Monthly Archives: June 2018

Is The Devil Real? The Bible’s Take Contra Friedrich Schleiermacher’s

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Alexandre Cabanel’s Fallen Angel, 1868

Is the Devil real; some refer to this as: is the Devil personal? Yes, I personally think the Devil is real. I can only arrive at this conclusion based upon the Dominical affirmation and teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is important, I think, because the biblical reality not only asserts that this is the case, but it frames the ‘spiritual battle’ Jesus Christ undertook, and the same battle that his church continues to undertake, as the church militant, in such terms that are clear that our battle is not ‘against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and powers and principalities’ that inhabit the ‘air’ as it were (read the whole Epistle to the Ephesians). None of this is to mention, of course, the most pivotal section of scripture in the whole of the Bible (it could be argued) in regard to the Fall. Genesis:

3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

We have other references in the Old Testament that refer to the ‘spiritual battle’, particularly in Daniel 10; note:

12 Then he continued, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. 13 But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. 14 Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.”. . . 20 So he said, “Do you know why I have come to you? Soon I will return to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I go, the prince of Greece will come; 21 but first I will tell you what is written in the Book of Truth. (No one supports me against them except Michael, your prince.)

And then of course the infamous battle that Jesus had with the Devil in the wilderness (a recapitulation of Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness) in Matthew (and the Synoptic attestation):

4 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” 4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:“‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

If we didn’t have the Old Testament witnesses the New Testament account of Jesus’s battle wouldn’t make sense, for one thing. For another thing what we do have in the ‘spiritual battle’ that Jesus undertook in the wilderness and the victory he won (think Irenaeus and recapitulation as far as hermeneutical and soteriological method) is not ‘parabolic’ in literary form but historical prose; in other words its intention is to detail a concrete event with theological depth per the reality of the euaggelion, per the Gospel reality that Jesus is in the incarnation. In other words, the reality of the Devil to this account in Matthew (and Mark) is just as central to the canonical narrative as is Genesis 3 with our first introduction to the Devil. There is a continuity of salvation-history in regard to the character and function of the Devil from the first Adam to the second Adam (to pick up on the Pauline motif cf. Rom. 5), and his role in introducing humanity to an evil that he had already partaken of. This is not to suggest that the Devil is evil, like in a Manichean or dualist sense, or that he helps explain the origin of evil—this would only exceed the bounds and thrust us into a mode of speculation that we dare not engage in as those committed to a revelational theology—but it is to recognize through attention to the text’s development that the Devil ought to be understood in a realist and at least ontic sense insofar as he has agency and volition in his textuality.

In short, the text, I contend, wants us to believe that the Devil is a real entity who is maliciously oriented against God and his purposes in Jesus Christ. The text wants us to think that the Devil wants to undo what God has done, and is doing in and through the resurrection power of the risen Christ in the human and created order in general. The text, as we think this canonically, wants us to think that the Devil is real; has agency, ‘prowls around like a roaring lion’; is leader of a cohort that has been made a public spectacle of at the cross of Christ; is ‘accuser of the brethren’ cast down from heaven in warfare with the heavenly host, that soon, along with the rest of death will be put under the Christ’s foot once and for all never to be heard of again. In other words, the text wants us to think that the Devil, with all his ‘being’ wants to destroy the good and very good creation and recreation of God in Jesus Christ; not to mention all of those who are participants in Christ’s life by the Spirit.

I write all of the above to get to Friedrich Schleiermacher; just who you were waiting for! Most evangelical and Reformed Christians couldn’t give two cents for what Schleiermacher thinks; I get that. Nevertheless, I think it is interesting, if not important, to understand where someone as giant and genius as Schleiermacher stood on such things. His theology of the devil is actually pretty scant, and as he notes (as you will see) unnecessary for a Christian theology. Clearly he reflects the ‘enlightened’ thinking of his times, and presupposes upon the developing ‘higher criticism’ of his day. You will see this reflected in what he has to say about the non-importance of the devil relative to scriptural teaching and Christian living. As you read him along with me here, what I opened up with above will become clear; you will see why I wrote what I did in anticipation of what Schleiermacher thinks. He writes:

Thus, even if only a few scriptural passages treat of the devil, or even if all the passages actually cited here and those otherwise still reputable for the purpose treat the devil, all grounds for taking up this notion as an enduring component in our presentation of Christian faith-doctrine would be lacking to us. Accordingly, all grounds would also be lacking for defining the notion so much more closely that everything that is ascribed to the devil could also really be considered together. This is so, for in Christ and his disciples this notion was not used as one that would be derived from the Sacred Scriptures of the old covenant, nor even as on that would be acquired from divine revelation by any pathway whatsoever. Rather, it arose from the common life of that time, thus in the same way in which it more or less arises in all of us, despite our complete ignorance as to the existence of such a being. Moreover, that wherefrom we are to be redeemed remains the same, whether the devil exists or not, and that whereby we are redeemed also remains the same. Thus, the very question concerning the existence of the devil is also no question for Christian theology at all. Rather, it is a cosmological question, in the broadest sense of the word, exactly the same as that concerning the nature of the firmament and of heavenly bodies. Moreover, in a presentation of faith-doctrine we actually have just as little to affirm as to deny on this topic, and likewise we can just as little be required to hold a dispute over that notion in a presentation of faith-doctrine as to provide a grounding for it. What the biblical deposit shows is nothing more than that the notion was a confluence of two or three very different components among the Jewish people themselves. The first component is the servant of God who locates the whereabouts of wickedness, and who has a certain rank and work among the other angels, but of whom there can be no talk of being cast out from being near God. The other main component is the basically evil being of oriental dualism, modified in such a way that the Jews alone would have been in a position to adopt the new version.[1]

Schleiermacher, clearly, was under the influence of his times; as such the Bible was undergoing a radical displacement in regard to being a trustworthy gateway into the strange world operative under the strictures of supernatural reality, as he attempted to theologize.

There are many today, Christians even, who have little time to ponder whether or not the devil is real; many believe we have enough concrete expressions of evil, systemically and personally, to take up our time and attention. But according to the brief survey of Scripture I offered previously this is errant. The Bible, contra Schleiermacher wants us to think that we are engaged in a real life battle with a ‘personal’ satan who seeks to not only destroy our souls, but the souls of every person for whom Christ died; and along with that the rest of creation as that is tied to our stewardship.

