The Third State—Knowing God in Grace

Before we can speak of the knowledge of God renewed in man, we must speak of the form of that knowledge and the means by which redeemed man comes to it. To say it another way, Christology and Pneumatology are foundational for understanding the restoration of theological reasoning. The overall framework for this restoration of theological reasoning is the covenant of grace. 

The first piece of the puzzle of this third state is Christological. Wherever we see sinners being grafted into the covenant of grace, there such persons “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col. 3:10). Whose image is this specifically? Paul uses the word “creator” to make plain that we are not experiencing a mere reset to Adam’s likeness. However, it is also not purely and simply to God in se, as that is quite impossible for the creature.

It is specifically Christ, and that by beholding that same image (2 Cor. 3:18). Whatever one thinks of the “christological doctrine”1 of the imago Dei, in terms of Christ as something of a prototype for Adam, at least we are bound to say that Christ is the end for which the renewed image is transformed (Rom. 8:29).  

This transformation is many things, but surely one of its chief elements is intellectual. This “beholding” is a renewal of our minds (Rom. 12:2), such that the form of the Perfect Man informs the renewed man. Jesus Christ is the Image of the true knowledge of God (cf. Jn. 1:18; 14:9; Col. 2:9; Heb. 1:3). In regeneration, our natures are changed. That means our minds are changed: not from non-mind to mind, not from non-reason to reason, but from a loathing of God pointing the mind where it will, to a loving of God delighting in the things of the kingdom. As Boston puts it, “it is not a change of the substance, but of the qualities of the soul.”2

For Junius, it is not simply that Christ shows God as the Object of renewed reasoning, but that Christ himself is the First Subject of this renewal, being himself perfect in knowledge. This Junius derives from the medieval tradition, in the language of the theology of union.3

“The theology, which we call that of union, is the whole wisdom of divine matters, communicated to Christ as God-man, that is, as the Word made flesh, according to His humanity.”4

This is to be distinguished from the archetypal theology which is his in the divine nature per se. Failure to attribute to Christ that knowledge of God that is perfect-yet-proper to humanity is to slide into Apollinarianism. “But both types of knowledge come together in the unity of the subject, and each preserves its own truth in the same Christ.”5

What Irenaeus said about the Word “as yet invisible” made Adam a “similitude” until lost. Although he was arguing against the Gnostics, it is difficult to ignore the Platonic language of form versus similitude, or in other words, essence versus example. Adam was the prototype to historic men to follow; but he was still an example, compared to the ultimate anthropological Essence. This is not to say that the manner of transformation into that Image is the same as Plato’s ascent to the immaterial. After all, Christ also has a body, and in the Christian view that body is not a prison.

Nonetheless, when Jesus says, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (Jn. 14:9), there is precedence to see that which is invisible in human nature to be the more excellent lens to see God in Christ. It is nothing bodily that Jesus meant there, as the divine is not bodily; and yet without bodies in a common physical medium, could the disciples have seen the zeal, compassion, or righteousness of God? So long as we remember that foundational verse in Colossians 3, that through “knowledge” the form of Christ transforms the redeemed soul, we will see how the body is a medium. 

The second piece of the puzzle of this third state is Pneumatological. If Christ is the Image of the true knowledge of God, then the Holy Spirit comes with the mission of the illumination of that knowledge. Earlier we touched upon Paul’s words 1 Corinthians 2:14 concerning what natural man cannot understand. The Apostle’s words antecedent and subsequent to that verse (vv. 11-16) would show a greater range of what the Spirit illuminates. In short, the Spirit gives both the depths of God and the breadth of all things.

As Bavinck put it, “as a disclosure of the greatness of God’s heart, special revelation far surpasses general revelation, which makes known to us the power of his mind. General revelation leads to special revelation, and special revelation points back again to general revelation. The one calls for the other, and without it remains imperfect and unintelligible.”6

There is an importance of Calvin’s doctrine of the duplex cognitio Dei when it comes to the curriculum of our divine, inward Teacher.7 Undoubtedly in the history of the world, God as Creator comes first; but what of the history of each mind’s coming to Christ? More than that, what of the foundational status of natural knowledge—not in a linear or sequential sense, but—in a logical and preconditional sense? Discussions of 1. natural theology in apologetic method and of 2. reason and nature in prolegomena, too often reduce to the linear sense alone, as in the question: “Where does one start?” But this is too one-dimensional. 

Redeemed natural theology is a shared Reformed doctrine. At least, I propose, it ought to be. That Bavinck (initially) and Van Til (thoroughly) limited natural theology to what I would regard to be the subjective sense of the redeemed use, does not prevent the Reformed classicalist and presuppositionalist from finding common expression on some of these points.

