Matt Postiff's Blog

First, let us be sure we understand the term "Law." The Law (capital L) refers to the Mosaic Law given at Mount Sinai to Moses. It started with the 10 commandments in Exodus 20 and has many other elements to it. Some say there are 613 specific commandments. In any case, the whole Mosaic Law is what we are referring to. Second, we must understand that no one has or could fulfill that Law, apart from Jesus Christ. All people find even the 10 commandments impossible to follow, particularly when considering Christ's high standard given in the Sermon on the Mount.

So this brings us to the question of how Jesus fulfilled the Law. He said He did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17-18). There are two ways that He did so. First, he perfectly kept all the commands and did fall short in any one of them. From the very beginning, at His birth, until the end of His life, he did no sin (1 Peter 2:22), he knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21), in Him was no sin (1 John 3:5), and He was totally without sin (Heb. 4:15). This is sometimes called Christ's "active obedience."

The second way in which Christ fulfilled the Law was by taking upon Himself all of the penalty of breaking the Law. The Law also has penalties in it for any infraction of the Law. Now despite the fact that the Lord Jesus did not have any infractions, He still took upon Himself the penalty of being cursed by hanging on a tree (Gal. 3:13). This is sometimes called Christ's "passive obedience."

In other words, the Lord fulfilled the Law as to its positive demands (actively doing all of them), and He also fulfilled the Law as to its penalties (passively taking them).

There is a third way in which Christ fulfills the Law today, and that indirectly is through believers. Romans 8:4 says that "the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." This does not mean that believers keep the Law directly, for Christians are not under the law per se (Rom. 6:14), and Rom. 10:4 says "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes." Putting these facts together, we understand that while believers are not keeping the Law directly, and they are not trying to do so in order to attain a righteous standing before God, they are, by their very nature as Spirit-indwelt Christians, fulfilling the righteous standard of the Law in their behavior (albeit imperfect) and also because of their perfect standing in Christ. He fulfilled the Law so that we, who could not and cannot perfectly do so, might be seen by God as in Christ and so fulfilling the righteous requirement of the Law.

I plan to work on a lengthy paper critiquing the doctrine of middle knowledge. A question that arose in my studies relates to the relationship of open theism to middle knowledge. One reason that this question arose is when people ask me what middle knowledge means, they often assume it is related to open theism. It also interested me that two authors (David Basinger and William Hasker) wrote in both Clark Pinnock et al., The Openness of God as well as Hasker, Basinger, and Eef Dekker (eds.), Middle Knowledge: Theory and Applications. Why would they write in both books if there was not some kind of relationship between the doctrines?

My conclusion: Open Theism has nothing to do with Middle Knowledge (hereafter referred to as OT and MK), except that OT proponents must discuss MK because it is a competing theory as to how God knows things and yet maintains human libertarian freedom. The relationship between the two doctrines is actually an adversarial one, for two reasons.

First, OT proponents cannot accept that God knows everything in advance-and that is a basic proposition in the MK system. Basinger writes, "However, proponents of the open view do not believe that God possesses middle knowledge--that God always knows beforehand what would happen, given each option open to us. In fact, we do not even believe that God always knows beforehand exactly how things will turn out in the future--that God possesses simple foreknowledge. " (The Openness of God, p. 163). He continues on the same page, "But since we believe that God can know only what can be known and that what humans will freely do in the future cannot be known beforehand, we believe that God can never know with certainty what will happen in any context involving freedom of choice." Obviously, OT cannot accept MK because of this belief. MK implies that God takes no risks, but OT proponents such as Sanders believes God does take risks because He does not know the future exhaustively.

Second, OT proponents believe there are logical and philosophical problems with the idea of MK. Sanders writes, "Open theists find middle knowledge unattractive due to the philosophical problems and questions surrounding its practical usefulness. " (John Sanders, The God Who Risks, p. 220). Among these are the too-strong view of providence and its handling of the problem of evil (see Hasker, Openness, pp. 145-47). We could add other objections to MK: the grounding objection, the question of the truth of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, the very question of whether such knowledge actually exists, and if God could possess it if it did exist.

