then, is that, not only does the New Testament apply Isaiah 65:17-25 to the eternal state, but that it never takes it to speak of the Premillennialist’s millennium at all.  The Premillennial interpretation of Isaiah 65:17-25 is absent from every possible allusion to the passage in the New Testament!  The new heavens and new earth (Isaiah 65:17) is a reference to the eternal state in the New Testament (2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1).  The New Jerusalem (Isa. 65:18) only descends from heaven in the eternal state (Rev. 21:2-4).  The banishment of weeping is found only in the eternal state (Rev. 21:2-4).

Waymeyer’s use of prophetic conflation in order to explain the clear references to the eternal state is misguided for a second reason.  The very passage on which the Premillennialist seeks to argue for the presence of death in the condition described in Isaiah 65:17-25 is actually understood quite differently by the New Testament.  Here we need to look closely at the flow of thought or structure of Isaiah 65.

Verse 19 asserts that there will no longer be weeping in the state predicted. This is clearly fulfilled according to the New Testament by the eternal state in the clear allusion to Isaiah 65:19 in Revelation 21:2-4.  There John says explicitly that the absence of weeping entails no more death!  Revelation 21:4 says explicitly: “and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”  Crying in Revelation 21:4 is the exact word used in the LXX to translate the weeping of Isaiah 65:19!

But what must be seen and weighed in connection with all this is that verses 20-23 of Isaiah 65 are the explanation in that passage of the statement of Isaiah 65:19, “And there will no longer be heard in her the voice of weeping and the sound of crying.” Thus, the New Testament takes verses 20-23 not to describe a time in which death continues, but interprets them of a time in which there will no longer be any death!  The phrase, “there will no longer be any death,” is, then, the New Testament summary of Isaiah 65:20-23.  Thus, the New Testament in Revelation 21:4 actually supports the figurative, Amillennial interpretation of Isaiah 65:20-23.

Waymeyer’s misunderstanding of biblical, hermeneutical principles and priorities, thus, betrays him into a misguided interpretation of Isaiah 65:17-25 which brings him into collision with the teaching of the New Testament.  Space does not permit me to show this with regard to the other passages which he thinks teach an intermediate (millennial) kingdom in the Old Testament.  I am satisfied, however, that proper hermeneutical principles and priorities will also explain those passages in a way which removes their supposed support for Premillennialism.  If Isaiah 65—the most plausible support for a Premillennial kind of intermediate kingdom to be found in the Old Testamant—can be so clearly understood in a manner supportive of the Amillennial position, then so also can the other passages he brings forward.

 

Amillennialism and the Age to Come—A Critical Review # 11

Amillennialism and the Age to Come—A Critical Review # 10

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9

Does Waymeyer recognize the figurative character of Old Testament prophecy or adopt the typical literalism of Dispensationalism with regard to it?

I noted in previous posts that Waymeyer at points seems uncomfortable, or at least speaks as if he were uncomfortable, with the literalistic approach of other Dispensationalists.  His statements about this occur on pages 61-63 and are worthy of a closer examination.

In these pages Waymeyer is responding to Dean Davis’ comments in The High King of Heaven where Davis notes that a literal interpretation of Zechariah 14 entails the notion that at the end of the present, modern age battles will be fought by men riding on horses, camels, and donkeys.  This direct implication of the literal hermeneutics of Dispensationalism, says Davis, poses one of the “intractable problems” for the premillennial view of this passage.

In response Waymeyer argues that Premillennialists have “long recognized the need to take an “analogical approach” with some Old Testament prophecies.” (61)  In this approach, he says, “statements are taken literally but then translated into their modern-day equivalents.” (61)  Waymeyer then opines: “Because it is unlikely (although certainly not impossible) that horses will be used as the primary means of advancing on Israel … the prophet may be describing the implements of future war with battle imagery familiar in his own day.”  (61)

This is an interesting and even startling admission in several ways.

