http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/12/church-fathers-on-transubstantiation/ sound at comment 182:
But the Protestant paradigm does not include the aspect of “participation.” And this is why from the Protestant point of view, Catholic doctrines such as the communion of saints (according to which the saints participate in Christ’s work through their merits and prayers), the Catholic doctrine that our sufferings are participations in Christ’s suffering, the Catholic doctrine that sanctifying grace is a participation in the divine nature, the Catholic doctrine that the Church as Christ’s Body is not mere metaphor but a reality, the Catholic doctrine that Mary by her participation in Christ’s work of redemption is a co-redemptrix and that all the saints are co-redeemers by way of participation in Christ’s work, the Catholic doctrine that the authority of the Apostles and their successors is a participation in Christ’s divine authority, the Catholic doctrine that heaven is not merely being in God’s presence but participating in God’s own perfect eternal beatitude, (and I could go on and on), all these doctrines depend on the notion of participation. So for the Protestant paradigm, which does not recognizing participation, all these Catholic doctrines “denigrate” Christ and His work, by implying that what He did was insufficient or inadequate (e.g. 70%), and that we must make up the difference, by adding to it. So without the notion of participation, the Protestant construal of all the Catholic doctrines that involve participation is that they add to Christ or add to what Christ did or repeat what Christ did, and thus denigrate Him or His work, whereas in the Catholic paradigm all of these are participations in Christ and His work, and so do not denigrate it in the least, but glorify it by carrying it forward through time and all over the world, or bringing all times and places to it.
from comment 108 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/12/justification-catholic-church-and-the-judaizers/
The righteousness that is infused into us at baptism was merited for us [by way of satisfaction] through Christ’s sacrifice, and yet is also, by infusion, truly ours. And the increases in righteousness through acts of love flowing from that infused agape are Christ’s because they are the dynamic expression of that infused agape, and are ours, because they are our cooperation in that agape. This is one implication of the ontology of participation.
here comment 158 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/01/holy-church-finding-jesus-as-a-reverted-catholic-a-testimonial-response-to-chris-castaldo/#comment-50420
It is clear that the alone formal cause of justification is the justice of God. That rules out created grace being something other than God’s righteousness; that righteousness just inheres in us in a different manner, via the presence of uncreated grace (the Holy Spirit) in our souls. Hence, it is not the righteousness by which He Himself is righteous (viz. by virtue of the divine nature) but by participation in that righteousness.http://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct06.html
also from http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2013/07/new-testament-epistles-on-bringing.html?spref=fb
Romans 2:7 to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life;
Romans 6:19 . . . For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification.
Romans 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
1 Corinthians 5:7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, . . .
2 Corinthians 7:1 Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.
1 Thessalonians 2:10 You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our behavior to you believers;
Ephesians 4:24 and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in truerighteousness and holiness.
Ephesians 6:14 Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
Colossians 3:12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience,
1 Timothy 2:15 Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.
1 Timothy 6:11 But as for you, man of God, shun all this; aim at righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.
2 Timothy 2:21-22 If any one purifies himself from what is ignoble, then he will be a vessel for noble use, consecrated and useful to the master of the house, ready for any good work. So shun youthful passions and aim at righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call upon the Lord from a pure heart.
Hebrews 10:22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our heartssprinkled clean from an evil conscience . . .
Hebrews 11:4 By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he received approval as righteous, God bearing witness by accepting his gifts;
Hebrews 12:11, 14 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. . . . Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
James 1:4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 3:18 And the harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
James 4:8 Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double mind.
1 Peter 1:22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere love of the brethren, love one another earnestly from the heart.
1 John 3:3, 7 And every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. . . . Little children, let no one deceive you. He who does right is righteous, as he is righteous.
*****
participation/faith
“18. This fullness which Jesus brings to faith has another decisive aspect. In faith, Christ is not simply the one in whom we believe, the supreme manifestation of God’s love; he is also the one with whom we are united precisely in order to believe. Faith does not merely gaze at Jesus, but sees things as Jesus himself sees them, with his own eyes: it is a participation in his way of seeing. …."
