Episode 143: Dr. K.J. Drake on the Extra Calvinisticum

Dr. KJ Drake works through the history of the doctrine known as the Extra-Calvinisticum in his book The Flesh of the Word: The Extra Calvinisticum from Zwingli to Early Orthodoxy (Oxford University Press, 2021. Although this is not a popularly discussed doctrine it drives at the heart of what the Reformers were debating in the early years of the Protestant Reformation. Dr. Drake provides a window into how the Reformers answered the question: “where is Christ after the resurrection?”

Timestamps:

3:56- Calvin and the Hypostatic Union

21:12- Theological Paradigms and Historical Perspectives

37:42- Lutheran v. Reformed Reason

54:36- Where is the Body of Christ?

Episode Transcript:

Charles Kim 0:00

Hello and welcome to history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim. With me this week will be KJ Drake. Dr. Drake is now academic dean at the Indianapolis Theological Seminary, and KJ and I did our PhDs together at St. Louis University. He worked in modern theology and reformation theology, as you will soon find out. And I of course, worked in patristic Christianity. But it was pleasure to get to talk with a KJ about his dissertation on what is known as the extra Calvin mysticum. And this, as he's going to show is a little bit of a misnomer. It was an idea that reformers thought about prior to Calvin. But this is a bit of a deep dive into reformation theology, especially Reformed theology, which is a little bit new for us. Although I do come from a reformed background, I have not spent so much time studying the reformers, as much as I have, of course, the early Christian theologians. So it was a pleasure to get to talk with KJ about some of the way that ideas and theology that I've learned and studied has been developed in the modern period.

KJ Drake 1:12

So thank you to KJ, hope you'll enjoy this interview, we will have a few more energy interviews coming coming up one with Emily Daimler Winkler, and I'm still fixing the audio to a interview that I did with Zack Hicks on reformation worship. So we're going to do a little bit more modern stuff, the next three or four will be more modern theology, reformation theology, and, and we're also trying to get some episodes together with Tom and Trevor. So be looking out for that. Please do rate us review us on iTunes. Let us know what you think it's been great to get some emails from, I got an email from a student who is at Biola University is getting ready to start their master's in classical theology. Great to hear from him. And so just thank thanks again, for all of your input. It really does help us know who's listening and why you're enjoying the show. So thank you very much. Without further ado, here's my conversation with KJ Drake, right. So this week on a history of Christian theology, or well, I say this week, and I know I do these bi weekly, whatever. Today I'm talking with KJ Drake, who has written the flesh of the word, the extra Calvinists to come from Zwingli to early orthodoxy with Oxford University Press, and KJ was at Redeemer College in Canada that has now taken a new position at is it the I don't remember even the name of the seminary, but you're in Indianapolis, Indianapolis Theological Seminary. Okay. All right. Very good. Very good. And before we recorded, we were talking about how excited KJ was to move back into doing historical and systematic theology, which fits very well with this book. Right. So this is his work, it's a work that comes out of your dissertation. And, yeah, so it's, it's a very rich study, with with a lot of very detailed analysis and research. But I wanted to begin just with a sort of a broad question. So you hear the phrase extra Calvinists to come. And you know, a lot of this is going to be pretty, you know, sort of scholastic

and systematic, heavy but you you put this question, at the very end of the book, you say the extra Calvinists to come can stem from the simplest of questions, where is Christ's body now? So, can you can you give us a little bit of a of a, you know, a synopsis of the book, how does the book seek to answer that question? And why is this? It also relates to the question, why is this pertinent to sort of 21st century theology?

Speaker 2 3:56

Great, thanks, John, happy to be with you. So, that question of where is Christ body now really does drive this discussion in the Reformation, but also beyond. So the term extra Calvinists come can seem very scholastic very obscure. But what it's really getting at is how do we understand Jesus as both fully God and fully man with reference to space and location? So how can the omnipresent God take on a spatially located human flesh? And how does that play out not just in the Incarnation itself, but throughout his entire ministry, through His death, resurrection, and especially the ascension? So when we think about the extra colonists to come as it came about in the Reformation, it was this question of what happens with Christ's body when he ascends into heaven? does it remain a spatially located body in some sense, while he remains divinely omnipresent? So that's where we get the idea of extra Calvinists to come. The, the original term is from Lutheran polemics, which means that crudely translated that Calvinists beyond idea, so extra here means beyond. And so what it's really saying is that Christ is fully within his human nature, but simultaneously is beyond it from the moment of incarnation, but also perpetually, that Christ does not give up his divine prerogatives as he becomes incarnate, but adds to himself a new nature, with new qualities such as spatial finitude. So when we think about the extra Calvinist to come, it is really a question of how do we conceive of Christ's presence to us, and yet his absence, because there is a sense where Christ says simultaneously, where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am with them also. But at the same time, I will not always be with you, I go away. So how do we reckon with the presence and absence of Christ in this time between his first and second comic, and the extra Calvinistic come which that term denotes the Reformation debate, which I discuss in my book, but really transcends that across church history of understanding the exalted ministry of Christ, and even the creed? You know, he ascended into heaven. And so the extra Calvinism is us reflecting on the ascension, and the two natures of Christ.

Charles Kim 6:30

Yeah, yeah. Well, and so, you know, we can think of Caledonian debates, but really just it I think the book is, as I was going through it, it just really forces you to say, what is the sort of the perennial question that the Christian must ask? What does it mean for the divine to also human, in the person of Christ? How is that even possible? And I just think, as you were saying, All that I, I have taught a lot of Sunday school classes. And usually I get brought in to teach early church history and early Christian history, which of course, makes sense, and I enjoy it. But when I tried to frame for, like, classes, you know, what is at stake in Cal Seaton? What do we mean and Christology? I realized that I have to begin with, what does it mean to be human? And what does it mean to be divine? Except for I also did run into the problem of how do we use those terms of the 21st century, which is not the same thing as how those terms are used in the fourth century, the third century, something like that, and this case, but you know, which makes me wonder, I guess I could let you respond to that generally. But also, do we think that it by the referent the time that this term comes up as reformation? You know, essentially, we're there's not actually as much discontinuity between the third and fourth centuries and the 15th centuries, as there may be in the last several 100.

