I recently found this interesting talk on John Davenant in 2015, from Michael Lynch, which I thought might be interesting for some folks here. The talk is about Davenant's view of hypothetical universalism. Among the Reformed circles, Davenant is often cited as one of the few Anglican types who dabbled in Reformed theology, but what's interesting in this video, is how much he infuses Anglicanism into Reformed theology, so that his Reformed bona fides are questionable. It's really amazing, that you take a conscientious Anglican like Davenant, and he will simply refuse to abide by some of the repugnant elements of the historic Reformed theology. To summarize, his main differences as described in the video, are these: 1. He posits hypothetical universalism. It's such a strong testament that real bona-fide Anglicans could never embrace Calvinishm, even in such a famous "Reformed" Anglican as John Davenant. Even he, as immersed as he was with the contiental reformed (wrongly, I'd argue), he was unable to let go the key apostolic doctrine of universalism of Christ's atonement, as preserved in Anglicanism. The apostolic teaching, as summarized in Peter Lombard, is Christ's death is sufficient for all, but effective for the elect. But this, along with many other apostolic doctrines, was quickly erased by the Reformed theologians, once they freshly appeared on the face of the Church. Davenant, the famous "reformed" Anglican, refused to accept the heterodoxy of mainstream Reformed theology. 2. He posits a radically different model of covenant theology. The default form of Reformed covenant theology posits a number of God's covenants, that were supposedly given in sequence, through the course of the Old Testament: first the covenant of works given to Adam (ie. he could be saved by works alone), down through other covenants of the OT, until reaching the covenant of grace that persists now (people are saved by grace alone). This is pretty heinous doctrine, mainly because it led into the grave errors of dispensationalism. It is also one of the distinctive marks of Reformed Theology, as contrasted with other major schools of thought in Christendom. The fact that Davenant does formulate his thought in terms of covenants puts him on the outskirts of Anglican orthodoxy; however: the covenants he formulates are not standard Reformed teaching. As seen in the video, the two covenants he posits are not in sequence, but simultaneous. From Adam on down two us, there are two covenants in operation, and both are valid, and we can partake of either one to attain salvation: one is the covenant of works (he who can execute God's law perfectly will be saved), and the covenant of grace (we lean on the One who can execute God's law perfectly). In this he widely steps outside of mainstream Reformed circles (leavening that school of thought with remnants of good Apostolic and Anglican influences), and avoids the errors of Dispensationalism which that doctrine later became notorious for. In avoiding the sequence of covenants, but making them perpetual and simultaneous, he reaffirms the Anglican and ancient doctrine that God's will is unchanging, and time does not alter his design. So to sum up, he is on the outskirts of Anglican orthodoxy to be sure, but he leavens his Reformed dabblings so much that he's very much heterodox there as well. It's a pretty fascinating lecture, if you're into this sort of stuff:
This is a banquet of wonderful stuff, 'for those who are into it', as you say. It is not just "The meat of The Gospel" rather than "The milk" of it; it is the Sirloin / Porterhouse Steak and two veg of The Gospel. I feel like I have sat through a 5 course meal, with brandy and cigars in the smoking room with Jesus, St Peter and honoured guests to round off a wonderful evening. An interesting bit at 25/5 minutes in highlights where his and my theological insights intermingle. I would have said: "The death of Christ made it LEGAL for anyone [placing their faith in] Christ to enter heaven." THIS is "Justification" ordained by God for the whole human race. But added to that, I would put; (for also anyone NOT placing their faith for salvation in THEMSELVES), which would also apply to all those who have never heard, (so also have never consciously rejected), The Gospel. They will still "enter heaven" but will have to face Disciplinary Reform. Whereas the ELECT do not face discipline in heaven, because they have accepted and responded to God's discipline upon Earth before their death, possibly even as Christ's martyrs and saints. The upshot and summation of all this though, seems to me to be this: That The Gospel is not as clear cut, black and white, heaven or damnation, as Calvinists and some Evangelicals would have us believe. Heb.5:12-14. We do not need to scare people into heaven with threats of hell and damnation. We just need to educate them in the Grace of the God who wants them all saved. .
Of course that however leaves the uncomfotable possibility, (for them), that once anyone has heard and understood The Gospel of Peace and then consciously rejects God's reconciliation with them, (themselves refusing to be reconciled with God), they put themselves in the same position regarding God, as the Devil and all his angels, irreconcilably, implacably opposed to God's commandments, grace and discipline. The word of God cuts both ways for both saints and reprobates. Heb.4:12, Revelation 1:16, Revelation 2:12. But the 'hell' they will have been consigned to will be the 'Lake of Fire' which contrary to common belief, is in Heaven, not in Hell, because in the world to come there is nowhere that God's reign does not reach. .
