Page History

Scanned PDF Version of this Document

It seems reasonable to hold that theism, properly so-called, necessarily involves the use of personalistic concepts and symbols, in that it conceives and symbolizes strictly ultimate reality as an eminent person, insofar like ordinary, noneminent persons who relate to one another as well as to the eminent person by relations of love, knowledge, judgment, care, and so on. But, then, it would seem equally reasonable to expect that there may be the same ambiguity in thinking and speaking about the eminent person's love as in thinking and speaking about the love of ordinary persons.

...

Of course, even the Reformers themselves continue to think and speak in terms of a conditionalist, works-righteousness frame of reference 00 --with the important difference that the only conditions or works held to be necessary to God's loving are provided by God Godself in the active/passive obedience of Jesus Christ, apart from which God is not free to be a loving God. Therefore, while the Reformers succeed in making clear that we are saved unconditionally, without works of our own, they are still caught in assuming that God does not, and cannot, save unconditionally, without works simpliciter, because of the role they continue to assign to the work of Jesus Christ as "meritorious cause" or condition of salvation.

...