Does God act “immediately”?

Every theologian is a negative theologian in the sense that there are certain traditions and theologies that he defines himself against . Protestants have always defined themselves against Catholics, Lutherans against Reformed and vice versa, and within each tradition there are subtraditions that co-define each other. One of the main negative sources of my own theological work is B.B. Warfield’s classic defense of Calvinism (really, a certain version of Calvinism), The Plan Of Salvation .

I first read the book in seminary, shortly after beginning to study the Institutes in a serious way, and I was struck by the sharp divergence between Calvin and Warfield. I couldn’t see how Warfield could have written Book 4 of the Institutes , where Calvin expounds His ecclesiology and sacramental theology. In fact, I had a hard time seeing how Warfield left much significant room for the church and sacraments at all; Calvin would come under Warfield’s censure as a “sacerdotalist” as much as any Anglican. Though I have referred to Warfield’s book only in passing in my writing, it has always lurked in the back of my mind as a particular brand of Calvinism that I believe needs to be rethought, revised, and reformed. Since I recently became aware that my friend and colleague Doug Wilson invoked the book positively some time ago, I thought it useful to revisit it and my reservations about it, in a somewhat more elaborate way. Hence this post.

Warfield’s book is organized by a series of binary oppositions. Different forms of Christian (or “Christian”) faith adopt one side or the other of these opposed principles: naturalistic v. supernaturalistic, sacerdotalist v. evangelical, universalist v. particularist. Calvinism is the most consistent and purest form of Christian faith because it is consistently supernaturalist, evangelical, and particularist. I would want to make some qualifications about all of these oppositions. If I offered a complete critique of the book, I’d want to deconstruct the oppositions, particularly the first, which I think is crucial. I don’t believe in “naturalism” in the way that Warfield uses the term; it is hardly Christian at all. But that doesn’t necessarily make me a “supernaturalist” in all the senses that Warfield means. Here I think Warfield’s foundational scheme is more “Thomist” than Thomas, and needs a dose of nouvelle theologie . Here, though, I focus on the second opposition, which is the one I have the strongest objections. I also want to deconstruct this opposition too; having reservations and objections to what Warfield calls “evangelicalism” does not make me a “sacerdotalist” in his sense. These are not the only alternatives. Assuming that they are the only alternatives has produced a good bit of the recent confusion in the Reformed world.

According to Warfield, the difference between sacerdotalist and evangelical versions of Christian faith has to do with the question of mediation. Warfield says that evangelicalism is consistently supernaturalist because it “sweeps away every intermediary between the soul and its God, and leaves the soul dependent for its salvation on God alone, operating upon it by his immediate grace. It is directly upon God and not the means of grace that the evangelical feels dependent for salvation; it is directly to God rather than to the means of grace that he looks for grace; and he proclaims the Holy Spirit therefore not only able to act but actually operative where and when and how he will.” Warfield says that the church and sacraments must be understood in the light of this immediate activity of the Spirit: “The Church and its ordinances [the evangelical] conceives rather as instruments which the Spirit uses than as agents which employ the Holy Spirit in working salvation.” Evangelicalism’s “primary protest continues to be against naturalism, and in opposing sacerdotalism also it only is the more consistently supernaturalistic, refusing any intermediaries between the soul and God, as the sole source of salvation.” Evangelicalism is the “double confession that all the power exerted in saving the soul is from God, and that God in his saving operations acts directly upon the soul” (pp. 19-20).

I have four brief areas of criticism of this position: First, I don’t find it coherent. Second, I don’t think Warfield’s position characterizes all Reformed theology. Third, I wonder whether it is fully Trinitarian. Finally and most importantly I don’t find it consistent with Scripture.

First to coherence. It is difficult to see how Warfield can speak on the one side of of the ordinances of the church as “instruments” of the Spirit and on the other side of the Spirit’s work as “immediate.” To employ instruments is to act “mediately.” If he intends his denial of “every intermediary” to be taken as strongly as his rhetoric suggests, then it stands in flat contradiction to his later admission that the Spirit uses ordinances as “instruments.” It’s the strong denial of mediation that leaves me wondering how he has room for sacraments at all. Or, for the instrumentality of the Word for that matter.

