Calvinism: A Dead End Theory

When I first started out seriously studying my faith, I had a number of interactions with Calvinists,
many of whom were on the presuppositionalist side of the apologetic spectrum. I continued those
efforts to some extent by interacting on the Called to Communion blog, which is dedicated to
Reformed-Catholic dialogue. Unlike the dialogues I have had with Orthodox Christians, though, these
dialogues never seemed particularly edifying for me, because I couldn't get my head around why
people had been Reformed in the first place. There are historical reasons for it, of course; I'm
American, and England and Scotland brought Reformed theology to America at its very founding.
Indeed, as I will mention below, there is good reason to view Reformed political theory as the core
of what made America what it is, including the religious pluralism that has made me free to practice
my Catholic faith in the country. But as a specifically Christian theology, it never really made sense to
me.

What follows is my analysis of Calvin's theology as a fundamentally anti-Nicene theology. Especially

because I have no personal connection with the Reformed faith, I am indebted to my friend Perry
Robinson, who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy from Reformed Christianity and who pointed out,
among many other things, Calvin's identification of Christ with the "predestined man" of Augustine. I
am sure that we would disagree on a number of conclusions about Thomism and Scotism, but even
in disagreement, I have benefited greatly from dialogue with him.

I. Background

One of the influences that caused me to take a more pessimistic view of the situation was Brad
Gregory's The Unintended Reformation ("TUR"). As I will discuss below, I question "the Scotus Story"
that inevitably leads to a parade of horribles culminating in all of the evils of modern society.
Michael Horton's review of the book summarizes it well: "Once you know the Scotus Story,
everything else falls into place. The Reformation is the carrier of modern ‘disenchantment.’ Tearing
the fabric of the sacramental tapestry, the reformers pushed the logic of metaphysical univocity,
voluntarism, and individualism to its obvious conclusions." I am concerned that this unwisely
discards an entirely legitimate Christian metaphysics, as shown by the work of Jared Isaac Goff and
Fr. Christiaan Kappes, establishing that St. Bonaventure took his own univocal metaphysics from the
Greek Fathers, especially St. John Damascene. But TUR's critique, much like Fr. Louis Bouyer's
critique in The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism (also a victim of the Scotus Story), is both accurate
and devastating in successfully attributing Protestantism to medieval nominalism. Unlike Gregory, I
do not believe that modern developments in science, politics, and society generally were wrong, but
I do believe that TUR is correct about the theological damage it has created.

I've used the title "dead end theory" here to differentiate Calvinism from successful theories that
provide an explanatory bridge until anomalies require a better one. One might think of this as St.
John Henry Newman's idea of development and corruption as modified by Kuhn's The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions in response to heresies, although the latter would obviously need to be highly
qualified in this context. A "dead end theory" is like Newman's corruption; it fails as a Christian
explanation because it negates essential dogmatic facts for the Christian kerygma that Jesus Christ is
God. Many dead end theories result in heresies, including Lucian of Antioch's Arianism,
Eunomianism, Eusebius's homoianism, and Mar Diodore's and Mar Theodore's anti-Apollinarian
theory of the person that led to Nestorianism. It is, however, not necessarily the case that dead end
theories always lead to people being accused of heresies.

There are also other theories that are successful in some respects, although ultimately failing when
confronted with a challenge that requires explanation. Especially in the early Church, there were
many theories that affirmed the dogmatic facts while being underdetermined or erroneous in some
respects. The clearest example concerns the divinity of the Spirit; there were many binitarian
theories that did not deny the Spirit's divinity outright but did not provide any basis for affirming the
divinity of the Spirit. Another example is Origen, who provided much of the early metaphysical basis
for Trinitarian thought but whose explanations concerning the pre-existence of souls were not
compatible with the Christian doctrine of creation. Gregory of Nyssa's theology of apokatastasis is
yet another example of a theory that has explanatory power but fails when pushed too far. I would
be inclined to put Augustine's theory of the massa damnata in this category as well. Many of those
problems were based on traducianism, the believe that the soul was inherited from one's parents
along with the body, which I do not believe is a coherent account of the existence of human souls in
the image of God. The point is that not every wrong path forces us to backtrack, but some do. Calvin
leads to one of those dead ends.

II. Essential Dogmatic Facts

In terms of the dogmatic facts that a successful theory must explain to affirm Christ is God, this is
basically the content of the first seven ecumenical councils. One sign of a failed theory is that it can
accept only the first four, because, as I will outline below, the acceptance of the first four logically
entails the latter three. No consistent account of the dogmatic facts given in the first four councils
will deny the last three, meaning that one cannot consistently believe both that Christ is God and
accept less than seven ecumenical councils. The linchpin that holds all of these councils together is
the pro-Nicene position that defines Christian monotheism: numerical unity of divine nature if and
only if numerical unity of divine operation. This principle adopted between Nicaea and
Constantinople shows that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one God, so that any of them
being revealed performing characteristic divine operations shows that the Person is also One God.
The use of this principle is documented by Michel Rene Barnes in The Power of God and extensively
applied in the "new canon" Augustinian scholarship on the Trinity, particularly in works by Barnes
and his frequent collaborator Lewis Ayres. This doctrine is traditionally understated as inseparable
operations, although a more technically accurate description would be identical operations. The
recent work by Adonis Yidu, The Same God Who Works All Things: Inseparable Operations in
Trinitarian Theology provides an excellent exposition of the doctrine in the context of specific
theological topics.

The pro-Nicene principle necessitates as a consequence of Nicaea (the identity of nature of the
Father and the Son) the next six ecumenical councils:
1. The Holy Spirit is one God with the Father and the Son, because He does what only God can do
(Constantinople I)

2. The man Jesus Christ is the Word of God, one Person with two natures, having two operations
(wills) with respect to each of his two natures (Ephesus, Chalcedon, Constantinople II,
Constantinople III).

3. Divine worship of the man Jesus Christ is permissible because (1) worship is directed to persons
and not natures and (2) Jesus Christ is the same person as the Word of God who is God (Nicaea II).

To consistently proclaim that Jesus is God, once must accept these dogmatic facts, which are
applications of the pro-Nicene principle. There are some who verbally differ with these formulations
but who can conceptually account for them, as appears to be the case with Miaphysite Christology.
There are many who inconsistently believe Jesus is God, generally due to a defective understanding
of divinity itself, and these are called Christian heretics. There are some who venerate Jesus but who
deny these principles at such a fundamental level that their belief does not even rise to level of
calling Jesus divine, which beliefs do not receive the Christian name at all. These include Islam
(particularly if viewed as originating from Christian heresy) and Mormonism.

As a Catholic, I believe that Eastern Orthodox Christians share this faith that Jesus is God. With
respect to the other religious beliefs, the Catholic doctrine is that they are true to the extent that
they can accept this faith that Jesus is God and false to the degree that they do not. We generally do
not speculate as to why people might hold false beliefs and whether God will or will not save them,
and this article is not intended to express an opinion on that issue. It is strictly an analysis of Calvin's
theology concerning whether it can consistently proclaim that Jesus is God, including all of the
relevant dogmatic facts outlined above. It is also not an appeal to the authority of the ecumenical
councils; it is based on the dogmatic facts about Christ as an object of monotheistic worship that
those councils have outlined above.

III. Nominalism and Voluntarism

As noted above, affirmation of univocity does not in itself require nominalism. Traditionally, the
problem of divine being has been resolved in Christian thought by the Neoplatonic concept of
participation, which was extensively developed by St. Dionysius the Areopagite and St. Maximus the
Confessor. In the West, this Christian Platonism was developed in the Franciscan tradition, including
Bl. John Duns Scotus. A parallel Aristotelian tradition was reflected in St. Thomas Aquinas, which
conceived of God as ipsum esse subsistens and used the analogia entis to relate our mode of being
to God's own different mode of being. Rather than viewing either of these traditions as a failed
theory, which is the Scotus Story does, I view them as successful alternative explanations for the
same set of dogmatic facts. Importantly, despite the univocal notion of being, the Neoplatonic
tradition maintains its own distinctive notion of divine infinity and simplicity that assures divine
transcendence. In particular, both Thomism and Scotism preserve the transcendent concept of the
Good (reinterpreted from Neoplatonism to Aristotelianism in Aquinas's case), which informs their
respective metaphysical paradigms. Thus, neither Thomism nor Scotism necessarily runs into the
problematic dynamics that Gregory and Bouyer outline.