Speaker 2 8:00

No, I would agree and that question that you're giving, how do we reckon with a true humanity, and true divinity is at stake now, all the disputants in this debate, whether it's Luther Zwingli, Calvin, etc, do degree or do agree on God, right? He is omnipresent, He is eternal, he is unchanging. And that is probably the thing that has taken the biggest hit in modern theology, as so called Classical theism has been challenged from many fronts, theologically, and philosophically, I still think it is a very tenable enviable position. But the question that really kind of emerged between Luther and Zwingli was what do we mean by true humanity? Yeah. Are we and that to be actually has a long tradition? In the reformed or sorry, in the Christian kind of debates? What does it mean for us to be human and remain human? Is there an elevation of human nature with the incarnation and salvation to something that is beyond what we think of humanity today? And so you could see this in any discussions of Theosis, or deification, like, what does that mean? So for Luther, we see a sense of Christ's humanity partakes uniquely, of divine attributes specifically on the presence, and others, like Zwingli will argue that can't be the case. Because to be human, is to be spatially finite, is to be spatially limited. And so to talk about an infinite humanity, is to cease talking about humanity. Right. And so this is kind of balled up in that question of, you know, you could even say although they don't talk about these terms, grace and nature, does Grace transcend nature and take us to something new, or does Grace perfecting nature in its own self or restore nature in that way, and because we There's so much you can kind of read him almost however you want on that question.

Charles Kim 10:05

Well, that just makes me okay. So, I, you know, so I was trained by a by an Augustinian scholar who specialized in deification in Augustine. So it is part of this extra Calvinistic comm. Do you take it to mean that, that the Reformation use of it resists Theosis? Because the osis is too much a sort of collapse? I don't know collapsing the Creator creation distinction, or at least sort of overwhelming the categories or something?

Speaker 2 10:38

Yeah, so that's, that's a really tricky question. While I was at SLU, I did an entire seminar on Theosis. And deification across the tradition. However, I my, my read on, it totally depends on what you mean by the term. There, there might be dozens of definitions of what we mean by Theosis, or deification, or Theo coisas. Right? I don't find the term particularly helpful, because I do think it like it's one of those terms, you're like, Well, to be made divine. Well, we don't actually mean to be made divide, but to participate in a relation with the divine. It's like, okay, but why use the term that says to be made divine like that might not be the best term. But the idea of deification, if by that we mean a union with Christ, that is divine in the sense of he is the Divine One, and we are brought to the fullness of what it means to be humanity, which is to be the image of God. Right. Then I do think you could talk about a reformed Theosis. And there are many who do but it's always going to be crystal logically mediated. Yeah, and I do think from McKinney's work, that's what Augustine ultimately argues like for Augustine there, there is no blending of the Creator creature distinction and Theosis that that always maintains a sharp division between the creator and the creature. And as long as a doctrine of deification or Theosis, attends to that very carefully and attends to the goodness of creation. Right. Our finitude is not a problem. Yeah, it's, you know, part of the good of being a creature is being finite being limited. Now those things can our qualities might be elevated, but they're never elevated to something that makes us no longer human, just like the the resurrected Christ is still a human being, but glorified. So I think there's room but I would just push a, are we getting anything out of that term that something like glorification and union with Christ could not get us? And there has been a real resurgence in thoughts on deification and Theosis in the 20th century? I think something that's very good. But it wasn't really the main way that the Western theologians talked about this, even though I think they had the concepts that people like about those terms. without necessarily needing that as a prime category for human salvation. Yeah. I do think when you get into the essence, energies, distinctions of the east and how it's worked out there, I'm less interested in that. I wouldn't claim to be an expert in any way. But I do think that's probably a different doctrine of Theosis than you see in the West.

KJ Drake 13:20

Yeah, and we've had my comments on the podcast talking about Theosis. And I was gonna say Tolkien. Now, Taurus. Taurus. Yeah. So yeah, how habits does or habits, I always get it wrong? Yeah, he doesn't utterance but anyway, it was a doctrine that I was kind of, had had been interested in. I think I yeah, I have. I think all of that makes a lot of sense. And you're right, it is a kind of Minority Report, as it were, even in Aquinas and an Augustine. But it just struck me as interesting. Yeah. Well, but

Speaker 2 13:59

it does relate to that question, which is one of the central ones, as you mentioned, how does the divine and the human relate? And how do we is that question of the humanity and divinity of Christ, grace and nature, the creator and creature like these are all distinctions that have relations that we can never, we can never absolute ties, that distinction, right? Like, even though the Creator creature distinction is, you know, is complete in some way. It's not so complete that God does not interact with his creation. And so there is this tension where the tradition has always refused to make these distinctions too simple. Yeah, but also refuses to annihilate the distinctions entirely. Yeah. And a lot of that debate goes into how do we navigate these properly, in light of the tradition and the scriptural witness?

KJ Drake 14:53

Yeah, it strikes me just as we're talking to the sort of famous, the locus classicus for all of this. We Be Athanasius God became man, so that man might become God. And so that's sort of the most literal way to phrase that. But it strikes me maybe that the the phrase that that we most easily Passover is become. And so the becoming this is actually really the part that's the the hard part. That is, that God always was, is. So we have that sort of is becoming distinction which is classic in Greek philosophy, you know, what God is the is the thing that is, and we are the thing that becomes, as as humans. And so really the essential distinction there God is what is we are what become. And so becoming God already assumes, in some sense that we can never be the same God in the same way, that God is God, we have to become it. And in which case, it presumes a sort of it is actually a distinction. You know, we I feel like oftentimes I see people say will be we become like God, which is fine. I mean, you can add that qualifier. But in some sense, if you if you understand what it means to become, that's already saying, it's not the same thing.

Speaker 2 16:19

Yeah. And I do think that Athanasios is also working much more with the concept of divine and almost analogy there. Now, he doesn't have that yet. But he's very careful to maintain the creature creature distinction throughout his work, right? That's the entire debate with Athanasius. Like, Christ is divine, because he does divine things that only God can do. And he does actually maintain the extra Calvinistic, probably, some of the earliest expressions of it are in Athanasius. So he says, I actually have this pulled up nice. Athanasia says, For he was not as might be imagined, circumscribed in the body, nor while present in the body was he absent elsewhere, nor while he moved in the body was the universe let void of his working and Providence, but thing most marvelous word as he was, so far from being contained by anything, he rather contained all things himself. So even Athanasius, we see this idea of the coming of Christ in the incarnation was not an abandonment of his divinity and divine prerogatives and Providence and creation, but was taking to himself a new mode in the human nature of limitation. So he was only he was in the body, obviously, fully, but he was also simultaneously beyond it. So I think even as we think of at the nation, Athanasios and deification, the greater creature distinction and even the extra Calvinists to come is maintained.