Would you please spell out these errors, and explain which ones are 'grave,' and why? This would be a great thread to have these listed. One of the primary scriptures this Reformed theology being discussed relies upon is Deut. 28: Deu 28:1 And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: Deu 28:2 And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God. Deu 28:3 Blessed shalt thou be ..... Deu 28:9 The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in his ways. Could you address this and explain why this doesn't support belief that there was a separate covenant made by God for the benefit of the Israelites whom He brought out of Egypt?
I would say an even more primary covenant would be the covenant with Abraham, which is the basis for the Covenant of Grace which directly derives from it through the principle of 'faith' in God. Gen.17:7-19. Where, from the text Deut.28:1-9 does the idea that a 'Covenant' is being discussed. A 'Promise', with conditions, yes, but is a covenant mentioned? I can't see any mention of a covenant in the verses you cited as being 'primary'. Does that come from elsewhere? .
The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in his ways. A covenant is another word for a contractual agreement. In law the necessary elements for a bilateral contract are an offer, an acceptance, and consideration. (no consideration is needed for a unilateral contract though). A bilateral contract is often called, "a promise for a promise." These elements are present. God promises to provide blessings and more (a thing of value) if a person provides obedience (a thing of value). The person accepts God's offer by carrying through or performing the obedience. God's 'swearing unto' them is better than a notarized signature on His solemn offer. "Consideration" in legal terms is "something of value given by both parties." Jesus' promise of eternal life to all who believe is a unilateral contract, in which one party performs even though the other party hasn't yet accepted and need not provide consideration. In addition to making the offer, Jesus provided the 'performance' of his promise in advance (redemption through His death and resurrection), leaving the people as individuals to accept by believing.
Deut.28:1-9, though mentions nothing whatever about a contractural offer on God's part being an everlasting covenant. In fact the offer is entirely conditional according to the wording of it, unlike Gen.17:7-19, which is an everlasting commitment on God's part without any condition other than faith demonstrated by circumcision, (a sacramental act symbolising a renewal of heart and obedience to God, only affecting an individual, similarly sacramentally symbolised by baptism, only affecting an individual) Ezek.44:7-9. Ezek.11:19, Col.2:11-12. Once circumcision was replaced by baptism under the New Covenant the Covenant with Abraham is still in effect as an everlasting one on God's part but it now also covers 'foreigners' and 'females'. Gal.3:28. .
Are you now Stalwart's personal secretary?? I asked him, you replied... Contracts are often conditional in nature. For example, a Bank might sign an agreement to loan millions to a corporation if they obtain a certain government contract, or a homeowner might agree to pay a painter a certain sum if he paints the house. Gen. 17 shows another one of those unilateral contracts. Deut. 28 details a bilateral contract. You're picking up on the (very real) distinction between the two, but they both are still covenants (another name for contracts). I gather you never spent 3 years taking law classes, which is understandable given the tuition fees they charge. Drove me bankrupt, but at least I was well enough informed by then to represent myself. That was a long time ago....
Well dispensationalism we covered in the other thread: it teaches God’s will as flexible, and the world he establishes as mutable. For instance if he decides to allow gay marriage, they might just be a new dispensation for modern times. Whereas in classical theism, God’s will is completely inflexible for the entirety of human history. Reformed theology isn’t quite dispensationalism, but still it gave birth to it, because it substantially originated its basic mindset, with the changing covenants across the Bible. As even John Davenant teaches, even if you do accept the existence of covenants, the only way to square them with classical theism is to say they are unchanging and forever. You’ve got to realize, that just like gravity, which you can’t plead with, can’t argue with, and it’s horribly implacable — we’ll that’s how God’s will is. Except even stronger. Classical theism for 4000 years has taught about God in this way, and that’s what dispensationalism (and covenant theology before it) has tried to break down.
Could you put some definitional lines to the distinction between "covenant theology" and "dispensationalism"? You say that the former leads to the latter, but I don't see how they are two separate things. You tend to be able to explain such things quite clearly in most cases.
I wait in anticipation like youself, but in a different place than you, (intellectually and theologically speaking not just geographically). I think the CofE is profoundly based upon Covenant Theology, (though the evangelical wing has been infiltrated recently by new fangled American ideas), and Anglicanism is not at all traditionally, 'Dispensational', as that term is used in theological circles. Just wondering how Stalwart will react to this statement. .
