God’s Promise To Be Incarnated and Sacrificed

By Ken Hamrick

And He said to him, “I am Yahweh who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.” And he said, “O Lord Yahweh, how may I know that I will possess it?” So He said to him, “Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” Then he brought all these to Him and split them into parts down the middle and laid each part opposite the other; but he did not split apart the birds. Then the birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away. Now it happened that when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. Then God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your seed will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. “But I will also judge the nation to whom they are enslaved, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. “As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried at a good old age. “Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.” Now it happened that the sun had set, and it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. On that day Yahweh cut a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your seed I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenite and the Kenizzite and the Kadmonite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Rephaim and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite.”

Gen 15:7-21 (LSB)

God chose Abraham to be the father of His special covenant people. God instructed Abraham to sacrifice certain animals, cut them in half lengthwise, and lay them out with space to walk between them, as was the custom of the nations of that day when making solemn commitments.* God then made covenant promises to Abraham. Ordinarily, both parties to a covenant would walk together through the bloody path between the pieces, swearing to be faithful to that covenant on pain of being made like the animals through which they walked. However, on this occasion, God made a deep sleep fall on Abraham while God alone walked between the pieces.

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The Image of God

by Ken Hamrick

Of all the creatures. Man alone is a spiritual being. Man and all other creatures have bodies, but only man has a spirit. It is significant that God, inspiring His inerrant, written word, chose to call the immaterial nature in man a spirit, which is the same word He chose to describe His own nature –John 4:24, “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” Every functional similarity of God in man that has been labeled as the image of God, such as man’s moral nature, his relationality, his dominion over the other creatures, and his reason and rationality, his personhood, etc., are only possible because man is a spiritual being. Without his own spirit, man could function in none of these ways. Because man is a spiritual being, he is a person. Only spiritual beings are persons. Animals without spirits can never be persons and men can never lose their personhood. Men are innately moral beings because they are spiritual beings.

There is another aspect of the image of God to be considered. There is a real sense in which what we gain in Christ we lost in Adam. We are spiritually resurrected—brought to life spiritually—when we are saved by Christ. Prior to salvation, we were spiritually dead—alienated from God and without the Spirit of God inside us. God sends the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ I suggest that Adam was created not only as a spiritual being, but also in spiritual union with the Holy Spirit inside him. As he chose to sin, the Holy Spirit left him and he spiritually died. Spiritual death is disunion with the Spirit of God who is the only Source of spiritual life.

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Letter to a Mormon from a Realist

Dear J. D.,

Lately, I’ve been trying to learn more about LDS teachings. To be up front, as I’ve shared before, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool baptist, so my interest in LDS is just for apologetics and to better understand the viewpoint of my LDS friends.

I found it somewhat startling to see the similarities between my view of traducianism (and realism) and the LDS idea of spirit propagation.

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The Importance of Biblical Realism

a guest post by Ryan Hedrich

(More from Ryan Hedrich may be found at Unapologetica).

Background

In Justification, J. V. Fesko wrote:

In the theology of Aquinas, and those committed to realism, the idea that universals have an existence separate from specific concrete entities, which drew upon the philosophy of Plato (c. 427-.c 348 B.C.) and is also known as the via antiqua (the “old way”), there was a greater emphasis upon seeing justification strictly in ontological terms. With the turn from ontology to discussions on the will of God in the theology of those committed to nominalism, the idea that universals do not have real existence but are merely names applied to qualities found within certain individual objects and that is also known as the via moderna (the “modern way”), for example, in the theology of Biel and William of Ockham (c. 1288 – c. 1348), we see the development of the intellectual framework in which the doctrine of justification could be considered in something other than in terms of ontology. In other words, it seems that nominalism opened the door to a consideration of the forensic nature of justification, and more specifically, the doctrine of imputation. This development, combined with the renaissance of Augustinianism in the fourteenth century, such as in the theology of Thomas Bradwardine (c. 1290 – 1349) and Gregory of Rimini (c. 1300 – 58), contributed to the intellectual development that made the Reformation possible.

McGrath notes six things that one finds in late medieval Augustinian theology that likely contributed to the theology of the Reformation:

  1. A strict epistemological nominalism.
  2. A voluntarist, as opposed to intellectualist, understanding of the ratio meriti (“reckoning of merit”). Voluntarism emphasizes the role of the will contrasted with that of reason or intellect.
  3. The extensive use of the writings of Augustine, particularly his anti-Pelagian works.
  4. A strongly pessimistic view of original sin, with the fall being identified as a watershed in the economy of salvation.
  5. A strong emphasis upon the priority of God in justification, linked to a doctrine of special grace.
  6. A radical doctrine of absolute double predestination.