Charles Kim 17:49

Well, and so one of the things that I was thinking about asking you, as I was reading the book is even this the use of this term Calvinists to come. So we've just said the Calvinists to come, is found in Athanasius. And so is there another phrase that you are, you know, thinking of that that might be more useful than Calvinistic. Um, I mean, you have to use it for the book. I get that, because that's the way that it works out the Reformation debates. But as you say, this is a this is a doctrine, this is a teaching that is that has pre existed the Reformation debates. So can you say something about the use of that phrase? And maybe, is there a better term and other term?

Speaker 2 18:33

Yeah, so the the term extra Calvinists become itself rises in the 1620s, in an actual intro, Lutheran debate between the faculties of to begin and giesen over disputes within how the Lutherans work this out, but other scholars, so the reformed don't ever take this term up for their own doctrine until the 20th century, because you kind of need a term to discuss the underlying conceptual framework. Yeah. One of the first callers on this was a guy named David Willis and he actually proposed the term extra catalystic COMM or extra patristic comm other scholars who have pointed to Peter martyr famiglie, who I treat in the third chapter of the book said, we should call it the extrovert MC Lian them my position would be like, actually, this is labeling it the wrong way. It's not a unique belief of any specific group, whether that's Calvin or vertically or Zwingli, or even the Patristics. In many ways, I think we should shift the term to a much more crystal logically focused label, and I would prefer the term of the extra carnem. So beyond the flesh, so that way, we're saying this is actually a standard doctrine, especially if Caledonian Christology, and if we want to reflect on Christ's relationship in the single person between the two natures, both in the flesh and beyond the flesh, that might be a better way to discuss this. So we're not fighting about who owns this, did Calvin come up with it, but you certainly didn't And that way, I think it could actually find a place of more proper reflection. Because there is a thing in theology, if you don't have a kind of place for it in the systematic discussion, it kind of falls away, right? And so having a term of like, Oh, we're going to discuss the extra carnem gives you a set of questions, and a way to trace through the tradition on this point. Yeah. Well, if you say the extra Calvinist to come, you don't look before Calvin. Yeah. And one of the one of the things my book was trying to show is that Calvin, even in the reformation is not the first one to make this point, that Zwingli is actually the originator of bringing this position into the debates of the Reformation, especially over the Lord's Supper. And so Zwingli, even early on in 1525, will say, we need to understand the Lord's Supper in light of the ascension of Jesus and the true human humanity that's ascended. And so that is one of the contributions of my book trend to show that Swingley is actually the originator of this in the debates of the Reformation, but not the concept itself, for which he draws on Augustine, specifically, and other others of the fathers.

Charles Kim 21:12

Yeah. Well, and just as we're, as we're making these kinds of conversations, we're drawing in Athanasius. We're drawing in Augustine, you're, you know, Zwingli. Luther, it just sort of strikes me that, you know, one question we people often are that I thought about, I guess I should say, I was trained in a Catholic institution for my PhD. I have a master's degree from Princeton seminary, which is whatever that is, and but we have this, you know, it's interesting how important the whole tradition is here. Right. So this is part of what your book shows? Well, I guess your book is very focused on on this this particular area area, but your broader work, it seems fits very well with this idea that the reformation is not just a not just a total break, right. Not just like a whole new moment in history. No, this is a this is an ongoing conversation. Trying to, you know, yeah, I mean, I, you know, we can use retrieval, there's probably problems with that. But, you know, could you say something about what it means to reason theologically, as a Christian, that this is just a natural way to do theology?

Speaker 2 22:28

Yeah. And that's very much what's going on in these debates. In the Reformation, they are not attempting to do anything new. That's why they consider themselves reforming. Right, both Luther and Zwingli are trying to return to what they consider a pure expression of the Christian faith in dialogue with the with the fathers, but also with L generally called Calvin calls them the better scholastics. And so there are arguments to be made that most of what's being pushed against is certain forms of late medieval scholasticism specifically in some of these debates, and also then what was perceived as clerical abuse, or kind of the rise of new movements. But when they're talking theologically, especially in the doctrine of God and the doctrine of Christ, it's the Catholic doctrine. It's the it's the broad orthodox doctrine of the Kraits. Kelvedon, comes up repeatedly in this it's often are we being true to the Caledonian deposit of faith. Now it doesn't have an independent authority, as if the issue is you're disagreeing with Kelvedon, when he does have the issue of they all agreed that it was a right rendering of the scriptural account. And so when you see these debates, they'll move from quoting the fathers to executing scripture to having philosophical reasoning come in about what is a plausible or accurate understanding of, you know, human embodiment? And also why does this matter to the activities of the church and piety and ritual practice? And they are not trying to innovate, right? Innovation is always something that they were trying to say, no, no, no, no, I'm not innovating. That's that's a bad thing in both the medieval and the Reformation, because not because they were afraid of what's new. But their thought was, if I'm saying it for the first time, the odds of it being correct, are probably pretty small. There were more radical aspects of the Reformation that were innovative, such as the rationalists, who become the Smithsonian's and parts of the Anabaptist movement, we're really trying to wipe the slate clean, and go back behind the entire tradition, and start from a kind of almost a restorationist of the New Testament Church as they understood it. But that was not the mission of Luther or Zwingli or Calvin or any of these people. They were trying to persuade the entire church that their way was truer with the Bible, and in the best parts of tradition, right? They wouldn't be The case of like, oh, yeah, we're just everyone agreed with us they knew better. But they would generally make arguments that this is the better strand of the tradition. And we return to Scripture to judge that tradition. Yeah. So for instance, Calvin cites Krista awesome all the time on justification, even though they disagree quite a bit on questions of predestination and foreknowledge, for instance. Well, he'll say Agustin all the time on numerous things, even though he'll disagree with Agustin on certain aspects of the nature of the church. And you see the same thing and Zwingli Zwingli is often I think, overlooked, and that was part of the the burden of my first chapters was to show that he's often kind of seen as the second fiddle to Luther, in the broader reformation. And then the second fiddle to Calvin, if we're talking about the reformed tradition, and those are fair in many ways. But he was a quite substantial scholar in his own right, trained in the humanistic methods of the period, but also being well trained in the via Antigua. He had degrees from the University of Vienna, and from basil, and so was very familiar with the kind of cutting edge of scholarship of his day. And so when he is trying to make his case, he's appealing to the fathers. He's appealing to the Creed's He's appealing to new humanistic methods of expository scripture in its full ancient context. And so this is a deeply tradition, movement. It's coming out of the Reformation. It is never coming tabula rasa.

