The two Johns - 19 March 2009 |
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One of John Frame’s most significant contributions to Reformed theology, to my mind, is his application of perspectivalism to pretty much everything that crosses his path. Here’s a rough summary, with application to ethics:
I call these three ‘perspectives’ normative (the law), situational (the facts, the world), and existential (the person). The normative perspective studies Scripture as the moral law that applies to situations and persons … The situational perspective studies the world as a field of ethical action … The existential perspective studies the ethical subject – his griefs, his happiness, his capacities for making decisions (Frame, Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, pp. 74-75).
Though each perspective covers the same ground and will lead to the same conclusions, they nonetheless do so with different emphases, shedding light on different aspects of the issue under consideration.
Another John (Calvin, this time), sees a similar (though perhaps not identical) relationship between our knowledge of something ‘out there’ (God) and our (existential?) knowledge of ourselves. These two aspects of human knowledge are interdependent, in the sense that each sheds light on the other.
The knowledge of ourselves not only arouses us to seek God, but also, as it were, leads us by the hand to find him …
Man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face … For we always seem to ourselves righteous and upright and wise and holy – this pride is innate in all of us – unless by clear proofs we stand convinced of our own unrighteousness, foulness, folly, and impurity. Moreover, we are not thus convinced if we look merely to ourselves and not also to the Lord, who is the sole standard by which this judgment must be measured. (Institutes, I.i.1-2)
This observation implies (among other things) an intriguing methodological conclusion: Calvin and Frame think in very similar ways without expressing themselves in the same terms. It would be easy to leap to the conclusion that Frame is onto something novel and quirky, merely on the grounds that he expresses things in a new way. In fact, Calvin was singing from the same hymn-sheet, just in a different language.
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Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Minister's Blog, Theology