Karl Barth Society of Amherst

Why the Eucharist Does Not Make the Church: Index

2007-10-13T11:20:00.001-07:00

Part I: Introduction and Henri de Lubac

Part II: John Zizioulas

Part III: Analysis and Conclusion

Why the Eucharist Does Not Make the Church Part III: Analysis and Conclusion

2007-10-13T11:19:00.001-07:00

Analysis:

With Zizioulas’s Pneumatological Christology, Webster calls us to remember that we must not think that “at his ascension Jesus Christ as it were resigns his office in favour of human ministers, and that henceforth the church is the real centre of ministerial agency” (John Webster, “The Self-Organizing Power of the Gospel” in Word and Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), 199). This is true even in the face of deep communion between Christ and the church which Zizioulas posits. “Ministry in the church ‘points beyond itself’ to the action of another” (Ibid., 201, quoting T.F. Torrance, Royal Priesthood. A Theology of Ordained Ministry, revised ednn. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 97). No matter how eschatological, the communion of saints surrounding the bishop can never be theologically understood to supplant the rightful place of Christ.

In regard to Zizioulas’ remarks on mission of the church to creation in the eucharist, human responsibility cannot consist in making creation “capable” of anything, let alone communion, and Christ’s cosmic reign is certainly not conditional on us – for he already is that in himself. Whereas the emphasis here is clearly on subjectivity, it fails to retain any objectivity that would make it properly eschatological such that “x becomes what x already is.” While the issue of capacity might be considered a Western hang-up, it is nonetheless important for making ontological distinctions between divine and human agents.

Responding to the caricature of Western (if not Protestant) theology, our position is not that “our fallen state of existence is all there is,” but that it certainly is to be accounted for. Without the qualification of realism regarding our sinful world and our place in it as a sinful community, Zizioulas runs the risk of making the truth of communion an escapist communal subjectivism. Christ is both objectively the author of our faith and the one who perfects it subjectively in us. Either way, it should be said that he is the primary acting subject in whom we participate. As Zizioulas points out earlier, “creaturehood means precisely this: the being of each person is given to him; consequently, the human person is not able to free himself absolutely from his ‘nature’ or from his ‘substance'” (Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 19). What is this nature if not sinful? No anthropology can deny this aspect of total depravity if it wants to understand the true meaning of grace.

Furthermore, an episcopate built on the Gospel of Jesus Christ must disagree with Zizioulas here. The life and ministry of Jesus to the poor and needy is essential to the Gospel, and this cannot be considered secondary with respect to unity. The social implications of the Eucharist, which attests to the Gospel, further support this move. George Hunsinger makes such a move in his chapter, “Christian Ethics as Evangelical, Social and Eucharistic,” as he exegetes Paul in 1 Cor. 11:17-34. Such implications are counter to the individualism that Zizioulas rails against, since Christ creates communion through the Eucharist here and now.

A proper understanding the Eucharist is found at Calvary. Here we see Christ present to us as both the one who is the Offerer and the Offering, the High Priest and the Lamb of God slain “for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). The Eucharist thus requires anamnesis, which is looking backwards at what has been achieved for us once and for all on the cross. At the same time, it is also prolepsis, looking forward to Christ’s second coming. E.L. Mascall puts out a stunning vision of the reality in which we anticipate and participate:

The apostles will have received their thrones as the judges and patriarchs of the New Israel. They will be seated with their Master, who is himself the Apostle of the Father, at the Messianic Banquet, which, because it is the banquet of his crucified and ascended Body and Blood, is at the same time the perpetual Liturgy where in the Father is glorified by the Eucharistic offering of him who is the son by nature and who includes within himself all those who, because they are his members, are the sons of the Father by grace and adoption, and who in their organic unity are his mystical Body and Bride the Catholic Church, one flesh with him (E.L. Mascall, Corpus Christi (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1953), 30-31).

Christ’s relationship to the church in the Eucharist is one in which he remains the “sole saving agent.” The Word makes the church by proclamation, guiding it by the authority of Scripture. The Sacraments make the church by baptism, sustaining it by the Eucharist. Christ witnesses to himself by the Word, imparting himself to us in faith. The Eucharist manifests his mediation to and from us as an impartation of communion and as his eternal self-offering on the basis of his finished saving work through intercession as our High Priest. Finally, he is the first-fruits of what is to come at the end when he returns in glory (Here I am indebted to George Hunsinger’s handout in TH325: Theology of the Lord’s Supper for helping to decipher the various components Christ’s agency in the Eucharist).

Mutual indwelling must mark our union with Christ, such that our relationship is internalized rather than extrinsic. However, this is marked by an asymmetry between Christ and the church, so that Christ maintains priority as Lord and Savior. Such a move would disallow the Monophysite tendencies of de Lubac and Zizioulas.

The Eucharist is part of the ministry of reconciliation, which is synonymous with the apostolic ministry. It is this ministry that de Lubac and Zizioulas have emphasized in their own unique ways. In proclamation, we as Protestants do not look forward as if unity were just an eschatological reality that is here. This is certainly true. But we also give emphasis to the perfect tense of this unity. The cross means reconciliation with God and with humanity itself. It has already been achieved in Christ there and then. And yet, as John Webster points out, “What the apostolic ministry of reconciliation indicates is the [reconciled] existence (not simply the potentiality) of the ‘one new man’” (John Webster, “Christ, Church and Reconciliation” in Word and Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), 223).

Conclusion:
The desire to form ecclesiology along the lines of communion has failed to account for Christology in a sufficient manner. The Eucharist, that institution by Christ which deepens our union with him, is thus used as a pattern for all ecclesiology, particularly the understanding of the ordering of the episcopate. Our union with Christ is a given entity to the Church, and its mission is to bring all others into communion with itself, the body of Christ. The line between Christ and his Body becomes blurred in this move by de Lubac, and further by Zizioulas, who believes Christ is the Church without distinction.
In their own unique ways, de Lubac and Zizioulas attempt to address the individualism of the church in modern times. However, one gets the idea that the only sin of the church is individualism. De Lubac and Zizioulas both try to account for a mutual indwelling of the “one” and the “many,” even as there is asymmetry between them. However, this does not defend against the ultimate problem of failing to distinguish between Christ and his church. This becomes apparent when the Eucharist, as a third wheel as it were, promulgates the Church itself as the primary acting subject. It turns out that the Eucharist “makes the Church,” but also that the church “makes the Eucharist.” This double principal, introduced by de Lubac, does not seem to take Christ into account, except as the one who endowed the church with the gift of the Spirit through apostolic succession we receive today.
Our ecclesiology can be mirrored in the Eucharist not as a principal of unity or communion, but only insofar as the Eucharist attests the union we have in Christ and thus with one another. It will be argued that we can indeed have a Eucharistic ecclesiology when a proper understanding of the Eucharist is put forth. Ecclesiology that builds upon the Eucharist in union with the Word, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, will not fail to account for how the church can be, and surely is, the body of Christ here and now.

Why the Eucharist Does Not Make the Church Part 2: John Zizioulas

2007-10-09T21:52:00.000-07:00

John Zizioulas (Being as Communion)

John Zizioulas, like de Lubac, also recovers the early church’s teaching on the Eucharist for the purpose of revitalizing ecclesiology, emphasizing that the celebration was not simply memorializing what had been accomplished. First and foremost, it was celebrating the fact that it was caught up in “an eschatological act" (21). The Eucharist constituted the being of the Church. It also helped bring together the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit. It could hold both the historical form and the divine reality together without confusion. The Eucharist was not simply an institution (22), but an event out of the working of the Holy Spirit to bring history into eternity with God.
Like de Lubac, Zizioulas wants to check individualism in the church.

The eucharistic community makes the Church eschatological. It frees it from the causality of natural and historical events, from limitations which are the result of the individualism implied in our natural biological existence (22).

The Eucharist cannot happen in isolation, but only when everyone is present. That is, Zizioulas has no regard for private masses because of the communal nature of the Eucharist. He characterizes the Eucharist not as a sacrament along side the word, but as

the eschatologization of the historical word, the voice of the historical Christ, the voice of the Holy Scripture which comes to us, no longer simply as ‘doctrine’ through history, but as life and being through the eschaton. It is not the sacrament completing the word, but rather the word becoming flesh, the risen Body of the Logos (22-23).

Zizioulas locates ecclesiology quite explicitly in the economic Trinity, identifying the humanity as the imago dei not within a universal human nature as de Lubac does, but only within “the work of Christ and the Spirit in history" (19).

Zizioulas bypasses the choice between a Christological or Pneumatological ecclesiology by emphasizing their unity-in-distinction. “The separation between Christology and ecclesiology vanishes in the Spirit (111).” To distinguish the Spirit from the Son, he writes:

Now if becoming history is the particularity of the Son in the economy, what is the contribution of the Spirit? Well, precisely the opposite: it is to liberate the Son and the economy from the bondage of history . . . The Spirit is the beyond history, and when he acts in history he does so in order to bring into history the last days, the eschaton (130).

It is also the Spirit that allows Christ to have a “corporate personality,” such that Christology is given a communal form – “with Christ having a ‘body,’ i.e. to speak of ecclesiology, of the Church as the Body of Christ" (131).

The two aspects of Pneumatology not only determine but also constitute ecclesiology. “[T]hese aspects must qualify the very ontology of the Church. The Spirit is not something that ‘animates’ a Church that already somehow exists. The Spirit makes the Church be" (132). This leads Zizioulas in a surprisingly premature way to the practical question to which he holds off on an answer: “what ecclesial structures and institutions exist which help the Church to maintain the right balance between local and universal?” (133). We will return to the framing of this question in our critique.

This Pneumatological Christology is significant for conciliarity. The oneness of the church is understood to coincide with its multiplicity. There is no council or synod that acts as a mirror image of the Pope for Orthodoxy. The relationship between the local and universal Church is worked out along the lines of his understanding of the being of God as a communion of persons. There is a double principal at work for Zizioulas, for on the one hand the institution has no prior existence or authority beyond “the event of communion,” while on the other hand the communion of the church cannot be prior to its unity. “The institution which expresses this communion must be accompanied by an indication that there is a ministry safeguarding the oneness which the communion aims at expressing" (135).
A Pneumatological Christology is also significant to the relationship between the bishop and the church, and the maintenance of relationship between the “one” and the “many.” “In the case of the local Church is represented through the ministry of the bishop, while the “many” are represented through the other ministries and the laity” (136). The “one” and the “many” are interdependent. In so far as the “one” is dependent on the “many,” there can be no ordination or episcopacy apart from the community. In so far as the “many” are dependent on the “one,” there can be “no baptism” or “ordination without the presence of the bishop" (137).

Finally, the ecclesial institutions of the bishop and the laity “have to be attached to the eucharist,” (138) thus emphasizing not only the communion but the eschatology of the Church. He describes the institutions as being “reflections of the Kingdom” in two ways. First, they “iconic,” in that “their ontology does not lie in the institution itself,” nor due they owe anything to “historical expedience” (138) but to Christ alone. Zizioulas does not advocate neglecting the needs of people, but he does not see these as having any fundamental structural bearing.

We turn to the function of truth in the Church. Zizioulas describes the Eucharist as “the Locus of Truth" (115). Christ is the experience of truth as the one who comes into our history and dwells within us (115). There is no truth of Christ apart from the community that we might locate within the individual mind (rationalism) or soul (mysticism). Christ is not the truth “in a community, but as a community" (115). The truth of Christ takes on a eucharistic historical form, which differentiates it from mere fact. History as such is known in “charismatic-pentacostal events” which do not submit to “a linear development" (116). Not surprisingly, this creates a new understanding of the infallibility of the Church as dependent on communion of the bishops and the community. Regarding the formulation of truth in dogmas, the aim of definition and anathema was to preserve “Eucharistic communion” (117). Zizioulas goes on: “Thus it may be said that the credal definitions carry no relationship with truth in themselves, but only in their being doxological acclamations of the worshiping community” (117).

The Eucharist reveals the renewal of creation, such that humanity is given the task of priesthood to it. Here we begin to see a characteristic blurring of divine and human agency:

Man’s responsibility is to make a Eucharistic reality out of nature, i.e. to make nature, too, capable of communion. If man does this, then truth takes up its meaning for the whole cosmos, Christ becomes a cosmic Christ, and the world as a whole dwells in truth, which is none other than communion with its Creator. Truth thereby becomes the life of all that is (119).

Finally, “a Eucharistic concept of truth shows how truth becomes freedom” (120). Whereas freedom as choice often assumes an individualist concept of being, the freedom “given by the Christ-truth to creation is precisely this freedom from division and individualization, creating the possibility of otherness within communion" (121). Those who “gather together in the eucharist realize their freedom under the form of affirmation alone: it is not the ‘yes’ and the ‘no’ together which God offers in Christ, but only the ‘yes,’ which equates to the Eucharistic ‘Amen" (121).

Because this notion of freedom is so otherworldly, Zizioulas admits that it may seem impractical and unrealistic. However, he reprimands Protestants for this reaction:

You do not do justice to truth’s ontological content by implying that our fallen state of existence is all there is. The individualization of existence by the fall makes us seek out security in objects or various ‘things,’ but the truth of communion does not offer this kind of security: rather, it frees us from slavery to objective ‘things’ by placing things and ourselves within a communion-event (122).

Why the Eucharist Does Not Make the Church Part 1: Henri de Lubac

2007-10-08T21:15:00.000-07:00

The following is my final paper that I wrote for George Hunsinger's class on the theology of the Lord's Supper last spring:

Does the Eucharist make the Church? Henri de Lubac, the great 20th century Catholic theologian who helped to stir interest in Eucharistic ecclesiology across Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox theology, proposed that it does. In Catholicism, de Lubac sought to give an account of the Church that relied on the Eucharist as a pattern of its life and being, exhibiting its “eminently social character.” Because the Eucharist is where the Church is found to be in communion – its eschatological reality - this pattern was instrumental in fighting off the individualism that had encroached the church so strongly in modern times. No less did John Zizioulas prefer to think of the Church as that which is its fullest self in the Eucharist. By focusing, as the Church Fathers did, on what the Eucharist does to the community, these and other high-sacramental theologians have circumvented the polemics over issues of real presence and sacrifice in favor of seeing the Eucharist as a celebration of communion. However, it is clear that in this turn to its ecclesiological benefits, Christology has languished.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze the ways in which de Lubac and Zizioulas describe the relationship between the Eucharist and the Church. I limit myself to two main texts for their thought: Catholicism by de Lubac and Being as Communion by Zizioulas. In this paper I attempt to give a Reformed response by paying particular attention to cases where the ontological continuity of Christ and the church threatens Christ’s own subjectivity and agency. On the other hand, it is my intention to avoid making Christ a completely supernatural and extrinsic entity to the church. A proper relationship between Christ and the Church will allow the Eucharist to both attest to Christ’s true presence in and with the Church and his lordship over it.

Henri de Lubac
According to de Lubac, “The Church . . . completes – so far as it can be completed here below – the work of spiritual reunion which was made necessary by sin; that work that was begun at the Incarnation and was carried on up to Calvary (17).” Again, he says: “Humanity is one, organically one by is divine structure; it is the Church’s mission to reveal to men that pristine unity that they have lost, to restore and complete it (19)” This mission of gathering humanity into its unity was given to the Church, enabled by the Holy Spirit and its gifts. The gift to the Church to deepen its own union was the Eucharist.

The Church has its active and passive aspects, baptizing and yet also being baptized, blessing even as it is blessed. It is both the one who reunites and constitutes those who have been reunited. It is a means to the end, and yet it is also “the end, that is to say, that union in its consummation (27).” There is a “mystical analogy” for de Lubac between the Church on earth and the church in heaven, “which we should perceive the reflexion of a profound identity (27).” For de Lubac, the union between the temporal and eternal, the visible and invisible, is a mystery that we should not seek to penetrate. He goes at great lengths to clarify that there is no confusion between them, so that the visible is neither deified nor adored. While seeing the Church requires faith, it is not the same faith which God requires to be known. While the Church has a hierarchy and a discipline at its disposal, this is only a partial cure to the rampant individualism and separatism since it works “only from without by way of authority, instead of effective union (27).” In a passage that blurs the distinction between Christ and the church, de Lubac writes:

If Christ is the sacrament of God, the Church is for us the sacrament of Christ; she represents him, in the full and ancient meaning of the term, she really makes him present. She not only carries on his work, but she is his very continuation, in a sense far more real than in which it can be said that any human institution is its founder’s continuation (27).

Thus, only by partaking of the bread and wine in a proper manner does the individual receive Christ and is received by the Church. To reject this reception into the Church is a rejection of the sacrament itself and Christ. How should we understand the relationship between the individual and the Church? For de Lubac, the individual is a “Church in miniature, (168)” and they are brought into a unity that mirrors that of the Trinity:

Between its different persons, whatever the variety of their gifts, the inequality of their ‘merits’, there obtains no scale of the degrees of being, but in the likeness of the Trinity itself – and, by the mediation of Christ in whom all are enfolded, within the Trinity itself – a unity of circumincession (183).

According to de Lubac, “since the sacraments are the means of salvation they should be understood as instruments of unity (35).” Here we come to the essence of Eucharistic ecclesiology. Because the sacraments deepen our unity with Christ, they necessarily deepen the unity of the church. The horizontal deepening of unity is intimately bound up with the vertical deepening of unity. “Indeed, in certain cases it must be said that it is through this union with the community that the Christian is united to Christ (35).” This contraction of church and sacrament occurs such that one is not effective without the other. Instead of seeing the sacraments as a supernatural rite that transmits grace, there is no point at which the church ceases to be the cause and effect of such transmission. The sacraments are given power by the church, even as the church is also nourished by the sacraments.

The primary significance of the Eucharist lies not in real presence or sacrifice, but in its unifying effect. Thus, it is impossible to speak of a true Eucharist if there is no unity in the Church. Furthermore, this unity is forged through suffering with the Church, since the Eucharist memorializes Christ’s Passion. Thus, the sacrificial significance of the Eucharist points toward unity since the Church is offered again and again “for a greater, more united Church.”

The unity achieved through the Eucharist is not simply for the Church’s spiritual enjoyment: “True Eucharistic piety, therefore, is no devout individualism . . . With one sweeping, all-embracing gesture, in one fervent intention it gathers together the whole world (49).” There is, thus, an assumed unity within humanity to be found in the fact that God made humanity in his own image. This image does not stem from below in the humanity of Adam. Instead, “it is one and the same image stamped from above identically upon each which makes all one; in other words, the principle of unity lies above, it is not to be identified with nay of the particular images here below (16).”

Whereas sin has introduced not only a metaphysical individuality but also a moral egoism into humanity (187), Christ is the redemption of our image by dwelling in us, both uniting and differentiating us at once:

But what is impossible to mere man becomes possible to man made divine, and what natural understanding rejected as fanciful becomes the sacred object of our hope. Christ, by completing humanity in himself, at the same time made us all complete – but in God. Thus we can say, in the end . . . that we are fully person only within the Person of the Son, by whom and with whom we share in the circumincession of the Trinity (187-88).

Earlier we saw a blurring of the distinction between Christ and the church, but now we see a clear distinction with asymmetry, so that Christ is spoken of as the primary subject. “Christ completes humanity,” and de Lubac provides a quote from Clement of Alexandria with supposed affirmation, saying:

This eternal Jesus, the one high priest, intercedes for men and calls on them: “Hearken,” he cries, “all you peoples . . . I summon the whole human race, I who am its author by the will of the Father! Come unto me and gather together as one well-ordered unity under the one God, and under the one Logos of God (6, quoting Protreptic, c.12)

Clement thus believed Christ proclaimed himself as one who constituted the unity of the world. De Lubac, however, does not dwell on how proclamation is related to the Eucharist.

Ultimately, it was the concern of individualism that drove de Lubac to recover a Eucharistic ecclesiology. “God does not love us as so many separate beings (182).” The grace mediated by the Eucharist was to be found only in the fellowship of the Church. However, as we shall see, an Orthodox theologian named John Zizioulas would not find this to be enough – he would not only de-individualize society but Christ himself, so that there is no external relation between them. Rather, the Church, as an eschatological reality, truly constitutes Christ here and now in the celebration of Eucharist.

The most significant short-comings of de Lubac relate to his lack of qualification regarding the relationship between Christ and the church. While there is certainly unity, there rarely ever seems to be a distinction. However, he maintains a healthy understanding of indwelling, at least with respect to our natural unity and our supernatural unity in Christ: “True union does not tend to dissolve into one another the beings that it brings together, but to bring them to completion by means of one another. . . . Union differentiates (180).”

Conclusion: BARTH’S RESPONSE TO MODERN CONCEPTS OF NATURAL THEOLOGY

2007-07-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

BARTH’S RESPONSE TO MODERN CONCEPTS OF NATURAL THEOLOGY
RATIONALISM
If we stipulate rationalism as purely attempting to prove the existence of God then it is obvious that Barth, as well as Brunner, have no interest in such a project. By disallowing natural theology, any speculation on the existence of God is nullified. For Barth, the reality of God’s existence is presupposed or given through revelation in Jesus Christ. Rationalism, as a motif for Barth, assumes reason as internal to faith (as in Anselm’s “faith seeking understanding”) and confines it within revelation alone. A more interesting question is: how would Barth respond to an a posteriori natural theology that articulates God’s handiwork in the apparent intelligent design of creation through scientific inquiry? It is unclear, given that Barth never truly engaged in dialogue with the sciences, as his protégé Thomas Torrance did. However, we can speculate that Barth would allow this scientific inquiry as a form of worship through creation, but only one entailed within the gracious revelation of Jesus Christ.

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
THE PROBLEM OF RELIGION IN THEOLOGY
In response to the philosophy of religion, Barth made his views clear in Church Dogmatics I/2 in a famous chapter called “The Revelation of God as the Abolition of Religion.” He believes that Christianity without revelation is certainly no better nor worse than any other religion. Again, he understands “religion” as relying on “innate” human capacities” and thus belonging to the subjective side of the human-divine correspondence. Revelation, must speak to this side if it is to determine our existence, for to deny this would be to deny it as revelation. Revelation, furthermore, must be regarded as a human phenomenological experience. It is thus open to the comparisons of history, psychology, etc. The human aspect of revelation thus introduces it into the sphere of religion. By recognition of the revelation of God as having a general human aspect, “Christian religion” becomes one in a mass of other human religious phenomena.
The fact that God’s revelation must be considered as a religion among other religions leads Barth to add an even more pertinent question to the discussion: “Whether theology and the church and faith are able and willing to take themselves and their basis seriously.” Religion in the 18th and 19th century had been the problem of theology rather than a problem for theology. Barth saw theology’s duty to the growing humanism of this period as a duty “to participate in this trend and lovingly investigate it. But it was certainly not its duty to co-operate in it.” It is precisely this “co-operation” that occurred. Thus, Barth sought to recapture the “object” of theology: “revelation in all its uniqueness.”
As Bromiley summarizes Barth’s concern not to coordinate revelation and religion:
Religion has to be considered (293), but it cannot be coordinated with revelation (294). If revelation on its subjective side becomes religion as event God himself is always the subject of the event. The question, then, is not that of relating revelation to a known factor of religion, but of finding out what religion is from the standpoint of the disclosed factor of revelation and faith.