First, Waymeyer here allows a hermeneutic which he denies to Amillennialists.  James Attebury (in his critique on Amazon) speaks of the Amillennial interpretation of Old Testament prophecy as using “the hermeneutic that the future is being described as an idealized present in Old Testament prophecy.”  Here Waymeyer himself allows the possibility that such a hermeneutic is possible.  An “analogical approach” to the Old Testament prophetic genre is all that Amillennialists require in order to answer Waymeyer’s polemic from Old Testament prophecy.

Second, it is also striking that Waymeyer is not entirely comfortable with his own admission.  Thus, as the above quotation makes clear, he holds out the possibility that Zechariah might still be taken in an entirely literal fashion.  He also makes the—what seems to me—contradictory statement that in this analogical approach statements are still taken literally, but interpreted analogically.  This, as with much else that the Dispensational hermeneutic has to say about the literal interpretation of the figurative language of the Bible, leaves me scratching my head.  It seems clear to me that if a statement is taken literally, then it ought to be interpreted literally.  On the other hand, it seems to me that if a statement is interpreted analogically, then this necessarily assumes that it is—as to its genre—analogical or figurative.

Third, further comments by Waymeyer suggest that he is still quite committed to a highly literal or literalistic interpretation of Old Testament prophecy.  Of course, in this vein we have just seen that he does not quite relinquish the possibility of a literal interpretation of the camels, donkeys, and horses of Zechariah 14.  We must also take account here, however, of his comments about the Feast of Booths and the Passover being celebrated in the Millennium in the following pages. (63)

Here Waymeyer argues that celebration of the Feast of Booths predicted in Zechariah 14 is consistent with the New Covenant’s fulfillment of the Old Testament shadows.  He says: “There is simply no reason why a future, eschatological celebration of this feast would require the re-establishment of anything that has been abolished or rendered obsolete by the first coming of Christ.”  Waymeyer may think so, but when the institution of this Feast is considered in Leviticus 23:33-43 and Deuteronomy 16:13-17, it is clear that the celebrating of this feast involves celebrating a ceremonial sabbath!  It also becomes clear that it is to be celebrated at Jerusalem.  It also becomes clear that it is appointed as one of the three great feasts appointed for the Jews to celebrated as part of their ceremonial calendar.  All of this is contrary to the abolition and obsolescence of the Old Covenant.

Waymeyer also in this context suggests that the Passover will be celebrated in the future!  Citing a personal conversation with Michael Vlach, he affirms this on the basis of the words of Jesus in Luke 22:15-16.  He then adds: “Celebrating the Feast of Booths in the messianic will no more constitute a return to the Mosaic law than eating the Passover will.”  The problem with all this is that it would contradict the New Covenant to eat the Passover after Christ our Passover has been sacrificed (1 Corinthians 5:7).  Furthermore, and emphatically, Jesus does not say that He will eat the Passover in the Age to Come.  He says that He will eat its “fulfillment.” This is something entirely different: “And He said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God”” (Luke 22:15-16).

More to come…

A Critical Review of Donald Macleod’s “The Person of Christ”

A Critical Review of Donald Macleod’s “The Person of Christ”

Introduction

Do the ancient creeds of Nicea and Chalcedon accurately describe the person of Christ? Is He truly, very God and very man as these documents teach? Donald Macleod, principal and professor of systematic theology at the Free Church of Scotland College in Edinburgh, Scotland, defends the reliability of these creeds against the onslaught of higher criticism in his book The Person of Christ. Macleod states, “This book…reflects my belief that the great creeds, far from betraying the gospels, faithfully encapsulate their central concern to portray Jesus as the incarnate Son of God” (15). Concerning his approach, Macleod begins his treatment of Christology with one that is “from above” and not “from below.” As he states himself, “The New Testament, almost unanimously, presents us with a Christology from above. It starts from the side of his deity, not from that of his humanity” (22). Part one, then, covers the deity of Christ while part two covers His humanity.