Charles Kim 26:31

Yeah. Yeah, that's Yeah, that's very helpful. And so to attend a little bit to this conversation between Luther and Zwingli, sort of the early part here, we, one of the things that sort of struck me as I was reading through this was the, the debates over this is my body, right? So Christ says, This is my body, it's so big, a big part of the extra Calvinistic come, the extra carnem is how Christ wears Christ's body. Now, with respect to how one celebrates communion, or the Eucharist, or the last supper, and so Zwingli and Luthor both have a way of interpreting this phrase, this is my body. So can you say a little bit about why this phrase is so important for both of them? And maybe it shows a little bit of their their different ways of reasoning theologic theologically about Christ's body?

Speaker 2 27:28

Yeah, I think that's a great question. So the debate over the Eucharist is kind of the location where this really takes off. I tried to show that there's kind of two debates that actually emerge, there's the debate over the Eucharist. And out of that spawns this Christological debate that underlies it. So they can be distinguished, even though they're deeply connected. And the reason this was coming up is as we move into the 16th century, there is a lot of turmoil over the Nate nature of the Eucharist, especially after the Hussite revolts, and the question of communion in two kinds, whether the lady has given the bread and the wine or merely the bread. And so there's a big issue with this. And is the sacrament then, also a means of justification. So when we look at this question of the supper, it does come from the motivating factors of the Reformation. For Luther that is the question of how is one justified before God? And for Zwingli? While he cares about justification, his real question is, how do we preserve the true and right worship of God? And so some of the things that Zwingli cares about in the suffer are the question of the adoration of the host, which he completely rejects as idolatrous. So when they come to this question of how do we interpret this is my body they have different priorities and different hermeneutical methods. Luther is really focusing on the Eucharist as the presence of Christ to the believer that secures and maintains the grace of redemption. So you're not justified by the supper. But it is an ongoing communion with Christ who justifies connected to the idea of foreign righteousness, connected to the idea of grace, this is all playing in for this. And for Luther, it's also combined with a hermeneutic, I would call the hermeneutic of obedience. So he says in the debate at Marburg, and 1529 If the Lord God commanded me to eat dung, I would do so. And so for him, this comes with a radical commitment to the scriptures as divine Word and command to be obeyed. And so when he gets to this as my body, he takes a very firm stance that is means is means substantial in some way. And so one needs to be obedient to the Word of God in that, and I do think in this you can see a bit of Luthers nominalist training. So there is debate on how nominalist Luther was, and it's a whole complicated thing, but my reading on some of these issues is his view of reason, his view of metaphysics does gravitate, at least in his rhetorical moments, to the nominalist tradition that would kind of set faith over reason. And that would argue for kind of the obedience of the word and the power of God in doing these things. So continually at Marburg, he tells, he tells Zwingli, stop bringing in mathematics. Now what does he mean by that? Zwingli is trying to argue about well, bodies have qualities and we can talk about whether these qualities are active or not. And Luthers has stopped bringing in geometry, do you believe Jesus or not? That's what's at stake here. And so for Luther, it is this act of obedience to Christ, to participate in the sacrament, and have true communion with Christ, whatever that means for him and ultimately ends up being that the humanity of Christ takes on the divine property of Omnipresence and therefore is able to be bodily present in the elements. And so that's his main contention. And for him, What's at stake is the very presence of Christ to the believer. Zwingli on the other hand, he's moving in a much more humanistic trajectory. Then, Luther being trained and corresponding with Erasmus, he cares very deeply about the Greek language and very careful exegesis. And so when he originally goes after the doctrine of Transubstantiation, it's for a couple reasons, reasons, he finds it to be contradictory. Because he thinks that Christ's Body ascended to heaven, and is a human body, and that the substance cannot be multiplied. And so this offense is sense that Scripture is reasonable and true. And therefore he asked the question, okay, this is my body might mean, substance. But it might not mean that let's do some exegesis and use the analogy of Scripture. Christ also says, this is I am the vine, I am the branches, right? I am the door. And so Zwingli offers this discussion of Well, should we take this as a trope? And by that means he means metaphorical in some sense, right? Or should we take this as a literal is statement, and he tries to show that actually, if we take it substantively, we run into contradictions about the nature of Christ's body. He also argues that, to say it's a miracle misses the point, because miracles are always sensible, right? Miracles are something God does in the natural world that we can perceive and see. But to claim that Transubstantiation is a miracle, it has no sensible luck factor to it, right? The accidents remain the same. So the miracle is unsexed. And from that he draws a lot on the understanding of symbols and signs from Augustine, actually, yeah. And so with this Zwingli is saying, we need to understand this as this symbolizes my body. And what that means is this is an act of commemoration and even of communion with Christ, but not the corporeal Presence in the Eucharist. Now, it's kind of a side discussion to say what is Wigglies actual view? Often it said that he's a pure memorialist. I do not think that's accurate. His view does develop most of his early thought is against Luther and the Catholic view of Transubstantiation and very little is his own position. But by his later work in 1531, he will argue for a sacramental presence of Christ, it's not fully worked out. But I do think he ends up towards the end of his life gravitating gravitating much more to what Calvin will hold, which is a presence via the spirit in the act of communing, as opposed to a corporeal presence in the elements in any way.

