Vos - Christ is "the central dominating factor of a new order of affairs."

Chad Bresson at "The Vossed World" has a terrific quote that illustrates why Geerhardus Vos is one of the most brilliant theologians of the last couple of centuries and why almost no one can read him these days.  It's a shame, but at least we have Graeme Goldsworthy who has the same program as Vos but is more readable.

If you can slog your way through this passage you will see that Vos is arguing against individualism and subjectivism, two conditions which go hand in hand and are prevalent today.  He points out that when II Corinthians 5:17 says that all things are new, it is not merely saying that individuals are saved, but that a whole new order of creation has been established.  The implications are huge but I'll leave it to your imagination to start working on the implications of this.

"The recognition of the eschatological provenience of the term "new ktisis (creation)” has been held back by its assumed individual use in 2 Cor. 5:17: ‘Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature,” and likewise by the exclusively subjective-soteriological reference the representation seemed to suggest. Both obstacles (individual use and the subjective-soteriological) also make themselves felt in regard Titus 3:5.

"But in regard to neither of the two passages can these objections obscure the quite perceptible eschatology texture. That Paul in Corinthians means something far more specific than the metaphorical statement about some one’s having been made “a new man” would ordinarily convey, the context clearly shows. For the one who has undergone this experience of having become “in Christ,’ not merely individual subjective conditions have been changed, but “the old things are passed away, new things have come into being.” There has been created a totally new environment, or, more accurately speaking, a totally new world, in which the person spoken of is an inhabitant and participator. It is not in the first place the interiority of the subject that has undergone the change, although that, of course, is not to be excluded. The whole surrounding world has assumed a new aspect and complexion.

"That the efficient cause for the thing described lies “in Christ” clearly indicates that such is the fact. Christ nowhere with the Apostle figures merely as a productive center of new individuals: He is everywhere, where the formula in question occurs, the central dominating factor of a new order of affairs, in fact nothing less than the originator and representative of a new world-order. A mere glance at the Pauline (and generally N.T.) usage of “ktisis” (creation) will further bear out the comprehensive and objective associations of the word; cp. Rom. 8:19,20; Col. 1:15; Heb. 9:11; Rev. 3:14." -- Geerhardus Vos, "The Pauline Eschatology", 46,47

Related Tags: Religion, Theology, Faith, Christianity, Christian, Bible, Individualism, Subjectivism, Salvation, Eschatology, Vos, Geerhardus Vos

Comments

[Jim]

Wow, that is a fascinating hypothesis. I've heard people use that statement "all things new" in some weird and wonderful ways. A quick look at the contect of this passage alone and it looks like Vos is onto something. This is an important verse - one frequently quoted, and perhaps often misunderstood. I guess when a verse is frequently quoted it's more likely to take on a life of its own - a life disconnected from the rest of the passage. Thanks for sharing the quote!

[Travis Prinzi]

I know a lot of folks might be appalled at the suggestion, but it almost sounds a lot like N.T. Wright to me.

A Reformed Presbyterian in the area has recommended Vos to me over and over again. I'm going to have to pick up his work one of these days.

[slaveofone]

Here is the aspect of Paul that is not often seen in Christianity--the fact that Paul wasn't saying something new, but exploring what Yeshua had already said and did. For Yeshua likened himself to the Son of Man, who would receive all dominion and authority in the earth and of whom the psalmist said all of creation would be given to him. If he is the new (or second) Adam, then he is also to have dominion over the earth and bring it into its intended order.

One can also see the individualism and subjectivism being played out in like form in many other places...such as the idea of new wine skins. This isn't meaning a kind of moralism or spiritualsim--that people would be changed on the inside...although people would be changed inside--but that the very thing Yahweh was bringing could no longer be defined and held and contained and perpetrated by the previous ways of things. Like the perishable becoming the imperishable. If our imperishableness is only inside and doesn't touch our physicality or the physicality in which we exist, then it is less than worthless and can hardly be described in such ways. But though we do not see the completion of it, does not diminish its past and present reality.

[William Meisheid]

It is rather self-evident that both are meant, as he says. Was the included passage part of what needed to be "slogged" through? If so, have we as a culture lost that much of our ordinary abilities to read and think that a passage such as that would appear difficult to deconstruct and understand?

As to the question, I see it as a both-and situation. Rather than being against individualism (per se) the passage links the essential individualism of personal choice and responsibility with the larger context of Christ and his plan for everything. We are both the child of God (individually) and a member of the family of God (collectively). The error lies in removing either pole of the dichotomy, since only by balancing the two demands can we keep from erring into existentialism (nothing but the individual matters) or communism (nothing but the collective matters).

I believe that is why the first form of government of God's people was Republican in nature. The Judges were meant to be a balance between the individual and collective. At the time the people erred toward the individual, hense the closing statement that everyone did what was right in their own eyes. From that failure they went in the other direction. With a king, the people became a collective with no real rights or essential responsibilities as the people of God, hense the Kings could "lead" them into general apostacy.

However, the ideal middle will always fail, its seems, because without God as overarching King, our sinfulness (which tends us to embrace either extreme) eventually wins out corrupting the process--as we see happening in the US today, and everything breaks down, just as it did in Judges. We too have reached the state where everyone is doing what is right in their own eyes, torn between those who worship existential realities and those who want collective rule by an overarching government with God out of the equation.

[David Wayne]

Travis - or maybe it's the case that Wright sounds a lot like Vos ;-) Although the reformed are the ones who are screaming bloody murder the loudest at Wright, he sees himself as continuing the reformed tradition. He believes himself to be following Calvin and Ridderbos. He thinks that NT scholarship has been overtaken by a Lutheran mentality which places too sharp a distinction between law and gospel. He has said that if people like Ridderbos had carried the day in NT scholarship there would have been no "new perspective." Interesting, eh?