The same cannot be said of nominalism. To understand the situation, I will turn to a helpful critique
of Fr. Bouyer by Silvianne Aspray in her metaphysical analysis of Peter Vermigli:

First, nominalism is a notoriously under-defined term, both generally, and in Bouyer’s work itself.
According to Bouyer’s primary definition of nominalism, as described above, it is characterised by a
radical empiricism, coupled with a metaphysics of singulars. However, he also seems to use
nominalism interchangeably with William of Ockham’s thought. Historians of the period disagree
over whether this equation is appropriate, given both the convergences and divergences between
Ockham and other thinkers of the time, such as Gabriel Biel and Pierre d’Ailly, and given also that
none of Ockham’s contemporaries would have called him a nominalist. It is moreover contested
whether and how nominalism as a concept reaches beyond epistemology into ontology. Bouyer
clearly assumes the latter, taking it for granted that the univocity of being is a characteristic of
nominalism. All of this suggests that – in contrast to Bouyer’s seemingly self-evident use of the
concept – defining or understanding nominalism is far from evident. It can be neither useful nor
desirable, however, if one’s hermeneutic lens cannot be delineated properly.

Aspray's criticism is valid; the problem with the Scotus Story generally and Bouyer's account
specifically is that it does not focus specifically on the effect of Ockham's rejection of nature as an
explanatory concept. Aspray identifies two distinctives that seem more serviceable in defining the
constellation of thought around nominalism: a univocal understanding of being and an ensuing new
notion of causality. But Aspray here is relying on André de Muralt, Jean-François Courtine, and
Olivier Boulnois specifically, and that suggests too much influence by the Thomist rejection of
univocity and acceptance of the Scotus Story. This is confirmed by Aspray's own question about
univocity: "Is 'being' thought to be a neutral category, applying to both God’s as well as created
being, or is there a pre-eminent Divine Being in which all other being participates?" But Scotus is
definitely not a nominalist, nor, for that matter, are Gregory of Nyssa or John Damascene. All of
those theologians present a univocal account of being with a robust account of participation and
divine transcendence, which belies the notion that univocity and participation are at odds with one
another. Speaking of Scotus specifically, Richard Cross helpfully notes in Duns Scotus on God that
"[i]t is not that Scotus is not happy with the language of participation; it is simply that he -- like
Aristotle -- does not regard it as anything other than an ambiguous way of talking about
relationships that can more perspicuously be talked about in other ways."

What we instead need to identify is the problem with Ockham's metaphysical account, which both
excludes participation and contradicts the dogmatic facts. Aspray reaches the right conclusion for
the wrong reasons when she says "By contrast, when 'being' is seen as neutral and univocal, and
human beings no longer participate in the Divine qua being, their causal relationship to the latter
changes. God and human beings, when possessing being univocally, can share in an action in such a
manner as to divide its portions. God’s share in an action performed by a human person can be to
concur to it, hence the new concept of framing Divine and human causality in terms of concursus.
Or, alternatively, if God’s and the human person’s intentions do not coincide, their respective actions
can interfere or compete with each other." This conflict results in the consequences to which Bouyer
and Gregory each point, and Aspray aptly summarizes them as follows: "Human actions can be seen
as taking something away from what is rightfully God’s in a kind of zero-sum game. In consequence,
Bouyer argues, both the Reformers and their Catholic counterparts were often trapped in false
dilemmas: 'either a grace that saves us … without affecting us, or a grace that saves us with our
independent collaboration, so that, properly speaking, it is we who have to save ourselves'; 'either a
God who is all while man and the world are literally nothing, or a man and a world having real
powers and value, though limited, and a God who is no more than the first in a series.'"

The problem is that the eradication of nature and the category of relation as metaphysical
explanations has left Ockham with no explanatory paradigm outside of the divine will, which I will
call super-voluntarism. Bereft of the divine ideas and the Good as explanatory tools, Ockham is left
with essentially one distinction in the divine power: the distinction between potential Dei absoluta
and potentia Dei ordinata. Massimiliano Di Cristo explains that "[i]n Scotus, the division of power
operates, as it would later for Ockham, so deeply that it can indeed be used as one of the basic
structures of his system of thought. Scotus also had quite profound influence in relation to Ockham’s
metaphysics. Indeed, similar to Scotus, Ockham regarded God’s act of creation first of all as the law
of ordered nature in a sense that has to be understood as not necessary inasmuch as it responds to
the divine will that is intimately free."

Joseph M. Incandela's dissertation "Aquinas's Lost Legacy: God's Practical Knowledge and Situated
Human Freedom" provides a comprehensive survey of how this use of the divine will as an
explanation leads to what Aspray calls the "zero-sum game." Unlike many commentators, Incandela
specifically traces the metaphysical difficulty to Scotus's conclusion that "there is no practical
knowledge in God," which effectively precluded a key explanatory distinction in the intellect in
relations to God's creative will and produced what has proved to be an irreconcilable conflict
between divine omniscience and creaturely freedom. Incandela attributes this innovation on the
divine will to a concern exemplified in the Condemnation of 1277 that Aristotelianism would lead to
pagan-style cosmic necessitarianism and fatalism, but this unfortunately had the result of throwing
into question an extensive legacy of Christian metaphysics concerning the divine will and intellect,
including Aquinas's own explanation as to how practical knowledge presented options to the will
without determining the will's judgment.

Perhaps the most dangerous lacuna created by this voluntarism is in the doctrine of evil as a
metaphysical privation based on the divine ideas of nature, which was universally held in Eastern
and Western Fathers such as St. Augustine and St. Athanasius, and which was specifically applied to
divine omnipotence by St. Peter Damian when he introduced the concepts of potentia Dei absoluta
and potentia Dei ordinata. Incandela (pp. 132-33) points out that Scotus is already running into
conflicts between his own view of the divine power and divine permission of evil in Ordinatio I, d. 47
("God offers to his will that this man would sin or is sinning. At first, his will does not have a volition
about this man (for God is not able to will him to sin). Second, God is able to understand his will not
willing this, and then he is able to will his will 'not to will this,' and thus he is said to allow and permit
voluntarily."). Scotus attributes the defect to the human will in Ordinatio II, d. 37, p. 2, but it is by no
means clear how this explanation can be reconciled to his views on the divine will. There are
certainly signs here that Scotus's understanding of the divine will is problematic, but Scotus is not
entirely consistent in his use of the concept in the first place, and we cannot necessarily speculate on
how he would have resolved conflicts that he didn't confront.

Scotus also likely augurs badly for metaphysical participation even before Ockham's nominalism
eradicates its metaphysical basis. This stems from Scotus's view that the object of faith and the other
theological virtues is not intrinsically supernatural, owing to univocity and the capability of the
intellect to have faith. This problem is summarized very quickly by Thomist Matthew Minerd's at
41:30-43:15 in this interview. The analysis parallels a criticism in Matthew Levering's Participatory
Biblical Exegesis, which points out a lack of "participated-in perfections" in Scotus's idea of Christian
faith. But as Dr. Minerd points out, Scotus thereby creates a problem both for the Western and the
Eastern accounts of grace, which both see grace as metaphysical participation in the divine. (Lucian
Turcescu's Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith provides an example of how faith operates in
Eastern theology.) Similarly problematic is Scotus's statement that "I say that God of his absolute
power could well accept a nature able to be blessed ... existing in purely natural means; and
similarly, he could accept as meritorious an act to which there would be a purely natural inclination"
(Ordinatio I, d. 17), which seems to exclude the need for metaphysical participation in the divine.
However, Scotus's predecessor St. Bonaventure had also based the need for divine satisfaction and
the work of Christ in the divine will and predestination while still maintaining a participatory
account, which suggests that there are other metaphysical considerations that can balance Scotus's
voluntarism. Stephen Edmonson in Calvin's Christology compares Bonaventure and Calvin
concerning the role of the God-man as Mediator, and that comparison is helpful in understanding
how Bonaventure's view fit into a different metaphysical context.

Thus, the truth to the Scotus Story appears to be less about Ockham following Scotus and more
about Ockham's denial of real natures leaving him unable to avoid these potential pitfalls in Scotus's
thought. By removing universals from Scotus's metaphysics, Ockham's super-voluntarism is
unconstrained by his predecessors' metaphysical restraints. Once he has reduced the idea of nature
to a creation of the mind, Ockham is left with no metaphysical tool but raw divine power, which
shows itself most explicitly in his divine command theory. This meant that the only stability and
coherence given to creation was the fact that God had ordained it in an act of will, so that it was
governed by His potentia Dei ordinata. That this metaphysical theory is inadequate for Christianity is
evidenced by Ockham's inability to give a satisfactory account of dogmatic facts like the Trinitarian
relations or the Incarnation, which explicitly hinge on the concepts of nature and person. While
Ockham's attempt at Christian theology may be an impressive and audacious metaphysical theory, it
is a failed Christian theory, which motivated Bouyer's disdain for it.