Charles Kim 33:42

Yeah, yeah, that was one thing. I mean, I know Zwingli, very little, I know the name, I maybe have read an excerpt or something. But it was interesting to see as I was following along in your argument, how much he's developing in what he thinks. And you know, I guess, just given the kind of, you know, it feels like there's a flowering in 100 different directions during this period. But it's got to be kind of an interesting thing, where you're suddenly kind of you know, all these people are the various reformers feel free to start saying what they really think in in this way. So of course, there's going to be a kind of development and a kind of like, a splintering off and 100 different directions. So, you know, I mean, I'm not saying that everyone felt like they had to toe the line for 1000 years, but, but there, there is a kind of like, well, I have to figure out how to bring what I think in line with the sentences or with, you know, whatever, whatever I'm doing. And so I guess it would make perfect sense, I guess, is what I tried to say that Swingley would have a little bit of like, oh, wait a minute. I hadn't worked that part out yet. I just knew that this part didn't seem right.

Speaker 2 34:58

Well, and we have to Remember that they're also operating deeply in history. And sometimes, like I point this out in my book for one of his winglets, things, like he wrote one of these things in three months, while he was being a full time pastor, while he was, you know, he was deeply involved in the politics of Zurich. And like, it wasn't as if he had the slow time to figure this out. And there were pressing needs that were polemical needs. And so we have to take that into account, I do think Swingley has been Miss served by not looking at his mature thought, which comes in the 1530s, right before his death. But it's similar for Luther, there's tons of development going on. But he had the luxury of a much longer life Zwingli his entire reforming career is only eight years, in which he produces everything that he's written. And even in that eight years, you do see progressive developments and how he understands things, as he tries to think through them more fully, and respond to criticisms and respond to critics and address the needs of the debt. So yeah, we should have that proper historical consciousness when we think about these figures,

Charles Kim 36:09

ya know that that's really helpful. It also just listening to you talk about it. It you know, there's the other thing that sort of emerges from this, which is sort of a Lutheran reflex. In terms of how to how does one again, do theology I feel like I've keep I'm using that phrase a lot in our conversation. But you know, the this sort of Lutheran, this is what he says, This is what it you know, you have to don't reason about it, don't bring in all these other things, just believe it. And it was funny, because as you said it, I was like, I actually thought, ah, Kierkegaard and, and there was like, that was what pinged off in my brain. And, you know, he comes from a Lutheran Danish Lutheran context, or even like, I've been reading a lot of Robert Jensen, we just interviewed Paul Hibiki, who has some kind of similar Lutheran reflexes, like Jensen does, and I mean, you know, whatever version of Lutheranism they are, they're still you can see, I feel like I can see a family resemblance in some of the ways that that they, they have developed an instinct for theology. And I think that's what made reading, I was reading a couple books from him lucky in preparation for that interview, and I had read a little bit from Jensen as well, but seeing they're similar, they're still very Lutheran. Even if they're not LCM. You know, the more conservative Lutheran, there's still that kind of Lutheran impulse.

Speaker 2 37:39

Yeah, they're in there does, I wouldn't want to push it too far. And I know that there are pretty advanced scholarships on exactly how Luther is using reason. And it's not kind of just the horror of the horror of Satanists, he said, but I do think both would agree that the Lutheran and the reformed develop quite this distinct views of the place of reason and theology. Yeah, neither is rationalists. Like that, sometimes the critique that Lutherans are a rationalist and the reformer rationalist that's not that's not accurate. But there are subtle distinctions that do really emerge. And you see it as early as Marburg, the kind of way that reason functions, along with faith seems a little more harmonious in the reformed tradition, and a little more dialectic in the Lutheran tradition. And that emerges very early on, I was actually converted in the Lutheran church. So I was Lutheran until I was from my my conversion until I was about 21. And so like I was trained in the Lutheran School to a small extent, right. But yeah, I do think there is that divergence that continues, and then is codified in the Protestant scholastics. Those debates that kind of are the trajectories that are set in the 16th century by Luther and his followers. And then Zwingli, Calvin Bullinger, and the reformed, then kind of come into how you discuss these things in the Scholastic period, even to the extent I notice, in my conclusion, that because of their different use of Christ's body, they actually develop different concepts of space and physics in the early universities, because they're different kinds of conceptions of what is required for something to be a body. Must a body be limited, says the reformed, therefore, physics looks one way can a body be, in some ways, still unlimited? Now, that's a short moment moment before modern physics comes in. But yeah, these things did have implications well beyond just these debates over the supper.

Charles Kim 39:39

Yeah. Well, and so we're, you know, we're still thinking about theology a little bit and you know, as soon as, as soon as Swingley makes the move to say, well, he doesn't mean literally, this is my body. It just had me thinking of like, what what does it mean to interpret Scripture, which is another kind of, I guess you could same impulse or an instinct that's being developed by Zwingli here as and then sort of pushing more in that reformed trajectory of this kind of, you know, is it a historical grammatical? What is the original intent of the author? And I, you know, seems to me that that's not well, maybe that is what he's doing. You know, I guess that's a question. But is the is that search for original authorial intent of the only way to reason? Well, I, you know, we, Tim Keller just passed away. And I was listening to some lectures that he gave on preaching, because someone had mentioned to me that they were really good. And he talks about like, the, you know, oh, you know, it's, it's so critical when doing expository preaching to understand the authorial intent. And then he moves on to say, but it's also important to think of the canonical scope. And so there's an but my first thought was, I don't know that the authorial intent did Matthew, when he records Jesus saying, This is my body. Did he think chaotically? Well, he couldn't have. And so authority, authorial intent, to me seems like at times, you know, I think it has its place, it's, but it's also limited by other concerns, like maybe canonical.