Encyclical letter Lumen Fidei
I just want to say that this idea of that Augustine introduced a legacy of ontology significantly determined by Neoplatonic sensibilities has been essentially dismissed by modern scholarship (see Lewis Ayres and Michel Rene Barnes among Catholic scholars and Maarten Wisse among Reformed scholars). The same (i.e., that the doctrine of participation was Biblical and not fundamentally Neoplatonic) has been abundantly clear among scholars of the Eastern Fathers for many years. So if your critique is based on such dated and inaccurate characterizations, it is hard to take seriously. In any case, it is extremely clear that the pro-Nicene account that supported conciliar Christianity was based on exactly this concept of participation, articulated in terms of the person/nature distinction. Therefore, your argument would prove too much, in that it would tar the entire history of Christianity with the Neoplatonic brush.
Unlike animals, human beings have certain capacities for instance, to learn languages or a capacity for generosity. These capacities are realized in action when particular human beings speak languages or perform generous actions. But between capacity and action there is an intermediate state possible. when we say that a man can speak french, we mean neither that he is actually speaking french, nor that speaking french is a mere logical possibly, States such as knowing french are dispositions. A disposition is halfway between a capacity and an action, between pure potentiality and actuality.For Aquinas regeneration is an infused habit or disposition that is somewhere between a mere logical possibility and a realized action: prevenient, but not actual grace.Auqinas writes” infuses the gift of justifying grace in such a way that, at the same time, he also moves the free choice to accept the gift of grace” the forgiveness of sins”. The case of infant baptism is paradigmatic for this process from infused justification to forgiveness of sins. Regeneration replaces imputation: God works in us is the basis of forgiveness.
Exactly, and orthodox Christianity formulates that distinction in terms of nature (capacity) versus person (exercise). So long as the capacity is supernatural, its exercise cannot possibly be the work of the person. But this does not imply that the person does not actualize it, i.e., that God does not work through the person. So Aquinas’s distinction is well-grounded in the categories historically articulated by conciliar Christianity.
For Calvin we by contrast say” that justification consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. If we make regeneration to be the basis of the non imputation of sin, as Tomas had it, there remains no reason to distinguish between the two. Regeneration, after all, is sanctification viewed from the angle of an initiating moment rather than a larger process. Hence, Calvin insists on the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, in this development the decisive role was played for the reformed by Calvin’s response to challenge of a one-time Lutheran ny the name of Osiander. Byan salvation is ethical and juridicial as opposed to ontological and mystical. Calvin held that the righteousness of Christ is not a substance but his active obedience in fulfillment of the law and passive obedience on the cross. Calvin made a significant contribution in the distinction between essential righteousness and acquired righteousness, not only to the reformed but also to Protetantism in general. ”
I agree with you that Calvin’s position was an innovation that he himself introduced. And that innovation would rightly be characterized as a contradiction or a corruption of the nature/person distinction, rather than a development. As we saw above with your characterization of Aquinas, you have essentially collapsed the nature/person distinction that is fundamental to understanding Aquinas’s position. This collapse of the nature/person distinction was characteristic of the late medieval nominalism in which Calvin was steeped, so he had to invent a completely new category to account for it, which was this idea of ethical/juridical/covenantal salvation. Unfortunately, that category is itself contradictory of the metaphysical account of participation (nature and person) on which conciliar Christianity was built. So while you claim not to be introducing philosophical concepts, you are in fact relying on a philosophy (late medieval nominalism) that cannot be reconciled with Christianity.