From a personal perspective I have experienced all types of spiritual warfare, in fact I’ve experienced some right now as I’ve come to type this post. I’ve had encounters with tangible contact points with the kingdom of darkness, been exposed to people who are demon-possessed, and confronted such realties in the name of the living Christ. This is why this is important; because it’s a real life struggle that each of us as soldiers of Christ faces on a daily basis. Maybe one positive point we could take from Schleiermacher, in a recontextualized way, is that we don’t want to give the devil too much of our time and focus; but along with the Apostle Paul we don’t want to be ‘ignorant of his devices’ or reality either!

Further, I wouldn’t want to close this post without noting that the ‘spiritual’, just as the resurrection of Christ illustrates, is disembodied, per se. In other words, even though the devil is a ‘spirity’ entity (as are his cohorts) does not mean, as we can infer from Scripture, that his means are always or mostly of the so called ‘paranormal’ sort. Typically, especially in the Western enclave, his most heinous manifestations of evil are very material in orientation. We see this extended into space and time in terms of economic, sexual, physical forms of violence and abuse; in systemic and structural ways. But we ought to remember, nonetheless, that standing behind such ‘beastly’ action is indeed the kingdom of darkness in all its grossness. Devil be damned!

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. –Ephesians 6.10-12

3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 6 And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete. –II Corinthians 10.3-6

 

[1] Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christian Faith Volume One, trans. by Terrence N. Tice, Catherine L Kelsey, and Edwina Lawler (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 242-43.

The No-God of Jordan Peterson: And the Conservative Evangelical’s Love Affair with Power in the Public Square

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Credit: ZachDrawThings

Jordan Peterson, that lightning bolt of a character these days, even for many Christians, just recently tweeted the following on his Twitter account:

God is the mode of being you value the most as demonstrated or manifested in your presumption, perception and action. –Jordan Peterson, June 25th 9:13 pm (Twitter)

In some of my reading I’m doing on Barth’s theology (actually some rereading in this case) I came across the following quote from Harvard theologian, Gordon Kaufman:

The concept “God” arises formally as ground and limit of the concept of “world,” and materially it arises out of the richness of human experience: for example, the experience of creativity, but also that of need and desire. God must be the ultimate reference point for human cultural and moral concerns. The two functions of the concept of “God” thus are the relativizing and the humanizing of the world. Since the concept “God” is not a report on information, and since the concepts that theology scrutinizes are employed to help us solve problems of meaningful moral and cultural living, theology is a practical rather than a theoretical discipline.[1]

As McCormack notes “The influence of Immanuel Kant on Kaufman’s perspective should be clear.”[2]

I couldn’t help but see some similarity between what Peterson recently tweeted and the ethos distilled in the Kaufman quote. For both God is a human projection, something immanent within the processes of the world ‘spirit’ and experience. Which makes one wonder, in some ways, why so many conservative evangelical Christians have become fan boys of Peterson; there seems to be dissonance between what conservatives creedally confess, as Christians, and who they pragmatically affirm in the greater struggle of the culture wars. There seems to be this sense that Peterson represents conservative evangelical values, and as such is worthy of carrying the torch that burns all progressive and liberal opponents at the stake of all that is unworthy in the realm of ideas in the public square.

Yet, ironically, it strikes me as odd, at least, that the poster-boy for conservatives is, in regard to his thinking on God, as progressive and ‘turned-to-the-subject’ as the Progressive and Liberal theologians are; as Kaufman helps to illustrate. Sooner or later Peterson’s commitments, on no-God, will come back to bite the very conservatives who are currently giving him platform and voice.

 

[1] Gordon Kaufman, “Essay on Theological Method,” in Hans Frei, “Types of Christian Theology,” cited by Bruce L. McCormack, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 117.

[2] Ibid., 117.

‘God by nature is technically indifferent towards Creatures’: Worshipping the God of the Philosophers Rather than the God of the Bible

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The Bible uses metaphors, analogies even, when referring to God. One of those, the one I think is most apropos for the topic of this post is: Rock. The idea of ‘rock’ connotes thoughts of immovability, hardness, strength, stability, security so on an so forth. The Christian classical theistic tradition likes to emphasize these realities about who God is—and rightfully so. But as we have covered so many times here there is a problem, from my perspective, with the metaphysic classical theism, by definition, has chosen. Before we go further it is important for me to qualify that I recognize that there are different instantiations of classical theism. That is to say, at some level all Christian theological tradition, particularly with reference to the development of a theology proper, must engage with some sort of metaphysical tradition; I am not a proponent of the thesis that anyone has actually achieved a post-metaphysical approach when engaging in theological endeavor. Further, whilst (I’m American so I use ‘whilst’ under advisement) metaphysics are necessarily the case for the theologian; some do better than others in ‘evangelizing metaphysics’ (h/t Peter Leithart for that phraseology). Recognizing that there is a certain continuity that has accrued in the Christian theological trad, I do not believe that this means that say medieval classical theistic development, most prominently undertaken by Thomas Aquinas, is equal with other or earlier classical theistic development under the ecumenical councils, or other theologians like Athanasius, Maximus the Confessor et al. I know people will disagree with me on just that point, but we will have to disagree. I believe Aquinas, for example, elevated Aristotelian categories in ways that other classical theists hadn’t prior to his unique and even genius movements of thought. While Aquinas was virtuoso I think he helped supply subsequent appropriations of his movements, such as we find in iterations of Post Reformed orthodox theology, with wrong emphases in regard to how we think God.

After the long qualification and sketch I just offered, what I want to do now is quote someone I respect and consider a friend, Steve Duby. Steve did his PhD on the very issues we have just been addressing, particularly with reference to the medieval classical tradition and how that impacts a doctrine of God. What I want to highlight, in particular, is how appeal to the classical theistic trad, so understood, affects, and more, correlates, or doesn’t, with the God Self-revealed in Jesus Christ as attested in Holy Scripture. As Protestants we like to assert that we are subordinate to the authority of Holy Scripture, as one of the principles of the Protestant Reformation; but in practice I often think that this assertion gets negated. In other words, in our attempt to, in good-faith, explicate the inner-logic (or theology) of Scripture, we end up affirming traditions that at the end of the day transmute God into a deity that I would contend does not fit well with the God Self-explicated in Jesus Christ. In this attempt we end up allowing the metaphysic we have adopted to do this type of heavy lifting for us to transgress the prior principle we say we are committed to when we assert that we are committed to the categorical authority of Holy Scripture. We allow the metaphysic and its categories to ‘essentially’ dictate to us what the categories of God must be even if those categories are not concurrent with the God we continuously encounter as we turn the pages of Scripture.