With these intellectual developments in mind, we can move forward to consider the doctrine of justification in the Reformation and post-Reformation periods. It is against this backdrop that one sees the Reformation begin to give a more precise expression and definition of the doctrine of justification.

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A Realist’s Review of Calvin on Osiander

by Ken Hamrick

John Calvin

John Calvin devoted an entire chapter of his Institutes[1] to refuting Andreas Osiander.[2] Osiander, a Lutheran theologian and professor at Königsberg University, stirred up quite a controversy in the 1550’s by teaching that men are justified neither by “mere imputation” nor by the human righteousness of Christ, but only by His “essential” (divine) righteousness, which becomes ours through a substantial union with the divine nature.[3] Calvin calls this a “monstrosity” and a “delerious dream”[4] and has much to say about it.

Calvin states, “[…]a man will be justified by faith when, excluded from the righteousness of works, he by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, and clothed in it appears in the sight of God not as a sinner, but as righteous.” As a proponent of the consistent Realist view,[5] I must point out that we are clothed not merely with the righteousness of Christ, but with Christ Himself (Rom. 13:14). Realism sees the need for justice and moral union to be grounded in a real union of being. Osiander seems to have had this truth in view, but missed the mark badly by discounting Christ’s human righteousness and denying the unity of Christ’s natures in redeeming us.

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Osiander’s Error & Realism’s Truth

by Ken Hamrick

Andreas Osiander
Andreas Osiander

A consistently realistic system of theology is one in which a parallel is found between our realistic union with Adam and our realistic union with Christ–the former being the ground of justice for our suffering the consequences of Adam’s sin, and the latter being the ground of justice for our being justified and saved by the life, death and resurrection of Christ. That is the position I have sought to put forward as the best understanding of Scripture.[1]

One criticism of the consistent realistic system, which occasionally arises and must be addressed, is that such a system is a rehash of the sixteenth-century error of Andreas Osiander that was universally rejected by the Church. Timothy Wengert has written a very detailed book, entitled, Defending Faith,[2] about the “reactions to and condemnations of [Osiander’s thought by] …Evangelical theologians of all sorts throughout the Holy Roman Empire… for the better part of the 1550’s.”[3]

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Defending Traducianism from Materialism

by Ken Hamrick

The most common, and often the most convincing, objection to traducianism is the argument that traducianism would require a materialistic division of the immaterial substance of the soul. The ironic thing about these objections is that they first assume that propagation of the soul would require a materialistic division…

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The Phantom Reality of Representationism

by Ken Hamrick

This is an informal discussion of the concluding part of John Murray’s book, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin, (Phillipsburg, NJ: Wm. B. Eerdman, 1959). As a Realist, I disagree with Murray’s Representationist view (which is also a Nominalistic Federal view).

Realism is the biblical principle of a shared identity grounded in a spiritual union or singularity of spiritual origin–and more broadly, Realism is a paradigm in which God’s justice depends on substantial reality; whereas Nominalism is the denial of any identifying union of immaterial substance within the man, Adam–and more broadly, it is a paradigm in which substantial reality is not necessary to God’s justice. Realists, from their paradigm, seek a justice that is commensurate with the facts of substantial reality and find it in a real union of immaterial substance inside Adam; whereas Nominalists see no necessity for justice to be dependent on the facts of substantial reality, but instead, include the nonsubstantial thoughts of God as sufficient ground for justice, and so they are content to locate man’s union with Adam as inside God’s mind alone.

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A Realist’s Response to Robert Strimple

by Ken Hamrick

In a recent discussion with Dr. Lane Tipton and others on the Reformed Forum Discord, I was offered Robert Strimple’s critique of Realism as “the finest… ever heard.” What follows is my informal engagement of that critique, as posted in that discussion.

You can find much of the remainder of that discussion here.

Dr. Robert B. Strimple, Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary California, approaches the origin of the soul in the following lecture: https://www.wscal.edu/resource-center/trichotomy-the-origin-of-the-soul-the-covenant-of-works-part-1 beginning at 07:55; He teaches about Realism in two of his lectures: https://www.wscal.edu/resource-center/the-parties-involved-part-2 beginning at 40:20, and continuing with: https://www.wscal.edu/resource-center/the-parties-involved-part-3

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