Warfield’s point might be that the Spirit is free to work apart from normal means like the Word and Sacraments, which I would happily affirm. But to say that the Spirit works apart from normal means is not the same as saying that the Spirit works “immediately,” for the Spirit could work through extra ordinary means, yet still work through means. Working through extraordinary means is not the same as working un-mediatedly. And if that is Warfield’s point, then instead of denying mediated action, he should be saying that the Spirit’s work is normally mediated. I also don’t believe Warfield’s (admittedly summary) characterization of sacerdotalism is fair. Thomas, who I think would count as a sacerdotalist in Warfield’s book, uses the same instrumental language to talk about the efficacy of the sacraments (one of Thomas’s analogies is, God is to the sacraments as a carpenter is to a hammer).

Second, a brief historical point. One way for me to make sense of Warfield’s views on grace and sacraments is as an example of what Brian Gerrish has called “sacramental parallelism.” Some within the Reformed tradition (Gerrish, if I recall, names Bullinger in this connection) have said that the sacraments are effective because the Spirit works “immediately” alongside the sacramental elements and actions. While the minister pours the water, the Spirit acts directly on the soul of the baptized; as we eat and drink bread and wine, we also eat and drink in our hearts by faith. This stands in contrast to others (Calvin and Bucer) who teach a sacramental “instrumentalism”: The Spirit acts in and through the sacramental actions and elements. Though he sometimes sounds like an instrumentalist, it seems to me that Warfield’s instincts are more in the direction of parallelism. If that’s all he’s up to, then my objections are fairly light. I think instrumentalism is more biblical than parallelism, but both have been represented in the Reformed tradition from the outset.

Third, a

Trinitarian question. I wonder if we can speak without further discussion of a Triune God acting “immediately” on the world. The Father is Creator, but He creates through the divine instruments of His Word and Spirit. The Son redeems, but He is sent by the Father and is incarnate by the Spirit and offers Himself to His Father in the Spirit. The Spirit doesn’t act through another, but that’s largely because the Spirit acts always on behalf of the Father and Son; the Spirit doesn’t act mediately because He is the Mediator. Even when God acts as immediately as possible – say, at the outset of creation before there were any created things to use as means – the persons are still acting “through” one another. At the very least, this complicates the question of mediation, and makes me wonder if Warfield’s position is finally based on a less-than-Trinitarian understanding of God’s relation to the world. Along somewhat similar lines, I am not sure quite how to fit the incarnation into Warfield’s paradigm. God saves, but the God who saves is the Son who takes human flesh. Has Warfield’s viewpoint put the incarnation to the side, or at least reduced the humanity of the Son to a passive “instrument” of salvation? I don’t press these points. I simply raise questions.

Finally, a question to the Bible: Does God act “immediately”? There is a strong case for saying that God brings our salvation through means. Peter says we are born again to a living hope through the living word of God (1 Peter 1:23), and Paul rhetorically asks the Galatians whether they received the Spirit through “hearing with faith” (Galatians 3:2, 5). Sacraments too mediate; God acts “by” or “through” them. “We have been buried with [Christ] through baptism” (Romans 6:4), and it’s by eating the bread and drinking the cup that we communion in the Lord’s body and blood (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). Such passages could be multiplied, and lead me to several conclusions: That the Spirit works “mediately”; that the Word and Sacraments function similarly as means by which the Spirit works in us; that our union with Christ and new birth are, according to Peter and Paul, achieved by the instruments of baptism and word. I don’t see Paul “sweeping away” all mediators.

But at certain times God acts more “immediately”: At creation; when He appears in glory to Abram in Ur; when He appears to Moses at the bush; when He sends Elijah out of nowhere to confront Ahab; the Spirit’s hovering over Mary’s womb; when the Spirit comes at Pentecost. Apart from creation itself, even these are “mediated” through creation in some fashion; the glory and the burning bush are visible to Abram and Moses, the Spirit hovers to form the God- man in Mary’s womb, and the Spirit comes with the sound of a great wind. But the pouring out of the Spirit on the apostles is more immediate than the reception of the Spirit by Galatians; the apostles are gathered and the Spirit falls, while the Galatians receive the Spirit through Paul’s preaching. It seems (though I might well be forgetting certain important passages) that all the more “immediate” acts of God come at transition points in the history of Israel and the church.

In short, it appears to me that God normally works mediately, and in the Trinitarian sense sketched above always works mediately, but that He intervenes more “immediately” and apocalyptically when He wants to move the creation into a new phase of history.