Summary

Chapter one deals with the meaning and defense of the virgin birth. Macleod shows how the virgin birth is a miraculous sign that points to the supernatural nature of Christ and the gospel message, the judgment on sinful man, and a new humanity. It also serves to teach us about the divine sonship of Christ, His sinlessness, and the positive roles of the Holy Spirit and Mary. In chapter two, Macleod moves backward one logical step from the virgin birth to the pre-existence of Christ. The Gospel of John, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Pauline corpus of writings, and parts of the synoptic Gospels provide enough evidence for even the skeptic to conclude that Jesus possessed a self-consciousness prior to His being sent into the world by the Father. But can Christ’s pre-existence be affirmed apart from His deity? Macleod says no: “no formal distinction can be drawn between deity and pre-existence” (57)…A person who was divine could not but be pre-existent. His godhead proved that he could not have come into being in 4 BC” (70). Chapter three presents the reader with a necessary implication of Christ’s pre-existence: His divine sonship. Macleod begins by explaining the term monogenes hyios as it relates to Christ: it refers to the uniqueness, and not the begottenness, of Jesus. He then goes on to deny any ontological subordinationism in the Son and affirms the co-equalness of the Son with the Father. He does, however, affirm economical subordination as it came to be in the covenant of redemption. Chapter four deals with the reliability of the church’s witness to the deity of Christ. Macleod argues that the Jesus of history is the Christ of faith. The written testimonies of the early church concerning Jesus are both genuine and reliable, but only the testimony of the Holy Spirit will persuade men of their divine authenticity. Macleod comments, “Scholarship can give a substantial vindication of the facts, but it cannot enable us to see compelling beauty in the face of Jesus. That is possible only when God the Father, through the Holy Spirit, shares with us his own view of his Son” (118). Chapter five is concerned with explaining the theology of and circumstances surrounding the Nicean Creed’s famous declaration that “Christ, as the Son of God, was homoousios (consubstantial) with the Father” (121). The Arian heresy, which denied Jesus’ self-existence, eternity, and co-equality with God the Father, was the reason for such a statement to be drawn at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. If Christ was not God, Christianity was a failed and doomed religion. Macleod then goes on to define the contours of the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father: He is a distinct person, He was eternally begotten of the very essence of the Father (what he terms ‘eternal sonship’), and He was eternally generated, not originated or made. Macleod next explains that homoousios means that the Father and Son are “one being and one God” or “identically one and the same substance” (139), defines perichoresis in this manner: “within the one godhead the three persons co-inhere in each other and interpenetrate each other” (140), argues that filioque should be understood as the procession of the Spirit from the Father and Son relationally, not causally, and affirms that the essence of the Son and the Spirit is autotheos and not subordinate to the Father’s in any way.

Chapter six begins part two of the book, which is entitled “Very God, Very Man”—Chalcedon & Beyond. In this chapter he covers the incarnation. The heresies of Docetism and Apollinarianism drove the early church to formulate its doctrine of the incarnation around two premises: “Christ took a true human body and he took a reasonable human soul” (161). In other words, Christ partook of all human attributes, including ignorance and emotions, save sin alone in order to save us “from alongside us” (180). Chapter seven addresses the relationship of Christ’s two natures in the Council of Chalcedon. The heresies of Nestorianism and Eutychianism were combatted with the formulation of the hypostatic union of Christ’s two natures. This formula encapsulates three truths: “that Christ is one person; that the union between his two natures arises from the fact that they both belong to one and the same person; and that this one person, the Son of God, is the Agent behind all of the Lord’s actions, the Speaker of all his utterances and the Subject of all his experiences” (189). Macleod ends with an extended discussion of the communication idiomatum in the person of Christ and the enhypostasia of His human nature. Chapter eight deals with the concept of kenosis. In this act of making Himself nothing, Christ did not abandon, retract, or transpose certain attributes of His deity to assume humanity but instead the pre-incarnate Christ, who “occupied a position of the highest imaginable eminence” (212), did not insist on His rights to be served, worshipped, and glorified but voluntarily veiled His glory and made Himself nothing (or vanity) by taking upon Himself a human nature and dying under the curse and wrath of God. Chapter nine touches on the inherent and actual sinlessness of Christ. It is to be remembered that He assumed a perfect human nature, not a fallen one, when He entered into a state of humiliation. Finally, chapter ten presents several modern approaches to the doctrine of Christ divorced from the Chalcedonian Creed. Denials of the incarnation, resurrection, and uniqueness of Christ from different nineteenth and twentieth-century theologians are discussed and dismantled by Macleod.