Bavinck’s Christological principle offers a unity to both forms of knowledge, of God as Creator and God as Redeemer, since,

“The whole world is thus the realization of an idea in God … the Son in a sense is also the final cause (causa finalis) of the world,” so both “its principle (arche) and its final goal (telos).”8

John 1:9-10 is instructive, but it requires the Spirit to trace back the patterns of the logos in nature, reason, and conscience. The order of the redeemed mind will be from Christ to the restored man, out to the restored view of all things. 

A third piece of the puzzle must be added. What is the role of the Scriptures in between the formal cause of Christ as Image and the efficient cause of the Spirit as Illuminator? Is the written word of God the material cause of this renewed knowledge? Not quite. A material cause is that which is acted upon, which is this case of the renewed mind itself. Now if we say that the word is the instrumental cause, there is an implied “merely” that begins to smack of a Barthian view of Scripture—e.g. the word is, instrumentally, serving as the carrier of the truth that is Christ himself, The Word.

It may be worth retracing what is wrong with Barth’s view and how else a concept of a Word by the word could be meant. When Jesus says that the Scriptures bear witness about him, in places like John 5:39 and Luke 24:44, and we think through how one must use the mind to abstract and deduce various ways in which Christ is “in all the Scriptures,” are we engaging in what Barth meant by “inspiration”? Not in the least. Jesus gives an idea of the Word within the word in those passages, but note that this is never the Word apart from the words. He is giving a hermeneutical principle that the thoroughly inspired and inerrant Scriptures are the vehicle through which the glory of Christ is seen. They are the textbook of the Holy Spirit in which Christ is the central study. 

With those three doctrinal pieces in place—Christ, the Spirit, and the Word—how should we view the relationship between natural knowledge and supernatural knowledge in redeemed theology? Junius struck the early balance here. Supernatural theology is the perfection of natural theology. He wrote,

“The conception of this natural theology in the human understanding deals with things that are common, and it is both veiled and imperfect. All the more then is there need for it to derive its perfection from supernatural theology.”9 

Mastricht judges true and false theology (whether natural or supernatural) by how nearly it draws near to Christ, or conversely deviates from Christ. This follows from his stated ends of theology, namely, living for God in Christ. True theology must have Christ at its center; and a false theology is so because it is “either ignorant of Christ or speaks falsely about him.”10 His examples of the heresies of his century show that this bears out by degrees.11

Of course the Atheist, the Muslim, the Socinian, and the Lutheran will all have different approaches to the knowledge of God in nature. They will also have different views of Christ. What Mastricht is implying is that there is a connection. If all things are created by Christ and for him (Col. 1:16-17), then it stands to reason that the broken lens of nature will distort one’s view in toward Christ; and, from the other end, one’s ignorance of the main Character in the drama will cause one to entirely miss the play one is watching. 

The waters are so muddied among the Reformed within Modernity, that Bavinck could criticize theologians for conflating natural theology with the covenant of works chiefly because they were using it to ground supernatural theology in the covenant of grace. Thus there was a continuity between nature and grace that circumvented the whole supernatural uniqueness of Christian truth. So the problem in false natural theology is that it prepares “step by laborious step” the way for “revealed theology.”12

On the other hand, he says, “Nature precedes grace; grace perfects nature. Reason is perfected by faith, faith presupposes nature.”13 Scholars have spoken of “two Bavincks”14 due to such statements, but I find this to be an insufficient explanation. The resolution is nothing other than Bavinck’s notion of redeemed natural theology. That is, the grace that perfects nature begins to do so in the mind of the new creation, so that the Christian can use natural theology. That may still leave the questions, “For what?” and “To whom?” But it is an important start.

If we take the above principles set forth by Junius, Mastricht, and Bavinck, we may arrive at a Christocentric redemption of nature and reason, in which the believer begins to systematize his reality after the pattern of the First Man of the new world. But he does not do this by rendering old nature as anything other than itself, nor by shying away from any avenue of reason as if it ever stood outside of revelation. He sees “God and everything else in relation to God,” now following that Image, that Word, after which the world was created. To say that in Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3) must apply to a total synthesis of old and new worlds. 

The Fourth State—Knowing God in Glory

Here we will have the least to say for the very good reason that we are given the least amount of information in Scripture. And specifically we are talking about the idea of the Beatific Vision. This concept was most famously drawn out by Aquinas in Question 92 of his Summa Theologica. He infers from 1 Corinthians 13:12 and 1 John 3:2 that we will see God in his essence. Borrowing from Gregory, Thomas also appears to drive a wedge into the concept of “glory,” in the Exodus 33:20 passage, since the request of Moses fell short not on account of any sight of God per se, but on account of glory. So the “desire of the saints cannot be altogether frustrated.”15 To show how Thomas answers the impressive list of sixteen objections fielded against the doctrine would exceed our study. It is enough to note his contribution to it. This marks the distinction between the theology of revelation and the theology of vision.