To help illustrate what I have been blathering on about further, let us now hear from Duby on God. I will appeal to what he has written in an effort to make clear what I have been asserting in regard to what happens when a faulty metaphysic is appealed to in a good-faith attempt to grammarize and articulate God for the church (no easy task to be sure!). Here is what Steve writes; for those familiar you will notice the Aristotelian over and undertones as the informing categories.

In His perfect actuality, the triune God freely creates a contingent world. The concern that we noted earlier in theologians like Moltmann and Torrance about preserving the contingency of the world should not be brushed aside. At the same time, that contingency is grounded, not in a divine temporal succession in which God might exist in temporal priority to creation, but rather in God’s fullness and completeness that entails, in scholastic terms, His “liberty of indifference” (freedom to create or not to create the world without any fulfillment or declension of His being hanging in the balance). Given that God is already actively fulfilled in Himself in trinitarian fellowship, He needs no external counterpart or external object of love. In choosing to create the world and in performing the act of creation itself, He does not fulfill a potency in His being but instead generously directs or turns His essential actuality toward the world. It may be asked whether God accomplished His outward action by His essential actuality would mean that the outward action is just as necessary as God’s own act of being. Why should God’s outward action still be taken as ontologically subsequent to His (necessary) act of being? My response is simply to clarify that the argument here does not posit a total identity of essential actuality and outward action. The former is complete in itself and absolutely necessary in God, while the latter is a matter of the application of the former toward creatures. Since the former is perfect in God’s triune life, God is by nature “indifferent” toward creatures in a technical sense (unable to be improved or attenuated by willing to create or not to create). His outward action is thus located under an externally directed, free application of His essential actuality, which then entails a distinction between the (contingent) action or egression and the necessary essential act of God.[1]

We can see that Duby is attempting to offer a treatment of God that appeals to classical theistic categories within a discussion about a God-world relation in a doctrine of creation. We also see appeal to, in particular, the categories of immutability and impassibility; the ideas that God cannot be moved from an extraneous reality to himself, and similarly that God has no passions contingent upon external sources such as human agents represent; indeed God has no passion given his fully actualized state, according to this iteration of the classical tradition. Duby earlier in the chapter notes that it is possible to arrive at such categories about God by way of ‘general revelation’ outwith the special revelation provided for by the Bible or more specifically, Jesus Christ; Duby writes, “. . . various authors in the Christian tradition have (justifiably, in my estimation) gleaned from general revelation that God is “pure act” (never inactive or having any unrealized potential in Himself) . . . .”[2] And this gets us to the nub of my concern. Why would we, as Christians, by way of theological method, want to affirm that we could arrive at ‘basic’ conclusions about God without first giving priority to the categories we are confronted with by the disclosure of Holy Scripture and the Revelation that grounds that in Jesus Christ?

I emboldened the primary point of illustration I wanted to make from Steve’s treatment. Beyond the various scholastic distinctions being made between God’s actuality, potency, and how that works in an ostensibly Christian doctrine of creation, what I wanted to highlight is how that cashes out when it is applied to a Father/Son-humanity relation. ‘Technically God is indifferent towards creatures’ for the Dubyian account because God’s actuality, his impassibility must remain intact; in other words the Creator/creature distinction must be maintained such that any suggestion that God might be contingent upon his creation for his being must be ameliorated. I would agree that we don’t want to make God contingent upon creation, this would be the worst type of pantheism; but if we must use the classical theistic categories in order to arrive at this conclusion is something lost? I would contend: Yes, something is lost!

All throughout Scripture, Old and New Testaments, God is referred to in the most relational of terms; not just in anthropopathic terms, but in real existential (and ontological I would argue) terms. He ‘walks in the cool of the garden’ in fellowship with the prelapasarian Adam and Eve; He is the Father of Israel; He is the Shepherd of Israel; He broods over Israel as a Mother Hen broods over her chicks; He weeps; He is the Father of all comfort; He cries for His people; God is love. My point: Scripture does not offer us with a conception of God that is ‘technically indifferent towards creatures,’ in fact just the opposite! This is what I mean when I speak of a metaphysic that offers us a conception of God that is discordant with the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Why would we want to affirm such categories to do such heavy lifting that in the end does something to God’s character that God himself according to Scripture does not emphasize about himself; at least not in the terms that said metaphysic requires?

 

[1] Steve J. Duby, “Divine Action And The Meaning Of Eternity,” in Bradford LittleJohn ed., God of our Fathers: Classical Theism for the Contemporary Church (Moscow, ID: The Davenant Institute, 2018), Loc 2227, 2235, 2242 kindle version. [Emphasis mine]

[2] Ibid., Loc. 2107.

Kant by Barth on What The Biblical Theologian Can and Can’t Do and What The Philosopher Can and Can’t Do

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I thought it would be interesting to see how Karl Barth sketches Immanuel Kant’s understanding of the relationship between [biblical] theology and philosophy; you might be surprised. What is interesting to me is to see how closely Barth’s development of Kant’s thought here mimics Barth’s own approach towards an understanding of the relationship between theology and philosophy.[1] We will hear from Barth at some length and then close with some concluding thoughts (per my usual format for blog posts):

Kant, as we have seen, with the notion of the Church as his starting point, pondered the possibility of the Bible having a position and significance, which, even if it were not ‘divinely statutory’ would yet be extraordinary and qualified, and he went on from this to ponder also the possibility of a theology which would be different from the philosophical theology he himself was propounding. He explicitly calls this other theology, which limits philosophical theology, ‘biblical theology’, and it is his with that the affairs of this biblical theology should not ‘be allowed to mingle’ with those of philosophy. He wants rather to form for it a definite distinct idea as befits its own peculiar nature. For Kant the possibility for such a discipline or faculty, which is theological in the narrower and specific sense, is given, first of all formally, simply with the existence of the Church which has its foundation in the Bible. Philosophy would be exceeding its rights if it were by any chance to proceed to the formation of a Church, to a special philosophical preaching, on the basis of its own understanding of religion. Philosophy does not offer itself as a rival to theology, but as a ‘friend and companion’. ‘A minister of a Church is bound to convey his message, to those he is teaching the catechism, and to his congregation, according to the symbol of the Church he is serving.’ Kant disputes the idea that a minister’s task as an office-holder is dependent upon any historical-philosophical convictions he might hold as one learned in the subject. A preacher would be bound to abandon his office for this reason, only if he should find something flatly in contradiction of the ‘inner religion’, as he must understand it as a philosopher, in the teachings of his Church, but not if these teachings do not happen to correspond exactly with his historical-philosophical convictions. Even if such a conflict between the office-holder and the scholar in him should take place, the scholar can always explain that it is not completely impossible for ‘truth to lie hidden’ in the things he has to represent in the Church as one holding office.