RELIGION AS UNBELIEF
Barth wants us to consider man as the subject of religion. Not man as a human per se, but as man (whether he knows it or not) in the revelation of Jesus Christ his Lord. It is this “revelation [that] singles out the Church as the locus of true religion.” The “Christian Religion” however is not the locus, or fulfilled nature of human religion, or in any way superior to all other religions. Rather it is that the truth of Christian religion is the revelation of grace by which it lives.
Barth believes that the Church, as the locus, can begin a theological treatment of religion and religions only for “those who are ready to abase themselves and their religion together with man, with every individual man, knowing that they first, and their religion have need of tolerance, a strong forbearing tolerance.” Without a readiness to give tolerance in the way they have received it, through God who has graciously reconciled sinful humanity, the church becomes mere religion and no longer the locus of true religion. Religion needs this toleration of itself, for in itself . . . it is shown . . . by revelation itself to be unbelief.”
Barth provides us with two standpoints from which to consider religion as unbelief. Firstly, revelation is “God’s self-offering and self-manifestation.” For Barth we must renounce all attempts to apprehend the truth, and let truth be revealed to us. However he also states that the “attitude and activity” by which the genuine believer met and still meets revelation is religion. “Arbitrarily and willfully” does humanity seek by its own insight to apprehend truth about itself. Revelation, as we have said before, opposes all these a priori ideas. “In religion he ventures to grasp at God. Because it is grasping, religion is the contradiction of revelation.” Barth presents humanity, creating in their religion a fiction and replacement for God, with little or no relation to God. It is not an outstretched hand that God fills in his revelation. Instead, revelation is a surprise to humanity!
Barth uses the Old Testament testimony against idolatry to emphasize that revelation does not link up with existing human religion. Rather revelation contradicts the arbitrary constructs and attempts of humanity. The New Testament proclamation of Christ is equally met with “a capricious and arbitrary attempt to storm heaven!” Thus, our attempts to seek after God can only be considered idolatrous to the revelation of God.
The second standpoint is that revelation affirms that man is unable to help himself. It opposes the self-righteousness of works. “He cannot in any sense declare himself that he is righteous and holy, and therefore saved . . . it would be a lie” against the truth of the Fall. God’s act of reconciliation is in opposition to the piety of religion, which Barth describes as an “abomination.” Though perhaps rare, it is possible to find a pious “godly” man within the sons of Adam, but a Christian is a different thing altogether.
By interpreting the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament, Barth sets out to show the Old as a scripture of revelation against every religion of law and works and therefore all religions as such. He is, however, aware that religion can be criticized from within, and is careful to distinguish this from the abolishment of religion by revelation. “Religion is always self contradictory and impossible per se.” Barth addresses religion’s self-contradiction and humanity’s inward dialect as something within the life of religion itself, unlike revelation. Religion fails to overcome idolatry and self-righteousness in its own strength.
Human criticism points to a two-fold weakening of religion. Firstly, religion is a non-necessity and need not be indispensable, as it is only an externalization, expression, or representation that man has fulfilled for himself in religious life. Thus it is not an authentic need. Secondly, “the link between religion and religious man in his variable-ness is the weakness of all religions,” i.e. religion either changes with the times and therefore makes its truth claims to rest on these times (relativism), or it holds fast but dies due to a lack of fresh believers and adherents.
In the weakness revealed by human criticism, religion attempts to dispel its externalism by convincing itself that the previous “attempt to externalize God was a misunderstanding that deceived us right at the outset” and that an outward law is replaced and concentrated onto an inward loyalty to a nameless, impersonal and undirected will. Barth sees this progression as taking a two-forked route: that of mysticism or atheism.
Mysticism does not negate religion or attack it openly. For as Barth goes on to explain it requires external religion as the text by which it makes its attempts to interpret its internal meaning. Atheism is seen as little better, and perhaps all the more naïve for its outright “negation of the over-world of religion, the weakness and non-necessity of which are perceived.” However, it fails to see that other dogmas of truth and ways of certainty will take on religious character and create other over-worlds of religion.
Barth agrees that atheism and mysticism bring religion into crisis, however they fail to undermine its power “for their own existence is too closely bound up with the existence of religion.” A real crisis within religion, which outstrips humanity’s power to create its own gods, justify and sanctify itself, comes by revelation. Revelation is the positive Word of Christ that goes beyond any negative word of humanity (in pure mysticism and pure atheism). Only in the light of faith can the judgments of unbelief, idolatry and self-righteousness be made.

TRUE RELIGION
According to Barth, “religion is never true in itself and as such. The revelation of God denies that any religion is true, i.e. that it is in truth the knowledge and worship of God and the reconciliation of man with God.” As Barth points out, Christianity comes under the judgment of revelation also. The only way for religion to become “true religion” is for it to “be justified.” For “revelation can adopt religion and mark it as true religion . . . there is true religion: just as there are justified sinners.”
If this is so, then there is no hesitation to say that Christianity is the true religion. Christianity does stand under judgment of religion as unbelief, but it is acquitted by the grace of God’s proclamation in revelation. The faith that justifies Christianity is not that which lives by Christian self-consciousness but “the faith that accepts Christianity’s weakness and therein displays its true power.”
“This power dwells only in weakness . . . the power of religious self-consciousness which is the gift of grace in the midst of weakness, unless Christianity has first humbled itself instead of exalting itself.” Thus, there is nothing with regard to the qualities of Christianity that give it any degree of superiority over other religions. Instead, it is made true as it is created, elected, justified, and sanctified in divine work of Jesus Christ.

APOLOGETICS
This discipline, which is equated with Brunner’s “eristics,” is the most difficult to identify within Barth’s theology. His theology lacks the crisis and anxiety which apologetic theology is constantly fighting, as it fights its opponents in defense of its doctrines, and especially its truth. Barth rejects any apologetics that defends theological truth if this truth is assumed to be neutral and capable of being grounded in some general possibility unknown to us. Apologetics of this type attempts to validate the truth claims of Christian theology by means of rational reflection. As Hunsinger puts it:

"Such validation would show that these claims are either not precluded or else, more strongly, are actually required (or at least confirmed) by certain philosophical principles, or by the results of certain historical or scientific research. Apologetics might also attempt to show that Christian beliefs are commendable, because they enable us to obtain certain ends which we know on other grounds to be valuable or beneficial. The validity of Christian theology – its possibility, its necessity, or its instrumentality – is thus to be demonstrated on external grounds."

Thus, the problem with apologetics defined as such is that it denies the existence of revelation, just as natural theology denies the power of revelation. Apologetics can also attempt to validate revelation by subjecting it to alien standards. Revelation is such that it cannot be tested, commended, or construed by terms outside itself, thanks to Barth’s radical singular definition of it. Revelation, again, is received by faith.
When Barth insists that the offense of truth’s exclusivity in Christ cannot be overcome on apologetic grounds, he seems to be saying that it cannot be overcome apart from a personal encounter with and apprehension of God’s Word. This apprehension does not occur unless our trust, humility and obedience are fully engaged. Apologetic theology, like natural theology, seems to defer to the moment of personalist apprehension while offering an objectivist generalization which strangely deletes reference to Jesus Christ. By contrast, what Barth seems to be saying is this: insofar as Jesus Christ himself in inalienable to an authentic objectivism, personal encounter and commitment are inalienable to our apprehension of God. The two are so indissolubly united that neither can be had without the other.

Like natural theology itself, apologetics must be done in such a way that it is a posteriori to revelation.

AFTERWORD
While the theological debate left Barth and Brunner in deep conflict with one another, there was, in the sense of the “greater context” which Barth spoke of in his “Angry Introduction,” a reconciliation at the most important moment in life: on the cusp of death itself. George Hunsinger tells us the following about Brunner and Barth:
"An attempted reconciliation in 1960 did not work out. As Brunner lay dying in 1966, Barth was moved to communicate through a mutual friend. “If he is still alive and it is possible, tell him again, ‘Commended to our God,’ even by me. And tell him, Yes, that the time when I thought that I had to say ‘No’ to him is now long past, since we all live only by virtue of the fact that a great and merciful God says his gracious Yes to all of us.” These were the last words Brunner heard before he died."

BARTH’S RESPONSE TO NATURAL THEOLOGY SUMMARIZED

2007-07-28T17:47:00.001-07:00

BARTH’S RESPONSE TO NATURAL THEOLOGY SUMMARIZED
By now it should be fairly obvious to the reader that Barth’s commitment to God’s grace fuels his hostility toward natural theology within the Church. Natural theology bypasses the mediation, the miracle, and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in God’s act of revelation. It renders human access to God immediate by way of innate spiritual and material capacities, as a general given truth.
In regards to its source and motivation, natural theology has been one way that the Church has chosen to affirm itself self-sufficiently, over against the penetrating revelation of God as Word. George Hunsinger interprets Barth’s view of natural theology in the following way:
It shows the extent to which we would rather bear our own lives, even through the wretchedness of guilt and death, than be carried solely by divine grace. It shows the extent to which we can endure the offer of God’s Word without being thrown off course. It shows the extent to which natural theology is something that has already been lived out before it has been thought and developed as such. Above all, it shows the extent to which we are prepared to affirm in self-sufficiency and self-justification that we ourselves already stand in the truth. “The core of this theology is that for us the truth can be had without the truth itself, because we are the truth itself, or at any rate, we are also the truth itself, in independence of the truth of God. This theology of life only needs to be made explicit as such and the whole of natural theology is in force in its basic idea” (II/1, 135-36 rev.).

For Barth, the question of truth cannot be answered without God’s help, nor even properly asked. Hence, the kind of access we might like to attribute to ourselves, as we do in other fields of knowledge, does not exist due to our sinful nature. All knowledge of God is rooted objectively and subjectively in the Holy God, who is set apart yet completely intimate to humanity.
Natural theology, as an expression of our desire for self-sufficiency, defends us against the miracle of grace, whereby God comes to us in our need to carry us to redemption, through guilt and death on the Cross, but in such a way that involves the subsequent surrender of precisely this self-sufficiency. Natural theology does not wish to allow this surrender. Instead it assumes that we have an independent status from God, standing objectively at the Archimedean point if you will, with no inadequacy. This natural theology is what Barth was schooled in, and what he attempted to break away from profoundly in 1916.
While grace “disrupts” us in order to liberate us, natural theology seeks to give us greater control. Natural theology is especially keen on using the language of grace, entailing grace as a choice that we can meet with utter poise. For we love nothing better than free gifts. Dietrich Bonhoeffer made this point well when wrote against the “cheap grace” of the German-Lutherans of his time, who felt that grace had no restrictions, and their obedience was completely irrelevant.
What Barth has against Brunner is that Brunner is formulating a natural theology that still seeks to explain grace as co-existing with nature, by which nature has its own self-grounded capacity for grace (at least in part). Nature cannot establish external conditions, especially on its own grounds, which grace must conform to. This would have grace cease to be free and sovereign. Instead, grace has the ability to reconstitute nature, as well as humanity itself, in order to have genuine fellowship with it. There is no autonomous capacity to choose revelation. Therefore, “natural theology (for all its good or bad intentions) not only reinforces human nature at its most unfortunate point, but also in the process fails to allow grace to be grace, revelation to be revelation, and God to be God.”
The only solution to the problem of subjectivity is to replace us with Jesus Christ as the respondent to grace. Barth’s theology always brings truth under Jesus Christ, especially as it regards our human existence. He is always “the missing center . . . Yet when he is restored to the center that is rightfully his, everything else falls into place.” Barth’s objectivism always entails subjectivism. And his “one-sidedness” always entails a “two-sidedness.” It is through Jesus Christ that this is accomplished - where God became Man because he was for Man, and responded to God as Man because he was for Man.

SIMILARITIES AND DISIMILARITIES: BARTH AND BRUNNER ON THE IMAGO DEI

2007-07-28T17:45:00.000-07:00

CONCLUSION:
SIMILARITIES AND DISIMILARITIES:
BARTH AND BRUNNER ON THE IMAGO DEI
According to O’Donovan, Barth and Brunner agree that human beings are unique creatures due to the unique relationship that God has chosen to have in covenant with them. The imago Dei must describe the relational aspect of man in order to describe its uniqueness. They both realize that in order for the doctrine of the imago Dei to say anything about the relationship between God and humanity, it must identify with the Word of God. This identification exists between being created in the image of God and receiving one’s true being in that Word. It further instructs us into a sustained true being through grace. The imago Dei is thus the “life- and form- bestowing transcendent divine relationship in which man as man participates.”
Where Brunner and Barth differ is in their articulation of this relational aspect of humanity. Brunner believes that this relational being of humanity can be found in the human constitution as originally created by God. Barth opposes this and instead advocates a Christ-centered understanding of human being.
For Brunner, the formal aspect of the imago is a transcendental structure of human subjectivity. He understands a person to be an individual example of freedom, responsibility, and decision. As the personal identity has continuity in both the sinful nature and in the act of faith, so does this transcendental structure of human being. But this formal definition of a person becomes difficult for Brunner to sustain when he materially describes the formal aspect in terms of our various capacities to know God as He is in Himself, as well as His Word for us. As O’Donovan points out:

"His concept of person depends on this move to actuality for its ethical force, its power of communicating the uniqueness and superiority of human being. In this move as well resides the tension of law and Gospel, for these actual capacities of sinful man constitute, at one and the same time, his openness to God’s saving grace and the negative totality of his rebellious will."

Barth rejects Brunner’s idea that the concept of a formal image as transcendental subjectivity never arrives at the individual’s actual being, but instead only stops at his/her possible being. Barth can accept Brunner’s “understanding of person as individual being in its singular destiny established by God’s Word of election as long as God’s elective Word is His revealed Word in Jesus Christ and as long as the singular destiny established is actualized from its inception within the covenant of God’s gracious dealings.”
The continuity of personal identity, which transcends both sin and faith, is a neutral concept for Brunner that is entailed within in his transcendental structure. As such, humanity cannot have this structure, for there is nothing neutral in actual sinful humanity – there could never be! Instead, sinful humanity falls within the scope of faith whereby individuality is conformed to the redeeming Word of Christ. This conformity “is the being with which he was created and within which his unique destiny unfolds.” Thus the only exclusion that occurs is in the corruption and destruction of human being. Sin thus threatens humanity with “non-being,” “irrationality,” and “perdition.” The covenant of grace in the Incarnate Word of Jesus Christ safeguards the “actuality of each man” as promised, here and now. St. Paul testifies that Jesus Christ is the true “image of God, full and perfect, in whom there is no division of form and content.” The only uniqueness attributed to humanity is found in their participation within the humanity of Christ alone.
Barth further implies that his own Christ-centered understanding of human being is consistent with the Word of God’s election of humanity. Brunner’s transcendental structure abandons the theological and Christological realism that he wants to maintain. “Whereas [Barth’s] Christological formulation of person keeps the focus on God’s transcendent act, Brunner’s transcendental formulation shifts the focus to an immanent and abstract structure, losing sight of the covenantal foundation of human being.”
Finally, O’Donovan highlights the ethical consequence of this shift of focus:

"namely, a loss of universality in the application of the concept of person. Barth’s reply of 1934 draws out this consequence with passionate lucidity by pointing to those ‘children of Adam’ who, ‘as far as human reason can see, possess neither reason, responsibility nor ability to make decisions’, and so fall outside the category of self-determining subjectivity. His examples, ‘new-born children and idiots’, carry as timely evocations for us as for the German church of 1934. While his words then resonated in the abyss opened up by the German Christian Movement’s demand that the nation be protected against the unfit and inferior, so the same words now resonate in the abyss opened up by the demonstrated willingness of members of our society routinely to dispose of incompetent human life by technological means."

BRUNNER THEN AND NOW: THE EARLIER FORM OF THEOLOGIA NATURALIS

2007-06-22T19:33:00.000-07:00

In the next chapter of Barth’s response we begin to see what Barth would have preferred from Brunner. Here he describes Brunner’s earlier project of natural theology (with some aspects akin to that of Kierkegaard) in a much more positive light than the one he sees in Nature and Grace. He distinguishes Brunner’s earlier project from the natural theology of the 18th and 19th centuries. He says:
"But the question concerning Brunner’s “true” theologia naturalis, of which we have already spoken, is the following: Does he really mean a “theologia naturalis” consisting of propositions and instruction directly obtained from natural evidence, of the kind that was introduced into Protestant theology two hundred years ago? Nature and Grace would have led one to suppose so. But again there is Brunner’s last authoritative pronouncement but one on the subject, which seems (at least at the first glance) to point in a somewhat different directions."

Barth then describes Brunner’s earlier form, which looks very familiar to Barth’s own earlier dialectical project:
"It seemed then, that Brunner was not speaking, as he is now, of a directly observable continuity between nature and grace, reason and revelation, but of a continuity which at the same time was discontinuity, which provided both a contact and a contrast. The latter was said to be so great that the continuity was subordinate to the discontinuity, the contact to the contrast. “The Gospel cannot be preached unless this continuity is completely disrupted. The content of the Gospel is of such a kind that by it this previous understanding (i.e. of God through reason) is not merely corrected but decidedly negatived. The natural knowledge of God is neither a true knowledge of God nor a true knowledge of God” (p. 510 f.). All natural knowledge of God is – so Brunner then said – essentially a knowledge of the wrath of God. And being subject to the wrath of God meant the same thing objectively as a bad conscience or despair subjectively. The different degrees of the subjective consciousness point to the objective side. The “contact” made in the natural knowledge of God consists in the fact that it involves a “loss of certainty.” The contact is made, not with something positive or neutral but with something negative."

Brunner, as Barth points out, believes that we apply this negation of human existence as the point of contact for evangelism:

"As regards the contents of the relations of God and man there is a discontinuity. Only as regards the formal fact of the relation is there continuity (p. 523 f.). Hence the proclamation of the God revealed in Christ must always be at the same time an attempt “to show the unbeliever the true character of his existence without faith, to show that despair is the ‘fundamental condition’ of existence.” “Humanly speaking, the success of the preaching of the Gospel is as dependent upon the contact that is made as upon true doctrine. And this contact consists of leading man to the place where he will know the desperate character of his existence, not merely theoretically but in his conscience.” For “bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. X, 5) means “that man recognizes himself in what is said to him by Christ concerning his natural existence, so that he can identify himself with it.” Similarly, theology has to make contact with the natural self-knowledge of man by elucidating and underlining its negative result from the point of view of faith. “Eristic theology means ‘laying bare’ the true character of existence by destroying the fictions of every Weltanschauung. But this ‘laying bare’ cannot be performed except by using what man can of himself know about himself” (p. 529 f.)."

While this all used to be Brunner’s opinion, much of it is “absent” in his Nature and Grace, though it has “faint echos” in his doctrine of the imago Dei. Barth is unsure why Brunner gave up on this direction, which he likens to that of Kierkegaard and Heidegger. Apparently Barth has decided that while he once found this small capacity for revelation interesting “around 1920, and perhaps even later,” he has turned away from it himself: “for in spite of its restrained formulation, it raised the problem of a peculiar aptitude of man for divine revelation in a much more acute, tempting and dangerous form.”
Thus, the earlier form of Brunner’s theologia naturalis explained the human capacity for revelation as consisting

"only in the fact that in the rational existence of man there is a diacritical point where this existence can be discontinuous, where it can issue in a “negative point,” where its most essential truth, its “fundamental condition,” i.e. despair, can come to light, where this despair can be theoretically described as true and felt to be so by the conscience, and where the knowledge of God, which is bound up with it from the start, can “become uncertain.”"

Barth notices that here at least Brunner sharply distinguished the formal and material aspects as being completely “incompatible,” while reason consists purely in its ability to be negated by sin, which leaves humanity with one response: despair. He adds: “Nor did Brunner fail to add that the transition from the ability to despair to real despair is dependent on grace.”
Barth defines this earlier form of natural theology this way:

"Accordingly the independent functions of natural theology would be the following: theology and proclamation of the Gospel must not confine themselves to putting forward “true doctrine.” In, with and under the preaching of revelation, natural theology would have to use what man can of himself know concerning himself. It would have to tell him about himself, i.e. about his deepest despair of himself. Lastly, it would have to use the demonstration of this negative point to destroy all the fictions of Weltanschauungen."

Barth then applies his “No!” with the same force towards this lesser version, for it still seeks to find within humanity a “capacity for revelation.” This earlier form is even more threatening because of its proximity to “Evangelical truth.” According to Barth, Brunner was “stating a real theological problem” in describing this negative, “uncertain” natural knowledge of the wrath of God and existential desperation. This theological truth is present in Scripture, and is the concept of revelation that I wish to highlight later on:

"that man is of himself unable to find access to the revelation of God. Just because Christ is born, we have to regard the world as lost in the sight of God. The Word of God declares man to be unfree in his relations with God. The fact that we become hearers and doers of the Word of God signifies the realization of a divine possibility, not of one that is inherent in human nature. Freedom to know the true God is a miracle, a freedom of God, not one of our freedoms. Faith in the revelation of God makes this negation inevitable. To contradict it would amount to unbelief."

But Barth notices that as early as 1932 Brunner shows us that he did not hold onto this concept for long. For if he had, he would not further preceded to explicate a “natural” knowledge of God. Barth speaks against anthropocentrism, and regards that being “one-sided” is our necessary point of contact:

"Nor could he possibly have said that the state of affairs to which this knowledge relates could be seen only by “utilizing that which man can of himself know about himself.” How can man ever in any sense know “of himself” what has to be known here? He may know it himself, yes! But “of himself,” never! How could he possibly convince himself of this negation of his freedom? He could only do it if he thought that he could, in advance, overlook and grasp both the Word of God and himself, if he thought not only that he knew the condition of his hearing of the Word – i.e. the negation of his freedom to do so – but also that he could create it himself. If we base ourselves upon what is possible to us, we shall always believe in them.. . . All the comfort, all the power, all the truth of the revelation of God dependso n the fact that it is God who is revealed to us. And all understanding of this fact depends on its identity with God being understood, on all possibilities except that of God being excluded. This applies also, or even specially, to the “loss of certainty” ! Also the wrath of God is the wrath of God. Hence it is by no means identical with any fundamental condition or “negative point” of our existence."

Hence, Barth rids of himself of previous contradiction regarding his own a priori use of natural theology, particularly through this amendment to his (and Brunner’s) earlier notion of the negative natural self-knowledge. He provides further Scriptural evidence and historical-theological scholarship that any self-knowledge, even negative knowledge, is never prior to the work of the Spirit. I find Barth’s use of Luther most illuminating, since it counters most of what Protestant theology today teaches in the pulpit:

"According to Luther, man is not a “sinner” by nature. He has to become one, and it is “a rare thing and a hard one” to become a sinner (Comm. On Romans 1515/16, Ficker II, lxxi, I f.). “As the righteousness of God lives in us through faith, so it is also with sin; that is, we must believe that we are sinners” (lxix, 10). “We have to give way to his revelation, that is to his Words, to justify and confirm them, and thus on the basis of what they say to us to confess to ourselves what we did not know before, namely that we are sinner” (lvii, 31). Humilitas can exist only as spiritualitas (cxlv, 23). Hence only the spiritual man can speak of himself as St. Paul does in Romans vii (cxlvii, 32)."

Finally, Barth gives a quote from Calvin: “According to Calvin, true knowledge of self in real humility cannot precede the knowledge of God, it must follow the latter. We perceive how little our eyes are able to bear the light, not when we direct them on to the ground, but when we try to look at the sun (Instit., I, 1).”
Barth turns his attack to the concept of despair as a negative “point of contact.” This concept, which was historically utilized by Kierkegaard , was an important part of the edifice for the dialectical movement, and so his rejection of the concept of despair further isolates him from this movement. For we find that Barth’s dialectics is formed out of his Reformed commitment of objectivism, and that “despair,” as a subjective reality, cannot be real for human knowledge prior to divine revelation. He says:

"It does not matter whether the despair we experience and know as our own is, according to one philosophy, the “fundamental condition” of our existence or, according to another, something else. At any rate that despair is not a factor which co-operates with the judgment of God and which, therefore, is indispensable for its execution. Nor is it, as Brunner evidently thought and still thinks, indirectly identical with the judgment of God, as being its subjective manifestation. That sorrow which really is possible to us is always that sorrow of which it is said in 2 Cor. Vii, 10, that it “worketh death.” It may be “shown up.” But what can here be shown up and appear can never be the sorrow “after a godly manner” which works “repentance not to be repented of,” which leads to salvation. Not even when it is in the sphere of grace! On the contrary, even when it enters into the sphere of grace I have to realize that in that sorrow which I experience, undergo and know as my own, I am still, and even all the more, my own lord and master."