Ockham's failure is not even limited to problems stemming from Scotist metaphysics; his own
nominalism is just as significant. Paul Thom's The Logic of the Trinity traces the use of philosophical
and logical concepts in the context of the Trinity from Augustine to Ockham, and it points to a critical
break in metaphysics with the Western tradition. Specifically, Ockham rejected relations as a
category, limiting himself to substance and quality (p. 164), which was an absolute repudiation of
Augustine's metaphysical doctrine of the Trinity. Thom notes the problem (and, incredibly, this is an
understatement): "The impact that Ockham's account of relatives would have if incorporated into
the theory of the Trinity is drastic." Thom points out that Ockham "found a way of avoiding these
unacceptable positions," but that way was by following the problematic dynamic we have already
identified in the divine power being its own explanation. Ockham eradicates both the Thomist
(subsistent relations) and Scotist (formal distinction) accounts for relational distinction in the Trinity
(pp. 173-75), expressly applying his razor to the formal distinction between divine attributes. In the
end, "[Ockham's] view is that there is but one divine attribute and it is the divine essence." While
Thom is charitable concerning Ockham, pointing out that he always backed away where he
perceived himself to conflict with Catholic doctrine, Ockham's peculiar view on the independence of
theology and philosophy removed the safeguards of the dogmatic facts (including the Trinity itself)
against his philosophical theories.

I do not say that Ockham intended to break from Augustine, whose authority he clearly
acknowledged. More likely, the condemnations of Aristotle in 1277 left both Ockham and Scotus
free to criticize Aristotelian philosophy as they felt necessary to do in the metaphysical area. But
Scotus maintained the essential features of Trinitarian dogma, and Ockham did not. Analyzing the
potentia Dei in the terms that he did was the end of Ockham's ability to consistently proclaim that
Jesus was God.

IV. Ockham and al-Ghazali

Ockham's repudiation of Aquinas and Scotus and his separation of theology and philosophy bear a
startling resemblance to al-Ghazali's rebuke against Avicenna in Islamic philosophy, and I do not
believe that this is a coincidence. It is unquestionable that Avicenna was a direct influence on both
Aquinas and Scotus; I've even seen it claimed (with varying levels of seriousness) that St. Thomas got
his best ideas from Avicenna. There is certainly a good argument for St. Thomas having been inspired
by Avicenna in his concept of the analogia entis and perhaps even the essence-existence distinction,
although I have been convinced by Stephen Brock and Ralph McInerny that the latter was
anticipated by Boethius. The reception of Avicenna is a specific example of how the dogmatic facts
of Christianity informed the use of philosophy by Christian theologians. And there is a simple reason
for why Avicenna was influential, which is that Aristotle was not concerned with the metaphysical
origin of the universe or with divine will in creation. Christian theologians using Aristotle were reliant
on people like Avicenna and Plotinus who had thought about those specific metaphysical issues in
the context of Aristotelian philosophy.

As one example, Muhammad Legenhausen compares Avicenna and Aquinas is his article "Ibn Sina’s
Arguments Against God’s Being a Substance" in Substance and Attribute: Western and Islamic
Traditions in Dialogue. This is a particularly interesting point of comparison because the use of
substantia for the divine essence is one of the oldest applications in Western Christian metaphysics,
dating back to Tertullian and explained in Aristotelian terms by St. Augustine. Dr. Legenhausen
confesses some perplexity about why Aquinas refuses to follow Avicenna in saying that God is not a
substance, although Legenhausen does recognize that Aquinas's view must stem from the Christian
usage of the term even though Aquinas himself recognizes that there is metaphysical baggage that
St. Jerome called "poison." What Legenhausen has missed (or at least has not mentioned) is the
modification of the category of substance by St. Augustine, which Thom outlines at length and tracks
through centuries of application by the later theologians. Thus, Aquinas is faithfully following the
Christian metaphysics of his predecessors as an alternative to Avicenna's conclusions.

It is not different for Scotus. Cross acknowledges Scotus's debt to Avicenna's philosophy in Duns
Scotus on God, and it is difficult to image Scotus's philosophy of individuation and univocity without
acknowledging some debt to Avicenna (even though Avicenna himself had an analogical concept of
being). But as with Aquinas, the influence of Augustine in Scotus' Aristotelianism was palpable,
particularly in the area of Trinitarian relations, a subject that Cross covers in depth. And again, once
can follow that development from Augustine through Scotus in Thom's treatment. The example of
Scotus again shows that Augustine's metaphysical category of relation, essential to his theology of
the Trinity, conditioned the Christian reception of Aristotelian philosophy.

Without those Trinitarian safeguards from St. Augustine in place, Ockham's metaphysics was not
consistently Trinitarian, which left his Aristotelian metaphysics essentially identical to that of Islamic
monotheism. Having a univocal concept of being and no real metaphysics of relation or participation
while denying Avicenna's version of the analogia entis, Ockham was left in exactly the same
philosophical position as al-Ghazali's criticism of Avicenna in The Incoherence of the Philosophers.
The comparison between Ockham and al-Ghazali is not original to me; it has been noted in
comparative religious studies for longer than I have been alive. I only note the parallel in that
Ockham followed the criticism of Aristotelianism to the point of contradicting even Augustine's
Christian metaphysics, which effectively left Ockham with no grounding in the Christian tradition.

Ockham's similarity with al-Ghazali is apparent in his sharp separation of philosophy and theology,
putting theology above reason in the cases of seemingly contradictory beliefs like the Trinity and
relying on the divine will and freedom as the sole basis for metaphysical explanations. With respect
to that similarity, there is a fascinating recent dialogue in the Muslim community that follows the
same lines as TUR in blaming societal decline on the fall of metaphysics. Hamza Yusuf attributes this
societal decline to Ockham's influence in much the same way that TUR does, citing in particular the
rejection of Averroes's reclamation of Islam's philosophical heritage. The response by Abdurrahman
Mihirig is a must-read in my view, because it argues that al-Ghazali and Ash'arism, not Ockham, is
the reason for the rejection of Averroes and Aristotelian metaphysics. Mihirig asserts that Yusuf's
critique is based on "a quasi-Thomist assessment on the emergence of modernity, which holds that
it was ultimately caused by the introduction of nominalism by the likes of William of Ockham." He
notes that "The Catholics, who saw their Aristotelian-Thomist worldview obliterated, laid the blame
on philosophical nominalism and especially William of Ockham." But following Ockham's own
standard of parsimony, there is an even simpler explanation for the connection here: both Muslims
and Christians suffered the effects of the same anti-Aristotelian critique, as made by al-Ghazali in
Islamic philosophy and Ockham in Western philosophy.

It is fair to say Ockham's interpretation of the potentia Dei absoluta and the potentia Dei ordinata
was a key feature of the via moderna in the absence of the metaphysics found in the via antiqua. Yet
another parallel can be seen with Islamic philosophy in the distinction. Ockham's distinction
corresponds to God's "decretive will," which is his secret and inscrutable will with respect to
creation, as distinguished from his "prescriptive will," which gives his commands to creation. The
identical distinction is found in Islam between Allah's generative will (irada takwini) by which Allah
creates and the legislative will (irada tashri’i) by which Allah commands. Notably, there are the same
debates over predestinarianism in Islam, which are the sorts of "false dilemmas" and "zero-sum
games" associated with Ockham's nominalism. The chapter on al-Ghazali in David Burrell's Faith and
Freedom: An Interfaith Perspective provides an intriguing contrast with Aquinas's "situated
freedom" as differentiated from Ockham's background in Scotus on this point.

V. The Via Moderna to Protestantism

Incandela (p. 152) observes that "Ockham performed a valuable service in cutting through the haze
of Scotistic subtleties to reveal the issue for what it had become: a clash between the wills of God
and man," the zero-sum game that Bouyer first identified. In the context of that competitive struggle
between God and man, it is easy to see why Augustine's anti-Pelagian polemics would immediately
become relevant. Yet Ockham lacked without any of the metaphysical tools that Augustine
deployed, including the view of evil (including reprobation) as a privation. Ockham's account of the
divine will completely dominated this new discussion on Pelagianism.

Incandela recounts Ockham's position with regard to Pelagianism that God could make a voluntary
decision (potentia Dei ordinata) to make natural action meritorious, even though it had no intrinsic
merit contra Pelagius. The Dominican Robert Holcot, a follower of Ockham, then used the category
of "covenant" to say that God had bound himself to reward the free acts of creatures. Incandela
concurs with Heiko Oberman that these views are technically Semi-Pelagian in terms of the
creature's original initiative rather than fully Pelagian, but one can immediately see why they would
be viewed as denials of the Augustinian doctrine of grace. Thomas Bradwardine, still firmly in the
context of the Ockhamist dichotomy between divine and creaturely will, responded with his own
anti-Pelagian texts. This was the genesis of the schola Augustiniana moderna, which had applied
Ockham's razor to excise key elements of Augustine's metaphysics. Gregory of Rimini, who was
himself a nominalist, then brought the same ideas to the University of Paris, which made them
extraordinarily influential for later generations. It is worth noting, as Muller does in Christ and the
Decree, that neither Bradwardine nor Gregory of Rimini were Scotists; their voluntarism came from
Ockham directly. Opposed to the modern Augustinian school was the more scholastic via moderna
exemplified by Gabriel Biel and Pierre D'Ailly.