And with this we have arrived already at what, according to Kant, constitutes the material possibility of a biblical theology. Kant guards against the reproach that it seems as if his critical religious teaching is presuming to dispute revelation. This is not his intention, ‘since it might be after all, that the teachings of revelation stem from men supernaturally inspired’. He does not wish to assert that in matters of religion reason is sufficient unto itself, but acknowledges (let us think once again at this point of that letter to Jung-Stilling) that reason, after it has established in religion those things which it is fitted to establish as such, ‘must await the arrival of everything else, which must be added beyond its capacity, without reason being permitted to know in what it consists, from the supernatural helping hand of heaven’. ‘Even at that point where philosophical theology seems to accept principles in opposition to those of biblical theology, e.g. in respect of the teaching concerning miracles, it confesses and proves that it does not assert them as objective principles, but only as subjective ones; they must, that is, be understood as maxims, when we merely wish to make use of our own (human) reason in judging of theological matters; and in so doing we do not dispute the miracles themselves, but merely leave them without restraint to the biblical theologians, in so far as he wishes to judge solely as a biblical theologian and scorns any alliance with philosophy.’ What Kant does dispute is the idea that the reality and possibility of revelation, its availability as data for human reason and its perception by human reason, are things which can be accounted for by philosophical means, the idea that over and beyond the philosophy of religion there is a philosophy of revelation and of faith, and that by its theology might be represented, or make its position secure. At the same time, however, he disputes the philosopher’s right to deny revelation because it cannot be accounted for by philosophical means. He therefore advises both the theologian and the philosopher ‘not to indulge his curiosity in those things which do not pertain to his office and of which in general he understands nothing’. For him theology is a ‘privileged body’, which he quite plainly instructs to do precisely those things in matters of religion which philosophy dare not do, and to refrain from doing precisely those things which philosophy is bound to do.

What may theology not do? It may not ‘interfere in the free profession of philosophy and attempt to prove or refute its principles of belief least of all, by philosophy’, just as philosophy for its own part has to resign itself that it cannot pass any definitive judgment upon the authority and exposition of the Scriptures. Theology ‘does not speak according to the laws of the pure and a priori knowable religion of reason, for in so doing it would debase itself and set itself down upon the bench of philosophy’. It may not, ‘in what concerns the fulfillment of the divine commandments in our will . . . by any means count upon nature, upon man’s own moral capacity (virtue), that is’. The interpretive method of ‘giving another meaning to something’ is forbidden for theology: theology cannot be entitled ‘to give the sayings of the Scripture a meaning which does not exactly suit what is expressed in them; with a moral meaning, for instance’, ‘and since there is no human expounder of the Scripture authorized by God, the biblical theologian must rely upon a supernatural enlightenment of the understanding by a Spirit which guides into all the truth, rather than concede that reason intervenes’. ‘The biblical theologian as such cannot and may not prove that God himself spoke through the Bible, since this is a matter of historical fact, and thus belongs to the philosophical faculty.’ He must, as Kant at one point says, certainly not without malice, as a pure (purus, putus) biblical theologian, be ‘still uninfected with the accursed free spirit of reason and philosophy’. What, on the other hand, should theology do? The answer: ‘The biblical theologian is really the scribe of the Church faith, which rests upon statutes; laws, that is to say, which stem from the arbitrary choice of another authority.’ Theology ‘speaks according to statutory prescriptions of belief which are contained in a book, preferably called the Bible; contained, that is, in a codex of the revelation of an Old and New Covenant of men with God, which was joined many hundreds of years ago, and whose authentication as a historical faith (and not, particularly not, as a moral faith, for that might also be drawn from philosophy) should surely be expected from the effects of the reading of the Bible upon the human heart rather than from . . . proofs’. ‘The biblical theologian proves that God exists by means of the fact that he has spoken in the Bible.’ He may, in the question of the realization of the will for good, count only upon grace, ‘which, however, man cannot hope to partake of in any other way than by virtue of a faith which fervently transforms his heart; which faith itself he can, however, in his turn expect of grace’. Theology, with these premises it has: the Church, the Bible, historical revelation, and grace, should allow itself to be ranked together with other branches of learning and content itself with the influence it can acquire as such by its own dignity.[2]

I don’t want to say too much because this post is already starting to run long, and I want you to read what Barth has written of Kant here. But if you are aware of Barth’s theology you’ll recognize some of the ethos of Kant’s thinking (as reported by Barth) in Barth’s own mode. Of course, as we noted in a recent post, Barth could not live with the dualism that Kant operated from and thus reified such thinking by taking Kant’s dualistic thinking (as evinced by his rupturing of the ‘knowledges’), and declawing that in the union of God and humanity in the hypostatic union that occurred in Jesus Christ; such that the objective and subjective aspects of knowledge are brought together in the singular person known as Jesus of Nazareth.

Nevertheless, what Barth offers us here, in sketch, I think provides an interesting look into Kant’s thought vis-à-vis Barth’s. Further, it is interesting to take Kant’s duality and apply that to what happened to the disciplines of theology and biblical studies in the 18th century (and into the present); it’s ironic that biblical studies, as a discipline, actually traversed Kant’s ‘lines’ and instead began developing its systems based upon the grounds that Kant would reserve for the philosophers; thus ‘de-confessionalizing’ the Bible and its study by placing it on a naturalist trajectory.

 

[1] For an in depth analysis of this locus in Barth see Kenneth Oakes most fantastic book: Karl Barth on Theology&Philosophy (OUP).

[2] Karl Barth, Protestant Thought: From Rousseau to Ritschl (New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969), 192-95.