Barth concludes this section by remarking that our proclamation, if it rests on this “point of contact” of “despair,” thus rests on a false doctrine. It also proves severely impractical. Barth points out once again that Brunner is trying to fill the “purely formal” imago with actual material, which is “the capacity for a sinless knowledge of sin . . .to sit in judgment on human existence, to inform oneself concerning oneself, to known oneself to be punished with despair . . . If that isn’t capacity for revelation . . .!” For Barth, the Holy Spirit is not in need of a point of contact in humanity, but instead creates its own “point of contact.”

Brunner and Calvin: Concerning Natural Knowledge

2007-06-07T12:38:00.000-07:00

BRUNNER AND CALVIN: CONCERNING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE
Again, as stated above, there is not enough space to direct attention towards a proper interpretation of Calvin’s theology out of Brunner and Barth’s disagreements. However, in conjunction with the interpretation of Romans I:18-20, Barth offers his own views on what the role of natural knowledge is by way of appealing to Calvin.
According to Barth, Calvin did not regard natural knowledge of God in creation as a separate capacity that is retained (formally) and is then “reconstituted” by Christ to be the “point of contact” for revelation. Furthermore, Scripture did not drive him “to search in reason, history and nature for another source of nature beside that of Scripture, for one that would supplement Scripture. While the possibility of natural knowledge in creation was a true possibility for Calvin “in principle, but . . . not a possibility to be realized by us.” Barth distinguishes the former as an “objective possibility, created by God” from the latter as a “subjective possibility, open to man.” This renders any natural knowledge as purely “hypothetical.” Thus, any talk of degree of human limitation regarding this knowledge is useless, because we simply do not have knowledge in the first place. Barth quotes Calvin, and makes an even stronger point:

“We are blind, not because revelation is obscure, but because we are mad (mente alienati): we lack no only the will but also the ability for this matter (Comm. In 1 Cor. I, 21; C.R. xlix, 326). That is true also of those “whose eyes have been opened by Christ”! Thus, even after any revelation we still find that the sinful nature impedes any prospect of Christ “reconstituting” us to see God in the world. Yet notice what Barth says regarding worship following this statement:

"Over against the philosophers [Calvin] sets the teaching of Scripture and nothing else. Scripture tells him that man is created by God and for God, that the wisdom and paternal providence of God rule over his life and that of the whole world, that there are ordinances of God and what those ordinances are, in which he has to honour the will of God. Scripture moves and inspires him to praise through the creation the God who is so completely hidden from man. That is what man, who is reconciled in Christ, can and must do. He cannot and must not, however, embark upon independent speculations concerning these things, made apart from and without Holy Scripture or arbitrarily deduced from it."

Thus we are still called to worship through creation. But how can Barth hold that we lack natural knowledge even after Christ opens of our eyes (revelation), and yet are called by Scripture to worship through creation after we are “reconciled in Christ” (revelation)? There is a tension here, for it appears we are supposed to worship that which we do not and cannot know. The tension could be better understood given Barth’s emphasis on worship being something that we participate in, and that Christ makes possible for us in Himself and through Himself. He makes it clear that even the hypothetical natural knowledge is not realized in Christ. But where even hypothetical knowledge is excluded from the possibility of participating in true worship, Barth may have something in his concept of revelation, one that allows humanity to worship God through creation. At this point it is quite unclear what he means.
Barth goes on to express Calvin’s claim that natural knowledge, when actualized, results in, and is always the source of, idolatry. Barth quotes Calvin as saying: “‘The knowledge of God which now remains to man is nothing other than the terrible source of all idolatry and superstition’ (Comm. in John iii, 6; C.R. xlvii, 57).” Barth is confused how Brunner can allow this possibility as a “point of contact. Between it and the possibility of divine revelation there is no relation, nothing common, and hence no inner connection.” Barth goes on to say that the only result of attempting to put divine revelation and this idolatrous natural knowledge together is “repulsion.”
Calvin’s hypothetical natural knowledge came from his conviction (based on Romans 1:20, for example) that God is revealed in all creation. Barth then elicits his clearest positive definition of the function of “natural knowledge:”

"It serves to demonstrate the fact that man is without excuse. The fact that God is revealed in all his works is God’s scriptural testimony to us against the ignorance of man. It justifies the wrath of God and his judgment upon man. It points out that man’s inability to know him is his guilt. But it does not serve “to praise our perverted nature” (Comm. In John I, 5, loc. cit.). We cannot make anything of it. It is a fact that our ability to distinguish good and evil convicts us of our guilt. But Calvin did not, any more than St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, draw from this the systematic conclusion that a “natural” knowledge of the law of God is to be ascribed to us and that this knowledge has to be put to a positive use in theology either antecedently or subsequently (“in faith”). On the contrary, he plainly denied that knowledge of the ethical good is gained by means of an ability (facultas) of man."

[Footnote: See Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans: 6th Edition, trans. Edwyn C.Hoskyns (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 42-48. Here Barth provides further commentary on his interpretation of Romans 1:18-21. He describes the “negative” natural knowledge in this way: “That which may be known of God is manifest unto them . . . We know that God is He whom we do not know, and that our ignorance is precisely the problem and the source of our knowledge. We know that God is the Personality which we are not, and that this lack of Personality is precisely what dissolves and establishes our personality. The recognition of the absolute heteronomy under which we stand is itself an autonomous recognition; and this is precisely that which may be known of God” (pp. 45-46).]

Finally, Barth emphasizes the point that knowledge of God revealed in Christ includes a real knowledge of God in creation. Thus, it does not allow natural knowledge as a separate entity through which we engage in disciplines such as “eristics.” Barth believes that there is evidence that Brunner actually conceived of natural knowledge as negativity at an earlier point, and that he should have stayed this course with Calvin, and subsequently Barth himself. This is probably due to the impact of Barth’s Romans commentary, which Brunner had previously (and at least briefly) been converted to.

BARTH ON THE IMAGO DEI

2007-05-31T17:04:00.000-07:00

BARTH ON THE IMAGO DEI
The reply given by Barth has the intention of undermining Brunner’s nature/grace dialectic. Barth does this by undermining Brunner’s distinction between the “formal” and “material” aspects of the imago Dei. He does this by pointing out Brunner’s dialectical usage of the distinction. He first concedes to Brunner that sinful man retains the personal structure of existence as subjectivity, responsibility, and decision. This is not a problem for Barth, since asserting a remnant of the “formal” image within the set of purely formal possibilities is like saying “Even as a sinner man is man and not a tortoise.”
Second, he concedes that we can consider the “formal” aspect as “the point of contact” for divine grace. But he stipulates that this concession should be allowed only if it does not make favorable humanity’s capacity for reception of divine revelation over against non-humanity’s capacity for reception. To make such a prejudgment would lead to the exclusion of non-human beings. It is here that Barth believes Brunner exceeds this stipulated use of the “formal” aspect, for he makes it the precondition for grace. For the “formal” aspect to occupy one side of the nature/grace dialectic, it has to be filled out with “material” content. This content is disguised in Brunner’s “formal” image from the beginning, according to Barth. This content is the natural knowledge of God. As Brunner has pointed out, this knowledge is available to sinful humanity in the contingent order of nature, in the historical experience of communities, and in the dictates and indictments of the conscience.
Barth argues that imperfect and incomplete knowledge of God is, nevertheless, real knowledge of God, and so is “not without relevance to salvation.” As Barth puts it:

"And if we really do know the true God from his creation without Christ and without the Holy Spirit – if this is so, how can it be said that the imago is materially “entirely lost,” that in matters of the proclamation of the Church Scripture is the only norm, and that man can do nothing towards his salvation? Shall we not have to ascribe to him the ability to prepare himself for the knowledge of God in Christ at least negatively? Shall we not ascribe to him the ability to prepare himself for the knowledge of God in Christ at least negatively?"

Barth is implying that this negative self-preparation is natural knowledge of humanity in failing to obey the created (and obvious) ordinances installed by God. Barth does not deny a natural knowledge of God’s will that preconditions one to receive divine grace, but instead objects that such knowledge comes through the created ordinances. He also points out that if man’s natural knowledge of God is the precondition of divine grace, what is the point of redemption? It seems that this apparently “formal” aspect actually exercises real limitation on grace by making grace potentially apprehensible to human reason.
In the case of preserving grace, Barth is willing to allow Brunner’s claim that human activity is used by the creator to carry out the work of grace, as long as Brunner is talking about the one grace in Jesus Christ. If this were the case, “human activity” would fall under the scope of the divine grace. But Brunner wants to separate “preserving grace” from the scope of Jesus Christ, according to Barth, and that Brunner’s limitation of grace by nature in this way betrays the most fundamental theological intention of the Reformation, by admitting “an entire sphere (one which is, as it were, preparatory to revelation in the proper sense) in which the Reformers’ principle of sola gratia cannot possibily be taken seriously.”

Barth believes that Brunner’s concept of “formal” has no anthropological significance without this material limitation. In other words, this “form” would not constitute essential human being and unique dignity unless it sheltered a material “capacity for revelation.” Barth puts a few challenging questions to Brunner:

"Is the revelation of God some kind of “matter’” to which man stands in some original relation because as man he has or even is the “form” which enables him to take responsibility and make decisions in relation to various kinds of “matter”? Surely all his rationality, responsibility and ability to make decisions might yet go hand in hand with complete impotency as regards this “matter”! And this impotency might be the tribulation and affliction of those who, as far as human reason can see, possess neither reason, responsibility nor ability to make decisions: new-born children and idiots. Are they not children of Adam? Has Christ not died for them?"

Here Barth is asking whether Brunner’s formal possibilities of sinful human nature are not actual capacities that express humanity’s original relation to the “matter” of revelation, and thus prove necessary to divine grace. If this is the case, Barth asks about those who apparently lack these specific capacities. Barth is rejecting any formal understanding of the image of God that fails to be universally inclusive, thus excluding some “children of Adam” due to their apparent lack of the defined capacities for revelation. In order to avoid this implication of rejection (which the so called “German Christians” did not). [Footnote:See Robert McAfee Brown, Kairos: Three Prophetic Challenges to the Church, (Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1990). “Almost immediately after Hitler's seizure of power in 1933, Protestant Christians faced pressure to "aryanize" the Church, expel Jewish Christians from the ordained ministry and adopt the Nazi "Führer Principle" as the organizing principle of church government. In general, the churches succumbed to these pressures, and some Christians embraced them willingly. The pro-Nazi "German Christian" movement became a force in the church. They glorified Adolf Hitler as a "German prophet" and preached that racial consciousness was a source of revelation alongside the Bible. But many Christians in Germany—including Lutheran and Reformed, liberal and neo-orthodox—opposed the encroachment of Nazi ideology on the Church's proclamation. At Barmen, this emerging "Confessing Church" adopted a declaration drafted by Reformed theologian Karl Barth and Lutheran theologian Hans Asmussen, which expressly repudiated the claim that other powers apart from Christ could be sources of God's revelation. Not all Christians courageously resisted the regime, but many who did—like the Protestant pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Roman Catholic priest Bernhard Lichtenberg—were arrested and executed in concentration camps.”]

Brunner must “stick to [his] statement that man is (‘materially’) ‘a sinner through and through,’ with the consequence that the ‘formal factor’ cannot be anything like a remainder of some original righteousness, an openness and readiness for God.” O’Donovan summarizes the point nicely:

"Only by surrendering its hidden revelational content can Brunner’s ‘formal factor’ perform its modest but legitimate service of indicating the universal being of sinful mankind. But in thus limiting itself, the concept forfeits its anthropological weight as an expression of man’s unique, inalienable dignity. The functional deflation of the ‘formal factor’ signals the collapse of the nature/grace dialectic in its epistemological and ontological aspects. No longer can the persisting structure of sinful human subjectivity, conceived as responsibility, constitute the necessary condition or ‘point of contact’ for God’s gracious self-revelation to man."

“If,” Barth says, “nevertheless there is an encounter and communion between God and man, then God himself must have created for it conditions which are not in the least supplied (not even ‘somehow,’ not even ‘to some extent’!) by the existence of the formal factor.” Only the material aspect of the imago Dei can occupy the human side of the “point of contact” between God and humanity. Here Barth shows us that this side, which sin has effectively barred us from occupying, is where Jesus Christ now stands in our place. Barth argues against Brunner’s anthropologically immanent understanding of the “point of contact” in the opening volume of Church Dogmatics:

"No matter how it may be with his humanity and personality, man has completely lost the capacity for God. Hence we fail to see how there comes into view here any common basis of discussion for philosophical and theological anthropology, any occasion for the common exhibition of at least the possibility of enquiring about God. The image of God in man which we must speak here and which forms the real point of contact for God’s Word is the rectitude which through Christ is raised up from real death and thus restored or created anew, and which is real as man’s possibility for the Word of God. The reconciliation of man with God in Christ also includes, or already begins with, the restitution of the lost point of contact. Hence this point of contact is not real outside faith; it is real only in faith. In faith man is created by the Word of God for the Word of God, existing in the Word of God and not in himself, not in virtue of his humanity and personality, not even on the basis of creation, for that which by creation was possible for man in relation to God has been lost by the fall. Hence one can only speak theologically and not both theologically and also philosophically of this point of contact, as of all else that is real in faith, i.e., through the grace of reconciliation" (Church Dogmatics, I/1, pp. 238-239).

For Barth, divine grace is not content with having a degree of priority over nature. Instead, it has total priority. Divine grace acts in the humanly impossible, in a redemptive miracle of faith. Barth does not differ with Brunner in this respect, when Brunner says: “Through faith the new person is constituted [in such a way that] the subject, . . . the fact of self-consciousness, is not destroyed.” Barth believes in the continuing identity of the person before and after faith, as Brunner also intends. Yet this continuing identity is not the functional “point of contact” for human apprehension of divine revelation as Brunner believes. Brunner may appeal to Gal. 2:20 (“Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me.”) as evidence for the continuity of personal identity in faith. However, Barth objects that this appeal stubbornly ignores St. Paul’s primary emphasis on discontinuity, “or rather [with] the divine miracle of the continuity of his existence without and with Christ.”

"Moreover the text does not go on to say something that would have to say if Brunner could fitting quote it in his support. It does not say that though St. Paul is crucified with Christ, but that nevertheless, together with his “formal personality,” some general knowledge of God derived from his conscience or from the ordinances of creation, recognizable in the world, accompanied or even led him into that new life which he can but try to explain by the inexplicable expression: “Christ liveth in me.” Does he live the life which he lives “in the flesh,” the first life, crucified with Christ, in any way but “the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”? Is the change in the human situation through the revelation of God, of which I Corinthians ii and Galatians ii speak, really a reparatio, a restoration in the sense in which Brunner employs it: “It is not possible to repair what no longer exists. But it is possible to repair a new thing in such a way that one has to say this has become quite new”? . . . I must confess that I am quite flabbergasted by this sentence. Had one not better at this point break off the discussion as hopeless? Or should one hope for an angel from heaven who would call to Brunner through a silver trumpet of enormous dimensions that 2 Corinthians v, 17, is not a mere phrase, which might just as well be applied to a motor-car that has come to grief and been successfully “repaired”?"

While Barth’s opposition to Brunner’s concept of the imago Dei successfully shows the problems with Brunner’s anthropology, it does not positively resolve the problem of theologically conceptualizing human being. However, we notice that his insistence on faith as the “point of contact” for divine revelation suggests a relational and Christological concept of human being. Furthermore, his concession of giving the formal aspect a legitimate role in representing the continual being in sin and faith leaves room for the possibility of a concept of human being as “subjectivity,” “personality,” and “responsibility.”

[Footnote: O’Donovan, Joan E. “Man in the Image of God: The Disagreement Between Barth and Brunner Reconsidered,” The Scottish Journal of Theology, 39 (1986). O’Donovan is concerned with the Imago Dei for its ethical implications. She is correct, I believe, in seeing the Imago Dei as the foundation on which Brunner’s other counter-theses rest. Barth treats this as the jugular of the argument which he strategically attacks first.]

Introduction to Barth's Nein!

2007-05-21T16:40:00.000-07:00

Barth's Response in Nein!

There is no question that Barth’s mind that it is his duty to respond to Brunner, for “at the decisive point he takes part in the false movement of thought by which the Church to-day is threatened.” He believes that Brunner’s writing is dangerous because he appears so close to Barth himself.

Is it not true that the danger is greatest where it appears to be least, where error combines with the presentation – a very thorough and skilful presentation – of so many “truths” that at the first, and even at the second and third, glance it looks like the truth itself?

Barth explains that his opposition to Brunner is one to prevent the sort of compromise that occurred in the Church during the 18th and 19th centuries. He ends the letter with with this:

"The reason I must resist Brunner so decidedly is that I am thinking of the future theology of compromise, that I regard him as its classical precursor, and that I have heard the applause with which all who are of a like mind have greeted his essay, Nature and Grace. His essay is an alarm signal. I wish it had not been written. I wish that this new and greater danger were not approaching or that it had not been Emil Brunner who had crossed my path as an exponent of that danger, in a way which made me feel that for better or for worse I had been challenged. But all this has now happened, and seen in some greater context it probably has its sense. But I hope that since it has happened I shall not be misunderstood if I act according to the use of our times and treat his doctrine of “Nature and Grace” without much ceremony as something which endangers the ultimate truth that must be guarded and defended in the Evangelical Church."

ANGRY INTRODUCTION

Barth’s “Angry Introduction” is a somewhat misleading title, because one might suppose that the anger is purely due to Barth’s substantive disagreement with Brunner. However far and wide that disagreement may be, what truly angers Barth is the personal backstabbing attitude that he discerns in Brunner’s method of debate. For Barth, the spirit of Brunner’s debate is just as wrong and insidious as the natural theology which flows in it:

"I am 'angry' with Brunner because on top of all this he did not refrain from showering me with love and praise and from maintaining that the matters in which I differ from him are mere 'false conclusions.' Now I have to reply with a 'No!' to Brunner and the whole chorus of his friends and disciples and those who share his opinions. And what a wicked man I appear to be, lacking all communal spirit and stubbornly refusing to allow even the least correction! Brunner might have known how necessary this 'No' was and how thorough it had to be. If he considered a debate between himself and myself necessary and promising, he might have lent it the dignity and status by addressing me from that distance which does as a matter of fact exist between us – however great 'a pity one may consider this."

He begins his introduction by quoting Brunner’s task for theology, in order to show the main component responsible for the distance between their two points of view:

“It is the task of our theological generation to find the way back to a true theologia naturalis.” . . . If this is Brunner’s opinion – and how can I, how can anyone, doubt any longer that this is indeed the case? – then I fail to understand among many other things the following: how can he think that, in spite of this opinion, he has a right to be mentioned “in one breath” with – of all people – me, to be my “ally,” my “good friend,” and that I have merely failed to understand him and therefore have in error shot at him by night?” For we ought at least to be at one in defining “the task of our theological generation” if we intended and desired the same thing in a way in which Brunner seems to assume this.

Barth further shows that it is not natural theology, per se, that he despises, as much any theology that makes it the primary task:

"How could I deny that I, too, have, as a matter of fact, repeatedly practiced “true theologia naturalis” in his sense . . .? It may be possible to convict me of many atavisms and relapses in this matter, and I am certain that it is not easy to get rid of the demon here in question. But my soul is innocent of ever even having dreamt of the idea that it was a task of our theological generation to find the way back to a 'true theologia naturalis'!"

The point at which his division with Brunner began is difficult for Barth to explain, since they received teaching from “Kutter and Blumhardt” (the Christian Socialists in Switzerland during Barth’s formative years). In contrast to Brunner, Barth offers his own theological task:
Ever since about 1916, when I began to recover noticeably from the effects of my theological studies and the influences of the liberal-political pre-war theology, my opinion concerning the task of our theological generation has been this: we must learn again to understand revelation as grace and grace as revelation and therefore turn away from all “true” or “false” theologia naturalis . . .

Barth decides he has no choice but to be the lone ranger that Brunner portrayed him as:

"Brunner does not understand . . . that the issue between himself and myself is such that to-day it can only be decided openly and consciously. Since he has thus joined the crowd and has therefore actually become so far removed from me, he might in the name of his Christian profession do me the favour of leaving me in my “isolation” and refrain from informing the world about me in the attitude and tone of a “good friend.” It is this obscuring of the situation which makes it so difficult for me to reply to Brunner that I should like it best to save both my readers and myself the trouble of replying at all . . . But it should not be held against me if in these pages I appear in a thoroughly exclusive and unfriendly attitude; if the reader now sees an unedifying disruption where before he thought to see unity; and if my answer lacks that “elegance” for which Brunner’s essay is praised. At the moment I am not worried about elegance. I have quite different worries. I must become clear and explicit."

WHERE DO WE REALLY STAND?
Barth begins by reviewing his “false conclusions” that Brunner displayed earlier. Barth interprets them back to us as follows:

"The image of God in man is totally destroyed by sin. Every attempt to assert a general revelation has to be rejected. There is no grace of creation and preservation. There are no recognizable ordinances of preservation. There is no point of contact for the redeeming action of God. The new creation is in no sense the perfection of the old but rather the replacement of the old man by the new."

In this chapter of his response, Barth throws off these conclusions that Brunner has attributed to him. This move is powerful since Barth has only just begun his argument, and we had expected some sort of defense against Brunner’s counter-theses. Barth’s dismissal of his own self has the effect of breaking down the “Barth” we had just begun to know (and perhaps even respected) as Brunner portrayed him so elegantly. It appears as though Brunner has only created a straw man named “Barth.” Unfortunately, due to the fact that Brunner calls “Nature and Grace” a “contribution to the discussion with Karl Barth,” his straw man now has to talk. The question remains whether Barth can adequately differentiate himself from the straw man; for he admits: “their wording may here and there recall my thoughts and my writings. But this does not mean that I am prepared to accept paternity and responsibility.”
One of the main problems for Barth is the method of organizing such “false conclusions.” Barth explains himself further:

"By ascribing these theses to me, Brunner imputes to me, apart from all discussion of the pros and cons, a fundamental attitude and position with regard to the whole problem which may be his but is not mine. For I can see no sense in giving to the denial of “natural theology” such systematic attention as appears in these theses. By “natural theology” I mean every (positive or negative) formulation of a system which claims to be theological, i.e. to interpret divine revelation, whose subject, however, differs fundamentally from the revelation in Jesus Christ and whose method therefore differs equally from the exposition of Holy Scripture. Such a system is contained not only in Brunner’s counter-theses but also in the theses ascribed to me."

Thus, the problem with such a method is that it is essentially “an abstract speculation concerning a something that is not identical with the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.” This leads one to question whether Barth is troubled by the “abstract” nature of speculation, the “speculation,” or the “something that is not identical with . . . Christ,” or all three.
It is this mischaracterization and ill-defined position that Barth blames for the difficulty in the debate, as he not only contends with Brunner’s own positive “natural theology” but with Brunner’s negative “Barth.” Thus, in some sense Brunner is right that the clarification of words and definitions is important - but it is only the tip of the iceberg in this debate.
He then explains that the only way to approach “natural theology” is to not approach it at all, but to walk away from it and even kill it if it continues to follow you:

"For “natural theology” does not exist as an entity capable of becoming a separate subject within what I consider to be real theology – not even for the sake of being rejected . . . Really to reject natural theology means to refuse to admit it as a separate problem. Hence the rejection . . . can only be a side issue, arising when serious questions of real theology are being discussed. Real rejection . . . does not form part of the creed. Nor does it wish to be an exposition of the creed and of revelation. It is merely a hermeneutical rule, forced upon the exegete by the creed (e.g. by the clause natus ex virgine) and by revelation. It is not possible to expand and compound it into a system of special tents explicating and defending it. Rather does it appear necessarily, but with the same dependence as that of shade upon light, at the edge of theology as its necessary limit. IF you really reject natural theology you do not stare at the serpent, with the result that it stares back at you, hypnotises you, and is ultimately certain to bite you, but you hit it and kill it as soon as you see it!"