By contrast, history has shown that conciliar Christianity used the categories of nature and person *without* relying on the underlying Neoplatonic philosophy; it legitimately transformed the philosophical categories to fit the Biblical categories. In fact, the heretics like Arius, Eunomius, and Nestorius were the ones who relied on philosophical categories to negate Biblical teaching, so the orthodox Fathers were actually the ones opposing the misuse of philosophy. This is the same method that Paul used in the Areopagus, and indeed, one of the most influential Christian saints was actually believed to be the same Dionysius the Areopagite mentioned in the Bible. Ironically, you are setting Calvin’s philosophical invention (the concept of free-standing juridical/legal salvation) against the dogmas taught by the very people who opposed the Neoplatonizing of the Gospel, the orthodox Fathers of the Church. Nor does Biblical scholarship support this idea of justification as juridical/legal salvation being separate from sanctification, as numerous Catholic Biblical scholars have pointed out. This isn’t to say that juridical/legal salvation plays no role, but it is grounded in the fundamental categories of the Incarnation, nature and person.
Absent that artificial separation, one would not read Bible verses as you do. For example, one would not view Peter’s communion with the divine nature as a purely covenantal category, even though that is clearly an aspect of the communion described therein. Likewise, one would understand the sense of “perfection” in Hebrews in terms of participation rather than a purely legal category, so those who are saved are legitimately perfected when they are baptized, even though that perfection can still be lost. Rather than reading the Bible through the philosophical categories of Calvin, which you admit that he invented, I would encourage you to put the late medieval nominalism aside and instead read the Bible through the categories of the Fathers who fought against the philosophers and defended the Biblical teaching.
comment 120 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/12/rome-geneva-and-the-incarnations-native-soil/#comment-68449
comment 120 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/12/rome-geneva-and-the-incarnations-native-soil/#comment-68449
On Warfield, I share Jason’s concerns. Warfield seems to simultaneously affirm that we participate in the Incarnation and yet to put a wedge between Christ and those participating in Him.
Just as a general concern, one big problem is that you are distinguishing the work of Christ and the work of the Spirit, which is impossible if we are to affirm the unity of the Trinity (one divine nature, one divine operation). None of the Trinity work separately. Another is that you are distinguishing the Sacraments from the work of God, and you are suggesting that God did not choose to work through the Sacraments, as if the priests are somehow forcing God to do something. This is why you are thinking of the work of the Spirit through the Word as being an internal effect of hearing Scripture. The entire point is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all simultaneously working from the effectual call (the drawing of the Father, the preaching of the Word of God, the internal movement of the Holy Spirit) to the participation in the Sacraments both in initial justification (the work of God, which grants faith). The reason that I reject the justification/sanctification distinction is precisely that I reject this nominalist idea that different words mean different realities. The distinct terms refer to one reality, so that when I see references to faith working in love or the work of God in the soul, I refer them to the one reality of the shared life of God, just as the Fathers did. The same is true of justification, as Catholic Biblical scholars like Joseph Fitzmyer, Brendan Byrne, and Margaret Mitchell all maintained. They do not chop the work of God into pieces, which actually would deny the unity of the divine economy, but they affirm that it is a single reality granted in the Trinitarian work of the Incarnation.
As to the Fathers, I agree that we do not turn into non-human beings in the Incarnation. But there is a difference between that and purely ethical/juridical participation, and reading that account back into the Fathers would be completely anachronistic. That’s the part that you do not seem to have gleaned from the Fathers you cited, and the failure to grasp the concept of anachronism (a common fault of the time) is why Calvin misreads them badly.
On philosophy, again, we, Aquinas, and the Fathers all agree that one can know God only by what is revealed in His works and not by comprehensive knowledge of His essence. You’ve even correctly identified the cause; the nominalist response was answering the radical univocity of late scholasticism (as opposed to the moderate univocity of Scotus, something that the Catholic Brad Gregory gets badly wrong). But the correct response is to go back to the sources and to correct the original mistake (radical univocity), not to read the later solution (nominalism) back into the Fathers. Nor is it to rely on Scripture to solve the problem, because as I have pointed out, anachronistically reading nominalism back into the Scriptures eisegetically will not produce answers, only further confusion. Instead, one must view salvation, justification, and sanctification as a single reality with different aspects, which prevents all of the divisions that you (and Warfield) are introducing
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