A God Who Needs?

Dr. John Piper is among the most influential modern theologian, and while not solely responsible for, may be the biggest contributor to the revival of Calvinistic theology we are experiencing today.


Born in 1946 Piper has been in ministry at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minnesota for longer than I have been alive. His book "Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist," came out the year after I was born, and has been without question Pipers' principle theological contribution. Some might say that all of his other books are in summed up in the teachings of Desiring God.

Dr. Piper is an interesting case study, he is a true Hyper-Calvinist, adhering to all five points of Calvin's teachings, but also adding two points of Edwardian Calvinism, making him what some might title a Seven Point Calvinist. Yet he affirms the teachings of justification by faith. He believes in Double Predestination, yet he is not a Dispensationalist. He asserts unconditional election, and perseverance of the believer. Some would argue that Dr. Piper does not know what he believes, but I am not so quick to throw my dear brother under the bus so to say.

Dr. Piper has made huge leaps in the understanding and explanation of the Sovereignty of God. His doctoral thesis "Love Your Enemies," while not his greatest literary accomplishment showed his theological chops. I believe that he truly loves God, and he is a brilliant writer. His work "Desiring God" spurred me on greatly in my Christian walk. I do want to point out some of the dangers in this doctrinal extreme where I believe Piper has missed the mark.

No person, of any intellectual position worth listening to, would ever contest the sovereignty of God. It is as much a part of the Godhead as water is a part of the man. It is an integral part of the omnipotence of the Trinity. If God is not sovereign, he is not all powerful. Yet if one were to look back on the history of the Church, one might find that, while God is sovereign, you hear other language used first. God is love, God is holy, God is father, God is... sovereign. It is as if the sovereignty of God is presumed, but the patristic literature says "God is sovereign... BUT GOD IS..." And this hierarchy is set up in relation to the divine attributes of God. Not that He is any less sovereignty, but if they could only use one word to sum up his deity, sovereignty would not be what exited the mouths of the Doctors of the Church.

So one might ask why? If the understanding of sovereignty is so essential to our understanding of omnipotence, why then is it not primary in the vernacular of those most important to architecting the theology of the Church? The answer is very simply this... Sovereignty is not a transcendent attribute of the Godhead.

Before time, before creation, God existed as the trinity (same yesterday today and forever). God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit... All God... See this God is only able to be that which He is. According to orthodox (right understanding, with a lower case "o") teaching, the Trinity, is equal, but distinct. There is no supremacy within the Trinity, and thus no person of the Trinity was sovereign, reigning, or presiding over any other person of the Trinity. Therefor before creation God... was not sovereign... Sovereignty then is temporary language, used in relation to the created order. God's sovereignty is secondary to His overall nature.
So then my friends, why did I speak earlier of the dangers of Piper's theological extreme. It is simple... If we focus on a secondary attribute of God, one that is fleeting and only exists from tree to tree, we miss out on the fullness of theology. We create for ourselves a God that needs... A God that is understood on a foundation of sovereignty, who will not always be sovereign. He does not need us to be sovereign over. In fact the Bible asserts that after these things have come to pass, He will no longer be sovereign. He forfeits sovereignty to be in communion with us, only maintaining those things that are primary to His person. No longer judge, no longer king, no longer sovereign. We will then only use familial language, primary language, Father, Son Holy Spirit. See, if the extent of our understanding of theology is centered around sovereignty as our axis of theological interpretation, our understanding will never achieve depth. Worse yet, it will fail to give adequate importance to those characteristics that are both primary to His nature, and transcendent of time.


I am very slow to hang a theologian. Piper is a true man of God, his church is making a radical difference on the world. The tragedy is this, people of the Calvinist discipline are leaning so hard on the modern theology of Dr. Piper, without a deep broad understanding of the rest of theology. We must look to the earliest teachings of the Church. Thomas Oden brilliantly organizes what must be the focus of our time. 1 Canon (Bible), 2 Testaments (Old and New), 3 Creeds (Apostle's, Nicene, and Athanasian), 4 Councils (Niceae, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon), and the first 5 Centuries of the Church. That is the lens by which we must view what is important in theology. With so very few exceptions, everything outside of this is just a flash in the pan of theology.