In brief, covenant theology limits itself to the eras of the Bible. So you have a covenant with Adam, then a new different covenant with Noah, then yet another different one with Abraham. Then yet another one with Moses and his people. Then yet another made with Jesus and his people. (“The new Adam”.) Each of these has had a different set of terms and conditions, the first with Adam based entirely on works, and the last entirely on grace. It seemed that God couldn’t make up his mind, and people kept thwarting God’s will, you see. They were stronger than his plans for their times. In modern Protestantism and Romanism it’s pretty common stuff, but for classical theism which had a much higher and much greater view of God, this is pretty abhorrent. Anyway so dispensationalism in the 19th century took this one level further: 1. each successive change became not just a different legal covenant, but a whole new epoch, dispensation, a new order of the world 2. if the epochs kept changing during the Bible, then who’s to say they couldn’t change after the Bible? And that’s how you get post-Biblical dispensations, such as Mormonism. In modern times it has led to the heresies of process theology, situation ethics (“biblical moral relativism”), and the rest of the annihilation of Christian moral teaching in the 20th century. When Pope Francis teaches that the death penalty might’ve been moral at a time in the past, but isn’t acceptable today, under changed circumstances, he’s operating on an implicit form of dispensationalism.
Yes, but, - how far do you want to take this supposed principle that the death penalty remains in force because supposedly God wants all His laws enforced in every generation by whatever regime that happens to claim it is instituted by Him? Death penalty for picking up sticks on a Saturday morning? Num.15:32-36. Are you suggesting that nothing has changed concering picking up sticks on a Sabbath or being caught in adultery? John 7:3-11. Though it was lawful for Jesus to have stoned the woman, he chose not to. Was he wrong in your opinion on the Grounds that God never changes his mind on anything, at all, ever, even the death penalty for adultery, by stoning? .
Thanks for that, Stalwart. The things I've learned along the way in my journey through some Protestant churches didn't always have these labels, and so I learned concepts more often than I learned names to paste on the concepts. Here are some of the things I'd learned (which any of you may find good, ill, or in-between). 1. Throughout the history of mankind, God has gradually revealed more and more about Himself. Information about Him and of His will was more full to the Israelites than to the people of Noah's day, and our body of information about God today is more full than what the Israelites had to go on, and so forth. This is evident in the existence of the word of God, which communicates much from God and of which mankind had received more and more as time went on (up until the Apostolic time). 2. Man is not held responsible by God for that which has not been revealed to him by God. Those who have never heard of Jesus are are responsible for how they respond to what they have been shown by God, not for what they did not have opportunity to know. This applies in the N.T. era and also in the O.T. and pre-O.T. (before any books of the Bible were written) times. 3. Because we can see this gradual or progressive revelation by God of Himself, we can also see that God had man relate to Him differently in earlier periods than in later ones (Example: before the resurrection, no one could relate to or comprehend the risen Savior). 4. God related to different people in different eras by making different promises. To Adam He gave dominion over all the earth so long as Adam did not eat of that one tree. To Abraham He gave promises to bless Abraham's offspring. To the Israelites He promised blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. And so on. 5. The above, different eras can be categorized and called 'dispensations.' This categorization helps us understand and explain some of the unusual and sometimes seemingly (but not truly) contradictory things between earlier understanding of (and words from) God and later ones. 6. Despite the obvious existence of these different eras, these different dispensations, God has always pointed mankind (by first one means and then another) toward trusting in Him. Examples: Adam's sin, physically, was eating the apple, but at its root he sinned by not trusting God's words to him of what the consequences would be, as well as not trusting that God (rather than the serpent) had Adam's best interests at heart and would only withhold from Adam what was harmful to him. The Israelites were promised blessings if they obeyed all of the law, but of course it was impossible for anyone to truly keep every single law every minute of one's life, and thus the law was given "as a schoolmaster" (Gal. 3:24) to point toward their need to trust God for mercy and redemption. In other words, there has always been just one way to God, and that way is by grace through faith in Him... faith to what measure the person had received knowledge of Him. Yet it is not outside of propriety to consider God's promises to Israel in Deut. 28 as a "legal covenant," for if (and that is a big "if") someone could have managed to live a sinless, perfect life before God, He would have been oath-bound to give them everything He promised. 