Chapter 7 of Franke’s book is where an astute defensive coordinator starts to get a good idea where the wide receiver is going to run his route. But since our free safety of orthodoxy has spent way too much time at KFC and is a tub of pudge, it begins to look as though we are going to get ourselves smoked.
Franke starts by saying a number of good and important things about the Definition of Chalcedon, in which the full humanity and full Deity of Christ are both affirmed as united in Jesus of Nazareth. Franke’s discussion of this is clear and orthodox, and when this is coupled with the fact that our free safety is easily juked, one can see how things will soon be going. We will soon see postmodern relativism doing a touchdown shuffle, but it will not be too flamboyant a shuffle because it is not a radical postmodern relativism (p. 64).
There are two glaring problems with this chapter. One is that Franke carefully and coyly assumes that all revelation is revelation of God Himself, of his nature and character, which means in turn that all revelation is subject to the necessities of “accommodation.” John Calvin’s famous comment about God lisping is quoted, and it all sounds fine, except that we don’t know why we feel so uneasy. Here is the trick.
The fact is that “my thoughts are not your thoughts” revelation does involve accommodation. But it does not follow from this that accommodation is necessary in order to explain the fact that heavens and earth were made in six ordinary days, the moral necessity of not coveting, the fact that Jesus went to Capernaum once, or the ongoing obligation the Church has to refrain from ordaining women to the ministry. If God were to tell us that grass is green, we do not need to appeal to accommodation as a limitation on this information, and we do not get to appeal to our situatedness as a way of opening up the possibility of other colors. The Godness of God, and the fact that He dwelleth in the height, inhabiting eternity, holding the stars in the palm of His hand, does not change the color of the grass.
But note what Franke does, over and over again in this chapter. Revelation is simply assumed to be of God Himself, and only that, and so therefore revelation must always be held tentatively, because of Chalcedon. The fact is that the divine nature of Christ does not negate the human (and therefore situated) nature of Jesus. All quite true, but unless “situatedness” means “screwing up constantly,” it is entirely beside the point. Situated knowledge does not mean false knowledge. My knowledge of oranges is situated, and it would be hard to imagine any knowledge being more situated. But the fact remains that two oranges in the bowl added to two oranges already in there will always get you four oranges, and it turns out that I know that. My knowledge is situated, but still accurate. My oranges are also situated. There, in the bowl.
But the chapter assumes that “revelation” is always of something shimmering outside our comprehension, and the thing that is shimmering is the nature of Deity itself. This ensures that orthodox critics will have to put a sock in it — “self revelation in Jesus Christ” (p. 63); “revelation is indirect because it is always mediated through creaturely forms, and nothing can be known of God directly” (p. 68); “God is genuinely revealed” (p. 68). “when God is revealed” (p. 69); “the revelation of God in Jesus Christ” (p. 69).
Nothing here about God revealing that John the Baptist was older than Jesus, that Peter denied Jesus, that Judas betrayed Him, and so on. We know these things because they are revealed. And the fact that they are revealed does not make them mystic truths doing the shimmy shimmy shake. They exhibit that admirable characteristic that Francis Schaeffer used to call true truth.
According to Franke, the orthodox understanding of Jesus Christ is “a paradigm for an understanding of the situated and contextual nature of revelation” (p. 64). In the first place, no it isn’t, and in the second place, even if it were situated is not a synonym with capable of being false.
What I really don’t understand is why Wile E. Coyote never seems to understand that every time he breaks the Acme Dynamite out of the box, the only one who will have the blackened eyebrows will be, you know, him.