Critique

            Macleod certainly interacts with the entire spectrum of Christological issues and their differing viewpoints in this book. The sheer breadth of the theologians he quotes from and is conversant with is quite impressive. In other words, Macleod has done his homework! But if his goal was to uphold the creeds of the past, I think he was close but missed the bullseye of his target. As stated in the introduction of this paper, Macleod declares his belief that the Nicaean and Chalcedonian creeds “faithfully encapsulate [the gospels’] central concern to portray Jesus as the incarnate Son of God” (15). It is true that throughout this book Macleod constantly battles against those who reject these ancient confessions of faith in order to vindicate them as true summaries of what the Bible teaches concerning the person of Christ. I heartily commend him for entering into the arena of higher criticism and coming out the victor. But in the process, he does seem to modify or even reinterpret certain concepts and terms in these creeds to fit his own theological system. Nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than with Macleod’s understanding of the Son’s begottenness.

Macleod is quite clear about rejecting the historical and traditional meaning of the begottenness of Christ. Though he affirms His eternal sonship and begottenness, Macleod takes a modern approach to understanding the term monogenes. He states, “But what is that concept? There is little doubt that monogenes expresses the uniqueness of Jesus. He is the only one of his kind” (72). He goes on to ask,

But is there a uniqueness more fundamental than that the Son is uniquely loved? Is he uniquely loved because there is something either in the origin of his existence or in the mode of his existence that is unique? It is extremely doubtful where monogenes by itself refers to uniqueness of origin (73).

He also states that monogenes carries with it little conceptual content: “It is doubtful that begotten adds anything to Son, apart from laying down that he is Son in a unique way” (73). In another place he states,

The problem, as we have seen, is that although we know that the Son is distinguished by the fact that he is begotten, we know little or nothing of what divine begottenness is. It carries us little beyond, ‘Is the Son of’…The truth is, we are lost. We know that the Son is distinguished by the fact that he is begotten, but we do not know what begotten is” (137).

He then concludes,

The following conclusions, then, seem safe. First, monogenes says nothing about origins because the Son is unoriginated. Secondly, it emphasizes the uniqueness of Jesus’ sonship. Thirdly, this uniqueness consists in four things: he is an object of special love, he is the Father’s equal, he is the Father’s likeness and he is an eternal, not an adopted, Son (74).

Here are my issues with such an approach:

(1) This sort of agnosticism to the term mongenes is absolutely unnecessary. Certainly, if begotten only means “unique” I can understand the mountainous problems Macleod faces. All one would know is that the Son is unique from the Father, but the content of that uniqueness remains shrouded in mystery and only slightly revealed in God’s plan of redemption. If begottenness is stripped of derivation, causation, or origination, this term really has no meaning at all! In fact, “Son” loses all its practical meaning as well! We do, however, know what this term means if we don’t limit its definition to merely “unique” but include the necessary ideas of generation and subordination. Etymologically, there is a good case to be made that monogenes is related to gennao and not ginomai. Although he asserts the opposite, he is mistaken. The King James Version does not “probably rest on a misapprehension” (73) but on the correct interpretation of the word. Sadly, he even goes so far as to quote Raymond Brown, avowed critic of the orthodox faith, to back up his claim! If Macleod would simply allow begottenness to retain its etymological and historical meaning, the derivation and subordination of the Son to the Father would serve as a key distinction between the two divine persons. Begottenness then would supply us with rich content that helps explain the personal distinctions inherent in the immanent Trinity.