The theological problem was exacerbated by its intersection with medieval politics. This was likely
because medieval canonists had appealed to the ideas of divine power in their understanding of
papal power, turning a speculative theological issue into a real and pressing controversy of papal and
political authority. That served as the crucible for deploying nominalism and its concept of potentia
Dei in societal issues. Di Cristo's article cited above covers Pope John XXII's struggle with Ockham
well, but that is the tip of a scholarly iceberg including works by Brian Tierney and Francis Oakley
particularly. I commend Pope John XXII and His Franciscan Cardinal by Patrick Nold for a thorough
examination of the subject, But regardless of the substance of that controversy, the influence of the
via moderna exploded almost immediately because of it. This raised the stakes in the theological
debate within nominalism considerably.

That this was the milieu for Protestantism is difficult to dispute; everyone one of the characteristic
Five Solae came from this Ockham's metaphysics. Matthew Barrett's analysis of Luther's dispute with
Biel gives an example of how the nature-grace distinction played out, and it is apparent that this was
within the context of one of Bouyer's "false dilemmas," pitting Luther's Augustinian nominalism
versus Biel's scholastic nominalism. Sola gratia emerged from those conflicts over Pelagianism. Sola
Scriptura was likewise from the nominalist primacy of revelation, with Ockham following Scotus's
non-traditional position that the object of faith did not need itself to be supernatural. Imputed
justification (sola fide) was a purely nominalist metaphysical concept with the legal category stripped
from the underlying metaphysical basis in participation in the divine nature. The consequences of
that metaphysical move were solus Christus, which denied the participatory metaphysics of the
Sacraments, and soli Dei gloria. The latter excluded veneration of the Saints, one of the dogmatic
facts that follows from the worship of the Person of Jesus Christ as God, as a result of the zero-sum
interaction between God's action and that of the Saints. This zero-sum account plays particularly
into Calvin's iconoclasm and his definition of idolatry. All of it comes from Ockham's nominalism,
exactly as TUR and Bouyer said.

This is not to say that the time period was entirely devoid of continuity with the Christian tradition.
Suarez was the last great schoolman, even if his metaphysics was somewhat nominalistic, and St.
Robert Bellarmine and St. Francis de Sales were faithful exponents of the Catholic tradition in the
Counter-Reformation. But even Catholics were drawn into the nominalist re-rereading of the
tradition, as the struggle between Molina and Bañez on grace and predestination revealed. It is
telling that both Thomism and Scotism survived those clashes to be vibrant as Christian metaphysics
in the present day. By contrast, Molinism continues to be debated only within the same "clash of
wills between God and man" that Incandela identified, and the nominalist metaphysics has only
survived by its effects, not having any real school that claims it.

VI. Calvin's Quixotic Quest for Revival

If the schola Augustiniana moderna was a failed attempt to revive Augustine as a nominalist, Calvin's
project could be seen as the same for the Gospel as a whole. This project was doomed from the
beginning; divine sovereignty was never metaphysically thick enough to carry the explanatory
weight that Ockham was trying to pile on it. And when it broke under the strain, there was no
question that the theology would fall into Christian heresy. For that reason, Calvin is the perfect case
study for why the nominalist reinterpretation of the Christian tradition cannot be consistently
Christian.

In this respect, I would distinguish Calvin's anti-Nicene theology from Lutheran theology, which was
similar to Ockham in the desire for fidelity to Catholic dogma despite an inherently problematic
metaphysical paradigm. Where both Ockham and Luther would often balk at drawing heterodox
conclusions and defend the orthodoxy of doctrines like the Real Presence in the Eucharist, Calvin
lacked this fundamental restraint. Thus, although Ockham and Luther may have been inconsistent
with the dogma, they were trying to remain in continuity rather than to reform it by disagreement.
By contrast, Calvin attempts to reconstruct the missing pieces of Trinitarian relations and
participation in a nominalist paradigm that ends up significantly contradicting the Nicene faith.

In examining Calvin's theory, we have the benefit today of a wealth of scholarship on the
metaphysical basis of Calvin's thought. Calvin's own disdain for speculation and scholasticism and his
reverence for Scriptural authority had unfortunately contributed to the neglect of studies in
Reformed scholasticism generally and a tendency to set "Calvin vs. Calvinists," but this has thankfully
been remedied more recently. Richard Muller in particular deserves credit for his magisterial work
Christ and the Decree, and his more recent book Divine Will and Human Choice, which together
provide a cogent unification of multiple metaphysical themes in Calvin's thought. (I find Muller's
criticism of Antoine Vos's Scotist "metanarrative" persuasive; I would add that Vos's "master
problem" for Western theology is actually one of the false dilemmas created by nominalism.) Paul
Helm has likewise taken on the philosophical analysis of Calvin's work; his book John Calvin's Ideas
collects his work accessibly. I have found Stephen Edmonson's book Calvin's Christology similarly
helpful for surveying Calvin's approach. On the specific subject of union with Christ and participation,
I would make a number of recommendations: Dennis E. Tamburello, Union with Christ: John Calvin
and the Mysticism of St. Bernard; Robert Letham, Union with Christ in Scripture, History, and
Theology; Michael Horton's Zondervan Digital Short titled Union with Christ; Julie Canlis, Calvin's
Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension (which includes interaction with Calvin,
Participation, and the Gift by Todd Billings); Mark A. Garcia, Life in Christ: Union with Christ and
Twofold Grace in Calvin's Theology; and Charles Raith II, Aquinas & Calvin on Romans: God's
Justification and Our Participation. (I've used bolding to add my own emphasis where I quote them
below.)

All of these commentators provide excellent summaries of Calvin's theology on the relevant points.
Yet none of them have any defense against the charge that Calvin's metaphysics of the divine will is
nominalist, and not a single one of them defends Calvin on the pro-Nicene principle of numerical
unity of the divine will and divine essence. This is likely because there is no coherent defense to be
given. To be fair, the critique to which they are responding is the Neo-Thomist critique that basically
blamed Scotus for everything that came after, which incidentally included Calvinism. To rebut such
"grand narrative" style accounts, whether anti-Calvinist (Bouyer, Gregory, Incandela) or pro-Calvinist
(Vos), it is only necessary to point out that Calvin was more Thomist than Scotist on issues like
predestination or secondary causation, a task that Muller and Raith in particular have performed
quite ably. Raith (p. 12) says it as follows: "One must not approach Calvin's theology through the a
priori lens of Platonism or Scotism or Thomism and then read Calvin through that particular lens.
Rather, one must engage Calvin's theology and only then discern points of contact that exist
between different strains of thought." But none of them actually respond to Calvin's metaphysical
use of divine will, a definite point of contact with Ockham. Even if we move from what Raith calls
"any simple trajectory that too easily links Calvin's thought with Scotus's," Calvin's theology cannot
be coherently reconciled with Nicaea any more than Ockham's could.

VII. Calvin on the Trinitarian relations

In particular, without the metaphysical category of relation as an explanatory category, Calvin must
recast the inner-Trinitarian relations as intersubjective relations of will, which violates the pro-
Nicene principle of unity in will. This directly follows Ockham's eradication of the inner-Trinitarian
relations of the Persons as the real metaphysical category underlying the distinction between the
Persons, leaving Ockham with the divine will (identified with the divine essence) as the only
explanatory principle. Rather than the orthodox Nicene position that the unity of the Persons is
constituted by the monarchy of the Father, from whom the Son is begotten and the Spirit proceeds,
Calvin sees the unity instead in terms of the alignment of will between them, taking the
metaphorical Old Testament image of the "divine council" quite literally.

This is evident from Calvin's doctrine of predestination, which Muller calls Calvin's "keystone of a
doctrinal arch" in Christ and the Decree and for which Muller offers the following passages as the
"central definition":

We call predestination God's eternal decree (aeternum Dei decretum), by which he compacted with
himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition, rather,
eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been
created to one or the other of these ends, we speak of him as predestined to life or to death. [Inst.,
III.xxi.5]

As Scripture, then, clearly shows, we say that God once established by his eternal and unchangeable
counsel (immutable consilio) those whom he had determined once for all to receive into salvation,
and those whom, on the other hand, he would devote to destruction. We assert that, with respect to
the elect, this counsel was founded upon his freely given mercy, without regard to human worth;
but by his just and irreprehensible but incomprehensible judgment he has barred the food of life to
those whom he has given over to damnation. Now among the elect we regard the call as a testimony
of election. Then we hold justification another sign of its manifestation, until they come into the
glory in which the fulfillment of election lies. But as the Lord seals his elect by call and justification,
so, by shutting off the reprobate from knowledge of his name or from the sanctification of his Spirit,
he, as it were, reveals by these marks what sort of judgment awaits them. [Inst., III.xxi.7]