For Junius, “The theology of vision is that which has been communicated with the angels, and with the spirits of the saints made holy or perfect in heaven.”16 It is “intellectual, enduring, and perfect in its own manner.”17 He makes it clear that it is not a merely intellectual knowing:

“The theology of the blessed or the exalted theology is the wisdom of divine matters communicated in the Spirit of God according to the measure of Christ with those who dwell in heaven; according to this theology they enjoy the eternal, gracious, and glorious vision of God for His glory.”18

Note also the role that the Son and the Spirit still play: in the use of 1 Corinthians 2:9-13 and Ephesians 4:13 about the Spirit (by whom) and the Son (in whom) in terms of this ectypal theology of vision perfected from that of revelation.

This is a perfection, and not merely a restoration, of knowing. For Junius, that ectypal theology that is in Christ by union is the “common principle”19 of all other theology that is communicated, whether to angels or to men, and whether to perfected men or those on pilgrimage. He uses the imagery of a “font” (archetypal in God) and “reservoir or storage vessel” (ectypal in Christ).20 The two “modalities” of receiving from the reservoir are by sight (of the blessed / exalted) and by revelation (of pilgrims / humble). For Boston, this final knowledge must be both intuitive, satisfying the understanding, and experimental, satisfying the will.21

As to the question of whether we will behold the Father and Holy Spirit, or the Son only: If the latter, the idea is that our sight can only ever be mediated, according to the human nature of Christ. Owen argues that it can only be “in the face of Jesus Christ,” from 2 Corinthians 4:6. As to the extent, Turretin acknowledges “debate about whether the blessed will see God’s essence immediately or see some effulgence of God.” 22

Boston cites Revelation 22:1-4 to combine the expression “God and of the Lamb” with the promise that “They will see his face.”23 He makes more plain the imagery of the Lamb as the “lamp” implying mediation, where he later adds, “They will be happy in seeing the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, not with their bodily eyes, in respect of which, God is invisible (1 Tim 1.17), but with the eyes of their understanding; being blessed with the most perfect, full, and clear knowledge of God, and of divine things, which the creature is capable of.”24

Concluding Thoughts

The purpose of this study is to provide a synthesis of classical realism and covenant theology at least on the question of the place of reason and nature at the foundations of our theology. Foundations have to take into account “starting points,” and ours are a complex of those ideas already held from before regeneration and those informed by Scripture. Hence the relevance of the second and third states of man’s reasoning about God. 

The trouble with non-Reformed classical theology is that it is ironically not sufficiently realist. Reason’s holistic design in the covenant is a real object with a nature. The noetic effects of the fall are a real object with a nature. This is not to say that there are not other difficulties in a non-Reformed classicalism at this point, but I highlight this ironic “sub-realism” because overcoming it makes a direct pathway to that synthesis. 

On the other hand, the trouble with non-classical Reformed theologies is that the soteriological critique of natural theology cuts too far down, severing even the roots of truth. A crucial dimension of the essential image of God is neglected because of its corruption. It confuses the nature that fell in man with that nature of truth which still makes God plain to his intellect. 

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1. Oliver Crisp, The Word Enfleshed: Exploring the Person and Work of Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 51-70.

2. Boston, Human Nature in its Fourfold State, 207.

3. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 121.

4. Junius, A Treatise on True Theology, 123.

5. Irenaeus quoted in Crisp, The Word Enfleshed, 53.

6. Herman Bavinck, Philosophy of Revelation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2018), 25.

7. Calvin, Institutes, I.2.1.

8. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II:425.

9. Junius, Treatise on True Theology, 147.

10. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I:79.

11. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, I:79-80.

12. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, I:87; cf. 78, 108-09

13. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, I:322

14. cf. ​​James P. Eglinton, Trinity and Organism: Towards a New Reading of Herman Bavinck’s Organic Motif (London: T & T Clark, 2012), 28-32.

15. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Pt.3, Q.92, Art.1.

16. Junius, Treatise on True Theology, 130.

17. Junius, Treatise on True Theology, 131.

18. Junius, Treatise on True Theology, 132.

19. Junius, Treatise on True Theology, 129.

20. Junius, Treatise on True Theology, 129.

21. Boston, Human Nature in its Fourfold State, 451.

22. Steven J. Duby, God in Himself (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019), 42.

23. Boston, Human Nature in its Fourfold State, 452.

24. Boston, Human Nature in its Fourfold State, 455.