(2) Macleod seems to think that the Patristic Fathers believed in an ontological subordination of the Son to the Father which tainted not only their writings but also their creeds. He says that “Christian orthodoxy has been only too willing to allow a subordinationist strain to remain in its own confession, just beside the insistence on Jesus’ deity” (76). He quotes Chrysostom as saying, “If anyone say that the Father is greater, inasmuch as he is the cause of the Son, we will not contradict this.” But Chrysostom was not saying this about the Son’s essence but His person! There is a whole world of difference between saying that the Father is greater than the Son according to His subsistence rather than according to His being!

(3) Though Macleod believes the Greek fathers were wrong to translate monogenes as “only-begotten,” he later criticizes the modern-day theologian Hugh Montefiore for not opting to translate apaugasma as “effulgence” like the Greek fathers did by stating, “The Greek fathers (who, after all, spoke the language) were surely in a better position to evaluate such grammatical niceties” (79). But didn’t virtually all the Greek fathers translate monogenes as only-begotten? If so, Macleod may benefit from a taste of his own medicine!

(4) At times Macleod seems to oppose the very thesis he sets out to defend. His stance is this: “If the Son and the Spirit are God then they are unoriginate (agenetos), that neither generation nor procession can mean origination and hence that all talk of derivation and causation are inappropriate (145).” But he admits that the general position of Patristic theology (and by implication the express teaching of the ancient creeds of Nicaea and Chalcedon) was that the eternal generation of the Son implied derivation, and therefore some sort of subordination (76). Isn’t Macleod contradicting and even arguing against his own claim that these documents “faithfully encapsulate [the gospels’] central concern to portray Jesus as the incarnate Son of God” (15) when he unwittingly charges them with incorrect views on the Son’s generation? The fact is, talk of derivation and causation are in these creeds, and if Macleod is consistent, he would have to call them (or at least parts of them) “inappropriate” instead of “faithful” to the teaching of the New Testament, thereby undermining his entire thesis and siding with the Enlightenment instead of the early church.

(5) It seems to me that Macleod functions as if the categories of subordination are only economical and ontological. It appears that he entirely bypasses the category of subordination of hypostases/modes of subsistences. This is seen when he fails to distinguish between the persons of the Trinity and the being of the Trinity as he denies generation and subordinationism. He claims that since Christ is the eternal Son He has no origin. That of course is true concerning the Son of God’s essence. He is homousias with the Father and autotheos. But what about the Son’s hypostasis? Is his personal subsistence without origin as well? Macleod says nothing. He has no issue with affirming an economical subordination of the Son to the Father brought about in the pactum salutis but goes no further than that. He explicitly states this when he says, “New Testament subordinationism is federal, not ontological” (78). But what about hypostatical? Again, this category seems to be missing from Macleod’s understanding.

(6) Macleod believes the language of derivation and origination “is fatal to the co-equal deity of the Son” (144). He thinks it creates “a totally asymmetrical Trinity in which the Father held the essence underived, while the Son and Spirit held it as derived from him” (144). He accuses John of Damascus and Augustine of enmeshing themselves “hopelessly in the language of causality” (144). For him, this language was influenced more by “Origen’s subordinationism” (145) than by biblical exegesis. Any hint of causality within the godhead reeks of “tritheism” (144). Since generation and procession have nothing to do with causality, Macleod believes “there is nothing inherently shocking about” speaking of the Son proceeding from the Father and Spirit (147). In fact, the Father Himself “owes it to the Son and Spirit that he is what he is (Father) as much as they owe to him and to each other that they are what they are (respectively Spirit and Son)” (149). Although Macleod attempts to avoid the pitfall of essential subordinationism, he falls into another by erasing any distinctions within the Godhead. If causality implies tritheism, Macleod’s view implies modalism!

Conclusion

            In conclusion, Macleod’s treatment of the person of Christ is generally balanced and in line with the creedal statements of Nicea and Chalcedon. Though I disagree with him on his view of the Son’s begottenness and believe he strays from the ancient creeds at this point, his overall defense of historic Christian beliefs against the theologians of the Enlightenment assists the modern-day church in its proclamation that God descended from heaven and assumed flesh “for us men and for our salvation” (250).

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