We can begin to question Barth’s dismissal of natural theology as a separate issue for the sake of doing real theology. For instance, what does Barth mean by treating natural theology as a “separate” issue? Is this what Brunner is attempting to do, or to differentiate himself from? Furthermore, is there any natural theology worth positing in real theology (once we define what real is)?

The Significance of Natural Theology for Brunner

2007-05-15T20:00:00.000-07:00

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THEOLOGIA NATURALIS FOR THEOLOGY AND THE CHURCH
Brunner begins by speaking of a discussion on natural theology that he had with Karl Barth. In it, Barth pointed out the political ramifications of Gogarten’s doctrine of ordinances. He found that within this doctrine lay hidden “a whole political and cultural programme of a distinctly authoritarian stamp” and that “events have proved how right he was.” But Brunner believes his own concept of orders is different in that it is “refracted.”

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY FOR ETHICS
He goes on to show the ramifications of natural theology:

"That much is clear: the theologian’s attitude to theologia naturalis decides the character of his ethics. Historically it may be said that the concept of the ordinances of creation has been regulative for Christian ethics from the beginning to the time of the Enlightenment, in all matters connected with the problem of society as such, i.e. in the doctrines of ministry, secular vocation, matrimony, the State, etc. Christian social ethics throughout the centuries may be defined as the doctrine of love founded in Jesus Christ and of its function in society according to the divine institution of the latter. Social ethics are therefore always determined as much by the concept of divine grace of creation and preservation as by that of the redeeming grace of Christ."

Brunner notes that the question regarding our doctrine of ordinances and preservation is not whether they should determine ethics, but how they should do so. He blames the Enlightenment for marginalizing this how due to its inherent individualism and rationalism. This abandonment further strengthens individualism because “all attempts to operate with the concepts of love or with those of ‘law’ or ‘commandment’ without the help of the concept of the ordinance, lead either to rationalistic social constructions (liberalistic doctrines of the State and matrimony) or to an uncertain attitude towards the ordinances of society as given factors, vacillating between acknowledgment and rejection.”
Brunner’s point is well taken that God’s creation is dynamically connected not just to our lives but to His life as well. The world is not just an external neutral reality but is a revelation of God Himself. We would go too far to say that God is His creation, that He is identical with it. This is the difference between the general revelation and the special revelation in Christ.
He goes on to explain the significance for ethics:

"But we have to acknowledge the fact that God has not simply put us into a “world,” but into his creation, whose laws can be known in spite of sin, by those who know God in Jesus Christ. This means that we have to acknowledge divinely appointed objective limits to our freedom and objective guides to the ordering of our society. That is the only way out of this chaos – the way which gives the Reformers’ ethics on the one hand their assurance, and on the other hand their realism.. . . All those who – quite irrespective of their motives – act in accordance with the laws of these ordinances, do the works of God. They are no thereby justified before God – that can happen only by faith, i.e. by doing these works in the knowledge of divine grace, in obedience to and confidence in God – but they do “right.” "

This objective law, which does not justify the individual human, is still fulfilled. The ordinances (matrimony, the State) “are part of the divine law.” Along with these ordinances, the written law (Scripture?) and the natural law “[are] the form in which the divine will is revealed, which only through the Holy Spirit becomes a concrete divine commandment, governing my existence here and now.”

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY FOR DOGMATICS
The concept of “analogy” is crucial for understanding why Barth opposes natural theology. Brunner explains Barth’s position as theologically nominalist:

"For Barth holds the strange doctrine that there is no creature which has in itself any likeness to God. Rather is it raised to this status by the revelation in Christ and through the Holy Spirit. This is a piece of theological nominalism, in comparison with which that of William of Occam appears harmless. For this would mean that we call God “Father,” “Son,” “Spirit,” that we speak of the “Word” of God, etc. not because God is more like a father than anything else, but simply because God says so in the Scriptures. God does not say it because by his creation and from his creation it is so, but, on the contrary, it only becomes so by the Word of God in Scripture."

Brunner believes this nominalist approach creates tensions in Barth’s theology, since the concept of analogy is his basis in Church Dogmatics, “even though he does not acknowledge this.” He cites evidence of the use of analogy in the following quote from Barth on the Word of God:

"The form in which reason communicates with reason, person with person, is language, so too, when it is God’s language. Of course it is divine reason that communicates with human reason. The divine person with the human person. The complete inconceivability of this event confront us. But reason with reason, person with person, primarily in analogy with what happens in the corporal or natural sphere. The Word of God is a rational and not an irrational event."

Brunner takes Barth to mean the following:

"Human reason is in itself – i.e. by divine creation – a suitable means of establishing relations between two subjects, not only between man and man but also between God and man. The fact that man is a subject is in itself analogous to the fact that God is a subject. Hence we must exclude all other analogies and make the fact that God is a subject the governing thought in our theology – as Barth quite rightly does. But this means that the whole Barthian theology rests de facto upon the doctrine of the formal imago Dei, which he so much dislikes, i.e. upon the doctrine that man as we know him, sinful man, is the only legitimate analogy to God, because he is always a rational being, a subject, a person."

Brunner then asserts his point more strongly. He interprets Barth as saying that “man’s nature as imago Dei determines that he should not speak of God except by human metaphor.” Brunner claims that Barth believes we derive all theological concepts from the parallels in human/divine “personality.” Thus, our concepts are set apart because God has created human being uniquely in His “likeness,” whereby this likeness “is not destroyed by sin.” Thus, against Barth’s wishes, the imago Dei is confirmed in revelation.
Brunner takes this contradiction to be apparent in Barth’s denial of the analogia entis. He believes that all theologians use analogy and should, but that they need to discuss how this should be done. “This determining factor rests upon the doctrine of the imago Dei, which can be adequately understood only in the incarnation of God.”

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY FOR THE CHURCH
Since Brunner agrees that the Church’s mission is to proclaim the Word of God, to do so effectively requires that the Church choose those human words that correspond adequately to the divine Word. This correspondence between human and divine word is grounded in the imago Dei, which has been revealed to us in Christ. Brunner believes that “the incarnation is the criterion of the knowledge of the divine likeness of man . . . But man’s undestroyed formal likeness to God is the objective possibility of the revelation of God in his ‘Word.’”
Here we come to the crux of Brunner’s aim with natural theology, and what drives his eristics. Brunner begins discussing the content of the proclamation. He claims that even true content is “useless” if it is not “comprehensible.” The point-of-contact (human responsibility and capacity for words), which is only a “general possibility,” is not sufficient to make the Church’s proclamation effective. While the Holy Spirit opens the heart of the receiving subject of proclamation, God’s role does not excuse the Church’s indifference toward what comes out of its mouth or pen. Instead, the Church must proclaim the right content, so that it corresponds with the divine Word. Yet, he also claims that it must correspond with man as well, in a way that is “comprehensible.”
Brunner stipulates a pastoral situation to describe why the framing of the content of proclamation is equally vital to consider:

"What I should say to a man upon his death-bed is a holy matter; but it is a matter no less holy how I am to say it to him in such a way that he shall understand and appreciate it. A pastor might – to put it somewhat strongly – go to heaven on account of the What but go to hell on account of the How. To despise the question of the How is a sign, not of theological seriousness but of theological intellectualism. The What is, as it were, guarded by faith, but the How has to be guarded by love. But where the How and therefore love is lacking, there faith must be lacking also."

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY FOR UNBELIEVERS
Brunner believes that just because “there is a false apologetic way of making contact does not mean that there is not a right way.” He believes the wrong way is “to prove the existence of God.” But this does not bar us from talking about evidence for God’s existence in creation. As Brunner himself says:

"But though proof is excluded, this does not exclude the possibility of a discussion pointing towards such evidence of the existence of God as we have. The decisive factor will always be the simple proclamation of the Christian message. But there is such a thing as theological work done upon the message, i.e. intellectual work in the realm of concepts, which can and is intended to serve the proclamation of the message. Similarly there is such a thing as an intellectual and conceptual work of preparation, which clears obstacles out of the way of proclamation. Everyone who carries on pastoral work among intellectuals or has the task of instructing modern youth, knows the significance of this."

Brunner then makes the single claim to which Barth will make his reply “Nein!”: “But the centre on which everything turns is the centre of the theologia naturalis: the doctrine of the imago Dei and especially of responsibility.”
He ends by saying that Barth’s one-sidedness has been used for God’s good purposes, as has Calvin’s more “comprehensive and balanced thought,” with which he is obviously associating himself. He considers the debate between himself and Barth to have arisen from not consulting Calvin earlier on the matter. He believes doing so will lead the Church toward reclaiming the lost theologia naturalis.

Brunner's Six Counter-Theses Against Barth

2007-05-07T12:03:00.000-07:00

I have posted my summaries of the Counter-Theses that Brunner wrote in "Nature and Grace," which I will index here (I will hopefully add page references later, since they are all in footnotes in the Word .doc currently). I will add the next section after finals are over on May 14th on Brunner's views of the Significance of Natural Theology.

First Counter-Thesis: The Imago Dei

Second Counter-Thesis: The Creator Recognized Through Creation

Third Counter-Thesis: Two Kinds of Revelation and Their Point of Contact

Fourth Counter-Thesis: God's Preservation of Grace

Fifth Counter-Thesis: The Divine Ordinances

Six Counter-Thesis: The Reformers' Doctrine and Its Antithesis

Brunner's Sixth Counter-Thesis

2007-05-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

THE REFORMERS’ DOCTRINE AND ITS ANTITHESIS
Brunner devotes a long section of his pamphlet Nature and Grace to explaining how his theology, especially the doctrine of the imago dei, is not only biblically sound but also within the Reformed tradition of Calvin. I do not wish to attend to who is right in this aspect of the debate, since this would require reading and interpreting Calvin’s theology. At the end of the section Brunner goes on to repeat the charge of one-sidedness against Barth as an explanation for why Barth denies natural theology. Brunner writes:

"Barth refuses to recognize that where revelation and faith are concerned, there can be anything permanent, fixed, and, as it were, natural. He acknowledges only the act, the event of revelation, but never anything revealed, or, as he says, the fact of revelation. The whole strength of Barthian theology lies in the assertion of the actual. It is here that revelation in the ultimate, fullest sense can only be an act, God speaking to me here and now. But that is only one side of the biblical concept of revelation."

He goes on to explain his theology of the Word as related to Scripture:

"The other side is its very opposite. It is the fact that God speaks to me here and now because he has spoken. Above all, that he speaks to me through the Holy Spirit because he has spoken in Jesus Christ. This “has” is maintained in the concept of the Canon. The Bible is the “fact of revelation” of God. It is true that the Scriptures become the Word of God for me and they become it because they already are it. They become it through that, which is written, the solid body of words, sentences and books, something objective and available for every one. If I may use this trivial comparison, the relation of the Bible to the actual revelation of God is like that of the gramophone record to the sounding music, which has been engraved upon it and taken out of it. It is a “record,” an action become substance. It is fixed and unalterable. It is a piece of world at anyone’s disposal, even though the fact of its being a revelation is not at anyone’s disposal. That which is at anyone’s disposal, this Book of books with its fixed text, is what God uses in order to speak his personal Word to me to-day. That is his will. Only through that which is fixed and given does he will to give me his direct personal Word."

From this Brunner makes the jump to God speaking to us in nature. Brunner claims that the “whole arrangement of the world, with its fixity and the permanency of its being, is a manifestation of God.” But he cautions that the world “does not bear this function ‘in itself’ – anymore than the Scriptures – but only because to this Word is added an ear that hears it, to this manifestation an eye that sees it.”

Finally Brunner discusses how God’s Word must be indirect communication:
God does not speak to us except by signs and pictures. By the picture-language of the order of the world and by that of the prophetic and apostolic word. Even Jesus Christ is a piece of picture-language or, as Kierkegaard puts it, an “indirect communication.” For direct communication is paganism. Direct communication cannot communicate the message of God, but only that of an idol. That is the reason why it is not possible to deny the “fact of revelation” of God in the order of the world or of the nature for the reasons which Barth gives, e.g. in the context of his rejection of the analogia entis. For if one did so, one would also have to abandon the fact of the revelation of God in Scripture, and would thus lapse into an enthusiastic idea of revelation. But this parallel with Scripture does not exhaustively show the signficance of natural revelation and therefore of theologia naturalis for the Church and for theology.

Brunner's Fifth Counter-Thesis

2007-05-07T11:58:00.000-07:00

THE DIVINE ORDINANCES
Under the rubric of preserving grace, Brunner links the ordinances of matrimony as well as government, “without which no communal life is conceivable, that could in any way be termed human. These ordinances vary in dignity.” He explains that monogamous marriage as an institution is more dignified than the State because it is untouched by sin. For Brunner, marriage is necessarily natural because all men practice it, which is important to understand for embracing natural theology:

"The Christian, who recognizes the creator only in Jesus Christ, also recognizes the ordinance of matrimony to have been instituted by the creator. The distinction between this “ordinance of creation” from a mere “ordinance of preservation” relative to sin, such as the State, is made for sound theological reasons. It is necessary for a Christian theologia naturalis, i.e. for Christian theological thinking which tries to account for the phenomena of natural life. Matrimony is a “natural” ordinance of the creator because the possibility of and the desire for its realization lies within human nature and because it is realized to some extent by men who are ignorant of the God revealed in Christ."

This natural ordinance of marriage argument is not very effective, since marriage is only “realized to some extent” and sociologically is somewhat dubious in its definition. But Brunner’s claim that matrimony is unlike the State in the sense that it is untouched by sin leaves room for the possibility that Brunner was open to questioning the government, though he is only speaking generally here.
Brunner emphasizes that these ordinances are only fully realized by a person of faith, but that they are still ordinances of nature, just like the arts, and are “created and maintained by reason or instinct.” This link between nature and reason is important to notice:

"Even the believer, who by reason of his faith understands their ultimate sense better than the unbeliever, cannot but allow his instinct and his reason to function with regard to these ordinances, just as in the arts. And finally it is true that only by means of faith, i.e. through Christ, their relation to the loving will of God can be rightly understood. Nevertheless through the preserving grace of God they are known also to “natural man” as ordinances that are necessary and somehow holy and are by him respected as such. For it is peculiar to the preserving grace of God that he does his preserving work both by nature acting unconsciously and by the reason of man."

There is something about reason and instinct that allows a kind of a priori knowledge of God. I think these faculties are somehow related to the formal aspect of the imago Dei, and are the capacities for knowing God. Having God reveal himself through creation allows God’s grace to penetrate our sinfulness come what may. What is lacking in the revelation in Christ for Brunner that motivates him to look outside it in creation? And is he looking in a way that is proper to the walk of faith?

Brunner's Fourth Counter-thesis

2007-05-07T11:57:00.000-07:00

GOD’S PRESERVATION OF GRACE
According to Brunner, “the manner in which God is present to his fallen creature is his preserving grace. Preserving grace does not abolish sin but abolishes the worst consequences of sin [i.e. death].” Brunner then proposes that God reveals Himself in creation by using it as a way of preserving the health and life of humanity. In a sense, it is the converse of the general religious claim that if it is raining, God looks favorably on us. Instead, what is revealed is that God looks favorably upon us, therefore it is raining. Here, the indicatives of grace are prior to the imperatives of law, as James Torrance has often emphasized in line with John Calvin. Of course, one must also take into consideration the problem that the elements also bring terrible disasters, which are often the impetus for questioning why it is raining so much! Therefore, creation seems to be a tool for God, not only for His grace but also for His wrath.
Brunner claims, rightly I think, that the Bible states clearly that God does not withdraw Himself entirely from creation, even in spite of the reality of human sinfulness. What is most interesting is what Brunner says next: “In part, however, in that, agreeably to the state of sin, he provides new means for checking the worst consequences of sin, e.g. the State.” Here we must take into consideration the political resistance against Hitler that Barth and (supposedly) Brunner are engaged in. The question is clearly applicable to their context, as it always seems to be: What happens if the State fails to act according to its office as intended by God, and becomes a tyrannical and idolatrous State? Or, to put the question to Brunner: What happens when the State becomes the medium by which we are tormented by “the worst consequences of sin?” While nature is a bit more simple to deal with, given that we cannot control the elements, our doctrine of the State here affects our understanding of the people that comprise the State. Does the State, as an institution, have any less of the residue of blinding sinfulness than we as human individuals have? Should we not implement some form of control and resistance against such a State, even that State to which we belong?
[Footnote: For a helpful discussion of these questions, see the essay by George Hunsinger entitled “Barth, Barmen, and the Confessing Church Today” in Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co., 2000), pp. 60-88. Hunsinger points out that there were two competing historical views on the doctrine of the State: One view held by Luther and Augustine and another held by Aquinas and Calvin: “The difference between the two views is clear: [Augustine and Luther hold] that to obey the state, even the radically unjust state, is to render obedience to God; [Aquinas and Calvin hold] that times may come when obedience to God requires political disobedience and resistance to the state” (p.81). Barth obviously felt inclined towards the latter view.]

Brunner points to the significance of the “historical life” as a way of God’s preserving grace:

"The benefits which form the historical inheritance of the whole of mankind, are seen to be given by the preserving grace of God. Consequently human activity comes within the purview of divine grace – not of redeeming but of preserving grace. All activity of man which the creator himself uses to preserve his creation amid the corruptions of sin belongs to this type of activity within preserving grace. It is from this that the doctrine of civil and secular functions and offices is derived."

Brunner's Third Counter-Thesis

2007-05-07T11:53:00.000-07:00

TWO KINDS OF REVELATION AND THEIR POINT OF CONTACT
Brunner believes that Scripture unanimously attests to the existence of two revelations: the general revelation of God in creation and the special revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The problem is not whether there are two revelations or one but how these two revelations fit together. He clarifies the problem by pointing out that the general revelation in creation cannot give us the knowledge of God that we need for salvation. It is not because this revelation is lacking anything, but, because of humanity’s sinfulness, we distort this revelation and make idols as a response to it. He then makes an interesting claim: “In any case he is unable to know God, who in Jesus Christ reveals himself to him anew according to his true nature, which even in creation is partially hidden.”
So far general revelation has been put forth by Brunner as biblical, Reformed, partially hidden. Is it partially hidden because of our sinfulness? Or is it just a partial revelation prior to our understanding (or lack thereof), to later be fulfilled by Christ?
Brunner believes that the “natural revelation” is only known in all its glory when Christ opens the knower’s eyes in the second revelation. The second revelation “far surpasses” the first, but Brunner does not give us a clear answer for why this is, and leaves the reader to fill in the gap. He further obscures his views when he attempts to summarize how “nature” applies in various events and capacities without giving any explicit connections between them:

"This means that in the phrase “natural revelation” the word “natural” is to be understood in a double sense, one objective-divine and one subjective-human-sinful. The term “nature” can be applied to such permanent capacity for revelation as God has bestowed upon his works, to the traces of his own nature which he has expressed and shown in them. But the term “nature” can also be applied to what sinful man makes of this in his ignorant knowledge, just as it can be applied to that which God has implanted in human nature as an image of himself, indestructible, yet always obscured by sin. Or it can be applied to what man himself makes of himself through sin. Therefore one can say in conclusion: Only the Christian, i.e. the man who stand within the revelation in Christ, has the true natural knowledge of God."

The big question that one leaves with is: how does one “stand” in this revelation in Christ? Brunner lets go of the project, perhaps admitting that he needs more time and space to help us understand what he has in mind. All he wants is our ascent so far:

"All these concepts need further theological consideration. But such consideration cannot alter these fundamental outlines without contradicting the testimony of Scripture. Even the most perfect theology will in the main be unable to get beyond the double statement that as concerns the heathen, God did not leave himself without witness, but that nevertheless they did not know him in such a way that he became their salvation."
[Footnote: Here Brunner cites Acts 14:17, my italics below. For context, Paul and Barnabas are preaching in Lystra, when Paul heals a cripple. The crowd responds by saying “The god’s have come down to us.” Barnabas they call “Zeus,” and Paul they call “Hermes.” As the crowd begins to sacrifice to them, Paul and Barnabas shout: “Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. In the past, he let all nations go their own way. Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons: he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy” (adapted from NIV Translation of Acts 14:1-17). This passage works favorably for what Brunner has said earlier regarding our attempts to use the general revelation as a platform for idolatry. Notice also that from this text the general revelation seems to be the message of Paul and Barnabas, while there is no mention of Christ. Finally, it is also Scriptural evidence of what Brunner will later say regarding God’s preserving grace of all humanity- in this case - through the regulation of weather elements.]

This “double-statement” harkens back to Brunner’s desire to secure responsibility in the hands of “the heathen” for their lack of knowledge, and thus their lack of salvation.

Brunner's Second Counter-Thesis

2007-05-04T14:17:00.000-07:00

THE CREATOR RECOGNIZED THROUGH CREATION

The second of Brunner’s counter-theses concerns the ability of humanity to see God the Creator in nature (His Creation). To further maintain the co-existing tension between nature and grace on the basis of the formal/material aspects of the imago Dei, Brunner decides to specify the formal aspect in terms of our spiritual abilities, such as the ability to recognize God in both the content of external nature as well as its activities in history; the moral abilities in conduct and judgment; and finally, the ability for self-knowledge of guilt.
Brunner believes that nature has the “imprint of God,” and that this acts a type of revelation:

"Wherever God does anything, he leaves the imprint of his nature upon what he does. Therefore the creation of the world is at the same time a revelation, a self-communication of God. This statement is not pagan but fundamentally Christian. But nowhere does the Bible give any justification for the view that through the sin of man this perceptibility of God in his works is destroyed, although it is adversely affected. Rather does it say this, that surprisingly enough sin makes man blind for what is visibly set before our eyes. The reason why men are without excuse is that they will not know the God who so clearly manifest himself to them."

Here, Brunner allows that this general revelation in nature is damaged, not destroyed, by sin. The question is to what degree this happens; whether the sinful consequence of blindness amounts to our epistemic destruction of God (Barth), or whether it leaves an epistemic residue of God (Brunner). The biblical exegesis that drives this aspect of the debate derives primarily from St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans, particularly 1:18-20:

"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

[Footnote: See Douglas A. Campbell, “Natural Theology in Paul? Reading Romans 1.19-20,” in The International Journal of Systematic Theology, Vol. 1 Issue 3, (November, 1999) pp. 231-53. Campbell offers a new way of reading this passage that undermines the traditional view of the passage that Brunner is working from. He begins his introduction: “Romans 1.19-20 has functioned within that sphere in turn as a locus classicus for the endorsement of general revelation and natural theology. And although made problematical by the criticisms of the traditional philosophical proofs for the existence of God, criticisms especially widely accepted since Kant, atheism has not completely overthrown the confidence of all scholars in these verses' possible philosophical defensibility. Neither, perhaps more importantly, has that scepticism blunted their apparent sense; only, for some, their apparent truth (although it is also arguable whether the verses imply full-fledged philosophical proofs). In addition, the apparent commitments of 1.19-20 are well known to those Protestant dogmaticians who may not endorse their basal dogmatic function because of their role in the famous spat between Brunner and Barth in 1934. Concerning this last debate, my own view was that Barth had the best of the theological argument and Brunner the best of the exegesis, leaving the somewhat unpalatable conclusion that Paul had demonstrated rather poor theological judgment in Romans 1.19-20 and its surrounding discussion. However, the difficulty of squaring that position with the apostle's incontestable theological brilliance elsewhere has always left me open to alternative construals of this text and its implications” (p. 231).]

For Brunner, the moral ability is chief among the qualities that make up the formal aspect, especially in its ability to know guilt. This moral ability is critical for Brunner as a response to God’s precepts given to humanity in the law. It is seen in his discussion of “conscience,” which he defines as “consciousness of responsibility.”

Men have not only responsibility but also a consciousness of it – which could be shown by a more detailed phenomenological analysis to be necessarily interconnected. Only because men somehow know the will of God are they able to sin . . . Responsibility of the sinner and knowledge of the will of God as the source of law (the knowledge also being derived from the law) are one and the same thing.