Horton describes this "compacting with Himself" as "[t]he intratrinitarian covenant of redemption
made in eternity" that "realizes itself through the mutual working of the Father, the Son, and the
Spirit." He cites Bavinck's statement in Reformed Dogmatics that "Here the basis of all covenants
was found in the eternal counsel of God in a covenant between the very persons of the Trinity, the
pactum salutis (counsel of salvation)." Girolamo Zanchi even has an entire theological treatise titled
On the Triune Elohim that would be one of the most amazing collections of orthodoxy Christian
belief but for taking the divine council in a tritheistic sense ("How could those to whom he spoke
hear and collaborate each in their own way to make man in their own likeness unless they were
substances subsisting through themselves and understanding?"). In short, this notion of the eternal
decree as a compact among the Persons of the Trinity is not an idle metaphor; it a core concept of
Calvinist theology.
But the idea of God "compacting with Himself" is also a clear warning; it is metaphysically absurd for
the Trinity to make an intra-Trinitarian compact when they have a numerically identical will. The only
distinctions in the Trinity are relations of origin, and their unity is constituted in having the same
divine essence and the same divine will, demonstrated by the performance of characteristically
divine activities. The divine power is numerically one just as the divine essence is numerically one; it
is not corcordance of will but identity of will. The idea of the Persons "coming to agreement" in
concordant fashion is simply not Trinitarian; it is tritheist. Calvin's account thus has the Person
concreted by mode of activity rather than mode of existence. That we should see anthropomorphic
and polytheistic expressions of a "divine council" in the Old Testament is not unusual, since it would
be the idiom of the surrounding culture, but it clearly violates Nicene monotheism to take these
references as anything other than a metaphor for consubstantiality. We can also note in passing
Calvin's localization of divine transcendence in the secret decretive will ("the just and irreprehensible
but incomprehensible judgment"), likewise characteristic of the super-voluntarist attempt to explain
everything directly by the divine will.

I should say at this point that not every intersubjective account of the Trinity must be anti-Nicene.
There are Nicene "social Trinitarian" models, such as the speculative theology of John Zizoulas, that
use the metaphysical relations of origin and their eternal activities (perichoresis) as the basis of the
intersubjective account. But these accounts do not equate the Persons with their agency and
voluntary fellowship (operations of will), referring instead to the consubstantial activities of
indwelling and interpenetration resulting from identity of nature. It is Calvin's denial of nature as the
metaphysical basis of unity among the Persons and placement of that unity instead in the concord of
the will among individual agents that makes the orthodox path inaccessible. Calvin must replace the
unity of nature with something else: koinonia in the sense of voluntary and intimate fellowship. And
that defective concept, at the root of Calvin's most fundamental doctrine, is not confined to the
eternal decree; it extends to the doctrine of the Trinity itself.

This anti-Nicene notion of intersubjective fellowship stems directly from Calvin's concept of persona,
which Edmondson summarizes as follows:

To grasp Calvin's understanding of Christ's person, we must first explore his understanding of the
word persona, for we will find that Calvin typically uses the word not only in a manner unrelated to
the psychological coloring with which we might shade it today, but also in a manner differently
related to the medieval theological use of the term in its concern for metaphysical definition.
Boethius' definition of persona as "an individual substance of a rational nature" orients the sense of
this term around a concern for that substantial self. We when speak of personae under this
construal of the term, we are concerned with their essence, abstracted from and preliminary to our
understanding of their engagement with the world. But, in the classical Latin to which Calvin was
committed, persona designated principally one's role or character in a play or office within the fabric
of society -- not the role, character, or office that one simply filled, but that which one was, for one's
role, character, or office defined one's significance within the outworking of the greater whole.
Persona in this classical sense was focused primarily on one's activity within the surrounding
economy, and then, only secondarily, on one's status as a substantial self or personage who fills this
role.

This concept of "role" carries down to the ad extra acts of the Trinity, which in the Nicene unity of
will are strictly one. Julie Canlis observes the unity of operation but misstates its origin when she
says "the West tended to follow Augustine's opera trinitas ad extra indivisa sunt" as contrasted with
what she views as Irenaeus's "economic trinitarianism." On the contrary, it is clear in the scholarship
that the pro-Nicene concept of unity of operation was universal in both East and West. She notes
Calvin's disagreement by saying that "Calvin did not deny Augustine's maxim (I.13.25), but it is not
adequate to describe Calvin's Trinitarian [sic] theology either." She is correct in that Calvin has
substituted concordance of wills for numerical identity of will, but she fails to identify it as anti-
Nicene. Horton similarly states the personal plurality of roles when he notes "the recurring motif
that every external work of the Trinity is done by the Father in the Son through the effective power
of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who brings us into union with Christ even as this same Spirit brought
the Son into union with us through the Incarnation." Again, interpreted in terms of roles in the
actions as opposed to appropriations, this would violate the pro-Nicene unity of the divine will.

This distinction also shows up in Reformed scholastics. Muller cites from Polanus in Christ and the
Decree (p. 149-50). Polanus said that the Persons can engage in ad extra personal acts by "opera
certo modo personalia, which, as works terminating upon created things, involve the whole
Godhead and have as their principle and cause the common power of the divine persons but have as
the terminus of operation (terminus operationis) one of the divine persons by reason of the internal
economy of the Godhead. These latter acts such as the voice of the Father at the baptism of Jesus or
the incarnation, mediation and atoning work of the Son, or the sanctifying work of the Spirit:
considered inchoative, these are the common work of God; considered terminative, they are the
work of individual persons." This can be given an orthodox sense according to appropriations and
the relation in which creatures are placed to a particular Person, as Vidu explains in The Same God
Who Works All Things. But it can only distinguish the work as relating to, not the work in itself. This
distinction is helpfully illustrated by Vidu's response to Oliver Crisp's argument that the Incarnation
must necessarily imply a distinction in action by the Son, implicitly making Polanus's argument here,
which Vidu successfully shows is not consistent with Nicene identity of the will.

[Excursus on John Owen

I have some across a couple of additional works making reference to John Owen's approach to
appropriation of roles, which is essentially the same as Polanus's. In particular, Matthew Barrett's
Simply Trinity and Jake Rainwater's "An Appropriate Pact" in Credo magazine talk about
appropriation within the Trinitarian acts. But appropriation is only permissible in how creatures think
about the Trinity, not with respect to the acts themselves. Incidentally, Vidu makes this same
mistake in his concept of terminus2, which I should have pointed out previously, but it does not
detract from his analysis of what he calls terminus1 (i.e., terminating on a Person as object rather
than subject).
I have reviewed their sources in the tradition on this point, and it is clear what the reason for the
mistake is. Vidu cites Bruce Marshall in Trinity and Truth, who in turn appeals to St. Thomas's
doctrine of appropriations (ST III, p. 32, a. 1, RO 1) to speak of an "immediate agent (the one whose
role terminates the action)." Since St. Thomas's doctrine of appropriation is solely a question of how
creatures think about divine actions, this is unsustainable, and there is no real explanation for why
Marshall or Vidu thinks otherwise. Barrett has a much more interesting citation from St. Basil the
Great's On the Holy Spirit, where Basil calls the Father the "original cause," the Son the "creative
cause," and the Spirit the "perfecting cause." While this could be reconciled with later thinking, it
seems more likely that this stems from "a certain Origenistic inheritance, by which the action of the
Spirit in creation is limited exclusive to rational creatures" (Giulio Maspero, Trinity and Truth, p. 187,
citing A. Meredith, "The Pneumatology of the Cappadocia Fathers and the Creed of
Constantinople"). As Maspero recounts, that error was rectified by Basil's brother Gregory of Nyssa,
and it appears that Barrett has simply followed Basil's earlier mistake.]

The replacement of consubstantial relations with intersubjective communion is equally problematic

for the ad intra acts, the Trinitarian processions. Where orthodox theology holds that these are
eternal relations of origin (communication of essence) between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Calvin
construes perichoresis in terms of interpersonal communion, which leaves him with no real
metaphysical tools to account for personal origin and consubstantiality simultaneously. He ends up
concluding that the Father begets the Son according to person but not essence and that this activity
is not ongoing but completed. Paul Helm covers Calvin's struggles with these doctrines on pp. 53-57
of John Calvin's Ideas, but even he ends up perplexed as to what Calvin is trying to do. It turns out
that Helm has said more than he knows when he cites a relevant observation by Gerald Bray in the
Doctrine of God (p. 203): "Here it is a little surprising that Gerald Bray holds that since according to
Calvin each person of the Trinity is autotheos, this ensures that the relations between them must
must be voluntary, since no one person can claim the authority to impose his will on the others." Yet
this is, of course, the problem; he has constituted the unity of the Trinity by voluntary fellowship
among the Persons, so the consubstantial relations between them are inexplicable. Again, Calvin's
Ockhamist metaphysics has put him at odds with Nicene orthodoxy.