Bibliography:

• Hasker, William, David Basinger, and Eef Dekker, eds. Middle Knowledge: Theory and Applications. Frankfurt am Main; New York: Peter Lang, 2000.
• Pinnock, Clark, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger. The Openness of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994.
• Sanders, John. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence. Revised Edition. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007.

In my December 7 post, I said, "I cannot grasp something that is ‘already' true and ‘not yet' true at the same time and in the same sense." It seems to me that this is just another way of expressing the logical principle we call the "law of non-contradiction."

My attentive blog reader asked if this statement is contradicted by the Christian doctrine of adoption. After all, Romans 8:15-17 teaches that we have received the Spirit of adoption as sons (see also Gal. 4:5-7). But then Romans 8:23 says that we wait eagerly for adoption as sons. So are we adopted or are we not? Or are we "already adopted but not yet adopted?" I suspect many Christians would by default lean simply to the first "leg" of the already-not yet statement, namely that we are already adopted. I would agree. The resolution of the supposed "already-not yet" conundrum comes when we see that Paul clarifies what he means by adoption in both cases. In Romans 8:15, he speaks of our receiving the Spirit of adoption. In Romans 8:23, he seems to refer back to that adoption as the "first fruits of the Spirit." In the latter half of v. 23, he speaks of adoption, "that is, the redemption of our body."

Thus, we see that the doctrine of adoption is not an exception to what I said above. It is not true that we are adopted at a singular time and in a singular sense in two different ways. Rather, we are adopted in one sense of the term presently, and we will be adopted in another sense of the term in the future. I believe a case can be made that "adoption" encompasses these two related truths which are distinct and can be carefully distinguished so as not to violate our sense of the law of non-contradiction.

Paul uses the term "adoption" to encompass both the realities of present receipt of the Spirit of adoption and the future reality of the resurrection and glorification of our bodies. There is some tension here. I will quote from Moo, Romans, NICNT, p. 521, who expresses this tension: "Christians, at the moment of justification, are adopted into God's family; but this adoption is incomplete and partial until we are finally made like the Son of God himself (v. 29). This final element in our adoption is the ‘redemption of our bodies.' ‘Redemption' shares with ‘adoption' and many other terms in Paul the ‘already-not yet' tension that pervades his theology, for the redemption can be pictured both as past and as future." So can we unravel the tension? I believe we can. The resolution is simply that there are certain elements of the adoption "umbrella term" that are complete for the believer, and there are certain other elements that are not. To me, this does not contribute to a kind of vacillation: "Am I adopted or am I not?" It simply points out that I am adopted and awaiting all the benefits that come with the package. I'm a son and an heir, I just have not received the inheritance as of yet.

Just thinking out loud here...I thought about entitling this entry "Enough Already Not Yet Enough" but I wondered if that would confuse the issue! I don't know about you, but the "Already/Not Yet" view of the fulfillment of prophecy has been grinding on my theological nerves for some time. Frankly, it seems to be theological double-talk. I cannot grasp something that is "already" true and "not yet" true at the same time and in the same sense. Is the kingdom of God already inaugurated, or is it not yet? Progressive dispensationalists will answer "yes," just like I answer "yes" to the question "Do you want pie or ice cream?" I want both pie and ice cream! Progressives want both "inaugurated" and "not" at the same time. Granted, the meaning of this phrase seems to be "already in the spiritual sense" and "not yet in the final sense" but the finer points don't always come across clearly.

Let me give an example. Sometimes folks say "we are already righteous but we are not yet righteous." This has the same already/not yet flavor to it. (The terminology has crept out of its original "prophetic" domain into other areas.) But if we specify our words more carefully, we note that believers already have been given a righteous standing before God, which is a positional righteousness. But believers have not yet been transformed to be fully without sin, which is a practicing righteousness. The two "legs" of the already/not yet statement are not the same type of legs. One is positional, and one is practical. The already/not yet statement becomes really no more than a play on words where one word is used in two senses. It seems that the already/not yet terminology embraces theological ambiguity. We ought to urgently dismiss such ambiguity as we press for more theological clarity, not relying on a word-play type of statement in our theological expression.

Thoughts?