For Brunner, conscience depends on the address by God’s Word. It is only as humanity is addressed that it receives the capacity of knowing its sin, and so is capable of receiving the later address of God’s grace. Later on he adds:

"It will not do to kill the dialectic of this knowledge of sin by saying that knowledge of sin comes only by the grace of God. This statement is as true as the other, that the grace of God is comprehensible only to him who already knows about sin. . . . A man without conscience cannot be struck by the call “Repent ye and believe the Gospel."

Therefore, the necessity for human understanding of the divine grace is our dual knowledge of law as divine command and of our sin as its violation. To deny this dialectical presupposition is to deny human responsibility. The law/Gospel dialectic requires a distinction in degree of knowledge between “partial” and “real” knowledge of God’s law and of sin. Regarding both law and sin, Brunner says:

"Natural man knows them and yet does not know them. If he did not know them, he would not be human: if he really knew them, he would not be a sinner. This dichotomy is itself the essence of the state of sin. Without knowledge of God there can be no sin: sin is always “in the sight of God.” In sin there can be no knowledge of God, for the true knowledge of God is the abolition of sin. This dialectic must not be one-sidedly abolished. On the contrary it must be strongly insisted upon. For only in this dialectic does the responsibility of faith become clear. He who does not believe is himself guilty. He who believes knows that it is pure grace."

Thus, “in the epistemological dialectic grace is both the completion and negation of nature.”

When Brunner returns to the ontological dialectic of nature and grace, he reintroduces his structural understanding of the formal aspect without the qualities of recognition, morality, and conscience previously mentioned in the epistemological dialectic. The human being, in the repentance and faith influenced by the Holy Spirit, receives the original righteousness that was lost, and undergoes a recreation in the material image of God. Brunner notes that “the subject as such, the fact of self-consciousness, is not destroyed by the act of faith . . . and upon this depends the possibility of an imperative of faith . . .”

meeting rescheduled

2007-03-06T15:31:00.000-08:00

For this week, we've rescheduled our discussion of CD I/1 to Thursday, March 8, at 7:30 p.m. at Amherst Coffee shop, adjacent to the Jones Library. I apologize if this is inconvenient for anyone.

Meeting tonight

2007-02-20T13:20:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,
Hopefully everyone in our area who might be coming got the message, but in case you didn't -- we're meeting tonight (Tuesday) at Glen Franklin's House to discuss Barth's take on "vestiges" of the Trinity.

Meeting Tuesday, Feb. 6

2007-01-30T20:45:00.000-08:00

We will reconvene at 7 p.m. next Tuesday, Feb. 6, at Glen Franklin's House (see link on the sidebar to see a map).
We are continuing with Barth's account of the foundations of Trinitarian doctrine with the doctrine of the Word of God (The upcoming reading is Church Dogmatics I/1, par. 8.2, pp. 304-333, "God in His Revelation: The Root of the Doctrine of the Trinity"). We're now asking that, if possible, participants read or skim the selected passage in advance so we might have more time for discussion.

Future meetings are (tentatively) planned for the first and third Tuesdays of each month.

Last time, we began with Barth's entree into this pivotal discussion of God as the One is the Revealer, the Revelation and the Reveledness (See par. 8.1, "The Place of the Doctrine of the Trinity in Dogmatics"). In a nutshell, Barth argues that the issue of God's self-revealing cannot be separated from the questions of how God reveals Godself and what the result of this revelation is. Put another way, the mode of revelation and its content (or the effects of its reception) cannot be abstracted from the identity of the Revealer, as such a disjunction would imperil the unity of God's being maintained in the divine self-disclosure.

A Review of The Ascension in Karl Barth by Andrew Burgess

2007-01-30T07:35:00.000-08:00

Ben Myers over at Faith and Theology has just written a review of The Ascension in Karl Barth by Andrew Burgess. I highly recommend it, as Ben always writes good reviews.

Barth Society Meeting Tonight!!!

2007-01-09T12:29:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone, and Happy New Year!

The Karl Barth Society of Amherst will resume meeting tonight (Tuesday) at 7 p.m. at Glen Franklin's home in Shutesbury. We will be meeting (tentatively) the second and fourth Tuesday of every week to read together a short passage from Barth's magnum opus, The Church Dogmatics (volume 1, part 1). Everyone is welcome. For more information, and for directions to Glen's house, check out our blog at http://barthamherst.blogspot.com
Or give me and Leah a call at one of the numbers below. (For those of you hearing of this for the first time, my apologies for the short notice).

Feel free to forward this announcement to anyone whom you think might be interested. Please let me know if you would like me to remove your address from this mailing list.

Blessings,
Scott Jackson

413-549-6797 / 215-510-0269

Karl Barth's Trinitarian Theology Released

2007-01-08T07:17:00.000-08:00

Peter S. Oh has received copies of his new book and he has been kind enough to put a copy in the mail for me. In the meantime, Amazon will release his book for purchase on January 20th. I suggest you check it out.

Next Barth Meeting Scheduled

2006-12-29T11:06:00.000-08:00

Hello all.
After a semester-long hiatus, the Barth reading group will be having a meeting at Glen's house (see Google-maps link on left nav bar for directions) at 7:00pm on the second Tuesday of January, which turns out to be the 9th. I'm told that Scott, Leah, and Glen will be continuing into the second half of CD I/1, where Barth explicates the doctrine of the Trinity. Yummy! I'm sorry I won't be able to make it, but you should give it a go if you can!

Future Barth Projects

2006-11-13T17:02:00.000-08:00

On my way to study at the lab, it hit me that I'd like to begin two projects for the future benefit of Barth studies:
1.) Translate all foreign languages in the Church Dogmatics for the English version.
2.) Edit a Church Dogmatics Dictionary, which would provide short definitions for the obscure people/places/things that Barth mentions in CD reader of Barth (these things especially occur in the excurses!).

2006-11-11T19:47:00.000-08:00

Peter was kind enough to send me the front and back covers for his new book coming out soon from T&T Clark.

My New Blog

2006-11-02T06:03:00.000-08:00

I've started a new blog called Disruptive Grace, which is more devoted to my own life and thought. I will continue to post all new Barth info that I come across on here, and hope it continues to serve you well.

New Book: Karl Barth's Trinitarian Theology by Peter S. Oh

2006-11-01T12:05:00.000-08:00

Karl Barth's Trinitarian Theology
A Study of Karl Barth's Analogical Use of the Trinitarian Relation
by Peter S. Oh
From Continuum:

Pub Date: 20 Nov 2006
ISBN: 0567031195
hardcover
192 Pages

Description
Karl Barth's Trinitarian Theology is an original and insightful discussion of the theme of the Trinity in the thought of Karl Barth with particular reference to ecclesiology. The book examines Karl Barth's analogical use of the Trinity, with respect to various patterns of divine-human communion in the context of the doctrine of redemption. In the first part of the book, Oh explores Barth's understanding and use of analogy throughout his theological development. To support his argument on the concept of analogy and in order to place Barth's moral theology in context, Oh compares the work of Kierkegaard and Barth. This research gives fresh insight into Karl Barth's Trinitarian, theological hermeneutics. In Part II, Oh examines Barth's analogical use of the doctrine of the Trinity from an ecclesiastical perspective. He demonstrates an indirect relationship and similarity between the perichoretic ‘intra divine’ communion and the complementary ‘divine-human’ relation in Barth's theology of redemption.
Author:
Peter S Oh Dr Peter Oh graduated from Yale University, USA, and obtained his PhD from Kings College, London, UK (under the supervision of Colin Gunton). He is currently a research fellow at the Eberhard-Karls-Universitat in Tubingen, Germany, where he is working on his habilitationsschrift.
Reviews: 'Barth's doctrines of the Trinity and the church continue to provoke debate; this thorough study offers new matters for reflection not only to Barth specialists but to any interested in the study of Christian doctrine'. 'Focusing on the concept of perichoresis in Barth's Trinitarian theology, this book offers a perceptive study of a little noticed feature of Barth's thought and ably demonstrates the considerable importance of the concept to his wider theological concerns. The book thus constitutes an original and challenging contribution both to Barth studies and also to the field of ecclesiology where the notion of perichoresis is especially applicable.'

Barth's Theology of Interpretation by Donald Wood

2006-10-31T09:17:00.000-08:00

Ashgate will release another book in the Barth Studies series, entitled Barth's Theology of Interpretation by Donald Wood at University of Aberdeen. Here's the synopsis offered:

Through his single-minded insistence on the theological priority of the Bible, Karl Barth (1886-1968) helped redefine the history of twentieth-century Christian theology. Barth's Theology of Interpretation sheds new light on Barth's account of what scripture gives and requires, drawing on both familiar texts and recently published archival material to offer a fresh reading of Barth's theological account of the Christian church's relationship to its scriptures. In addition to presenting a fresh picture of Barth's intellectual development, Donald Wood also raises new questions regarding Barth's contribution to contemporary discussions of the theological interpretation of scripture.

Contents:
Introduction; Discoveries and developments; History and the politics of interpretation; Revelation and the grounds of interpretation; Hearing and obeying the word of God; Conclusion; Bibliography; Indexes.

Further Information:
Affiliation: Donald Wood
ISBN: 0 7546 5457 5
Publication Date: 02/2008
Number of Pages: c. 240 pages
Binding: Hardback
Binding Options: Available in Hardback only
Book Size: 234 x 156 mm

technorati

2006-10-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

Technorati Profile

Brunner's Counter Theses and Their Proof: The First Counter-Thesis

2006-09-13T19:20:00.000-07:00

THE IMAGO DEI

Brunner wants to reconstruct natural theology biblically and on the grounds of the Reformation. He claims this new way of doing natural theology is able to maintain the dialectic of nature and grace that can preserve the priority of grace over nature, both ontologically and epistemologically. The “lynchpin of this dialectic,” as Joan O’Donovan has observed, is the dual concept of the imago Dei, which can function as both nature and grace.
According to Brunner, man’s creation in the image of God has two aspects: the formal aspect and the material aspect. The formal aspect acts as the structure and function of human being, a characteristic that makes it inherently superior to the rest of the contingent order of created beings. The structural-functional superiority of human being manifests itself in human “responsibility” and “capacity for words.” As Brunner puts it:

Man has an immeasurable advantage over all other creatures, even as a sinner, and this he has in common with God: he is a subject, a rational creature. The difference is only that God is the original, man a derived subject. Not even as a sinner does he cease to be one with whom one can speak, with whom therefore also God can speak. And this is the very nature of man: to be responsible.

Thus, the formal aspect cannot be destroyed by sin, thereby rendering humanity responsible and inexcusable for the cosmological chasm (which is both ontological and epistemic) between God and His subjects.
In contrast with the continuing integrity of the formal aspect, sin has successfully destroyed the material aspect of the image of God in humanity. Brunner agrees with Barth that humanity’s original righteousness “has been lost and with it the possibility of doing or even of willing to do that which is good in the sight of God . . . [such that] the free will has been lost.”
The destruction of this material aspect leads to the total perversion of created human being that renders the once “personal” human being as “anti-personal.” The sinful human remains “a person” insofar as he/she remains a responsible subject (retaining the formal aspect). Yet, Brunner notes:

he is not a personal person but an anti-personal person; for the truly personal is existence in love, the submission of the self to the will of God and therefore an entering into communion with one’s fellow creature because one enjoys communion with God. This quid of personality is [negativized] through sin, whereas the quod of personality constitutes the humanum of everyman, also that of the sinner.

This Year's Karl Barth Prize Goes to . . .

2006-09-13T16:13:00.000-07:00

Meehyun Chung! Thanks to Ben Myers at Faith and Theology for giving us the good news.

Scott Jackson's Ph.D. Dissertation Abstract

2006-09-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

I'm excited to finally have received Scott Jackson's dissertation, entitled,

JESUS CHRIST AS THE GOD WHO LOVES IN FREEDOM:
ELECTION, COVENANT AND THE TRINITY
IN THE THOUGHT OF KARL BARTH

I hope to give it a good read before the semester commences. Again, my congrats to Scott for finishing such a monumental piece of work. Now he can rest easy, and look for high-paying theology jobs. :-)

THE PURPOSE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY FOR BRUNNER

2006-09-07T15:04:00.000-07:00

In reference to Paul’s letter to the Romans, Brunner unfolds the foundation of a Christian doctrine of “natural man” and of heathen religion. He believes that Paul begins with a two-fold occurrence of “trust” and “repentance,” whereby saying No to oneself is how one says Yes to the saving grace of God. Therefore, when Paul speaks of the “inexcusable,” he is speaking of the responsibility of the ungodly for their ungodliness. Brunner makes the doctrine of natural revelation to be the ground of this judgment, for how else could the ungodly be judged? It is precisely the fact that God is with humanity today in His creation witnessing to Him, that makes it impossible to fault God for man’s sinful state. Indeed, humanity is at fault, for they have perverted what they know of God (Romans 1:23) and turned away from Him who declares Himself. Thus, the revelation from creation is used to give reverence to humanity rather than God. As for the heathen, they “do not stand outside the revelation of God, or out of relation to him; they stand rather in that alienatio originis which from the human side must be called sin and from the divine side the wrath of God.”
Here what lies behind Brunner’s attempt at saving natural theology is his attempt to ground the responsibility of the sinner. He sees this responsibility as relevant to the missionary who proclaims the Gospel to the heathen. The knowledge of one’s own sinful state is not only practically effective in the contact between the proclamation of Christ and the revelation of God in the works of creation and in the law written in the heart, it is “indispensable.”

He goes on:

"He who thinks as a missionary, understands without further ado the central significance of this contact, normative and productive of repentance, with the two-fold revelation in creation; and he knows also that far from prejudicing the sola gratia, it alone makes possible the preaching of justification. Everything depends on the establishment of this responsibility, which makes men guilty; and the responsibility itself depends on the reality of a general revelation in creation which precedes the revelation of reconciliation in Jesus Christ, and indeed precedes all historical life."

BARTH’S FALSE CONCLUSIONS

According to Brunner, it is the doctrine of sola gratia and the position of the Bible as the sole ultimate standard of truth from which Barth draws the following conclusions:

(1) Since man is a sinner who can be saved only by grace, the image of God in which he was created is obliterated entirely, i.e., without remnant. Man’s rational nature, his capacity for culture and his humanity, none of which can be denied, contain no traces or remnants whatever of that lost image of God.
(2) Since we acknowledge scriptural revelation as the sole norm of our knowledge of God and the sole source of our salvation, every attempt to assert a “general revelation” of God in nature, in the conscience and in history, is to be rejected outright. There is no sense in acknowledging two kinds of revelation, one general and one special. There is only one kind, namely the one complete revelation in Christ.
(3) Accordingly we have to draw the following conclusion from the acknowledgment of Christ as the sole saving grace of God: there is no grace of creation and preservation active from the creation of the world and apparent to us in God’s preservation of the world. For otherwise we would have to acknowledge two or even three kinds of grace, and this would contradict the oneness of the grace of Christ.
(4) Accordingly there is no such thing as God’s ordinances of preservation, which we could know to be such and in which we could recognize the will of God which is normative of our own action. A lex naturae of this kind which is derived from creation can be introduced into Christian theology only per nefas, as a pagan thought.
(5) For the same reason, it is not permissible to speak of the “point of contact” for the saving action of God. For this would contradict the sole activity of the saving grace of Christ, which is the centre of the theology of the Bible and the Reformation.
(6) Similarly the new creation is in no wise a perfection of the old, but comes into being exclusively through destruction of the old and is a replacement of the old man by the new. The sentence, gratia non tollit naturam sed perficit, is in no sense correct, but is altogether an arch heresy.

Visiting the Barth Center

2006-09-07T14:46:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, as I went to bother David Congdon, I had the chance to meet the Curator of Special Collections, Clifford Blake Anderson. When I had emailed Anderson a few months ago about this Barth site, I had accidently mispelled the URL as http://barthamherst.blogpsot.com.
Anderson replied that he was a little concerned about my theology at first, and when I visited the wrong link, I found out why.
As a side note, if you can read Anderson's latest essay in Cultural Encounters on Kuyper and Barth on Worldviews, you'll get a very fresh understanding of why they can't see eye to eye (most assume the difference is their Doctrine of Scripture). As someone who has attended L'Abri lectures many times (founded by Francis Schaeffer), I can attest to the evangelical/reformed popularity of "cultivating a Christian worldview." Barth has pretty much knocked that philosophy out of me now, although many fragments of truth are embedded in its system.

David was kind enough to introduce me. When he said "Amherst," they already knew who I was (does that count as being a Barthian celebrity?). I was asked if the Barth Society of Amherst was large, and had to admit that five people was a "good day" for us, which received a good chuckle. Kenneth Henke offered to take me on a tour of the Barth Center on his lunch break, which was a real treat. It was amazing to see Markus Barth's own chicken-scratch from when he took his father's class in the '40s (which ended up being published as CD I/2). There were canes, pipes, pictures, ash-pots, and of course a whole collection of first editions (again, largely provided by Markus). On top of that, they have collected all of the secondary literature available on Barth, including recently completed doctoral dissertations (send yours in, Scott!).

Perhaps I should consider this a culminating experience into the world of Barth (yes, there is a culture of it). What would be even more grand would be to work in special collections with David. I'll let you know how that goes.

Nature and Grace

2006-09-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

A year of silence follows, when Brunner sends a note to Barth explaining his monograph, Nature and Grace: A Conversation with Karl Barth, and his motives for writing it:

"I ask you to accept this booklet as graciously as possible. I have tried as far as I am able to understand what unites and divides us, and I express our opposition as falling within a Reformation-Biblical co-partnership. And thus my wish for fellowship is as clear as my wish for theological specificity. For that reason, I maintain that your teaching on natural theology is not entirely biblical and is not entirely Reformed. But I know that, despite this, you are united with me that it is important to struggle in our Church and in the world for the value of the biblical message in its Reformation interpretation until the end. I believe in this co-partnership."

NATURE AND GRACE

Brunner introduces his essay Nature and Grace by speaking of their theological alliance, and the degree to which Brunner respects even the things that Barth has to say against him. He clarifies the point that Barth is the chief theologian to be credited with changing the Protestant conversation from “religion” to “the Word of God,” thus regaining a theology that is compatible with the message of Scripture and the Reformation, and breaking through the front of theological modernism. Brunner forgives him for friendly-fire, as it were, since Barth was only serving his duty as a night watchman of the Church. Even in shooting, however, Brunner believes that Barth (thankfully) missed, and feels it is important to resolve the conflict by finding common ground. It is primarily Barth’s “lone-ranger” attitude that bothers Brunner, implying that Barth sees himself as doing theology better on his own. He continues to maintain (against Barth) that the difference between them is “purely objective and theological and can only be removed if we test anew by that standard which we both acknowledge.” Brunner truly seeks to put the ball in Barth’s court regarding the status of alliance and is intent on forcing Barth to dissolve the relationship publicly. This, among other reasons, is why Barth wrote a quick review on the back of the pamphlet to Brunner that included this statement: “It would have been better if [Brunner] had not written this article.”
Brunner further explains that he uses the term “natural theology” in an objective sense, whereby the human individual, who has already received divine revelation, comes to know God through His creation. This sense of the term is distinguished from the subjective sense, whereby knowledge of God is accessible to “the heathen or to independent rational argumentation.” To clarify some terminology, the “objective sense” is theological rhetoric for emphasizing God’s agency, whereas the “subjective sense” emphasizes human agency. This rhetorical use of “objectivity” by Brunner is necessary for him to stay close to Barth in the argument, since it is a (but not the) primary motif of his theology. It is easy to confuse this usage of “objectivity” and “subjectivity” in the philosophical sense, where often the distinction lies in whether we are talking about our mere representation of an object (subjectivity) or the object as it is in itself (objectivity). We might be tempted to supplement “God” into the logical space of “object” in this distinction. But to do so would be, for Barth, to cross into philosophical territory. God must not occupy the space of “object” as philosophically defined, for the God of Christianity and the God of philosophy are incommensurable for Barth. Instead, God must define objectivity and subjectivity for us.
Brunner even says that if the term “natural theology” is a stumbling block to dialogue, it can be scrapped in favor of “the Christian doctrine of general revelation or of revelation in nature.”

New Blogs

2006-09-05T12:12:00.000-07:00

Hello friends.
I've started my own personal blog, called Disruptive Grace.

Halden and others in East Portland are starting their own Barth Society. And what would a Barth Society be without a blog? My non-existent hat goes off to them. Where shall the next group pop up? It could be in YOUR hometown!

Barth and Brunner on Natural Theology: Part 5

2006-08-22T13:19:00.000-07:00

NATURAL THEOLOGY (1932-1934)

The distance between Barth and Brunner grows when Barth revises Church Dogmatics I/1, which devotes ten pages to undermining Brunner’s “eristics” project. Brunner, in turn, writes an article entitled “The Question of the ‘Point-of-Contact’ as a Problem for Theology,” which calls for theologians to devote attention to theological anthropology. He also writes Barth to thank him for sending an early manuscript of Church Dogmatics, while accepting Barth’s diagnosis of the growing distance between them:

"You are heading in the direction of a “perennial theology,” which rejects the special feature of human questions for every time; you believe that, in the twentieth century, you must also answer the questions of the sixteenth century. I, on the other hand, have turned in the direction of the kind of dogmatics which sees its service as answering the questions asked by the modern person. . . . [This is] where all of our differences have their ultimate ground . . . For me, theological work, . . . in the end, is nothing more than a particular type of evangelism, namely the battle against pagan thinking. . . . Perhaps (this is still always my hope), when your great work is brought to completion, you will turn yourself again to the work for which you are so specially equipped, and – if God grants it – you will be allowed really to ring the great bell which the whole world can hear."

Instead of accepting Brunner’s task, Barth responds predictably by formally relinquishing Brunner as a theological colleague:

"Yes, it is as you write: we continue in opposite directions, only for me it has been, for a long time now, a question not only of an opposition of method and style of writing, but even more a material opposition occurring right down the line. . . . I can understand as a theological friend only one in whom I have trust that he will not make a pact with the ancient serpent, neither with respect to nature nor with respect to grace. I no longer have this trust in you. You have made this pact on both sides as solemnly as possible. . . . It grieves you to hear that from me. But it has first grieved me to see gradually over the years and now completely clearly that we . . . want and intend something completely different materially, so that nothing now remains but for us to renounce the fictitious picture that there is a special solidarity in our work. . . . This renunciation is my answer to the point-of-contact. . . . All you need to do is to understand . . . your letter as radically as possible . . . in order to get the story of the gulf which divides us. All [its] points are non-debatable for me. . . . Here, here at the level of these . . . points it must be shown whether we are united in Christology, justification, the Scripture-principle, etc. If we can still be surprised with one another here, how then can it not be that we also intend completely different things in these other doctrines . . . ? The hyphen which has bound your name and mine . . . was a fictitious alliance."

Brunner goes onto repeat his charge of “one-sidedness” at Barth, thus laying the blame for their dissolution on Barth:

"There is truth in the saying: as much unity as is possible in some way. You have always been the strong one; you have perceived yourself to be the mightiest alone. You could accomplish it all by yourself. But also consider what it means for Christian people if you throw off everyone – everyone – from yourself, and will have fellowship with no one else who comes to the fore theologically. And what will happen if it comes to the point where you have the theological tradition of the entire Church against you! Do what you must, but we will always ask ourselves whether this separation belongs to the necessary issues, or to the uncertain issues, where there is freedom."

Mascots at Church?

2006-08-11T09:42:00.001-07:00

You saw it here.

David Bazan with Sojourners

2006-08-09T14:16:00.000-07:00

You can read an interview with David Bazan here at Sojourner's. Formerly known as Pedro the Lion, David has recently gone solo. Like Sufjan Stevens, he has a poetic quality in talking about the joys and frustrations of being a disciple of Christ among American Christendom. While Sufjan is subtle, David is caustic. His album "Control" is one of my favorite indie rock albums.