Speaker 2 41:21

Yeah. So I think that's a good question. And it goes to the the history of kind of interpretation and method. So when Zwingli saying literal, here, he's talking about the literal reading of the text, according to the traditional four fold discussion, right. So according to the letter, or he would contrast that with according to the meaning, right, one of the difficulties as we think through this is hermeneutics just took on a completely just different shape through the 19th and into the 20th century. Right. And so authorial intent is kind of an awkward way to say something sometimes, because it sounds as if what you need to get out is the reconstruction of the ideas in the mind of the writer when they wrote, but But that's an accessible and that's that's not really what was once like that was kind of all the rage in the early 20th century. If you think of Collingwood on history, right? History is getting in the minds of the people in the past and having the same thoughts, you're like, well, that's not really exactly what we're doing. However, what is trying to guard against is a kind of, especially after the ad is and others is a reader response form. And where what doesn't matter. What's most important is what does the text elicit in me as opposed to what it was intended to. And so what I think in Dorial intent is really getting at is allowing the text qua text to speak to us in its fullness, and its historicity, before we bring in other things, or to stop them, make sure we're not importing, later discussions, our own desires. And then it's often sometimes it just stops there historical, grammatical period, I don't think you can do that. Because then you're not reading scripture as holy scripture as the word of God in any real meaningful way. It's, it's a text that has divine sanction. However, one wants to think about that the the idea that it is not just the author who is human, although that needs to be taken account of, and certain former ways of interpreting might have discounted the kind of concrete human aspects of the text, and to quickly gone through theological interpretations. But a mode that just says we need authorial intent of the human is missing out on the authorial intent of the Divine. And so what you see going on in the Reformation, is this kind of humanistic and medieval informed view. They're trying to get away from what they saw as excesses of the method of analogy that they thought just was untethered from the words themselves. Yeah. And so they're adopting, I wouldn't say it's a authorial intent, or even a historical grammatical approach, although they did. The learning of the Greek and Hebrew was a big element to all of them. What what they're trying to get at is how do we see this as the Word of God to the world, and being tied to what the text in its original language is set. That's why there's this ad Fontys, they are trying to especially get away from the glossing tradition of the Middle Ages, right? And that's what you can see in two different ways. You can see it in a more mystical way, that kind of direct encounter with divine words through human words. And that's more Luthers way. Or you can see it much more as the text and its complex meaning and literary structure reveals to us true words from God that we see in context of the whole scripture. And so what Zwingli is really doing is scripture interpreting scripture. He's saying we come to this text Yeah. What does it mean? It's not about what Matthew meant when he wrote it. It is about what Jesus meant and means, though, right? Because the idea is, as Jesus speaks this, he's speaking as the one who inspires the entirety of the canonical witness. And so Zwingli does care about how does this connect to the Passover, for instance, how is this couched within the Upper Room Discourse? How is this couched within the ascension? And so it's the pre modern exegesis is, I think, much more holistic. But it was more holistic and naive. And I don't mean that in the negative sense, right. But it's just kind of pre critical. Yeah. And by doing that, they were easy. It was easy to slip between textual analysis, theological interpretation, connecting to different scenes in Scripture and bringing them together in a holistic theological presentation, what we would call now kind of theological interpretation, without the self consciousness of it. Because they're, you know, theological interpretation is good, but everyone feels a little uncomfortable, close, and they're not sure if it's true, right? Are we allowed to do this? They didn't worry about that. They. And I think another important thing is they interpreted to persuade what God was speaking. And I do think that's a big difference in their method. This was not an academic exercise for peer review journals. So other scholars might think that you're more partially right on one thing. This had a clear, practical purpose in transforming the church to be faithful to God. And if they weren't concerned with that they weren't doing it. Yeah. And so they actually thought this mattered beyond tenure, and Alana and your CV. They thought, this is our call from God. And that's why they took it so seriously. That's why things were at stake here that we often miss. Like, people can sometimes be like, Why do they care so much about this? Right? It's, like, well, for them. This was the very question of how is Jesus Christ present to believers today, and the spiritual health of people utterly, is demanded here. Same with the you know, the classic, the difference between homos sauce and more UCS is an overlap, right? And you're like, well, in one sense, but in another sense, not at all right. And so this is a deeply theological, embedded way of interpreting scripture and making theological arguments that is also tied into the tradition. They're bringing in the father's all the time, they're citing the Scholastic's when they like them. Or they're disputing them, because they think that these debates matter for the church. Yeah.

KJ Drake 47:41

Yeah. Well, and I think, as you put it, just there, which seems right to me, is Christ that what Christ said, but what Christ says, and you know, and getting that correct, is a big part of this. Right. So as as God is speaks, not as God spoke. And, you know, I, I've encountered that a little bit with sort of speech act theory, and this comes up. I mean, the Lutherans love this too, right. I mean, very much. These are God's promises, and what God promises to you. And you know, but I think it also, you know, it fits with Agustin. He has a directness, to his address, God promises to you, these same things. These are God's promises, you know, and so it's not just, it's not just God promised, or God promised to them. And you put it taken that third person kind of, you know, moving out of the arena of direct address, but moving it into the arena of like, a past event. And yeah,

Speaker 2 48:49

yeah, and maintaining at the same time, that kind of attention to the literal sense, and the historical is important. But if we get trapped in just that, we have in some ways rendered the text and NERT. But also we render it a nurse if we just care about what I experienced from the text, right? If it's only kind of that, which is already in me, that resonates right. It only has the ability to confirm what's already there, right, as opposed to challenge it. So a much more I think, theological approach, which remembers that God is the one speaking in the past and now and there's a continuity via the Ascended Christ to bring it back there. And they don't go into this. But there is a sense where the Ascended ministry of Christ is still prophetic, that there is a continuity with the Incarnate Word, the Ascended word, the in Scripture ated Word and the Spirit of Christ to illuminates the word now, and that kind of reading scripture within the divine economy is something that they would never have expressed, but is what they did. Right If there was, so Webster always talks about John Webster, that scripture must always be read in the face of God as He is one as we speak about God, he has someone in the room, right? And that kind of sense of interpreting scripture. Coram Daioh was the heartbeat of the reformation is attempt to put forth what they thought was the best interpretation of Scripture, and therefore the best way to worship in honor God.

Charles Kim 50:27

Yeah. I like it. As a kind of switch gears questions, I was asked someone, what is one thing you you thought true, but now think is false. And or vice versa? One thing you thought was false. And now you think is true. I say, you know, sometimes I like this as a question like, it could be related to the book. So like, what did you you know, see, what something people don't always realize is that when you're doing research, for a book like this, you you come across something, you're like, oh, shoot, I had that all wrong. But it can also be interesting, just to hear a little bit from scholars things in their lives, you know, ways in which I mean, just to kind of go back to what we were talking about with hermeneutics there. You know, if God really speaks, then then we're bound to change our minds about some things, right, we're bound to recognize that we're not just confirming our priors. Or we're not just you know, it's not just this, you know, confirming what I already felt. And so that's, that's the power of Scripture is to change in some in at least in some way. So, yeah, so you can take that however you like one thing you once thought was true, and now think is false, or vice versa? And if you if you if even if you know what caused that change? Yeah.