The Motion of God’s Life; A Stillness that Only Christ Knows for Us: A Reflection in a Self-Aware Mode

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I often come into these self-reflective moments; do you? Well I’m in one right now, and want to write about what’s on my heart. It isn’t actually a tangible thing or idea; it is more of a sense of awareness that I am being hit with—almost like an out-of-body experience, but not really. Moments like this, I take it as a Christian, come from the LORD. I am being hit with the reality of life—which I take as a I gift; being hit with this reality that is—what I mean is that there is a type of awareness wherein it is almost like you are given a chance to stand back and simply look out at all that stands before you. There is this constant drip of movement and unfortunately chaos in the world, and without knowing it I get caught up in it. In other words it just seems like as a people all across the globe we are all caught up in this drama that gets called ‘life,’ and life doesn’t like us to slow down and realize what we are part of; I mean the phenomena or experience of daily life. I wake up (usually at about 4pm because I work the graveyard) feel compelled to get as much reading that I can get done prior to going to work; alongside other things, important things like see my wife and kids—and eat dinner of course! Then it’s off to work. This process happens over and again on a daily basis; before you know it your kids are both in high school with one of them heading into their senior year. With all that is good in this life, particularly as I think about my wife and kids and the blessings that they are to me, you also begin to realize that we are seemingly in a rush to get somewhere; but where?!

I read theology books, as you know, lots of theology books! But I read the Bible more, and always have; this has led me to reading lots of theology books and other books about the Bible. I’ll finish one book of the ten I have going at one time, and feel a sense of accomplishment; I’ll also wonder how that particularly book, whatever it might be, has edified me and helped me to grow deeper into the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Sometimes after I read theology books—historical, constructive, Dogmatic—I’ll put it down and feel this sort of emptiness. And this is what I mean about the ‘constant drip’ of daily life itself; I seem to be chasing after something that I can never really attain or grasp. I’ve tasted and seen that the LORD is good, and I’ve experienced what it is to be in his presence where all is still and yet bursting with the greatest excitement and sense of wonderment that one could encounter. When I read theology books I’m constantly looking for something deeper and greater, in regard to growing in knowledge of God that heretofore I hadn’t yet encountered or experienced. I have a great desire to know and hear God’s voice, and I will not stop seeking that no matter what; it’s my reason for living! And yet I’ll put a theology book down—even good ones sometimes—and almost feel let down. This sense like: okay, that was amazing it was stellar, but now what? I guess I’ll pick up the next theology book and see if that will help slow my life down and bring me into the stillness of God’s life in even greater depths; but then I’ll finish that book, and often have that same empty feeling. There is only one book that actually satisfies the deepest longings of my soul; the Bible. I am about to finish my thirty-ninth time through the whole Bible having read through the New Testament concurrently over the last twenty-three years hundreds and hundreds of times. I read it so much because the God I have encountered there in Christ is the God my soul longs for; he is the God where my life touches down and finds its greatest meaning and telos. And I’m not talking about doing critical bible study—God knows I think this is important as well, I have two degrees in such endeavor that illustrates the importance I see in that—but what I am referring to is just reading the Bible. I see the Bible as the Holy Ground surrounding the Burning Bush where the living presence of God in Christ encounters me in and through the fire of his inextinguishable life. When I read the Bible, it doesn’t matter what book of the Bible I’m reading, I always have this sense that I am in a place where I should at least take my shoes off and begin trembling. Not that this is always that conscious or visceral, but in the back, if not in the front of mind it is this reality that attends my reading of the Bible. I want to be still, like all the time, and just know that he is God and I am not. I find peace and tranquility in the posture that brings in these moments of self-awareness. And really, it isn’t self-awareness, but it is God awareness, and in that awareness I come to have a genuine sense of self-awareness; self-knowledge. Maybe this is why I am having this moment right now.

As I look around at the chaos and noise of the world, because of my life in Christ, I can step back in the Holy Spirit’s spaciousness and simply be still and know that he is God. This is what my soul longs for, it is something that theology books can help provide some important ways to imagine things by their ability to bear witness to Christ; but really, it is only Christ in his mediated immediate confrontation of me that reality becomes illumined in such a way that even the noise and chaos of ‘life’ is seen from the reality of his life; his life and reality that has invaded the deep spaces, the noisiest and most chaotic sectors of this world system and ultimately reversed it with his indestructible life. This is the God that I want to, I need to encounter over and again, afresh and anew or I don’t think there’s much worth living for. I often feel empty, as if I am just going through the motions, almost a sense of depression; but then I encounter the living Word of God in Jesus Christ once again, over and over again on a daily basis and he brings to light the nourishment that my starving soul needs each and every day.

There is so much drama going on out there. I see people going through, what I take to be the motions of what the world tells us life is supposed to be, only to miss what it really is in the stillness of God’s life for us in Christ. I see identity politics, and suffering, sickness and death and the way cultures attempt to mitigate or cope with that; I see this as the motions of life. There is no rest in the motions of life, there is only rest in the motion of God’s life for us in Christ; a life, again, that has penetrated the motions of daily life and imbued it with a cruciform reality that ultimately has brought and is bringing new creation and reversal the likes of which most people never slow down enough to contemplate. I know that God is real, and that he tastes sweet. He wants us to be able to step back and look at all the noise and chaos—particularly as that is present through the churches—and for us to slow down and begin to participate in the motion of his life; a life that is grounded in the interpenetrating reality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He wants us to rest in the sabbath of his life, and out of this rest bear witness to who he is in a world that cannot extricate itself from itself; in a world that has no rest, but only a noise and chaos that drowns out the reality as that is in God’s life for us and with us in Jesus Christ. amen

A Quick Response to ‘God Of Our Fathers’ and the ‘Spirit’ of the Schleiermacherian Reformation

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I am about two-thirds through the new critical edition of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Christian Faith, so it intrigued me when the opening chapter of another book I just picked up, God of Our Fathers: Classical Theism for the Contemporary Church (h/t Derek Rishmawy) engages with Schleiermacher a bit. I want to engage a bit with what the author, Eric Hutchinson, by way of sketching, has to say about Schleiermacher’s initiation of a movement of modern theological discourse, that according to Hutchinson was placed into a trajectory, because of Schleiermacher that wanted desperately to reformulate not just the foundations of soteriological consideration (so the move of the magisterial reformers et al.), but all of the foundations; most importantly for Hutchinson’s purposes, with reference to a doctrine of God.