Canlis documents Calvin's anti-Nicene concept of inner-Trinitarian relations in great detail. Canlis
aptly describes the link between the work in the economy and the divine Trinity in Calvin's work as
follows: "it is a robust theology of the communion, cooperation, and interrelationship between
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for the salvation and sanctification of humanity." That description is
completely accurate, in that Calvin takes his economic tritheism into his immanent description of the
Trinity. And Canlis likewise describes the result: "a crucial reorientation away from the standard
reading of Augustine on the Trinity and thus away from some of the traditional 'Latin' emphases that
had marked Western theology for centuries." And while she recognizes that the de Regnon thesis of
the Latin essential Trinity versus Eastern personalist Trinity has been discredited, she appears to be
oblivious to the fact that it was discredited in a significant way by the recognition of the pro-Nicene
principle (unity of operation to unity of essence), exactly the same principle that Calvin rejects in this
account.
Canlis approvingly cites Gerald Bray's statement in The Doctrine of God that "Calvin held to a
doctrine which said that the three persons were coequal in their divinity and united with each other,
not by sharing an impersonal essence, but by their mutual fellowship and co-inherence -- the
Cappadocian doctrine of perichoresis in God, applied at the level of person, not essence." There
could really be no better summary of Calvin's tritheism and his rejection of Nicene doctrine by
putting unity at the level of personal fellowship. This Canlis contrasts with what she calls
"Augustinian Trinitarianism, which renders the three members of the Godhead functionally
indistinguishable," although what she is criticizing is really nothing but the pro-Nicene doctrine of
numerically one divine will. Calvin's tritheist account similarly affirms distinct (as opposed to
appropriated) acts of the Persons in salvation; "Calvin pioneered a Trinitarian [sic] model based on
the mutuality of the work of the Son and Spirit." Canlis correctly observes that "[t]his is a significant
departure from medieval ontology," but fails to see that Calvin's innovation is actually based on
medieval ontology (Ockham's) and that the departure is of this medieval ontology from the Nicene
doctrine of the Trinity.

Finally Canlis summarizes how Calvin's entire theology is rewritten on the basis of tritheism, and I
cannot improve upon her accuracy here:

To summarize, we see two significant innovations in Calvin's doctrine of the Spirit. First, he has
shifted the primary bond between the human Jesus and the Father from divine substance to the
divine person of the Spirit. This opens up a new realm for the Spirit's operation in the life of Jesus,
where the Spirit has its own particular mission from the Father in conceiving, anointing, and
empowering Jesus' mission. In effect, Calvin's approach here redeems us from confused readings of
Chalcedon: rather than two naked natures coexisting without mingling, Calvin treats the whole
person of Christ, who, by the Spirit, is kept truly human and truly divine. The Holy Spirit represents a
new way of being in relationship -- the joining of two unlikes in a relationship of particularity and yet
union. Second, and as a result, Calvin is enabled to shift the bond between God and humanity from a
more Platonic view (based on an ontological similarity between divine and human) to the person of
the Holy Spirit. Once again, an abstract "similarity" or "point of contact" is subverted for a person,
anchoring human participation only in God himself, beginning with the self-gift of God to us in the
person of the Spirit.

We must now be critical of the idea that Calvin received this teaching from Scripture. The Bible
affirms that the Trinity is One God, which should require identity of divine will. The Nicene doctrine
of homoousios is nothing but a restatement that God is One, which is then used to interpret
anthropomorphic references in the Bible and other Biblical language, including references to the
distinct acts of the Persons, in a way that preserves this unity. That interpretation is not reading
Scripture in terms of philosophy, but rather allowing Scripture to interpret Scripture so that it can be
reconciled as a whole. By accepting Ockham's philosophical explanation of persons in terms of
operations of will and making divine unity into voluntary fellowship, Calvin has put his philosophical
notion of persona in apparent conflict with with the Scriptural teaching that God is One. This leads to
a divided, anthropomorphic picture of God "compacting with Himself" in a literal divine council, a
philosophical error that the Scriptural teaching that God is One could have prevented. Calvin's
understanding of divine sovereignty is similarly anthropomorphic, as shown by his account of the
eternal decree and the ad extra acts, which fits into the nominalist "zero-sum" game between divine
and human wills. This does not seem to be letting Scripture determine his idea of divine sovereignty
but rather reading an early modern understanding of personhood into Scripture.

Needless to say, this anti-Nicene position leads to problems with all of the later councils. Canlis's
assertion that other readings of Chalcedon are "confused" actually reinforces that Calvin's reading is
anti-Nicene. His anti-Nicene notion of persona ends up being applied to both the Son and the Spirit.

VIII. The Person of the Mediator

No Calvinist doctrine more clearly opposes Nicene orthodoxy than his view of Christ as Mediator.
The orthodox account of Christ as Mediator is strictly based on the categories of person and nature:
the Word of God assumed anhypostatic human nature into His Person to become Incarnate, and it is
in exactly and only this sense that "there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and
men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5). That is, the Person of the eternal and unchanging Word of
God and the Person of Jesus Christ are absolutely identical in every respect without any distinction
whatsoever.

St. Augustine gives the orthodox summary in On the Predestination of the Saints:

But there is no more illustrious instance of predestination than Jesus Himself, concerning which also
I have already argued in the former treatise; and in the end of this I have chosen to insist upon it.
There is no more eminent instance, I say, of predestination than the Mediator Himself. If any
believer wishes thoroughly to understand this doctrine, let him consider Him, and in Him he will find
himself also. The believer, I say; who in Him believes and confesses the true human nature that is
our own, however singularly elevated by assumption by God the Word into the only Son of God, so
that He who assumed, and what He assumed, should be "one person in Trinity."

Muller (Christ and the Decree, p. 36) criticizes the orthodox view as follows: "The man Jesus or, more
precisely, his human nature was predestined to be the Son of God in incarnation. According to this
formulation it is not the person of the mediator that is predestined but only the abstraction of the
human nature which has no substance independent of the person." Muller's description of
"abstraction" is simply a denial of enhypostasis; the anhypostatic human nature is absolutely real
and concrete when enhypostasized in the Word of God. But Muller's comment is telling in terms of
just how different the Calvinist understanding of persona is from Augustine's. Until concreted by
activity, the person is not even real, merely an "abstraction." This concept of "role" defining the
Person is shown clearly in that the Word of God is taking in His divinity a role appointed to Him by
the divine council.

Calvin thus deploys his anti-Nicene concept of persona as activity to correct St. Augustine (Muller pp.
37 et seq.): "Calvin attempts to move beyond this doctrine to a conception involving the whole
person of Christ, the concrete, historical mediatoris persona.... Calvin must depart from a doctrine
which examines the predestination of an abstract humanity which does not exist apart from the
person of Christ.... Since Christ is mediator, according to both natures, the election of his humanity
correlates with the designation or self-designation of his divinity for the work of redemption. This
correlation appears in the broader context of Calvin's Christology where the kenosis is considered as
part of the status humiliationis and the status humiliationis is applied to the divine as well as the
human nature." Muller describes the doctrine of Polanus as follows: "the subordination of Christ as
mediator and as elect man stands as the foundation of the work of salvation." Edmondson similarly
notes that Calvin speaks of Christ the person as serving in the role of mediator: "Christ's statement
that he teaches what he has received from the Father should be understood in relation to his
subordinate role as the Mediator, and not as he is the eternal Son and Wisdom of God, coequal with
the Father."

Calvin's heterodoxy on this point was raised by the Lutheran Francesco Stancaro in a controversy
that is summarized in Chapter I of Edmondson's Calvin's Christology. Stancaro (correctly) pointed out
the orthodox doctrine that Christ's mediation was solely exercised by His humanity, on pain of
subordinating the Son to the Father in His divinity. This is not to say that it was irrelevant that His
humanity was the humanity of a divine Person, the significance of which St. Anselm and St.
Bonaventure had already pointed out, but the Word of God was not uniquely acting according to His
divinity or otherwise subordinated according to His Person in this role. In what Edmondson describes
as a "dramatic break with the tradition," Calvin again deploys his concept of persona as activity
based on the work of the Mediator. Edmondson notes that "in the midst of all this talk of natures,
the implicit logic in Calvin's discussion is that mediation as an activity is carried out by a person, not
by his natures, though this person certainly is only able to carry out this activity on the basis of his
natures," thus explicating exactly why Calvin's anti-Nicene concept of persona leads to denying
Stancaro's correct and orthodox conclusion. Edmondson correctly summarizes the problem as
follows: "The subordination, then, which Calvin describes, refers not to the ontological relationship
between the Father and the Son, but rather to a loving decision shared by the Father and the Son."
He goes on to say that "[t]he Son's subordination through his condescension is not accidental to
Calvin's theology, proceeding only out of his commitment to hearing how Scripture speaks of Christ
and to the integrity of the complete person of Christ in his office of the Mediator." But apart from
begging the question concerning the misreading of Scriptures by Christians for centuries, it admits
that Calvin has departed from Nicene orthodoxy.