Speaker 2 51:43

So the research didn't do a lot of that for me, not because I thought I knew everything about it. But because going into it, all I knew was I thought this topic was interesting. And I did have a lot of preconceived notions of exactly how this played out historically. And so I found out tons of stuff about that, that was not something I thought false, beforehand, but I just had no idea. However, on this topic, like, as I think I mentioned to you before, I was actually converted in the Lutheran church. And so I held to Luthers position on the Lord's Supper, throughout my from my teen years into college, and I was a theology nerd, as one would expect for someone who becomes a theologian. And so you know, I thoroughly defended Luthers doctrine of commercial Presence in the Eucharist, as I talked with friends who are more evangelical or reformed. And my position didn't change on that in college. Actually, while I was helping to distribute the sacraments in a Lutheran church. So I'll tell the story briefly. And any Lutheran leaders I'm sorry, sorry, this is probably not how it should have been. But it did occur. So I attended a church that was a Lutheran chapel on campus, there was almost no, it was entirely students with one pastor. And so they would have some of the students help distribute the elements after they were consecrated by the pastor. And one Sunday, I'm handing out the bread, and I run out. And I didn't know what to do. So I rushed into the back and I grabbed a thing of wafers, put them on the plate, and went out and started handing them back. And I realized after about the second or third one, wait a second, these are on consecrated Am I currently distributing a false sacrament or an invalid sacrament. And I had this realization, um, you know, as I'm walking, I had an I had been in the process of kind of looking into the reformed tradition, and this was something that was actively being debated in me. And I did conclude, not at that moment, but as I reflected upon it, that I believe that the presence of Christ was in the act, not in the elements. And when I kind of reflected on that I that was the last kind of movement from myself becoming reformed, as opposed to Lutheran and my own convictions. And I know that there's probably good reasons that a Lutheran theologian can give me that I wasn't doing anything wrong, or, but that was that was my kind of movement into the reformed camp was actually deeply tied to these questions. And I didn't actually pursue this topic, by the way, anything related to that, like it was completely in the rearview mirror. But there was a kind of I could appreciate both sides of the debate, because I had had personal experience with us. The extra Calvinistic comm didn't play into it at all, but I didn't learn about that till later. But

Charles Kim 54:36

well, but yeah, you know, there is some deep resonances, though. I mean, as it does play into it. That's, that's good. I like it. Well, okay, so what the last thing that that this is just an kind of maybe it's an off the wall question. Or maybe it's a more Lutheran way to ask this question. I don't know. But I was as I was reading the book, you kept talking about Where is Christ? And so is is Christ in the elements is, you know, in Christ's ascension, where's his body? And Jensen has, he has a book called theology and outline. And it's basically a series of lectures he gave at Princeton University. And one of the things that he asks in there is not the question is not where is Christ, but when is Christ? And so there is this sort of other element that doesn't feature. I mean, Luther doesn't really bring it up as far as I remember in the book. But the other question of time, how does you know? So if we're talking about the divine relationship to space? Well, if contemporary physics talk about space time? Well, there's another part of this question. And so I just I was curious if if you had sort of, if every time you wrote time or space, did you ever think space time? And they'd go, Well, what does that mean?

Unknown Speaker 56:01

I did try to avoid that.

Charles Kim 56:03

Okay, all right.

Speaker 2 56:06

There, there are some complicating questions to this. So first off, Jensen is coming from a 20th century mindset that wants to preserve preserve what he called the futurist city of God. bannenberg, also Moltmann. And in some ways, this has a process of God coming to be, or at least coming to be manifest fully through the process of history. Yeah. As if there is a waiting for God to be for us, as we kind of are drawn forward into the eschaton and the full revelation. And that's played out differently in Jensen, Tannenberg. And Milan, from Oman, for instance, that I do think he's saying that God actually comes to be through the process of time. And therefore, God is not really fully himself until creation is renewed and restored. I don't think that's what Jensen's Jensen saying. But, I mean, sometimes Jensen is hard to understand. But that's not really how they thought about time, like, I think we we have gotten actually extremely used to thinking of time as a medium. So that concept of spacetime as like, the medium through which we move, has become quite normal to us as we move into modern physics. But for the ancients, that's not really what time was, you know, I guess as the famous quote, I can define time until you asked me to define it. But for the early moderns, time, especially because they were very influenced by Aristotle, was actually just a way of noting change, time was not so much a thing was our experience of change. It's not purely subjective. But where there was no change, there was no time, in many ways for the Aristotelian concept. There is kind of a platonic concept of time as the reflection of the eternal. But how that played in beyond kind of the metaphorical is a little unclear. So when they think of Christ, they think of him as one person, obviously, that always needs to be maintained, the one person has two natures, according to His divine nature, He is eternal. And that means utterly transcendent of time. Just as Omnipresence does not mean present, like in parts, but utterly transcendent of all space. Now, space was understood as a container, basically, in some ways, space was defined by a boundary in which something fit in. So the example often given is like the water in a vase. The space is created by the vase containing the water. Now, space was something else, right? We now kind of consider them together as this medium of motion, change, existence, etc, almost a more existential view of time, which I think can be very helpful. But for them when Christ ascends, he is changing in spatial locality. Now that space then becomes habit, right? So now, it is having rights. The God space in the world, metaphorically is the heavens. So crisis tends to be in God's space, God's place in the creation that's connected very much to this idea of Temple presence. So you think of Hebrews Christ ascended to the heavenly throne, not made by hands, you know, that kind of idea. And so that's what they were mostly concerned about. Now, how they thought of it temporarily is a little tricky, because I don't think they did. So they definitely did not see this as future, but contemporaneous in some sense, heavens time and Earth's time are connected. However, if you press them, I bet they would argue, but time is not the same. In both places, just as the locality of the Ascended Christ is not our space. It's it's still local according to the reform, but we can't necessarily say how. So for instance, in work called the consensus tick arenas, which was a compromise document between Bolinger and Calvin on the Lord's Supper, they say that Christ ascends to heaven, as if in a place. And that phrase is intentionally ambiguous of like, is having a place properly? Or is he there spatially like we don't know. But we know bodies have some sort of space. So that maintains, I would suspect, if we were to speak of them on time, they'd say something similar, then he ascends beyond our time, which is our experience in this world, into the time of waiting the heavenly time, and those things will come together in the end. So whether or not they are experienced the same. There is also a sense that he is our contemporary and contemporary that needs to be so sorted out. That is one of my cautions with the concept of the future recipe of Christ, that He doesn't really seem to be our contemporary in any meaningful sense. He is always something on the horizon, as opposed to an immediate presence in his embodiment. And I do think the story of scripture really does play out fairly linearly, that there is a contemporaneous act of God, presence of Christ. And you could ask the question, what does it mean to be human with reference to time? It definitely cannot include include eternality, for instance, or even transcendence utterly of time, because they're finite, temporal beings. And if Christ is human, along as being divine, he must have some similar temporal finitude and temporal Markedness, even if that is, we could say glorified in the ascension. Back to that grace nature thing. Yeah, but he's not destroyed. Right? Yeah. So maybe we could say he's in grace to time after the ascension, but it's still temporal in some sense. So what do you think about that? That's just my spitballing.