Here is Hutchinson at some length as we pick up with his sketch and the implications of Schleiermacher’s impact on the development and trajectory of modern theology. Following, I will offer some feedback and response to Hutchinson’s thought.

These are the brief gestures toward the Trinity found in the bulk of the work. But, to repeat, explicit treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity is saved for Schleiermacher’s concluding remarks. What is particularly interesting for the purposes of this paper is the justification—or, more precisely, an additional justification—he gives for the freedom with which he treats this doctrine. He writes:

We have the less reason to regard this doctrine as finally settled since it did not receive any fresh treatment when the Evangelical (Protestant) Church was set up; and so there must still be in store for it a transformation which will go back to its very beginnings.

We should ponder the peculiar view of the Reformation in this statement, for it is one that is, one suspects, widely shared even among so-called “conservative” Protestants today. What is required for a doctrine to be treated as “finally settled”? “[F]resh treatment” at the time of the Reformation.

Aside from the fact that this view is paradoxical—if “fresh treatment” is a desideratum as such, how can anything ever be “finally settled”?—there is a more basic point that should be highlighted with respect to the idea of “reformation.” On Schleiermacher’s reading, “reformation” entails that all dogmatic loci be revised and overhauled from their very foundations. According to the gloss of a recent commentator, Schleiermacher believed that the Protestants of the sixteenth century “too uncritically took over earlier views without testing them against the Protestant spirit.” Schleiermacher is explicit in the work’s final section that his placement of the doctrine of the Trinity is due to just such a desire for total overhaul. The assumption lurking behind this viewpoint—and it is an assumption—is that there was a unifying drive broader than and undergirding particular theological revisions, that it ought to be generalizable to all doctrinal topics, and that if it has not been so generalized, it is due to a lapse on the part of the Reformers in carrying their Grundsatz all the way through. Thus Schüssler Fiorenza can gloss Schleiermacher’s stance as follows: “The traditional doctrinal formulations [about the Trinity] fail to express [the] reformation impulse.”

Schleiermacher’s basic position on this question became a hallmark of a certain style of Protestant theologizing in subsequent generations. For that reason, one is not surprised to find Adolph Harnack claiming, in the late nineteenth century, that the spirit of the Lutheran Reformation required something like what Schleiermacher desired, though it was impossible for a single man, Martin Luther, to carry it out; thus the “Catholic elements” in Luther’s theology “belong certainly to the ‘whole Luther,’ but not to the ‘whole Christianity of Luther.” This latter required the wholesale reworking that Luther himself could not perform. Indeed, this tension between the new and the old led the Reformation to “terminate . . . in a contradiction,” in that “it gave to [the new Church, in addition to Pauline faith] at the same time the old dogma as the unchangeable cardinal article, together with a christological doctrine, which did not negate the fundamental evangelical interest, but which had received an entirely scholastic shape and had therefore the inevitable effect of confusing and obscuring faith.’[1]

If the point of continuity for retrieving a ‘church catholic’ for the 21st century church is to find a common core between all the traditions (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant) having a uniquely iterated Protestant doctrine of God—one that at least ‘innovates,’ and at most ‘reformulates’—will not do. While I am only just getting into Hutchinson’s chapter I am pretty sure this is the basic premise that shapes his thinking; it is a common thesis held among almost all those in this particular style of retrieval.

But I am getting ahead of myself. We could agree with Hutchinson that after Schleiermacher Pandora’s Box was opened in certain extreme ways (Hutchinson mentions Moltmann and Barth, although he hasn’t engaged much with Barth yet). Us Evangelical Calvinists, insofar that we work ‘after Barth,’ and insofar as Barth works ‘after Schleiermacher’ might be candidates for the critique that Hutchinson is most likely going to make. The idea of operating in and from some sort of ‘pervasive spirit’ of the original reformational mind, as Hutchinson attaches that to Schleiermacher’s mind, clearly has substance to it. Indeed, if you have ever read Karl Barth’s Theology of the Reformed Confessions (one of my favorites!) you will see him pressing into this very distinction; viz. a distinction between the ‘letter’ versus the ‘spirit’ of the Reformed faith. Barth maintains that to operate in the letter of semper reformanda (‘always reforming’) means that the spirit of this letter entails that while there are certain orthodox parameters attending to and presented by the tradition of the church, that within those ‘orthodoxing’ parameters there is space to operate (‘the spirit’) with imagination that is regulated not by the force of the tradition (which is always and only a proximate or ectypal knowledge), but by the regula revealed in God’s life for us in Jesus Christ. For Barth, and for myself as an Evangelical Calvinist, to operate in the ‘spirit’ of the Reformational impulse is to recognize as Barth did, that knowledge of God is always already an eschatological reality, and as such allows for the Christian mind to grapple with him in ways that might just recalibrate certain aspects about who he has revealed himself to be that prior imaginations (and the categories they had available to them, philosophically) were unable to see. Bruce McCormack makes this very point in regard to Barth’s theology:

I say all of this to indicate that even the ecumenical creeds are only provisional statements. They are only relatively binding as definitions of what constitutes “orthodoxy.” Ultimately, orthodox teaching is that which conforms perfectly to the Word of God as attested in Holy Scripture. But given that such perfection is not attainable in this world, it is understandable that Karl Barth should have regarded “Dogma” as an eschatological concept. The “dogmas” (i.e., the teachings formally adopted and promulgated by individual churches) are witnesses to the Dogma and stand in a relation of greater or lesser approximation to it. But they do not attain to it perfectly—hence, the inherent reformability of all “dogmas.” Orthodoxy is not therefore a static, fixed reality; it is a body of teachings which have arisen out of, and belong to, a history which is as yet incomplete and constantly in need of reevaluation.[2]

Also, in the same ‘spirit’ Adam Neder writes this:

while fully conversant with and significantly indebted to the vast resources of the church’s reflection on the person and work of Christ, Barth regarded himself to be primarily accountable to Holy Scripture, not church dogma, and thus asked that his Christology be judged, above all, by its faithfulness to the New Testament presentation of the living Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, one regularly finds Barth justifying a Christological innovation with the argument that the New Testament depiction of Christ requires it (or something like it) and that the older categories are inadequate to bear witness to this or that aspect of his existence. In other words, and quite simply, Barth understood himself to be free to do evangelical theology — free, as he put it, to begin again at the beginning. And this approach, it seems to me, is one that evangelicals have every reason to regard with sympathy rather than suspicion.[3]

For Barth, according to McCormack and Neder, ‘orthodoxy’ is not the absolute in the theological enterprise, instead the object and norm by which we come to recognize orthodoxy is the effulgence of God’s life given to us and for us in Christ; so orthodoxy is a symbol that serves as a boundary criteria that the ‘faithful’ have come to recognize, but it is only a boundary wherein greater reality, not lesser can come to be realized. This is not to suggest that there are no recognizable contours or ‘orthodox’ corners by which the church might confidently know her God. But it is to recognize that the church lives in a constant state of vulnerability and contradiction as she is ever afresh and anew by the grace of God confronted with her sinfulness—which implicates her ability to know—vis-Ă -vis con-versation with the living God.