Crummy Church Signs

2006-08-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

In America, our churches feel that the billboard is the way to go if you want to get people in the door. Well, that's assuming you know how to effectively communicate. Here's a bunch of people who don't, and it's really funny.

http://www.crummychurchsigns.com/

Which of Barth's Doctrinal Treatments Expanded Your Theological Horizons the Most?

2006-08-01T10:21:00.000-07:00

After many months, I've decided to close down the poll and start anew. We had a good spread on this one. Not surprisingly, the doctrine of election was the most popular (36%), followed by the doctrine of reconciliation (22%), the doctrine of revelation (18%), the doctrine of the Trinity (16%), and the doctrine of Scripture (9%). Thanks for voting, and for the comments listed below:

Really hard choice actually - also his ethics and treatment of election.

07/21/06 7:38:40 AM MST

Election. it broke the back of my hyper-calvinism

06/15/06 6:07:10 AM MST

I cna't begin to put into words the value I see in Karl Barth's writings.When you 'get in the gove -- his gove," the reading progresses rapidly and truly opens the door to a deeper and more confident relationship with God and God in Christ. J Smithson

06/07/06 8:35:42 PM MST

What? No entry for Christology?!

05/11/06 7:10:52 PM MST

KB's doctrine of eternal election in Jesus Christ helped me get beyond the "insiders/outsiders" dichotomy and to perceive the depths of God's openness to us. - SJ

04/27/06 3:05:29 PM MST

Now we turn to the contemporary Barth interpreters. Who's your favorite?

George gives interview with Electric Politics

2006-07-24T12:49:00.000-07:00

I love George Hunsinger, and I haven't even had class with him yet. But he was very influential on my former youth minister and friend Glen Franklin, and so I benefited from the theological trickle-down effect. In many ways George reminds me of my father-in-law, especially in his gentle way of speaking about serious issues. The following is an interview given by George with Electric Politics, which I just came across today. George introduces Barth to us as non-academic theologians, and connects Barth's thinking with today's contemporary politics. The interview is quite long, but well worth the time.

http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2006/07/prophetic_acts.html

Enjoy!

New Articles Added

2006-07-24T12:47:00.000-07:00

Over at Princeton's Barth site there have been plenty of new articles added that were written in the past 20 years by people like Migliore, Busch, and McCormack. Enjoy!

A Prayer

2006-07-10T15:59:00.000-07:00

"Laugh at me, Lord. Make light of my pompous and heavy pretentiousness. Let the medicine of your mirth heal while it stings. Dispel the humidity of my ponderous self-concern. Yes, when my thoughts grow tiresome, teach me to laugh with you until together we shatter the tinkling goblets of my emptiness and pride."
- author unknown (from Prayers for a New World, ed. by John Wallace Suter, 1964).
Thanks to Tom Fisher for this one!

2006-07-10T14:14:00.000-07:00

2006-07-10T12:59:00.000-07:00

My Last Barth meeting

2006-07-09T06:56:00.000-07:00

Our last Barth meeting was held in Great Barrington, thanks to the kind hospitality of Matthew Palardy. We were supposed to meet at the Helsinki Tea Room, but we were unfortunately late and could not keep Matthew there to hold our table. So Matthew led us to a wonderful gazebo in downtown that had its own spotlights built in. Here we were reading Barth while sitting cross-legged on the floor, with all the rich New Yorkers on holiday walking around us in the dark. Barth in the spotlight indeed!

I want to thank Scott, Leah, Glen, and Matthew for their commitment to the group since its inception last October. They now hold the reins for where the group goes. As far as I know, they plan to finish CD I/1 by December. And then the group will perhaps take a more pedagogic turn, with presentations and shorter/easier barth readings (e.g. Dogmatics in Outline, Romans commentary, Evangelical Theology, Word of God and Word of Man, etc.). Contact Leah at threewitnesses@yahoo.com or Scott at jacksongregg2002@yahoo.com if you have any questions about it.

Edward Thurneysen

2006-07-08T20:06:00.000-07:00

Hi folks,
I'm starting to settle into my new home here at Princeton Seminary where I'll be doing an M.Div. I've already made some great contact with neighbors (who have fed us more than we can , and can't wait to get started on intensive Hebrew this Monday (which apparently includes Friday afternoon ultimate frisbee matches with the Intensive Greek students!).

One thing that's been on my mind is Barth's life-long friendship with Edward Thurneysen, a pastor who ministered to a congregration in a village adjacent to Barth's in Safenwil. It was through meeting him that Barth found support in the midst of a serious shaking of foundations (e.g. the collapse of theological liberalism). Who was this man? Was he simply a "yes-man" to Barth? Or was he Barth's critic? How did the dynamics of their relationship change over time as Barth become more influential?

Whatever the details of the relationship, one cannot stress enough how important it is to have at least one (if not more) theological comrade on call. Even for the most introverted and self-disciplined theologian, it is essential to have someone like Thurneysen around. Not only must we seek him/her as a guide and critic of our own theology, but we must also be that very person to others.

Do you have a Thurneysen in your theological meanderings? And how much beer does this relationship consume? (always a helpful measuring stick, don't you agree?)

My thanks to those of you who answer here on this forum for your openness to discuss Barth's theology in depth.

Please keep me and my wife in prayer during this time of drastic change. And may the Lord bless you and keep you in steadfast love.

~Chris TerryNelson

Barth and the Problem of Grace and Nature Dualism, with special emphasis on the Bible as the Word of God

2006-06-30T13:29:00.000-07:00

Over at Pilgrim.Not.Wanderer, I've been discussing Barth's doctrine of the Word of God. I appreciate Pilgrim's critical eye for Barth, as I have the tendency to plunge wholeheartedly into any theologian that I like with blinders on. However, I think Pilgrim's concerns for Barth's early trajectory of theology, while good concerns in themselves, are not warranted, esp. when we read the later works. This is copied from a comment left in the comment box.

And God speaks and acts and enters into covenant with us. So He can't really be "wholly other" in any way that is meaningful to us as God's people.

I know somehow this fits into his unfolding dialect[ic] style of theologizing somehow. But why think this way to begin with? Why talk this way?

I think Barth saw exactly the problem that you are sensing here. In fact, later on he criticized his early work for being too transcendental (like the Romans commentary in 1916). However, even early on Barth saw his polemical mode of writing as a necessary "ground-clearing" in order to put forth his positive message. It's important to see both aspects in his writing.

In order to understand Barth, one needs to understand the theological liberalism in Europe that he broke from (and is largely responsible for breaking for the benefit of the Church). Any of Barth's early writings have pretty specific and cutting language to describe his contemporary theological setting. The jist of it is this: theological liberalism assumes that God is immanent in creation and specifically in His creatures to such a degree that the distinction (or the "qualitative difference" as Barth would say) is virtually lost between God and humanity. Instead, basically ALL human language (that is, modern language), and the various ways that we extend ourselves through history, culture, religion, etc. are the GRACE of God. "But is this true grace?" Barth wants to ask. It's here that Barth gets a lot of influence from Kierkegaard. While it's important to not see Barth as post-modernist (as some scholars like to heroicize him), you can see how Barth saw the brilliant lie all around him:
"Here was a human culture building itself up in orderly fashion in politics, economics, and science, theoretical and applied, progressing steadily along its whole front, interpreted and ennobled by art, and through its religion and morality reaching well beyond itself toward yet better days.”
Or listen to an address by Barth in 1916 called “The Righteousness of God,” where he suggests that at the hands of “the happy gentleman of culture who today drives up so briskly in his little car of progress and so cheerfully displays the pennants of his various ideals, the longing for a new world has become the joy of development.”

Morality, the state and law, religion – the building blocks of what Barth later called “liberal, positive, cultural Protestantism,” are nothing less than self-wrought human righteousness, an evasion of the sheerly critical, utterly different, will of God. “His will is not a corrected continuation of our own. It approaches us as Wholly Other.”

For all their talk about grace, the liberals had domesticated it and robbed it of its true power. This is very similar to the critique of "cheap grace" that Bonhoeffer lobs at the increasingly nationalist Lutherans of his time in "Cost of Discipleship."

Now, how does this connect with your discussion with the Word of God? First of all, I should clarify that to understand Barth one must understand his exegesis of Scripture first. I think too many people, me included, put so much weight on his rejection of liberalism that we give it too much credit for his later thought. I don't want to give you the impression that Barth is merely a product (or anti-product, as it were) of his context. And this is certainly not the case of his theology. Barth, for all we might disagree with him, is trying to be true to Scripture in his theology. It's always important to have this in mind, even as Barth could confess that "I am a child of the 19th century."

That said, I think this discussion of the Word of God needs to ask questions regarding our own context: is there a domestication of grace going on now with regards to how we view the Bible? If there is, then we might need to heed advice from Barth.

First, Barth wants to confess the Bible in a biblical way, in a way that does justice to what the Bible says about itself, and what the biblical writers would say about their own writings. This means that it's not "just" a text as the liberals would want to see it, although it is certainly a human work. Nor is it supernatural in the way that conservatives like to make it out, simply just raw divine speech. It is not simply a deposit of God-info, a frozen artifact that we now need to unpack for all its theological nuggets. God is a Living God, and His word is a Living Word.
If I may vent a bit as you have, my frustration with evangelicals lies in their consistent misinterpretation of the Bible, both in what it is, and (therefore) what it says.
Behind the word "biblioatry" I suspect Barthians are (or at least should be) making this claim, which I support: the Bible is not God's Word given to us so that now it is OUR possession. The Bible remains God's Word, which means that it is God's possession.

Now why make this distinction? Because evangelicals like me want certainty, and we want certainty on our own terms, i.e. the world's terms. The life of faith in modernity (and postmodernity, which is just another form of modernity in my opinion) has ironically consisted of discovering new methods to apologize to this world for our identity as Christians. Yet the life of faith as Jesus describes it has no affinity with this world. While evangelicals are willing to confess their counter-cultural Christian stance in ethics, they seem to think that the realm of knowledge plays by a different set of rules. So the Bible has been made into the foundation of our knowledge of God, instead of God being the foundation (and means) of our knowledge of God. That is why revelation is such an important piece for Christian theology. It helps not to domesticate God in the text, but sees him both above it and in it at once (similar to how we think of the way in which we hold that Christ is both divine and human). But notice, it also helps not to domesticate the Bible, nor us as readers. We are all (God, the biblical writers' testimony, and us) in relationship to one another through God's act. [here I'll add a new tidbit] There is no way to know God except through revelation. There is a long debate between Barth and Brunner regarding how and where revelation takes place, and whether or not "nature" has enough grace embedded in it that all humanity can and should recognize God, a la Romans 1 . I think Paul was being ironic in talking about universal human knowledge of God, and it's is a foundation that he wants to quickly throw away. I can't go into this now though. See Doug Cambell's essay in International Journal of Systematic Theology, 1999.

The Bible is the Word of God, but in no different a way than a preacher's word is the Word of God. The Bible does not point to itself as God's Word (I'll welcome a proof-text here to prove me wrong); it points to God. That is, it testifies to God's "speech-acts" (to use the trendy language of today) in the history of Israel and the Church. Likewise, the preacher (if he/she is fulfilling their commission), is preaching the Word of God as they point beyond themselves to God. We have to ask "what about those that hear or read the Word of God?"

This is where your critique of Barth (even if it's misappropriated) is right on. If human language is indeed too wretched, and God is so wholly other that we cannot have relationship or correspondence with Him, then we're indeed walking away from what Scripture tells us about God and His grace towards us in Jesus Christ. There is no other God except this One. Barth does not want to overshadow the human being, and I think that's why he makes such great effort to speak about our "hearing" and "knowing" of God in the first volume of Church Dogmatics.

Ultimately, Barth's critique against himself came when he realized that the God who acts and speaks to us through grace is God's being IN HIMSELF. I think this is one of the most beautiful trinitarian insights that Barth offered to theology - that the "God for us" is the only God there is, and there is no other God behind Him (i.e. God the Father as the God of Providence and Wrath that we might have inherited from less Reformered thinkers).

By the way, you say at the beginning of your first post :
Or if I hear any more about how the bible "contains" the word of God... or about how the word equals revelation, and that the revelation of God is the "self bestowal" of the person of God, and specifically not a linguistic-message/word/promise/announcement /judgement from God... then I'll loose it again.

God's self-bestowal does not negate or even operate separately from the language of God, since they are made one in each "speech-act." That is, God's speech is God's act, and vice versa. Whether these Barthians mispoke or you misheard, to say that self-bestowal is NOT a linguistic message/promise/judgment is antithetical to Barth, in my reading of him.

To me it says more about what Barth was setting himself up against. But is Barth's strategy of dealing with an admittedly good enemy a good one? A faithful one? Or do we have way better resources with which to deal with this stuff nowadays?

I think Barth would applaud this question, since he always said at the end of his life (as he had gained recognition as the great Protestant thinker of his time) that he wished people would write more about the things he was "trying" to write about (i.e. God), and to do them better than he did, instead of just writing about him. If anything, Barth should be given credit for having always pointed away from himself as John the Baptist does in Grunewald's Crucifixion. This was Barth's favorite painting. To him, theology always had the task of pointing away from oneself and towards God, saying with John the Baptist: "He must increase, I must decrease." That said, no one has surpassed him yet (especially if you look at ALL his work, and not just excerpts of early works, which is a requirement for reading any theologian I think). There have only been a handful helpful corrections, and a LOT of revision of the early Barth interpreters like Torrance, von Balthasar (generally seen as Pro-Barth), and Van Til/Schaeffer (generally seen as Anti-Barth).

I recently picked up the best beginner's introductory text on Barth that I've read so far (and I've read 5 or 6 of them). It's part of the Outstanding Christian Thinkers series, it's written by John Webster. Very comprehensive, and manages to sum up the themes of the Church Dogmatics in a very concise and clear manner. It also brings a lot of healthy criticism of Barth by contemporary theologians towards most of his doctrinal treatments.

This is sufficiently long, but to interpret Barth means to bring various angles on that matter. I'll go ahead and post this on my Karl Barth Society of Amherst. It'll be interesting to see what corrections I get handed. Feel free to respond there and here, as it'll make it easier for me.

A Response by Andrew Dole on Spiritual vs. Social Gospel

2006-06-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

Professor Andrew Dole, a friend of mine who teaches religion at Amherst College and a Schleiermacher specialist (sorry, had to wipe the saliva off the monitor there), has written a nice response to my earlier piece on the Spiritual Gospel vs. the Social Gospel. He has allowed me to post it. It is more of a concern regarding the limited definition of "social gospel" that evangelicals like me have inherited. Giving "social gospel" work this broader definition I think reiterates the point that we cannot bifurcate the two.

"Dear Chris,

Since I've just finished teaching a course in which the Social
Gospel figured significantly, I do have a comment to make about
this. Basically, Stott's grasp of what the 'social Gospel' entails
seems pretty thin. In its classic forms it went far beyond simply
'helping people with daily needs'. Those who argued, in the early
20th century, that the primary social task of the church was 'helping
people with daily needs' were saying something very different from
the social Gospel types, and not infrequently were trying to resist
what they were up to.

The social Gospel movement concerned itself not simply with
alleviating the suffering of the unfortunate-- that was widely seen
as an important task, but one that was too limited. What the social
Gospel people addressed themselves to were the societal causes of
suffering: structural features like wage inequality, flagrant labor
exploitation, militarism, nationalism and the like. They were
interested, to cite the title of a book by Rauschenbusch, in
'Christianizing society'. This took various forms: advocation of
child labor laws, unemployment insurance, and minimum/living wage
legislation; activism on the side of workers' rights to organize and
participation in labor-capital negotiations; advancing Socialist
party policies and candidates; advocating pacifism; and preaching
against racism, greed, traffic in the sale of alcohol, and rampant
nationalism. In comparison to this kind of aggressive social/
political program, those who called for the church to do no more than
engage in charitable relief were often trying to restrict the scope
of the church's activities.

Barth's relationship to this tradition was an interesting one.
Overall he's seen as a political quietist: one who thought the
church had no business meddling in politics. But it's become clear
since his death that he was passionately committed to socialist
politics in his private views, and there are those who have argued
that his theological work is shot through with a pro-socialist
program (this is a highly contested claim).

You'll be learning far more about this over the next few years, of
course, but I wouldn't want you to start your seminary education with
such a thin notion of such an important Christian movement.

Take care, Andrew Dole"

I'll respond later on Barth's political life, particularly his relationship to socialism, and the contentious debate surrounding how much CD is filled with this. I invite anyone else to add their say on this issue, or simply respond to the general problem of social/spiritual gospel.

Barth and Brunner Part 4

2006-06-20T12:30:00.000-07:00

THE TASK OF THEOLOGY (1930)

In 1929, Brunner goes beyond Barth’s explication of the primary task of theology as scientific interpretation of the Word of God, forming the discipline of “eristics,” derived from the Greek word erizein, which means “to debate.” According to Brunner, eristics allows the theologian to fight on two fronts: (1) the philosophical presuppositions of non-believers; and (2) the existential theology of believers in response to the Word (in contrast to the objectivistic dogmatic theology of Barth). Barth writes to his friend Edward Thurneysen in 1930 to express his intention to distance himself the from the “dialectical theology” movement he had earlier been ascribed to along with Friedrich Gogarten, Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, as well as Brunner:

"The whole line is entirely not a good thing: under no circumstances do I want to be associated with it. Is it not the case that all of us, who apparently stand close to each other, have gradually come to want exactly what we . . . did not want and struggled against from the beginning – standing in the nearest relationship to . . . a grounding not in actuality, but in laying the possibility of faith and revelation on the table? . . . What is all this . . . if it is not the renewal of the relationship between theology and philosophy, just like Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, De Wette, etc. – only that now, for a change, philosophy has become something negative, existential, etc. . . . Is it just a question of a harmless difference, while the rest of our theologies are “fundamentally” at one? I don’t know, . . . but I simply oppose with all the hairs on my head the entire state of affairs . . . , and I don’t know whether I should bunch together one great article of resistance and bid farewell to Emil, Paul, Friedrich, and Rudolf."

Barth decides to write such an article, and entitles it “Theology and Modern Man.” Here, Barth claims that theology raises three scandals to the modern person: (1) God’s freedom in revelation forces modern people to engage the doctrine of predestination; (2) theology binds itself to the church; and (3) faith – rather than history, psychology, or philosophy – becomes the way to obtain human knowledge of objective truth. This third scandal is particularly challenging because it suggests that theology does not (nor must it) offer any proof for its propositions, but calls for obedience without guarantee.
Barth then goes on to show three typical responses to these scandals: (1) atheism, which rebels against theology’s primary task; (2) Liberalism, which seeks to tame theology; and finally (3) Roman Catholicism, which desires to control theology. Barth describes these three responses in the following analogy:
"If you see a wild and threatening horse galloping straight at you, you could either jump out of the way [atheism] or try to soothe it with friendly words [Liberalism]. Or, if you had enough self-confidence, you could jump on its back and become its rider and master [Roman Catholicism].”

Barth goes on to describe his colleagues as giving various formulations of the third response:

"Perhaps it might be a negative metaphysics, an apparently very non-Thomistic metaphysics, not the zenith but the nadir of human knowledge, an ontology of the “hollow space,” to whose dimensions faith and theology correspond exactly, and . . . are clearly indicated [Bultmann]? Perhaps an “eristic” theology, which would have the task of making it clear to the modern person, with paternal wisdom, that he, without recourse to Christian faith, necessarily must become entangled in an evil self-contradiction [Brunner]? Or perhaps a doctrine of history, whose truth would correspond exactly to what the biblical presentation describes as the reality of the relationship of God and humanity [Gogarten]? (p.394) . . . It is more dangerous [than Roman Catholicism] because unbelievably good theology loses its way at one small point: it no longer says that human thinking reckons with the Word of God only through faith. But isn’t it precisely on this one little point that everything hinges? Is there any secure place which we can give to theology? Is not theology precisely theology only in the uncertainty of the real science of faith, . . . only as a stranger in the areas of the other sciences, without its own area? . . . Perhaps this is the fatal question which our generation asked, whether theologians are in the position to recognize this last and dangerous temptation for what it is."

Brunner responds to the article by trying to show that Barth is unconscious of how his own theology depends and assumes a rational certainty and a set of “guarantees” prior to and coupled with faith. He views Barth’s use of Anselm as evidence that Barth cannot escape Brunner’s undertaking. Brunner writes:

"Anselm is a powerful Eristician. ‘Why did God become man?’ – that is entirely and completely an eristic way of asking the question, just as the way he conducts his proof is eristic. Eristics . . . is the demonstration of the gap which God’s revelation or God’s grace covers . . . Whoever says possibility says eristics. Whoever sets up conditions of grace, guarantees it."

Brunner views Barth’s article as a “case and point” of the dialectical watch-dog that barks at everyone including Barth. He finds the article unhelpful due to its polemic against theology seeking certainty because he thinks all theology does exactly that, even Barth’s. Brunner believes Barth has overlooked the constant certainty of human logic utilized in his own theological thinking. Brunner writes:

"[Just look at] your unsubdued faith in the power of (theological) logic, with which you trust yourself to examine thoroughly the depths of the Trinity. How solid you must consider the human capacity for thought, that you trust your conclusions so unconditionally based on a concept of revelation. . . . How does it happen that humanity, which has nothing left of the image of God, has such a phenomenally trustworthy logic? . . . In reality you trust humanity in its fallen condition no less than I (your proof is not by virtue of regenerated logic, but is a result of purely natural logic), but you do not want to bring it into relationship with the original possession of a knowledge of God through creation."

Here we begin to see the development of a concept of a general revelation through creation that Brunner will later expound in Nature and Grace, where he ascribes to human logic the possibility or entry point for this revelation, which further allows the entry point of special revelation in Jesus Christ.
Barth responds by showing their theological alliance as having inevitably come to an end, and that the differences are so fundamental that there can be no rectification through the clarification of terms. This rift upsets him greatly, mostly because Brunner failed to see it sooner. Barth writes:

"Accept the fact . . . that you completely misunderstand not only my prolegomena, . . . but also my Romans, since you have obviously not noticed that since 1920 (not 1930, but 1920) it has been for me a question of “constructing theology from predestination.” . . . What have I said to you in this lecture that I have not always maintained as my presupposition, and which I have often expressed to you? And which of my “constructions” in all their forms do not spring from the ground of this presupposition, bound to it and conditioned through it, up to the last little proposition? That is true of my Prolegomena as well. . . . You have not let it be pointed out to you . . . that this anthropological background is lacking in me. Thus, my entire work, despite all the manifold similarities, is to be explained differently from yours. Thus, if not from the very beginning, then for a goodly time, you should have made the most fundamental stand against my work. . . . Why do you interpret me thus now . . . as if I indeed work with ‘guarantees,’ when you used to be in the habit of reproaching me in other discussions that I lacked such guarantees and that you must, so to speak, supply them with your eristics? . . . Have you ever heard from me . . . anything other than that I consider all theology to be nonsense which does not absolutely begin ‘formally’ with obedience?"

Finally, Barth suggests that at this point one must persuade the other to convert: either Brunner converts Barth to adding the other task of theology found in “eristics,” or Barth converts Brunner to “a theology which, like a spinning top, supports itself on only one point.”

John W. Hart sums up Barth’s definition of this theology as “a theology which respects the absolute freedom of God in his revelation, a reality which creates its own possibility, a reality which is both received and thought out only within the realm of the church and faith. As a theology of the living God, it relies on no external preconditions or possibilities or supports, but only upon grace, revelation, and faith.”

Karl Barth has died

2006-06-16T20:23:00.000-07:00

Yes friends, Karl Barth has died. Read about it here.

The Word of God and Faith . . . and Stephen Broyles

2006-06-12T20:36:00.000-07:00

Tonight I had only one comrade in dogmatics - Stephen Broyles - as all others were busy. I should mention in passing (and will devote an entire post soon) that our Scott Jackson was busy receiving his Ph. D. from University of Chicago last week, and so congrats to Scott.