7. God did indeed make various and differing covenants (agreements) with different people, during different eras. This cannot be denied if one reads the Bible. God made a covenant with Abraham. It was different from the covenant He made with the Israelites. And so on. Each such covenant ultimately, one way or another, pointed people in the direction of having faith in God. A covenant is defined in the dictionary as "a binding agreement;" if one wishes to fish out some esoteric, theological distinction to say that some of God's promissory agreements (by which He bound Himself to do this if people do that) are not covenants, then I fear we're falling into the semantics of some esoteric religious language that I'm not fluent in. I'm sure there are people who take 'covenant theology' to some extremes that are not warranted, just as there are many who do not (I suppose we could regard John Davenant as this thread's "poster child" to illustrate the fact that great variations and diversities exist, even among Anglicans). Seeing how I was taught, and as someone who acknowledges the existence in history of different dispensations, I think of myself rather loosely as a so-called "dispensationalist." Are there some dispensationalists who go much further and deviate from the above, and who fall into "situational moral ethics" or "biblical moral relativism"? Yes, but I'm not convinced they so deviate because they are dispensationalists; perhaps they are simply prone to find whatever rationalization they can seize upon, to justify their erroneous thinking. (Some people are inclined to call the current Pope, not a dispensationalist but, a dippy sensationalist.) And since I think a physical, millennial reign of Christ on earth, during which He fulfills the as-yet-unfulfilled prophetic promises He made to Jacob's (Israel's) descendants (such as in Jeremiah 30, 31, & 33), is the view supported by the most natural and un-strained reading of Revelation and related O.T. prophetic scriptures, I think it is most unfortunate that some folks reject this possibility primarily by reasoning that it would be a "dispensation" still to come (and anything called 'dispensation' simply must be wrong!). Anglicanism is a broad group that includes people who lean this way and that way on different things. I've been told at times that it isn't good to get overly definitional about some terms because it leads to arguments and divisiveness. I'm inclined to think that 'dispensationalism' falls into this category, and that it's not good to label all 'dispensationalism' as 'gravely erroneous'.
God's law in the abstract is not equivalent to the Mosaic laws, or any particular verse from the Scriptures. Determining the contents of God's law is the province of Theology. It's why the whole field exists. If it were as simple as proof-texting from some chapter and verse, there wouldn't need to be theology in the first place. For example most of the Mosaic laws no longer apply, since they were fulfilled in the Messiah, and thus the science of theology would not use them in consideration of its understanding of God's law. The death penalty is in no way grounded on the vast majority of Mosaic laws (apart from the Ten Commandments which are for all time). Nor am I trying to debate this or that particular doctrine, but rather whether God's law (as determined by Theology) is mutable, or for all time. So if you have a principled objection to the death penalty, that's fine, but you should then want to argue that it was wrong always in the past, and the Church was simply in error for 99% of her existence in promoting it.
There is a simple way to shed a light on the practical contrast between dispensationalism and classical theism. Can those of us living today, in 2021, make a claim that new information can emerge which will alter how we understand the Scriptures or God's will? Is it possible for some new fragment of the Bible to emerge that will argue the opposite, for example that we should worship Satan, or that the Gospel of James is a true part of the Biblical Canon, or that St. Paul wanted men to marry other men, etc? In principle, can some new development, a manifestation from God or a Scripture fragment, emerge in (say) the year 2022, such that all faithful Christians will have to re-orient themselves to approach God in a new way? I'm not saying if it's likely or not; just is it, in principle, possible? Could God declare some time from now, that because of the liberation of LGBTQPP, and because of feminist movements, that women should now in fact be heads of households, and that it should be right to bless marriage of people of any sexes? Male-male, female-female, male-male-female, etc? Obviously you'd argue that that's wrong under the current dispensation, but could it be that in a future dispensation, because of changing circumstances, that some things which were one way before, could become another way later on?
Well, was it possible for God to give mankind a vegan diet (Gen. 1:29) but after the flood to permit man to eat meat (Gen. 9:3)? Yes. And was it possible for Him to declare that certain meats (including pork) were unclean and not to be eaten (under the Mosaic Law), and later on to declare (Acts 10:15) that those meats may be eaten by us? Yes. Different eras, different dispensations. What exactly might Jesus declare (in person!) in a millennial dispensation wherein the Israelites are once again the focus of attention and the resurrected believers "live and reign with Him" (Rev. 20:4)? I can't say with certainty; I see "as through a glass, darkly." However, there is a certain consistency and constancy from age to age in how God deals with mankind; sexual sin, murder, avarice, envy, etc. are (and have been) wrong always, and no "new revelation" saying otherwise could be from God.