Much more needs to be said, but let me close. My ultimate concern is that all of modern theology ends up getting caricatured by this type of gloss on Schleiermacher and it is seen as a hindrance to the advancement of presenting a fiduciary way forward for the church to know her God. That it is seen as an affront, or ulcer on the church’s capacity to think ‘catholically’ with our brothers and sisters pre-17th century and backwards looking, and thus relegated to a heterodox period of theological development that should be, with all purpose, abandoned. What a travesty! And all this in the name of offering the orthodox churches a ‘catholic foundation.’

As we can see, at least in Barth’s case and us Evangelical Calvinists following, to be orthodox is to always be in conversation with God as he encounters afresh and anew in the risen Lord, Jesus Christ. I would suggest that to take the tact that I believe Hutchison actually presents us with a conception of God that gets necessarily reflected in the method of catholicity that Hutchinson et al are calling us to. In other words, if God is a monadic unmoved mover then so will one’s conception of catholicity be.

Addendum: I finished Hutchinson’s chapter, and he went in another direction than what I had anticipated; although his chapter could serve as a historical ground clearing for the thesis of catholicity that I had anticipated in my blog post here. His chapter is an attempt to contextualize Melanchthon, particularly with reference to Melanchthons’s Loci Communes 1521. He argues that Barth and Ferdinand Bauer misread Melanchthon and as such find something in him that actually isn’t the case; in regard to Melanchthon’s supposed lack of focus, or abstraction of focus on creedal Christology and Trinitarianism (per the ordering of his communes). Hutchinson argues and concludes that the apparent ‘lack’ was precisely because Melanchthon was so committed to these traditional permutations that he didn’t feel compelled to spell them out because they served, instead, as the understood bases upon which he made his points about salvation and so on.

[1] E.J. Hutchinson, “Melanchthon’s Unintended Reformation? The Case of the Missing Doctrine of God,” in Bradford LittleJohn ed., God of our Fathers: Classical Theism for the Contemporary Church (Moscow, ID: The Davenant Institute, 2018), Loc 571, 581, 593, 603 kindle version.

[2] Bruce L. McCormack, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 15-16. Also see this article.

[3] Adam Neder, History in Harmony: Karl Barth on the Hypostatic Union, in Bruce McCormack and Clifford Anderson eds., Karl Barth and American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011), 150. For further elaboration on Neder see this article.

The Most Important Thing, Knowledge of God: Actualistic Faith Trumps Stabilized Being

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One of the first hooks for me with Barth’s theology was his conception of what is called the analogia fidei (‘analogy of faith’ — in contrast to the classical analogia entis ‘analogy of being’). At first reading and contemplation I thought it was a better way because I was already predisposed against the mechanical universe of classical theism; and the inter-chained hierarchy of being that held it together (think of Thomas Aquinas’s theology and substance metaphysics). In other words, if there was not necessary symmetry (albeit analogically understood and thus asymmetrical at certain levels i.e. Creator/creature) between God and all subsequent contingent reality then how might we as creatures gain a knowledge of God devoid of this type of interrelation between ‘being?’ I didn’t have an articulated sense of this dilemma, maybe just an inchoate unacknowledged sense; but one that came from my working in the area of historical theology with the realization that even in late medieval theology under the impact of the nominalists this ‘chain-of-being’ idea had already been critiqued and found wanting (at least for some). No matter the influence, what I found in Barth’s theology in regard to a theological epistemology (and ontology) resonated and resonates with me deeply. In order to expose you to what I am referring to I am going to transcribe a long quote from Bruce McCormack where he describes the Göttingen Barth’s understanding of knowledge of God. What you will see is that Barth, as a modern, was responding to and working from Kantian categories; nevertheless, what you will also see in McCormack’s development, is that Barth reified and in fact flipped Kant’s categories on their head insofar as the ‘knowing subject’ is not you and me, but instead Jesus Christ for us.

At the heart of Karl Barth’s doctrine of revelation, in the form in which it was first given a relatively full and positive elaboration in the Göttingen lectures on dogmatics, lies the concept of “indirect identity”: in revealing himself God makes himself to be indirectly identical with a creaturely medium of that revelation. Such a relation is indirect because the use made by God of the creaturely medium entails no “divinisation” of it. The veil in and through which God unveils himself remains a veil. And yet it must also be said that in the act of Self-revelation, God is indirectly identical with the creaturely medium. That is to say, the presence of God in the medium of revelation—however hidden it may be outwardly, to normal perception—is the presence of God, complete, whole and entire (without division or diminution). The hiddenness of God in revelation is not to be likened to the hiddenness of the submerged portion of an iceberg. It is not as though part of God is revealed directly while part of God remains hidden to view. No, Barth makes it quite clear that if revelation is Self-revelation (and it is), then revelation means the revelation of God in his entirety—but the whole being of God hidden in a creaturely veil. Nothing of God is known directly; God remains altogether hidden. And yet, where God is truly known in his hiddenness, it is the whole of God which is known and not “part” of God.

Expressed christologically: the process by means of which God takes on human nature and becomes the Subject of a human life in our history entails no impartation of divine attributes or perfections to that human nature. And therefore revelation is not made to be a predicate of the human nature of Jesus; revelation may not be read directly “off the face of Jesus.” And yet it remains true that God (complete, whole, and entire) is the Subject of this human life. God, without ceasing to be God, becomes human and lives a human life, suffers, and dies.