Stephen and I have known each other for about six years now. Stephen is a true renaissance man, as you'll see when you visit his website above, or look at the various talks he's given at the Andreas Center. Stephen was kind enough to travel from Greenfield to join me in finishing Barth's section on "The Word of God and Faith" in CD I/1.

In many ways, Stephen's life has been a witness to the faithfulness of God. His book, The Wind That Destroys and Heals is a vivid portrait of this faithfulness in the midst grieving the loss of his wife. Stephen, even as he has an incredible wealth of knowledge at his disposal, is a regular guy just like you and me, and just as vulnerable to destruction and healing by God as you and me. Please pay his website a visit. He comes from Alabama, so when he speaks Old English, his Southern accent doubles the charm.

J-Web's Blog

2006-06-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

Jerod and I have attended the same church for quite some time. He is working on some pretty cool stuff as a Computer Science grad student at UMass, involving visualisation technology for the blind, and sign-recognition. He's certainly one of the most eclectic people I've come across, being a proud Nebraskan cyber-punk who has a punk radio show at WMUA 91.1 in Amherst on Wednesday afternoons. Always a treat, I suggest you keep up w/ Jerod's blog.

Tony's Guitar Blog

2006-06-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

I'm proud to know Tony as a brother in Christ. His commitment to excellence has always astounded me, as well as his deep awareness of God's beauty in this world. We not only share the love of theological propositions, but also music, and the idea that these two arenas coinhere in very mysterious and beautiful ways. Tony has devoted himself to some incredibly difficult pieces by solo instrumental guitarists, which I was blessed to see the fruit of last Friday night at the Amazing Things Arts Center. Tony opened with a twenty minute set for Brooks Williams, our local guitar hero. Tony has taken lessons from Brooks over the years, and I think I managed one or two. It was a wonderful night of watching the Master and the Little Grasshopper in action. Read about it at Tony's Guitar Blog and check out the cool backstage photos.

Stand Against Torture

2006-06-09T10:56:00.000-07:00

Thanks to George Hunsinger and the people over at National Religious Campaign Against Torture, this ad will be on display in the New York Times on June 13.

Salt and Light: "Social Gospel" vs. "Spiritual Gospel"

2006-06-06T18:04:00.000-07:00

The following comes from a meditation on Matthew 5: 13-16 (the "Salt" and "Light" passage), John Stott's commentary entitled "The Message of the Sermon on the Mount" (also called "Christ and Counterculture") from his wonderful biblical commentary series "The Bible Speaks Today." Finally, of course, it incorporates the following comments by Karl Barth in CD I/1:

"But there are also other elements in the life of the Church in which what we say about God is addressed to our fellow-men but which cannot seek to be proclamation. To this group belongs a function which from the very first has in some form been recognized to be an integral element of the life of the Church, namely, the expreession of helpful solidarity in face of the external needs of human society. This, too, is part of man's response to God. When and because it is the response of real man, necessarily in terms of Matthew 5:14f. it is a shining light to people among whom alone man is real man. If God exists for man, as the Church's prayer, praise, and confession declare in answer to the proclamation heard, then this man as the man for whom God exists must also exist for his fellow-men with whom alone he is real man. Yet the special utterance about God which consists in the action of this man is primarily and properly directed to God and not to men. It can neither try to enter into quite superfluous competition with society's necessary efforts at self-help in its straits, nor can it seek, as the demonstration of distinctively Christian action, to proclaim how God helps. "That they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven," that they may be a commentary on the proclamation of God's help, is, of course, freely promised, but cannot be its set intention. Like prayer, praise and confession, especially in casees like Francis of Assisi and Bodelschwingh, it has always been spontaneous, unpremeditated, and in the final and best sense unpractical talk about God. Then and in this way its light has shone out. . . If the social work of the Church as such were to try to be proclamation, it could only become propoganda, and not very worthy propoganda at that. Genuine Christian love must always start back at the thought of pretending to be a proclamation of the love of Christ with its only too human action" (p.50).

First, we need to ask the question: is there really a difference between "the social gospel" (helping people with daily needs) and "the spiritual gospel" (talking to them about Jesus Christ)? Where did we get these categories from? And who told us they were separate things?

I understand these categories well. I used to think of the spiritual Gospel (aka, the four spiritual laws, or some form thereof) as being of a higher order than the social gospel, and thus the true basis for any social work in the world. Surely when Jesus talks in Matthew 25:31-46 about separating the sheep and the goats, implicit within the sheep's social work is preaching of the spiritual gospel! Right?

The missionaries, for example, who accept this view might then decide to use social work as a tool for gaining favor with people, showing themselves to be a good people, perhaps a light in an otherwise dark place. Then, if social work is consciously and strategically done solely to gain a platform for sharing the love of Christ, it is often referred to as a Christian bait and switch method, an inauthentic witness. Is this a fair critique? Is there any other way?

If we are afraid that social gospel work might get confused with altruism by the world if we do not give explicit speech and confession of Jesus Christ, what makes us any more certain that our preaching, that our proclamation, our explicit speech and confession, might not be confused with something else?
Okay, perhaps we can be certain that the world could never mistake our "Spiritual Gospel" for something else. After all, words are so much more exclusive and explicit than action and body language and deeds (that is, if you have a Western perspective on communication).

So let's take a more common Western response to the Spiritual Gospel: what if it is ignored? What if people are indifferent? Do we pull out from doing work with the poor because it's not doing its true job - getting souls saved? What if it's not even looking as if our social work is opening the door to spiritual conversations? Is it simply a waste of time?

Which then gets to the bottom of this whole problem: the issue of salvation, which is entailed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. If he is "the Center," as we pray when we sing that wonderful worship song "Be the Center," then how is He involved in this dark world in which we are called to be salt and light? Did He just send us and stay home on the throne (at the right hand of the Father)?

I used to think that Jesus just got the ball rolling, but that it was all up to me for here on out. Send up some prayers to God to figure out how to live obediently and tell people about Jesus.

While I cannot think of one particular time of conversion-experience, I can certainly remember multiple mysterious encounters with God that led me to repentance and transformation. But I am now convinced that Jesus Christ, as well as the God the Father and The Holy Spirit, are fully self-involved in my full life. Likewise, Jesus Christ is fully self-involved in this world, which seems so dark to us. Yet, if we take Christ's work seriously enough, we realize that all the current forces have already been defeated and will come to pass.

While it’s certainly true that Jesus Christ is: a.) the One who saved us at the Cross, thus defeating the power of sin and death in this world, and b.) the (not just “a”) model and teacher of how we are to live on this earth as a people in but not of this world, He is even more than this. Jesus has promised Himself for the whole world as the sacrifice for sin, and is fully committed to the darkest places as the Redeemer. He is quite capable of doing this Himself, but has chosen to involve us, His Body, in this redemption of the world. We need to begin to see the presence of Christ with us now, not just in our past and in our future. He is eternal, after all, which means ALL the time.

We are continually made and sanctified as His Church again and again as we are addressed by God. Being a Christian is not just a one-time thing - “you’re saved, you’re in, batta-bing, batta-boom.” It would do us well, then, to realize that God is fully at work in this world, and that our explicit speech and confession has no more ability to save or redeem this world than the drink we give to the thirsty. If God wants us to do either, He will tell us. And if He chooses to hide the fruits of our labor from us, if our speech and work go unheard, it’s okay. And if He wants to redeem the world using people like Brian, then God is still glorified! We should not compete with the world in social work, nor should we think that there can be an automatic deduction from our helpful speech and work to the saving fact that “God helps.”

Ultimately, we give as the Church give water, food and shelter because we worship God through Jesus Christ in that person. It is Christ who gives every person dignity as a creature of God, regardless of whether they believe it or anyone else. Likewise, when we preach the Gospel, we are responding to Jesus Christ in that person. Either way, a person’s response is just as secondary (if not irrelevant) as the skill with which we preach or work. May all our thought, speech, and work be directed to God, and by God.

So let us not have faith in our speech, in our work, in our thoughts, but in Jesus Christ alone. And let all of our speech and work be a worthy response to Him. He already reigns on this earth.

Semi-Pelagian Narrower Catechism

2006-06-05T15:19:00.000-07:00

This is hilarious. Period.

Barth and Brunner on Natural Theology: Part 3

2006-06-04T10:31:00.000-07:00

THE FOUNDATION OF THEOLOGY (1925)

During his tenure at Göttingen, Barth begins developing a systematic theology based on the self-grounded axiom of God’s actual revelation of Himself to humanity, such that his dialectical theology finds its roots in the doctrine of the Trinity. Brunner, on the other hand, moves in a different direction, publishing an essay on the relationship between philosophy and theology entitled “Law and Revelation: A Theological Foundation.” The Law, for Brunner, is essentially the epistemic border for humanity. Hart summarizes Brunner as follows:
Brunner writes that in the relationship between theology and philosophy, “there is a border where both touch each other, thus where they . . . touch like two army spearheads over-against each other. This common point, which is precisely the point where there is a collision, is the Law.” Thus, for Brunner, there is a double significance for the Law. In the positive sense the Law is the way in which God encounters humanity as humanity proceeds on its own way to God. Negatively the Law, as that which uncovers humanity’s sin, separates God and humanity. The Law is the “stage prior to the ‘face of God’ . . . : It is God and yet not God, God as he wants to be for us but as he maintains himself against us.” Therefore the Law brings a crisis: it brings knowledge of sin and judgment, which points to the need for revelation of grace. Revelation alone makes possible the “full” knowledge of sin; nevertheless, since the Law is the touching point between revelation and philosophy, philosophy knows “something of the Law.”

Barth writes to Brunner in response to this essay with deep concern:

"Now that I see more clearly where you’re headed, I have nothing against you. Except that a demon (whose voice I still cannot translate into a scientific formula) prevents me from following you, (1) in your undertaking as such, which seems to me (as you usually conduct your undertakings) to be “somehow” too grandly designed (I still don’t know clearly enough what theology is, so I can hardly venture to think about its relationship to philosophy . . .); and (2) in the execution of your undertaking, which appears to me to be “somehow” too simple, too unambiguous. (It’s the same here as with your other works. . . . I see you giving answers where I am really first stirred up at discovering questions.) . . . I have absolutely no desire whatever to get involved in the hand-to-hand combat of philosophers with one another (1) because I don’t have what it takes, (2) because it’s not my office, and (3) because nothing would be more unpleasant for me than the realization that my theology stands or falls with a particular philosophy. You must understand how strange it makes me feel to look at you with your “foundation” – where one must first be converted from being an Aristotelian into a Kantian, and then from a Kantian into a Christian, and also that as a Christian one must necessarily be a Kantian (which I will concede is the most desirable and helpful position)."

For Barth, this polarity depicting law and gospel as opposites is a result of Brunner’s Kantian philosophical commitment. He asks Brunner:
“Is not the Law also revelation, [or is it] only punishment and opposition? Or does the praise of the Law in Psalm 119 count only as a ‘limit . . .’? . . . philosophy as such can ‘sense’ something of the ‘Law’ in the theological sense, it can say nothing, and that is a matter of importance. For then one must consider whether philosophy can ‘sense’ the ‘Gospel’ just as much as the ‘Law.’” Barth asks why Brunner calls his article a “theological foundation” if he builds upon an understanding of the Law which is common to Kantian philosophy. Barth concludes by remarking on the fact that people are reading Barth’s and Brunner’s works side by side: “While I am grateful that by the means of your clearer formulations many people better understand my ‘abracadabras,’ you must certainly take account of the fact that in my work there remains an ‘X’ of which you have not laid hold.”

Brunner apologizes to Barth for sounding too certain, but refuses to give up his undertaking:
“It was not my intention . . . to lay a theological foundation. . . . Nothing was intended other than a preliminary attempt to define the borders of philosophy and theology. But now, I think, it sits there, condemned: ‘foundation.’” . . . “We cannot avoid this task” of engaging with philosophy, because poor theological conclusions often result from the appropriation of bad philosophy . . . Brunner argues that he is simply reformulating what Paul and Calvin teach: the law is the tutor for the gospel. “This point of connection (Beziehungspunkt) [between revelation and reason cannot be] surrendered . . . I am not capable of speaking of revelation in the Christian sense without marking out the border of revelation against that which is not revelation, i.e., reason. Perhaps this comes in my genes, being the son of a teacher; but clarity as such appears to you to be somewhat pedantic and dangerously certain. But how do you answer your students when they ask about your doctrine of revelation: “Yes revelation is necessary – one does not know Christ through reason. But doesn’t the person who knows nothing of Christ know the Law just as well as the person who does?” With a dig at Barth’s dogmatic lectures, Brunner concludes by arguing that Barth cannot escape the question of revelation and reason in the long run: “It is more important that we clarify the relationship of reason and revelation – which is identical to saying that we must clarify the concept of revelation – than that we be instructed in all the subtleties of the doctrine of the Trinity.”

For Barth our theology is a posteriori (for our purposes, this term means “after the experience of revelation”) or Nachdenken (“reflection”) in relation to the revealed Word of God in Jesus Christ, through which we come to an understanding of God. Brunner is a more philosophical theologian in the sense that he is concerned first with the point of contact between our doctrine of God as revealed [Barth’s starting point] and our doctrine of humanity as receiver of this Word, and the proper conditions that help the former reach the latter. Brunner’s premier construct for this condition will be the image of God in man, which we will discuss later.

Book Spotlight: Barth, Israel, and Jesus

2006-05-31T14:34:00.000-07:00

I try to keep up with the latest Barth research as much as possible, and found this new book on Ashgate's website.

Barth, Israel, and Jesus: Karl Barth's Theology of Israel
by Mark R. Lindsay

The attitude of Karl Barth to Israel and the Jews has long been the subject of heated controversy amongst historians and theologians. The question that has so far predominated in the debate has been Barth's attitude, both theologically and practically, towards the Jews during the period of the Third Reich and the Holocaust itself. How, if at all, did Barth's attitudes change in the post-war years? Did Barth's own theologising in the aftermath of the Holocaust take that horrendous event into account in his later writings on Israel and the Jews? Mark Lindsay explores such questions through a deep consideration of volume four of Barth's Church Dogmatics, the 'Doctrine of Reconciliation'.

Contents
Preface; Introduction; Jewish-Christian relations since 1945; Barth and the Jewish people: the historical debate; Karl Barth and natural theology: a case study of the Holocaust as a theological locus; Barth and the state of Israel: between theology and politics; The function of 'Israel' in 'The Doctrine of Reconciliation'; Conclusion; Bibliography; Indexes.

Reviews
Very little has been written on Barth's doctrine of Israel in the later volumes of the Church Dogmatics; and Barth's view of the state of Israel is one that will prove timely -and controversial -as it did in Barth's own day. Professor Lindsay's prose is clear and literate, always welcome in this field. Volume 4 of the Church Dogmatics is the major re-statement of Christology in our era and the place Jews and the people Israel have in those volumes should be of interest to all Barth scholars, and theologians who work in Christology.
Professor Kate Sonderegger, Virginia Theological Seminary, USA

'Following his earlier analysis of Barth's theological critique of Nazi antisemitism in 'Covenanted Solidarity', Mark Lindsay turns to examine the significance of the holocaust for Barth's post-war theology of Israel, particularly in the doctrine of reconciliation. Lucidly written, with scrupulous attention to the scope and the details of the texts, this is Barth scholarship of a high order, and will also be read with profit by all concerned for the relations of Christians and Jews.'
Professor John Webster, King's College, Aberdeen

About the Author/Editor:
Dr Lindsay currently works at Trinity College, The University of Melbourne, as Director of Academic Studies and Deputy Dean. He also works as an adjunct lecturer in the Trinity College Theological School, and as a distance education tutor in the postgraduate program of the Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations in Cambridge, UK

Affiliation: Dr Mark R. Lindsay, Trinity College, The University of Melbourne, Australia
ISBN: 0 7546 5087 1
Publication Date: 06/2007
Number of Pages: c. 208 pages
Binding: Hardback
Binding Options: Available in Hardback only
Book Size: 234 x 156 mm

Barth meeting tonight

2006-05-29T13:16:00.000-07:00

Hello all.
We'll be meeting at Glen Franklin's house tonight between 8:00pm and 8:30pm, since Scott and Leah can't make it until later. Hope to see you there!

Nicholas Wolterstorff's Commencement Address

2006-05-29T12:40:00.000-07:00

One rarely ever hears a commencement speech worth remembering. However, Wolterstorff proved a sage for the thousand students ready to move out into "the real world" of playing off loans AND one-month's rent. His speech, entitled "You Need Both Eyes," touched on the Reformed understanding of the coinherence of our hearts and minds as Christians. For we are called not only to be skilled and knowledgeable in our vocation and witness (the first eye), but also called to "weep with those who weep" (the second eye). Follow the link and read the entire address.

Karl Barth's Review of the Da Vinci Code

2006-05-26T17:39:00.000-07:00

Now that I have your attention, while Barth unfortunately never had a chance to read the book or see the movie, I thought you might enjoy this review.

Your Review of the Barth Conference

2006-05-26T12:51:00.001-07:00

Hello.
If you had the chance to be at Princeton this week for the Barth conference, would you mind giving us your thoughts on how it went. I'm extremely bummed out that I had to miss it, as I love Hunsinger, Webster, and Molnar's work. Also, please post at Barthian Milieu.
Thanks!

Your Review of the Barth Conference

2006-05-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

Barth and Theological Aesthetics

2006-05-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

Over at Faith and Theology, Ben Myers posted the following quote which I absolutely loved:

"It is a feeble view of art that isolates it as a sphere of its own for those who find it amusing. The word and command of God demand art, since it is art that sets us under the word of the new heaven and the new earth. Those who, in principle or out of indolence, want to evade the anticipatory creativity of aesthetics are certainly not good. Finally, in the proper sense, to be unaesthetic is to be immoral and disobedient.”

—Karl Barth, Ethics [lectures from 1928-29], ed. Dietrich Braun (New York: Seabury Press, 1981), p. 510.

Currently Reading:

2006-05-24T21:23:00.000-07:00

Karl Barth - The Gottingen Dogmatics
Eberhard Busch - Karl Barth
John Webster - Word and Church
T.F. Torrance - Theology in Reconstruction
John Milbank, Graham Ward - Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology

Currently Listening To:

2006-05-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

Kate Rusby - The Girl that Couldn't Fly
Josh Ritter - The Animal Years
The Fire Theft - Fire Theft
Brad Mehldau Trio - Day is Done
Nickel Creek - Why Should the Fire Die?
Garden State Soundtrack (especially Frou Frou)

Check out The Fire and the Rose

2006-05-24T21:10:00.000-07:00

Over at the Fire and the Rose D.W. Congdon has written a couple of wonderful posts. One is entitled "N.T. Wright, New Gnosticism, and Apologetics," while the other (which provides a quote by Barth) is called "Further Reflections on Contraceptives and God's Graciousness." I'd like to thank David for his continual guidance in getting me prepared to start at Princeton Seminary this summer. We'll be taking the same Hebrew class, which I'm very excited to do!

Off to Calvin College

2006-05-16T22:34:00.002-07:00

Hello all.
There will be no Barth meeting next Monday, as I'll be in Grand Rapids, Michigan watching my new sister-in-law graduate. I look forward to a week's time away from home, and hope that you will all be well. Keep us in prayer as we travel, and I'll see you after I get back on Wedneday, May 23rd. I will not be in contact via email, as this is a great time to fast from the internet.
Love,
~Chris

Off to Calvin College

2006-05-16T22:34:00.001-07:00

Off to Calvin College

2006-05-16T22:34:00.000-07:00

Saying Goodbye and Hello to Two Great Men of God

2006-05-15T14:09:00.000-07:00

Today I learned from Matthew Palardy that Jaroslav Pelikan, the great historian of the church, has passed away at the age of 82 from lung cancer. You can read his obituary here.

Also, forgive me for not mentioning earlier the death of a man who "spoke truth to power," a preacher on behalf of the poor and oppressed: William Sloane Coffin. He died at the age of 81 last Month. His obituary is available here.

While I have not yet given full attention to these men and their life works, many colleagues and friends have driven me to at least know them a little.

Pelikan's history of church doctrine has been recommended to me over and over, and has apparently bypassed that of one of his role models: Adolf Van Harnack. Jaroslav devoted himself to the past 1900 years, while everyone else was busy debating the present (he called it his "minority report"). Whenever I've gone into bookshelves, I've been amazed by the prolific writing of this thinker. There always seemed to be a new book on the shelf by him! So thank you, Jaroslav, for your good work in the service of the church, and I hope we get to know each other better, as I'm sure we will at seminary.

Coffin's name first popped up as I was reading George Hunsinger's wonderful book of essays, Disruptive Grace. As an orthodox Christian with progressive political convictions, Coffin seems to have embodied the spirit of Hunsinger's two great heroes: Karl Barth and Martin Luther King, Jr. I find myself in a similar situation, wanting neither to truncate the Gospel of its power and its truth, its offensive and gracious work. William, I hope to be as courageous as you, to learn how to walk the talk as you did, and be willing to be a fool in a world so filled with violent wisdom.

May they both rest in peace in our Lord Jesus Christ until we meet in the air with Him.

The Worst Part(h) About Barth?

2006-05-13T21:07:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be revealing to have a discussion regarding the shortcomings of Barth. However, let's stay close to the discussion of his doctrinal treatments, and far away from how "long-winded" his writing style is.

A quick example:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Where Barth's Christology Goes Wrong

"Bonhoeffer’s own christology began to take definitive shape in his Habilitationsschrift, Act and Being. In this book, Bonhoeffer analyzes the epistemologies of transcendental and ontological philosophies in terms of the problems they pose for an understanding of revelation. Of particular significance is his assertion that transcendentalism is prominent in Barth’s ‘actualist’ theory of revelation (Gruchy 1991, 8). Barth argued that revelation is a product of God’s infinite freedom and thus a purely contingent act. It creates its own response, is not bound to anything, and God is free to suspend it at any time (8-9). Revelation as act means that God is always beyond human knowledge, escaping every human attempt to have God at its disposal. Barth felt that only by affirming revelation as act could one preserve the freedom and majesty of God against human attempts to domesticate the divine. Bonhoeffer criticized Barth’s actualism because it made God so utterly free that God’s freedom became an abstraction (Woelfel 1970, 138). " (taken from B.U. Collaborative Encyclopedia of Western Theology)

So, do you think Barth was too exclusivist? Too inclusivist? Was Barth's treatment of Scripture problematic? Was Barth lacking a satisfactory treatment of the Holy Spirit?

Meeting this monday

2006-05-13T13:05:00.000-07:00

Hello all,
We'll be meeting at Glen Franklin's home this Monday night. And we'll be making headway into the question of the knowability of the Word of God.
See you then!

Where's Barth's Christology in the poll?

2006-05-12T08:47:00.000-07:00

One person has commented that the poll lacks the opportunity to vote for Barth's christology, which would be number one, I'm sure. Let me suggest that those who want to vote for christology place their vote for "reconciliation," since this is Barth's most direct treatment of christology. The doctrine of reconciliation manages to incorporate plenty of Barth's revolutionary moves which all center on the life, work, and being of Jesus Christ. Barth does not write in linear fashion, so I guarantee you that many of the themes you might have enjoyed in earlier volumes of CD pop up again.
Now you might think I'm biased, but I'm just trying to help out the average joe. I personally voted for Scripture, since it was the middle of CD I/1 that caught my eye at the age of 20. I didn't really understand the rest of it.
Happy trails!

New Book!

2006-05-10T06:58:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,
I just received John Webster's book of essays. I hope to post some notes on it, which will perhaps culminate into a higher form (i.e., an Amazon review!). My wife, Anneli, is sick today, so I'll browse this while she sleeps the afternoon away.