In this Christology, Calvin's equation of person with activity could be confused with Nestorianism,
especially since it uses the term persona in a similar way to how the Nestorians saw the term
prosopon. In both cases, the metaphysical concept is to create unity by unity of an entity's activities,
so that both Calvin and the Nestorians use it as an explanation for the union of the two natures of
Christ. But the Nestorians used this concept with respect to nature so that each nature must have its
proper mode of expression (prosopon), which formed the prosopon of the union when they acted
together. Calvin is instead using this concept of activity for persona, which has tritheist implications
that the Nestorian doctrine does not. For Calvin, to be a person is to have a role, an activity, an
office, as contrasted with the Cappadocian or Augustinian concept of hypostasis as a mode of
existence. In taking this step, Calvin takes a step that Ockham had not taken, thereby moving beyond
the bounds of Nicene orthodoxy.
In Calvin's theology, the person of the Mediator thus serves to constitute the unity of the activities of
the natures in the same way that the prosopon of the union does for Nestorians. The office of the
Mediator is in turn the result of the divine decree, meaning that the new personal role (and activity)
constituting the unity of the natures is not the Word of God itself. Constituting the hypostatic union
of Christ in something other than the Person of the Word of God is the defining characteristic of
Nestorianism, as opposed to the frequently employed caricature of "two Christs." As Fr. Richard
Price has pointed out "The Antiochene theologians Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius, in quest
of a clearer way to express Christ’s unity, were happy to talk of ‘one energy’ and ‘one will’ in Christ,
despite the Antiochene emphasis on the completeness and freedom of Christ’s manhood." Just as
Calvin used the inner-Trinitarian fellowship of will as the basis of union in the Trinity, so he relies on
the activity of the Mediator to unite the natures in Christ.

Calvin does, therefore, end up in the same place as the Nestorians on the communicatio idiomatum.
Helm (p. 77) says that Calvin's view that the communicatio is "figurative, metaphorical, or
'improper' ... coincides with Nestorius," citing JND Kelly's explanation that these terms are attributed
to the "'prosopon of the economy,' i.e., the God-man Who united both natures in His single
prosopon." Because Calvin's person of the Mediator is a role in which divinity and humanity perform
distinct functions, there can be no real communication between the two in the metaphysical sense
without confusing their distinct roles in the work in which they are unified. Moreover, because the
roles are distinct, Calvin maintains that the divine operation cannot "fit" within the person of Jesus
Christ, so that there must be an extra calvinisticum in the person of the Mediator, with its unity
constituted by the work of mediation. Calvinist commentators, including Helm, repeatedly try to
locate the extra within the patristic tradition, but they do not account for the fact that Fathers such
as St. Athanasius are using the metaphysical concept of person as opposed to Calvin's anti-Nicene
persona. Given Calvin's anti-Nicene confusion of person with operation, it is clear that the extra
calvinisticum is only the result of his mistake. Contra Stancaro, Calvin thinks there is too much work
for the human nature to do, and this extra work must be contained within the person of the
Mediator's extra so that it can include the entirety of his mediating activity.

Just as Calvin's move of Trinitarian perichoresis from nature to Person excluded the consubstantial
communion of the Persons, thus leading to tritheism, Calvin's denial of the reality of natures has
excluded the possibility of perichoresis between the natures in the Person of Christ. As with the
perichoresis within the Trinity, the perichoresis between the natures is essential to the coherence of
the Chalcedonian dogma. Moreover, it is the metaphysical basis of salvation in the Nicene account;
the divination of Christ's humanity is the mechanism for our own resurrection and glorification,
becoming God-like in immortality and glory. As Donald Winslow says concerning St. Gregory the
Theologian: "The unity of Christ's person, for Gregory, is theosis" (Dynamics of Salvation, p. 87).
Calvin's defective concept of union by will has vitiated his concept of Christ's person as well; he
cannot conceive of real perichoresis between the natures in the metaphysical unity of person
without mixing or confusion.

IX. Participation and Union with Christ

Calvin's theology of salvation brings together all of his Ockhamist innovations in one place: (1) the
zero-sum account of nature and grace (what Raith calls the "competitive-causal" account), (2) the
tritheist divine council's eternal decree of predestination, (3) the person of the Mediator constituted
by the work of mediation, and (4) the tritheist account of distinct operations for the Son and the
Spirit in this mediation. The Thomist and Scotist antecedents at this point are irrelevant, because
those systems never deny the metaphysical account of hypostasis or the identity of ad extra divine
operations. Regardless of whether Scotus did or did not have responsibility for the nature-grace
competition in (1), that was clearly the accepted understanding of Pelagianism in Calvin's mind at
the time. Then Calvin, completely on his own, has discarded the traditional metaphysical concept of
persona for an Ockhamist view identifying person with operation, resulting (2)-(4) as distinctive
features of his theology that are determinative for later Reformed interpreters, even for Reformed
scholastics such as Vermigli, Polanus, and Zanchi. (In fact, Muller's Christ and the Decree
convincingly argues that every single significant Reformed interpreter follows Calvin's account of
salvation in this regard.)

In brief, Calvin's doctrine centers around the concept of koinonia as voluntary fellowship between
the Persons, each autotheos, in eternity. In their eternal and unchanging counsel, they compact with
one another to create a universe that will demonstrate their attributes and to elect a portion of that
creation to enter into koinonia with them by the work of mediation. Within that divine work of
mediation, the Son has the office of Mediator to condescend to creation (kenosis, status
humiliationis) in order to elevate creation into the koinonia on His behalf, thus serving as the
paradigm of predestination and the elective will. The Spirit has the role of the effective power to
bring the creatures into this koinonia with the Trinity through the Son. These roles correspond to
their eternal actions in the koinonia, where the voluntary communion with the Father brings unity to
the Trinity. Those roles, which correspond to justification and sanctification in the duplex gratia, are
inseparable (being part of the same work) but not identical (contra Nicene orthodoxy). Regarding
the distinct role (the secret power) of the Spirit on those engrafted into Christ to produce union, I
recommend Mark Garcia's description in Life in Christ at pp. 125-140. Horton describes it likewise,
quoting Calvin: "It is by 'the secret energy of the Spirit' that 'we come to enjoy Christ and all his
benefits. To sum up, the Holy Spirit is the bond by which Christ effectually unites us to himself.'"
Notably, Calvin explicitly rejects Osiander's belief that all three Persons of the Trinity are present in
any act of indwelling due to the inseparability of the operations.

Because Calvin accepts a univocal account of divine and human wills, the obstacle to this
participation the divine koinonia is not in principle ontological but rather social/legal, in that we have
not been invited into communion. Notably even the angels require "a peace maker, through whose
grace they may wholly cleave to God," thus achieving the "proper condition of creatures, [which] is
to keep close to God" (quoted from Calvin by Canlis). Adam and the fallen angels were originally
invited into communion with God by the Mediator, an example of the pre-incarnate divine role,
which would have been eternally effectuated by the Spirit. But they broke that communion by their
sin, violating the harmony of will, which left Adam's progeny legally "uninvited" from Eden with an
unpaid debt to divine justice. (Like Scotus, Calvin does not have a coherent explanation in the divine
will for either Adam's fall or that of the demons, an endemic problem for super-voluntarist accounts
that has never been resolved.)
While there is a huge amount of discussion in Reformed scholarship about the etiology of these
beliefs, none of the scholars I have cited disagree about whether those are Calvin's beliefs. We have
scrupulously followed Raith's caution to "engage Calvin's theology and only then discern points of
contact that exist between different strains of thought." The differences from the sources are
likewise agreed. Canlis correctly says that Calvin has broken from Augustine on the inner-Trinitarian
perichoresis; she cites Bray saying the same with respect to the Cappadocians. Muller says that
Calvin has shifted Augustine's predestination of the human nature to the person of the Mediator.
Helm agrees with the assertion that Calvin's view of the communicatio idiomatum is Nestorian and
agrees with Bray that the communion between three autotheos persons must be voluntary if none
has authority over the others. What I have presented is just what Calvin believes and where he has
broken from the tradition in believing it.

That participation-as-koinonia is Calvin's account of the unio mystica with Christ and the duplex
gratia seems undeniable if these many scholars are correct. That this account cannot be reconciled
with the patristic account of theosis, which is based on the perichoresis of the natures in the divine
Person of the Word of God, is equally apparent. (As Dr. Minerd aptly puts it in the video clip linked
above, "Christification is not theosis.") Canlis distinguishes "participation-as-infusion" or "Platonic
participation" from Calvin's "Trinitarian [sic] participation," the latter of which she contrasts with
"Osiander's low appreciation of the Holy Spirit" (i.e., the pro-Nicene view of identical operations).
And while Canlis shows some points of harmony between Calvin and Irenaeus, even she must admit
that "Irenaeus stood right at the junction between Middle and Neoplatonism, deftly using
participation for his Christian purposes." She likewise traces the differences between Calvin's view
and the mystical theology of ascent. Her conclusion is essentially identical to Garcia's critique of
Tamburello (pp. 69-74) regarding Calvin's antecedents in St. Bernard, which maintains that the
continuity would come at the price of interpreting the terms so broadly that one would sweep over
the critical differences such as the ones Canlis identifies. Raith's analysis of Aquinas is similarly
accurate, and he identifies exactly the same duplex gratia and the work of the Spirit as key elements
of Calvin's theology, offering no real solution as to how they can be reconciled. Aspray's analysis of
participation in Vermigli likewise follows the lines of the duplex gratia. Letham and Horton provide
similar evaluations of the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis, and while there is some difference
between their critiques, both end with the same model of the duplex gratia and koinonia.

