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Horton
redemption through God's covenantal dealings. Unlike Barth's over-emphasis on divine
transcendence, Reformed orthodoxy understood the Creator-creature relationship in
covenantal terms even at the ontological level, which implied similarity as well as
dissimilarity.
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As a result, it advocated its own version of the doctrine of analogy.
But before we describe that position, let us briefly explain the biblical assumptions upon
which it rests.
A. The Creator-Creature Relationship
Contrary to popular caricature, Reformed scholasticism championed an anti-
speculative and anti-rationalistic theological method based on the Creator-creature
distinction. Turretin, for example, speaks for the whole tradition when he states,
.
But when God is set forth as the object of theology, he is not to be regarded simply as God in himself...,
but as revealed...Nor is he to be considered exclusively under the relation of deity (according to the
opinion of Thomas Aquinas and many Scholastics after him, for in this manner the knowledge of him could
not be saving but deadly to sinners), but as he is our God (i.e., covenanted in Christ as he has revealed
himself to us in his word)...
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Even sola scriptura is not some abstract notion of authority imposed on theology from
without, but is the recognition that, as the Reformers so clearly warned, the knowledge of
God in his blinding majesty is deadly, while the knowledge of God in his condescending
self-revelation is saving. Turretin elaborates on the contrasting approaches:
Thus although theology treats of the same things with metaphysics, physics and ethics, yet the mode of
considering them is far different. It treats of God not like metaphysics as a being or as he can be known
from the light of nature, but as the Creator and Redeemer made known by revelation...For theology treats
of God and his infinite perfections, not as knowing them in an infinite but in a finite manner; nor absolutely
as much as they can be known in themselves, but as much as he has been pleased to reveal them.
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In fact, Turretin offers a typical Reformed complaint concerning those such "as Justin
Martyr, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, and the Scholastics, whose system is
philosophical rather than theological since it depends more upon the reasonings of
Aristotle and the other philosophers than upon the testimonies of the prophets and
apostles...The Socinians of this day strike against the same rock, placing philosophy in
the citadel as the foundation of faith and interpreter of Scripture."
19[19]
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Analogy and therefore similarity as well as dissimilarity are written into the very fabric of
creaturehood. See, for instance, Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (Phillipsburg, NJ:
Presbyterian and Reformed, 1979), especially 9-14, although it is a theme running throughout this work and
Van Til's thought generally. "Man is created in God's image. He is therefore like God in everything in
which a creature can be like God. He is like God in that he too is a personality." On the other hand, "Man
can never in any sense outgrow his creaturehood...He is like God, to be sure, but always on a creaturely
scale. He can never be like God in God's aseity, immutability, infinity and unity." Created as a prophet
"to interpret this world" and to both dedicate the world to God (priest) and rule over it for him (king), the
fall was at least in part the result of "a false ideal of knowledge." "Man made for himself the ideal of
absolute comprehension in knowledge...Man confused finitude with sin. Thus he commingled the
metaphysical and the ethical aspects of reality" (13-15).
17[17]
Turretin, op.cit., 16
18[18]
ibid., 17
19[19]
ibid., 44