KJ Drake 1:02:06

No, I think that's great. Yeah, it's, there's, there's just so much I mean, you know, obviously, it's a really open and wide question. But it just, I yeah, like I said, I, well, part of it. This is like the, you know, I don't know, confession or something, which is like, I have a very weirdly fragmentary sort of theological education. And so nothing, everything just like things just paying off in my brain. And I'm like, I don't really know where to put that. And so like, you know, I was introduced to Jensen, and my M div introduced upon and Berg introduced a milkman. But I, you know, I didn't have a good sense of, Well, I mean, classical, we were talking about classical theism earlier. I couldn't have defined that for you. I had a philosophy degree. But we talked about philosophy, we would call it the three Oh, God, of which is not quite the same thing, either. As classical theology, I thought, if you would have asked me, I probably would have thought it was. And so anyway, so sometimes I just started having these thoughts. And I'm like, I don't really know how to put this picture together in a coherent way. So yours was very helpful. But yeah,

Speaker 2 1:03:21

we had there is some discussion of this Torrance actually has a book called space time in the resurrection, where he talks about this to a degree that is kind of thinking about time as a relational concept, which I found helpful. I'm not always sold on everything that drones is doing there. But I think is interesting. And it does show that like, the way we think about time now is just not how anyone else thought about time specifically in the past, it doesn't mean it's completely disconnected. There is a book on the Christian invention of time, that argues that the the, the father's really kind of bring into this concept of linear time into the West as the main way to think and that maintains, but time itself as a medium does seem to be a much more kind of modern way of conceiving it, I think it's a helpful and right way to see it. But there's also something about time is about change, and it's about the experience of things moving. And you can even play with that in the kind of relativity of time that is subjectively experience. So yeah, there's the theology of time I think is a some some astute work on that. I'm sure they have.

Charles Kim 1:04:30

Yeah, well, I we were just doing I just taught confessions and translation. And the other thing that I had to explain to them as we were doing the the question on time, from the, from the confessions, was that time in Latin is not permanent, in the sense that it's the 60 Minute like what we take to be an hour changes depending on the length of the day, which changes depend ending on the time of the year. And so we have this sort of idea of like the permanence of time. And in fact, Augustine took time to be like the definition of impermanence of flux and change. And Ed's that seems very much

Speaker 2 1:05:15

more kind of in tune with Aristotle and others. You're very bold man to make our students read the sections on time passed by in compassions. Well, what do you think Augustine would say about the temporality of the Ascended Christ?

KJ Drake 1:05:31

Yeah, I think I think what you said is, right. I mean, in the sense that it's not a medium in the same way, it's like, you know, it is, he couldn't he couldn't have asked the question that I asked about, when is Christ in the same way? I mean, you do have the same problem, though, of Okay. So what Christ takes on in time, is, you know, Christ is in finite cry, or the, the sun is in finite? And so you know, and so there's that. Yeah, I mean, I guess the other thing that I was thinking of that you have to put in here is eternity. Versus everlasting. Yeah. And everlasting nests. And so like, you know, so Christ is the one that that like, unites both of those for us. But yeah, I think I think the the fundamental problem would be what you just said, which is taught, like, he knows that as God, Christ cannot change. And so that has to be the, and he wants that to be the ballasts the fixed point, the, you know, that is the permanent thing. Understanding the rest is relative to that permanence. And so yeah, I think that's, that's the index, the index, that's the word I was looking for. And so everything is indexed to God's eternity, I think. Yeah, I mean, as far as like, you also have time is history, which you are kind of bringing out the linearity of time. I mean, yeah, I mean, he definitely sees time as unfolding linearly, but he would mean, as far as that's concerned, he thinks God is outside of time. Outside of that kind of, yeah, sort of existential experience of time. I mean, as you well know, philosophically, this creates other questions where pong and bird can say things like, backward causation in certain things. And that gets kind of weird. I mean, so that's the that's, that's the other problem. I learned from doing philosophy, especially when you do sort of philosophy of religion, as you start to say things like, well, as a human, I don't really know how to conceive of being outside of the experience of time. And if I say that's true about God, it ultimately makes any sort of positive statement that I can make, at the very least cautionary, but yeah,

Speaker 2 1:08:05

yeah, I mean, I think that's where we, I would say that's where we go back to Aquinas and the medieval was on analogy right you know, that kind of issue of religious language for theology visionary that Yeah. Although like so that that provision ality for medieval philosophers was in some ways overcome by revelation. Right so there's a provision ality in our conceptions, but we can we can adjudicate between them differently in the theological mode because of Revelation. I think that would be accurate to Thomas. I'm no toma scholar by any means. But

KJ Drake 1:08:43

yeah. Well, I have immensely enjoyed this conversation. And yeah, I just want to thank KJ Drake for taking an hour, well, actually a little longer out of his day to talk with me. Also many years of hard work and producing the flesh of the word. also grateful to Oxford University Press for providing a copy of the book. And they gave me a hard back, which is hard to get to Oxford to give those anymore. But if you push them and wait, they will give it to you.