At some point, we must let Calvin speak for himself. He doesn't believe in identical operations,
although he does believe that the work of mediation is an inseparable operation, which is why the
duplex gratia of justification and sanctification can't be severed. But if Calvin believed in identical
operations as opposed to inseparable operations, he wouldn't have disagreed with both Stancaro
and Osiander on that specific point when it was raised in the context of their separate disputes with
him. He wouldn't have spoken of the decree on predestination as a compact that God makes with
Himself. And while later Reformed thinkers may have differed from Calvin on some issue or other,
these ideas of the eternal and immutable counsel as compact, the person of the Mediator, the
distinct roles of the Son and Spirit in mediation, and the duplex gratia remain firmly embedded in
this "clash of wills between God and man" that is super-voluntarism. This is an anti-Nicene theology
from start to finish.
X. How Should We Then Live?

Knowing truly what Calvin's theology was, I now offer the same question to Calvinists that the
Reformed scholar Francis Schaeffer offered after his own critique of Western society: now that we
see the problem, what should we do? Note that I am not disagreeing with these many distinguished
Calvinist scholars on their conclusions; as far as I can tell, they are all exactly right. But if they are all
right, then Calvin has denied the identical operations required by Nicaea, which means he cannot
consistently say that Jesus is the One God.

For my fellow Catholics, I do not see much good in reading anti-Nicene theologians except as
cautionary tales. I would put Calvin with Eunomius and Nestorius, his fellow "logic-choppers," as
theologians that we should study only with extreme care and with a clear understanding of the
threat they pose to belief in Jesus as the One God. The risks of failing to do so are substantial.
Maurice Wiles chronicles the revival of Arianism among eighteenth-century British intellectuals in his
book Archetypal Heresy: Arianism through the Centuries. More recently, the German scholar
Friedrich Loofs led a purported rehabilitation of Nestorius based on the discovery of the Bazaar of
Heracleides, in which Nestorius articulated his belief that he had been vindicated by Chalcedon. This
only reinforced the chimerical idea of an orthodox Antiochene Christology that had supposedly been
balanced against the Alexandrian Christology of St. Cyril at Chalcedon, and it has taken decades of
careful scholarship, such as that of Anthony McGuckin, to debunk that particular myth and to
reaffirm Cyril's doctrine that Jesus Christ just is the Word of God. This is not to say that the exact
philosophical exposition of the union has not been a subject of some discussion, as documented in
Christopher Beeley's The Unity of Christ, but there was no orthodox Nestorian position being
balanced at Chalcedon. The lesson is clear: there is a degree of temptation in following intelligent
men who have made serious errors, all the while thinking that we are smart enough to avoid them.

From the pro-Nicene position, I would suggest that we take Calvin himself seriously: "Thus those
ancient Councils of Nice, Constantinople, the first of Ephesus, Chalcedon, and the like, which were
held for refuting errors, we willingly embrace, and reverence as sacred, in so far as relates to
doctrines of faith, for they contain nothing but the pure and genuine interpretation of Scripture,
which the holy Fathers with spiritual prudence adopted to crush the enemies of religion who had
then arisen." I agree with him. The pro-Nicene Fathers who contributed to Constantinople I and
those who have followed them to the present day were following Scripture in affirming the doctrine
of identical operations. Calvin has not, which means he is not following the pure and genuine
interpretation of Scripture. He has introduced anthropomorphic personhood in early modern
medieval philosophy into the sublime majesty of the One God.

Calvin's deviation from tradition is not without consequence. Even apart from the numerous
problems that TUR documents, there has been tremendous fallout in theology from the conflict
between the doctrine of persons and the divine simplicity. James Dolezal's book All That Is in God:
Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism bemoans the rise of
"theological mutualism," in which personal relationship with God is held to be impossible unless God
is somehow mutable in response to us. But Calvin has put the same kind of intersubjective
fellowship in God with his account of persona and koinonia, so how ought one expect anything
different? As a defender of divine simplicity, where is Dolezal's concern to defend identity of
operations, which Calvin denies with his account of mediation and his duplex gratia? What about the
Word of God being subordinated in His divinity and His person as an object of predestination?
Calvin's anti-Nicene concept of person and his attacks on divine simplicity are responsible for the
deviations Dolezal identifies even among his Reformed confrères; where is the criticism of Calvin?
These are questions that scholars such as Muller and Helm, who have commended Dolezal's work,
need to ask themselves, since they are the ones who have so accurately summarized Calvin's
theology.

What I would like to see from Calvinists is to pick a side, so that we can all have honest discussions.
There are anti-Nicene and anti-Chalcedonian churches that are the subject of ongoing ecumenical
discussions, so it is not as if conciliar fidelity is a prerequisite to be taken seriously. Likewise,
nominalism is hardly an unusual position to have in modern society, so to admit that Calvinism is not
Thomist or Scotist or Palamite would hardly be a surprise to anyone. Only admit that your faith is not
Irenaeus's or Augustine's or Anselm's or Aquinas's or the Cappadocians', and there is a reasonable
baseline for discussion. And to be fair, Calvinism is the first truly modern religion, breaking from
tradition in a way that not even Lutheranism did. Why not own that role and be openly critical of the
entire idea of Nicene orthodoxy? Perhaps Calvin has, by discarding his theological past, returned to a
Hebraic mode of thinking with Paul that was inherently more polytheistic, so that this is a return to
what the Bible actually meant. What I don't understand is wearing a cloak of orthodoxy that simply
doesn't fit, which doesn't serve the truth at all.

XI. Was It All Bad?

As pessimistic as I am about Calvinism as a theology, I cannot say that modernity as a whole has
been a bad thing. Despite the protestations of some dyed-in-the-wool Aristotelico-Thomists, I do not
believe that Aristotle's sciences are all that relevant to modern science except at a very high level,
and that is a good thing. The early Christian Fathers were realistic about what philosophy could tell
us and what human reason could hope to achieve. In responding to Eunomius, St. Basil the Great
pointed out that we couldn't even comprehend the nature of corn, as recounted in Scot Douglass's
Theology of the Gap. St. Augustine was likewise skeptical of human reason for much the same
reason; we are extended in time, and as creatures experiencing this distension, we are limited. Even
the Aristotelian St. Thomas recognized that even the small bits of truth we were able to extract were
the result of laborious study, and he attributed predestination and Providence to the practical
knowledge of God, which remains inscrutable to us.

Where I think that medieval philosophy went wrong was in seeing things that they shouldn't have
been able to see based on the limits of human reason. There is certainly a "negative" meaning of
desacralization that denies to God even the role that He should have in creation and that He has
revealed to us. But there is an entire superstructure of explanation that one can build onto those
metaphysical assumptions, far beyond what is strictly necessary to affirm what is revealed to us and
what we can know in our creaturely capacity as limited beings, let alone what are strictly
incomprehensible theological mysteries like the Trinity, the Incarnation, divine eternity, or the exact
mechanism of creation or Providence. Put another way, there is a sacred cosmos, which embraces
God as the Creator and Jesus Christ as His Only-Begotten Son, and then there are sacred cosmologies
that serve as explanatory paradigms in areas like science and culture that may be beyond the level of
confidence that our finite reason can give us.

[Update: Since writing the piece, I have thought at greater length about the motivation for Calvin's
political views, and I believe that his views on political sovereignty were actually based on a Christian
theological perspective: rejection of idolatry of political sovereignty. This is, it seems to me, a real
and valuable contribution to Christian theology, just as Luther's emphasis on justification was a real
and valuable corrective to the excesses of nominalism in medieval soteriology. This was a new
realization for me, and I wanted to give Calvin his proper due for having made this contribution.]

Those sacred cosmologies are, in my view, like the Trinitarian doctrines of the early Church. They
have problems and anomalies that ultimately require them to be revised. They cannot explain
everything they need to explain; alternatively, they may try to explain something that cannot be
explained. We can accept St. Maximus the Confessor's idea of a sacred cosmos centered around the
Incarnate Word without accepting his sacred cosmology in which animal death was something that
came only after Adam's fall. We can accept a God Who orders the cosmos in His Providence without
St. Bonaventure's celestial hierarchy extending all the way down to the motion of the planets. We
can accept the hierarchy of sciences in their objects, down from theology studying divine revelation
and metaphysics examining "being as such," without then looking to Christian dogma to explain
biological science. We can accept divinely established authority in the Church without committing
ourselves to integralism that rules out pluralism and religious freedom. That the Reformation forced
the Catholic Church to confront the limits of Her explanatory paradigms was not a bad thing. I would
argue that we are all better for it, culminating in recognition of Vatican II of the political right to
religious freedom.

At the same time, we cannot disregard the fundamental basis for the sacred cosmos: the Father, His
Only-Begotten Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever. And in that respect, I
believe Calvin has gone much too far.