Barth and Brunner on Natural Theology Part 2

2006-05-04T02:36:00.000-07:00

Continuing with the account of their correspondence by John W. Hart in For the Sake of the World: Karl Barth and the Future of Ecclesiology, edited by George Hunsinger:

Later, Brunner returns to Switzerland from a sabbatical at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Barth attends one of his church services to hear him preach. He debriefs Brunner rather critically, telling him that he had preached “cheaply, psychologically, boringly, churchly, without distance, etc.” In a letter following up on their visit, Brunner sees problems with Barth’s dialectical expressions, and offers a parable to show just how radical and unhelpful Barth’s dialectical method in its emphasis of the ontological distance between God and humanity. Brunner writes:

"[You have confused] the dialectical No with the critical No. Dialectics is, as is well-known, Hegelian, not Kantian philosophy. For Kant, the No is critical, like the watch-dog who barks at everyone except for the owner of the house. But the dialectical watch-dog barks at everything in principle. You maintain the distance as a dynamic – and thus an unlimited – principle; there is no stopping it, as little as with the Law. The dialectical watch-dog will tear apart anyone who dares to approach God . . . the Gospel ultimately means something positive . . . The question is not whether something positive appears (the dialectical No), but where it appears (the critical No): Christ appears in time, the kingdom of God grows in time together with the weeds, we have this treasure in earthen vessels, faith justifies proleptically and forensically . . . For me, this entire development is an excellent proof that I am correct when I maintain that . . . knowledge and experience, the objective-material and the subjective-personal . . . form an insurmountable polarity."

Brunner clearly does not understand Barth’s radical dialectical method. However, soon after reading Barth’s second edition of the Roman’s commentary, Brunner makes a startling turn by admitting that he finally understands “the encompassing significance of the scandal,” which is the radical distance between Creator and creation and its accompanying comprehensive judgment on humanity and humanism in all its expressions. But he does not continue in Barth’s direction, since he is also reading Ferdinand Ebner’s The Word and Spiritual Realities, adopting Ebner’s “I-Thou,” “divine summons/human response” philosophy. Instead of adopting Barth’s “dialectical No,” Brunner continues looking for divine/human continuities under the concept of “dialogue” rather than “dialectic.”

One can only imagine what it must have been like to preach with Barth in the audience! And then to have him (and Thurneysen, apparently) tell you that you preached "cheaply." Yet, instead of interpreting this as a "cheap-shot," I sense a deep and pastoral concern for truth, one that tempers and disciplines those of us who would become teachers.

Although I have no understanding of the history of dialectics within German philosophy (Kantian or Hegelian), let me instead offer further words by Barth on the distance between God and humanity. They come from the Gottingen Dogmatics which were lectures given by Barth from 1924-1925. This section in on pp. 76-77, "Man as Pilgrim." Barth elucidates how humanity contradicts the Word of God, and that 1.) this contradiction is not just some apparent spoke in the wheel of God's great plans for the world. 2.) This contradiction is not just regarding the relation between God and man, but really exists in us. 3.) Therefore, it is not simply our fate to be sinners, i.e. contradictors of this Word, not just spectators of this sinning, but actual participants in it and therefore responsible for it. 4.) Finally, we are left with no human possibility for hearing God, let alone loving or "being with" God. Only he has possibility and actuality to be "God with us."

1. "Why cannot the Word of God be written very generally, spanning the whole harmoniously like a rainbow? Why the historical contingency of the Deus dixit? Again, why is not that which the Word of God is meant to restore something general and orderly and planned? Unlike speculative thinkers in every age, from Origen by way of Zwingli to Schleiermacher and Hegel, we must not view man's alienation from God as a stage in God's will that man necessarily had to go through, as a process that could not have been different. It is instead the very epitome of the particular that cannot be reduced to a system. It is an episode. Man is not understood, at least in a Christian sense, if his being is as it were sanctioned by theological or philosophical systematizing, even though the concept of God's glory stands at the head of the system, as in Zwingli. God is not glorified by our using the concepts of creation and providence to sanctify that which from a Christian standpoint at least is unholy and has to be overcome. Even as the Creator and Ruler of All Things, God can be praised only by calling upon him in our need. And need means that the thesis and antithesis of the contradiction are not balanced like the arms of a scale. Otherwise it would not be a need and we would not have to call upon God. This leads us to the next point.

2. From a Christian standpoint the definition of man as a pilgrim is a definition of existence, not merely of thought. There is no reason why it should not have also logical, epistemological, and dialectical significance. The whole history of philosophy shows this. But the decisive point for the Christian understanding of this feature is that what is understood thereby is first of all the real dialectic of life. Pilgrim man stands between Scylla and Charybdis [Wikipedia: Scylla and Charybdis are two sea monsters of Greek mythology situated on opposite sides of a narrow channel of water, so close that sailors attempting to avoid Charybdis will pass too close to Scylla and vice versa. The phrase "between Scylla and Charybdis" has come to mean being in a state where one is between two dangers and moving away from one will cause you to be in danger from the other, and is believed to be the progenitor of the phrase "between a rock and a hard place". The phrase "Caught Between Scylla and Charybdis" has also become synonomus with a popular song title], between two truths that make each other, and man as the third thing between them, impossible. Even in his family and nation and church and culture, man is truly uprooted, no matter how strongly or weakly this may be apparent. He may reflect upon his path, he may find pleasure in the tireless self-movement of the idea, he may erect a system of paradoxes, he may be very comfortable in his humanity. He can do these things, but he is not a pilgrim man as he does so. We reach here a point at which Kierkegaard once thought that he should vindicate the intersts of Christianity against Hegel. The relation of Hegel's dialectic to the real dialectic seemed to him to be like that of Leporello with his record to his master Don Juan, who in contrast himself drinks, and seduces and enjoys life, and hence himself goes to hell. The "himself must be asserted. The Christian concept of man becomes unambivalent only when it ceases to denote a mere relation and begins to denote what happens in the relation, when man is not the subject of mere discussion or clarification but the participant in a battle report who has just emerged from the fray. We may compare this definition, the existentiality of the human contradiction, with that of revelation, which I have called address. God's address is to pilgrim man himself, not to his philosophical shadow.

3. With this is connected the third point. Man cannot view the disorder in which he is entangled as his fate. He must view it as his responsible act, his fault. The element of fate that all of us, parents and children, are human, and that we are thus implicated in the contradiction, in the alienation from God, is beyond dispute. But this consideration cannot be our final one. The rift goes through our existence because we cause it ourselves and are not just spectators of this tragedy. In defining revelation, we stressed the fact that God's address is a miracle, not a marvel. It is an act of God, not a manifest givenness of the divine. In the same way we are not to view in natural or material or static terms the situation of the man to whom this address relates, the hiddenness of God for us if he did not address us, our nonseeing and nonhearing of God were he not himself both eye and ear. Man must not meet God's grace - as we may best describe his action - with a mere insight into his own relativity, finitude, creatureliness, etc., with a mere assertion that he is merely a man, but with shame that he is this man. "Fools and slow of heart" [Luke 24:25] - this is what we are with our nonseeing and nonhearing. Sighing at the plight we are in, if we see things aright, must go deeper and become pain at our sin, without which we do not see that the alienation of pilgrim man is really alienation from God. The final point follows at once.

4. From a Christian standpoint, the human situation is seen to be a final one apart from divine possibility. The contradiction cannot be overcome. This follows from the fact that man msut always view it also and primarily as his own act. Overcoming it would mean removing the subject that causes it, the subject in which it continually has its origin. In keeping with this is the truth that in revelation we always have to do with the fact that God becomes the subject. God overcomes the contradiction by himself becoming man and by creating faith and obedience in us by his Spirit. But because this is exclusively his possibility, to say this is to say that man has no possibilities in this direction. In this final definition we tear up by the roots all the optimism to which people so readily yield in modern theology. It will not do to accept the contradiction and then to give the assurance that something which transcends it, a third and higher thing, a synthesis in which the antitheses can come to rest, presses upon us so ineluctably that we cannot avoid positing it as real and thereby overcoming the contradiction. It is we who (rather boldly) dare to do this. And it is we who still engage in the contradiction as we do so, for in so doing how are we in any position to do anything but posit a new contradiction? Nor will it do to accept the impossibility of overcoming the contradiction and then to make it all the object of a dialectical reversal, attaining in this way to the saving position of making a truly radical negation and then promptly altering the sign, and securing a happy ending, on the ground that because a contradiction that we cannot remove is one side of the equation, its overcoming is its conceptually necessary counterpart. Certainly we can and must think this, but we can only think it. Thinking the possibility that is the opposite of an impossibility does not alter the finality of the impossibility. On the contrary, it confirms it. The signthat we have altered says no more and no less than everyting we do. What hands have built . . . [hands can throw down." - F. von Schiller].
In my view, it also will not do that after perhaps renouncing the two above procedures, at the last moment, when all other lights have been put out, we try to retrieve the lost situation by brining in a visible historical entity, Jesus of Nazareth, in which the contradiction is supposedly overcome. I am not contesting, of course, the material signficance of this final attempt at a solution. It points to the divine possibility of a solution that announces itself in revelation. But we should not introduce this reference as a final human attempt, as obviously happens when an emphasis on the historical entity Jesus approvingly recalls its presence in our own sphere, and an emphasis on the visibility approvingly recalls our own ability to grasp it. As though this entity were not thereby brought into the dialectic of our contradiction! As though by being made an instrument of the human attempt at a solution it could be made to serve an apologetic purpose and be a solution, an overcoming, an answer! As though it would not instead confirm the finality of the judgment thatstands over all things human!
When I say that the contradiction is final, I mean that no word that man speaks as subject is the world of reconciliation, not even the word "Jesus Christ," which is not a magic formula. There is room for this word only when God as subject makes room for it, when he takes it up and speaks it. Only on this presupposition, to which we should not have resort only at the last when we can do nothing else, but at the very outset, only thus is the reference to Jesus Christ anything better than an evasion. In the place which God creates, as God's own Word, this Word can in fact be the Word of reconciliation, of overcoming, of homecoming. But if it is to be such a Word on our lips, we must first learn radically to renounce its compromising use as a Deus ex machina, as a final resort in a not quite hopeless situation.
I hope that you will at least agree with me to the extent of seeing that if we put the concept of revelation at the head, the concept of man necessarily demands with all strictness this final definition, the definitive nature of his being out on the street. It will not have escaped you that with what we have said in subsections II and III we have touched on the basic features of what will call for treatment in dogmatics proper as the doctrines of the fall, original sin, and the bondage of the will."

A Great Barth Meeting

2006-05-03T21:05:00.000-07:00

I'm glad that we finally were able to meet Tim. Matthew was able to drive out to visit us from the Berkshires, and we're thankful that he invited Tim along! As we read the 2nd subsection in the "Speech of God as the Mystery of God (p.174 - p.181), Tim could hardly control himself. He reminded us of the true revolution occurring in Barth's writing, something that we tend to forget as we slug it out week after week. It seems to be a pervasive problem in our relationships: how to trust people and yet be careful that we do not box them in. How does this "boxing in" occur? For instance, we assume what their response might be in a given situation. We pick up patterns in the behaviour of others, and take short-cuts in our conversations based on our past experience with them. But this has the adverse effect of objectifying the person we are dealing with, as though they are a static being continually reacting with the same "limited" decisions day-in and day-out. We cannot snap a photograph of anyone and say that "That says it all!" No, our picture is a film with no end. It is dynamic. So thank you to Tim for his fresh eyes, and my prayer is that this group will sanctified by the Spirit, leading all of us closer to our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

An Ode to Church Dogmatics

2006-05-02T20:13:00.000-07:00

Ben Myers has done us all a huge favor and written out an appropriately reverent ode to the most famous of all 14 volume sets. Way to go Ben!

And Chris Tilling, over at Christendom has some thoughts on what books to read alongside the Dogmatics.

Barth and Brunner On Natural Theology Part 1

2006-04-27T20:47:00.000-07:00

Here's an excerpt of the work by John W. Hart at Oxford on the early correspondence between Barth and Emil Brunner. It was presented at the 1999 Barth Conference, and printed in the collection of presentation essays, entitled "For the Sake of the World," edited by George Hunsinger, Eerdmans 2004. I have yet to read Hart's longer work, but a review of it is posted at John McDowell's website. I wrote my honors thesis on Barth and Brunner on natural theology, and Hart's translation of these early letters proved most useful to my research. These letters were deeply moving, as I have heard both their voices in my life. How should we think about the "object of theology," namely God Himself? And how might we describe this God in lieu of the whirling subjectivity within which we are always confronted?

Barth had been asked to preach a sermon at the Aarau Christian Student Conference in 1916, which he entitled “The One Thing Necessary.” The point of Barth’s sermon was that instead of doing all kinds of possible things, we should do the one thing necessary. As he says:

We should begin at the beginning and recognize that God is God . . . As academics, we obstruct the way to God by, first of all, requiring definitions and concepts: “Who is God” “What is faith?” Let us respect our logical needs, but let us not let them fuel our fatal natural instinct to persist in our questions about the definition of God rather than making our decision for God. We will always walk around the circumference and never arrive at the center so long as we refuse to begin at the beginning before our definitions are set.

At this point it is clear that Barth is making our conceptual understanding secondary, but secondary to what? Notice that it is secondary to making a decision for God. Is this decision a leap of faith? Surely one must know the God whom one decides for. More importantly, is this decision for God a response to the special revelation of Christ or a general revelation found in creation? Or is it a precondition in order for revelation to be received in the first place?

Brunner responds to Barth by letter, showing honest difficulty in his own experience. He writes:

As often as I have attempted “to let God matter, to let Him speak,” it has not helped me forwards. Naturally, I am to blame for this, and I know that . . . you are nevertheless right . . . I probably preach the same way as you . . . – but often only with a half clear conscience . . . This is my experience: Either I will completely be at the center . . . : God lives, let God matter. But then I soon find that all I have in my hands are four letters [G-o-t-t] . . . , an abstract thought, with which I can neither understand nor master my life. I can say, Let God matter. But, in reality, what matters is not God but my thought that “God should matter.” . . . Or, on the other hand, depressed from this experience, I . . . fall into the other extreme: “God should matter” [becomes] “The Good should matter,” [faith mixed up with] a moral-cultural lifestyle, a system of ethics, that, up to a certain point, shines through one’s life, but naturally (as little as “the law” in Paul) has no power. . . . I’ve always had the feeling – and my moral experiences confirm it – that I have still not yet penetrated to God, that my faith has produced nothing. . . I need first to become a different person in order to have faith; but I have to have faith in order to become a different person! With kind regards, your still somewhat-fallen-short companion on the way.

Barth, upon hearing this, responds immediately with pastoral care, only to repeat the sermon for its practical input into Brunner’s situation. Barth writes:

"I understand you very well. It is exactly the same for me as it is for you, at every point. . . . I really experience the same things – you are in no way a “fallen-short companion on the way.” This you must believe . . . It really becomes clearer and clearer to me that this religious labyrinth has no exit. . . . It is a question of God, and why do we marvel if He is not found in the psychological labyrinth of our religious experience? “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (Luke 24:5). . . . We are not Pietists; we can know and really know that faith in no way consists (neither positively nor negatively, neither optimistically nor pessimistically illuminated) in taking this whole psychological reality as serious and important. Rather, with our eyes closed as it were, we hold on to God . . . Does not the entire misery of our situation exist simply in that, again and again, we turn back to ourselves instead of stretching out to the Objective? Don’t we fail – due to some kind of pride . . . – to give our obedience and trust to God as God, God above all in his objectivity? . . . I cut off these thoughts the moment I notice the trap being laid. . . . Then I wait until joyfulness, faith, enthusiasm, etc. return (sometimes they don’t return for a long time). And this objective hold on God as God is always more important to me compared to the previous unfortunately unavoidable variations of the inner life. I believe that here unfolds the constant which I (as well as you) have sought in vain in my subjective faithfulness . . . For my part, I do not believe in your unbelief."

It is this view of taking "God as God," or more precisely, letting God describe Himself to us, that has been so enriching to my own spiritual life. Yet, I can completely empathize with Brunner's thoughts. As I have embraced "God as God," it has been on shaky ground. "How do I know I'm not simply fooling myself with this objectivity business? What about my obedience?"
In Barth's reply I find freedom. It is pastorally sensitive and yet uncompromisingly truthful to name our overly skeptical mind and anxious/pious heart as a hidden lack of obedience to God. How prideful even our confessions can be! While Barth is certainly not condemning Brunner for his thoughts (since he admits to having felt very much the same), it stands to bear the last statement ("I do not believe in your unbelief)" as a warning not to dwell on these thoughts as though they might lead us to the truth, i.e. to the Word of God.

Prayer Request

2006-04-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

Rebecca, Craig & Trish's middle daughter (3 years old), has pneumonia and has been in Bay State Hospital since Tuesday night. She is getting worse, the pneumonia has spread to her second lung and the doctors can't find an antibiotic that works.
Please pray for God to heal her illness, and to comfort her family and friends.

The Next Barth Meeting

2006-04-27T20:36:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends.
We shall be meeting at my house in Amherst at 7:00pm instead of 7:30pm. Our friends Matthew Palardy and Tim Koch from the Berkshires shall be traveling an 1.5 hours to meet with us, and I would like to afford them suitable time to get home at a reasonable hour.
We are in the middle of reading "The Speech of God as the Mystery of God," starting on p. 174. I have readings here already. Look forward to seeing you all!

Barth at Marburg (1909)

2006-04-26T09:18:00.000-07:00

Karl Barth, at the age of 23, is ordained but decides to stay at Marburg to assist Martin Rade in editing Die christliche Welt ("The Christian World"). Later this year he returns to his homeland in order to pastor an assistant minister, and preaches in the same hall as John Calvin did in Geneva.

A quote from today's reading

2006-04-24T19:37:00.000-07:00

In The Speech of God as the Mystery of God, on p. 168, Barth says the following, which made quite the impression on us tonight, and coincides nicely with what he has to say about "Secular Parables of the Truth" in CD IV/3:
"One is not to think of the secularity of the Word of God as a kind of fatal accident or an inconvenience which will some day be set aside either totally or at least in part. This secularity, this twofold indirectness, is in fact an authentic and inalienable attribute of the Word of God itself. Revelation means the incarnation of the Word of God. But incarnation means entry into this secularity. We are in this world and are through and through secular. If God did not speak to us in secular form, He would not speak to us at all. To evade the secularity of His Word is to evade Christ. Even though it dawns on us for the first time what is meant by the fact that we are flesh and therefore not God, that we have no organ or capacity for God, that we are in enmity against Him and powerless to be obedient to Him, nevertheless, what seems in the first instance an absurd obstacle that God Himself has put in the way is in fact His real way to us, and consequently a necessary way and a good way. It is not as though we could see why it can and must be so. We are not above God or ourselves. Hence the only sentence we can pronounce on the necessity and goodness of the relation in which God has set Himself to us is one that seeks to reproduce the actuality of this relation. But we have nothing else to reproduce, and therefore we must repeat the fact that just as surely as God enters into relation with us through His Word, so surely His Word must be as it is, i.e., secular, a Word spoken in twofold indirectness. It is not, then, that God was concealed from us by some unfortunate disturbance and that He revealed Himself by removing the concealment. If this were so, the attempts of man to help God by forcing his own way into the mystery would be understandable and excusable if not actually necessary. This truth is, however, that God veils HImself and that in so doing - this is why we must not try to intrude into the mystery - He unveils Himself. It is good for us that God acts as He does and it could only be fatal for us if He did not, if He were manifest to us in the way we think right, directly and without veil, without secularity or only the innocuous secularity that can be pierced by the analogia entis. It would not be love and mercy but the end of us and all things if the Word were spoken to us thus. The fact that it is spoken as it is, revealing its concealment, is a decisive indication of the truth that it has really come to us instead of our having to go to it, an attempt in which we could only fail. In its very secularity it is thus in every respect a Word of grace.

The Pointing Hand of John the Baptist

2006-04-24T12:28:00.000-07:00

Over the writing desk of Karl Barth hung "The Crucifixion" by Grunewald. Barth always saw the task of the theologian to be that of John the Baptist: to point toward Jesus in the distance, and say "He must increase, but I must decrease." The pointing hand served as a reminder throughout his life of theological writing, preaching and teaching that he should not glorify himself, but Christ crucified.

And the little drummer boy turned 25 . . .

2006-04-24T12:08:00.000-07:00

Here's a fantastic birthday card I just had to share with you. I pray my first child can strike this pose.

Last night I had the privilege of having my surprise birthday party at our little apartment. Scott and Leah, as well as Matthew (who travelled all the way from the Berkshires) were there. As Matthew said, "Let's just hope the fire-marshal doesn't show up." I counted about 30 people in all! It's truly amazing to see God's children, who come from so many different walks of life, all convene together because of one person's existence in this world. Thanks to Anneli, my wife, for gathering the peeps! And Mom and Dad, for excellent dining at Northampton Brewery and great gifts!

Barth's definition of a "Generous Orthodoxy"

2006-04-20T13:48:00.000-07:00

Over at Generous Orthodoxy ThinkTank, a Princeton student named John L. Drury has posted on what Professor George Hunsinger thinks a good mission statement of a "generous orthodoxy" could be. I'll give you a hint: it has to do with someone whose picture is on this website.

Review of David Clough's Ethics in Crisis: Interpreting Barth’s Ethics

2006-04-18T17:53:00.000-07:00

At the website for the Center for Barth Studies, a new review of David Clough's Ethics in Crisis: Interpreting Barth’s Ethics has just been posted. This Ashgate series continues to exemplify the kind of close reading that Barth scholarship sorely lacked in earlier years.

Where Did Barth and Bonhoeffer Meet For the Last Time?

2006-04-18T12:55:00.000-07:00

My friend Stephen Broyles over at the Andreas Center sent me this picture with the following description:

"[This] is picture of a friend of mine sitting at a checkpoint on a
footpath between Switzerland and Germany very near and convenient to Basel.
I have wondered whether they met in some such place as this."

Pictures of Barth's Study in Basel

2006-04-18T08:29:00.000-07:00

Ben Myers at Faith and Theology has posted some beautiful pictures of Barth's study.
Check them out!

Barth Meeting At Amherst Coffee Tonight!

2006-04-10T15:47:00.000-07:00

Hey guys,
Barth will meet at 8pm at Amherst Coffee downtown, following the Holy Eucharist service at Grace Episcopal Church (which starts at 7pm).
Please come by. We'll be finishing the section entitled "The Speech of God as the Act of God" starting on p. 143 in CD I/1.

Site update

2006-04-04T17:23:00.001-07:00

Dear folks,
I'm currently learning how to update blogger with some better resources and nicer images. Hopefully I'll have 'er lookin' purdy in no time!
Until then, please take the time to visit the new links listed on the side.
Cheers,
~Chris

Site update

2006-04-04T17:23:00.000-07:00

2006-04-02T12:21:00.000-07:00

Last night at Dead Sea Cafe I gave a 20-minute summary of Barth's understanding of the phenomenon known as "secular parables," found in the first half of CD IV/3. Here we see Barth explaining more fully how it is that "God may speak through Russian Communism, a flute concerto, a blossoming shrub, or a dead dog. (CD I/1, p. 55).

Please email me if you would like my powerpoint presentation and notes for this lecture.

No Barth Meeting

2006-03-27T05:57:00.000-08:00

We shall cancel Karl Barth Society for tonight. The reading assigned (pp.143-162) will be postponed till next week.

Meeting in Amherst tonight

2006-03-20T13:34:00.000-08:00

Hello friends,
Please swing by my house in Amherst at 7:30pm tonight. We shall read Chapter V, section 2 entitled "The Word of God as the Speech of God," pp. 132-143.

Karl Barth Podcast

2006-03-18T13:25:00.000-08:00

Benjamin Myers over at Faith and Theology has given us an exquisite summary of Barth's message in MP3 form, complete with soothing Mozart background. :-)
Check it out!
http://www.switchpod.com/users/benjamin-myers/KarlBarth.MP3