Disclaimer: While this blog at no point claims to portray the express views of a source, much of it is drawn from the teachings of Dr. Albert Outler, Dr. Thomas Oden, and Dr. Chris Bounds. These are the opinions and findings of the Author; Zachary Aument and are only meant with the purist intentions. Taking any teaching to an extreme is dangerous, and one must seek to temper theological views within the context of the larger Christian community.

Ecclesiastical Interpretation

Vincentius (Vincent of Lérins) was an early church father who lived and wrote in Lérins, France. His contribution that deserves our attention is a work called the "Commonitory." It is often held that the Commonitory was a work by Vincentius meant to create a rubric where by the Christian might determine true Ecclesiastical Interpretation and Doctrine, from heresy. When one looks to address the Commonitory as a literary work it is by and large a refutation of Augustine's doctrine of Predestination. Most scholars would give a wide range of dates for the writing of the Commonitory, but the stream of thought that I want to present is that Vincentius wrote the Commonitory in 434, three years after the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus.


Now even as I said that the primary goal and purpose of the Commonitory is to refute the Augustinian doctrine of Predestination, his stance and verbage on searching out heresy is exceptional, and has now formed the foundation by which I view doctrine.


Vincentius would contest that due to the highly interpretive nature of Scripture, while complete and sufficient of itself, must be read through the lens of the Ecclesiastical Tradition. My theology professor Dr. Chris Bounds points out the ease with which an Evangelical discards the Tradition of the Church over time. The urging of Vincentius is to embrace the work done for us by those that have predated us. Outside of the Tradition one can easily diverge from Orthodoxy. It is nearly impossible for a person, independent of community, to arrive at an Orthodox understanding of scripture. I do not recall who said these words, but the effect was that "if we by chance see further than those that have gone before us it is because we have the privilege of standing on their shoulders." Thus, the collective work of the founders of our faith gives strength to our understanding, apart from which we would fall into heresy.


Vincentius also sets up a series of beautiful tools by which the Christian can check the authority of a doctrine. He states that we must look to the Universality of a doctrine. To see if it is accepted by Christians everywhere. Assuming, as we must, that there is one and only one faith that is true for all. Secondly we look to the Antiquity of a doctrine. It begs of a doctrine its authority based on its age. This is HUGE! There is a law within the pursuit of theology called the law of "Proximal Authority." It states that the closer a thought is to the chronological date of Christ, as Christ is the insertion of the ultimate authority on theology into time, the more weight it must hold in our hearts. That something said by Jesus is chief, followed closely by His disciples, then the Apostolic Church Fathers, followed then by the Greek and Roman Fathers and on down the line to the theologians of our day. Thus we are presented with our third rule which is the position of the Doctors of our faith.


Consensus within the Church on a doctrine can be arrived at by looking to the past. One must see everything through the eye of Consensual Theology. What has been agreed on over time? We must take great care, looking to see if any general or Ecumenical councils have been assembled over, or have spoken to the issue at hand. If not one must look to the collective wisdom of the fathers of our faith. I, in my naivety, fail to truly appreciate the severity of the nuances of doctrine. A statement that would send shutters down the spine of a more learned wise man, is uttered with total apathy from my lips. I, and those like me, must, absolutely must lean into, and run with fervency toward understanding, lest we truncate the essence of our Lord.


I will leave you with an image that Vincentius uses to speak to the progression of understanding of doctrine. He compares the evolution of doctrinal understanding to the growth of the human body. Canon lays the foundation in the womb of our understanding. The general anatomy of doctrine is forged in the sacred Scriptures, and through time theologians of old have formed and nurtured it. Growing it into a more mature understanding. Taking great care not to change an element of it, because we believe that it holds within it the capacity to grow to it intended state. It is logical that when one begins with a boy, it will become a man. Theologians then form doctrine within the constructs of Scripture arriving, in time, at holistic understanding. Articulating elements that were unclear in the text, and emphasizing those areas that require assertion. So now when one takes the cumulative works of Canon and the texts of the Traditions, one is able to experience the fullness of the understanding of God, and to that end we strive.