The principle consequence of this conception of an indirect revelation for theological epistemology is that God is the Subject of the knowledge of God. Human beings can know God only by being given a knowledge which corresponds to God’s Self-knowledge. This occurs in that human beings are given the eyes of faith with which to discern that which lies hidden in the veil. Thus conceived, revelation is seen to have two moments; an objective moment (God veils himself in a creaturely medium) and a subjective moment (God gives us faith to know and understand what is hidden in the veil). The objective moment is christological; the subjective moment, pneumatological.

In the Göttingen lectures, the Kantian assumptions with which Barth works in explicating this point of view are especially clear. With Kant, Barth believes that human knowledge is limited to the intuitable, phenomenal realm. And this means that if God (who is unintuitable) is nevertheless to be intuited (and therefore known in the strict, theoretical sense) God must make himself to be phenomenal, that is, God must assume creaturely form. But at this point a further problem arises. In making himself phenomenal, God has entered into the subject-object relation in which the constructive role played by the Kantian categories of the understanding make the human knower the “master” in any and every knowledge relation. So the problem is this: How can God remain God (i.e. the Subject of the knowledge of God) even as God takes on phenomenal form? The answer has everything to do with the fact that God does not make himself directly identical with a phenomenal magnitude but only indirectly so. What occurs in revelation is that the divine Subject lays hold of or grasps the human knowing apparatus through the phenomena from the other side. In this way, the limitations placed on human knowing by the Kantian subject-object split are overcome by a transcendent, divine act.

It should be added that Barth secures the lordship (“mastery”) of God in this knowledge relation by insisting on its actualistic character. It is not the case that God unveils himself through the veil once and for all, as a completed act. If it were so, God would have ceased to act; nothing more would need to be done. But such a view cold be coherently explicated only by the thought that although God was once only indirectly identical with a medium of revelation, at some point in time God became directly identical with it. In this view, nothing further need occur from the divine side. The epistemic relation between God and the human knower would have become fixed, stabilized. Having begun in a relation of absolute epistemic dependency, the human knower would once again have attained the mastery in this relation. To all of this, Barth said no. God is indirectly identical with the medium of his Self-revelation not only before revelation occurs but during the revelation even and after it. Thus Barth could consistently overcome the limitations placed by Kant on the knowledge of God only by insisting upon the actualistic nature of the epistemic relation.

One final clarification: for those of us who are “disciples at second hand,” the place at which God finds access to us (and therefore we to God) is not longer Jesus of Nazareth (who has “ascended on high”); it is, rather, through the medium of the witness of Holy Scripture that God continues to unveil himself. For us, knowledge of God occurs when and where God takes up the language of the biblical witness and bears witness to himself in and through its witness (the objective moment) and awakens in us the faith needed to comprehend that witness (the subjective moment). In that this occurs, a relation of correspondence (the so-called analogia fidei) is established (actualistically!) between God’s knowledge of himself and human knowledge of God. This it is quite clear that the motor that drives Barth’s theological epistemology is the Realdialektik of the divine veiling and unveiling.[1]

Much to digest. I think that what is covered by McCormack in regard to Barth is THE most important locus of theology. In other words, how we come to think about how we have knowledge of God has a prior notion informing it in regard to who we think God is; this seems to be a paradox, or a dialectic. Indeed. I think, often, people just take for granted a certain theological tradition with all of its trappings without considering what in fact those trappings are and where they come from. So we have formal and material realities mutually implicating each other insofar as the object of theology is related to its subject and vice versa. What I think is most important to recognize is that if we presume that we are talking and writing about God as theologians that we’d better have a sound basis for asserting that we are indeed thinking God from God. This is where the classical theistic approach fails in my view. It starts with a ground for knowledge of God in the being of humanity abstract from God, albeit preveniently informed by God’s grace (understood in qualitative terms); a ground that is not grounded previously in God’s being, only upon the asserted supposition that all being is sourced in God’s. Do you see the problem with this? It does not overcome what Barth overcomes in the Kantian form of such knowing; a form of knowing where the human ‘knower’ is the ‘master’ of the knowing apparatus that allows them to assert that they have a point of contact with God outwith a previous ground in God (in a theological taxis ‘order’). This is the genius of Barth’s proposal; it grounds knowledge of God in God and extends that by his grace (who is the Christ) out to us, brings us into that center of knowing by the Holy Spirit, and allows us to think God after God has already thought himself for us in Jesus Christ. So the Deus absconditus is the Deus revelatus.

Theologians will keep on theologizing in their received traditions of theologizing, but for my money I can’t really see how what they are ultimately articulating has much to do with a knowledge of God that is itself grounded in the Self-knowledge of God. I would suggest that the tradition has stumbled upon proper aspects of knowledge of God only insofar as it has sought that in its disclosure borne witness to in Holy Scripture. In other words, the tradition has offered certain categories toward a knowledge of God that have relative gravitas to them only as that has incidentally been arrived at by the theologian’s willingness to seek for such knowledge in Holy Scripture.

[1] Bruce L. McCormack, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 109-12.

A Critique of the ‘What Would Jesus Do Society’ In Light of the Border Dilemma

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Here is a post I originally posted probably eight years ago. I have reposted it multiple times since. I can’t think of a more apropos time to repost this than the times we are facing right now. This current issue at the border is evincing something in the hearts of many so called conservative Christians that needs to be confronted. It is something that has been developing and cultivating for years. The border issue currently underway is now only revealing how deep this heart condition has become. I think the following post helps to confront the problem.

I really like how John Webster describes Barth’s understanding against the Liberal Protestantism of his day. Ironically, I think, that the way Barth understood the Liberal Protestants of his day, could (should) be the way (by and large) that we understand American Evangelicals of our day [please note: I am speaking in generalities, there are obviously many exceptions to this amongst American Evangelicals, just as there was exceptions to the Liberal Protestants in Barth’s day]. In fact, I think this dovetails nicely with the post I just posted on Occupy Wall Street. It gets to the question of how it is that “good” honest hard working (even Christian) people can be duped into thinking that the aformentioned attributes serve as the garb that justifies their place in society (i.e. as good honest hard working folk). There is always room for conviction and self-“criticality;” I know we don’t like this, and I know that much of this ultimately bothers our sensibilities; but we are Christians, people of  love and truth (insofar as we participate in God’s life in Christ).

As I’ve already alluded to, the following is Webster commenting on Barth and his critique of the Liberal Protestants (which I am lifting and applying to American Evangelicals). This is intended to decenter our trust in ourselves, and instead cause us to throw ourselves at the mercy of God in Christ. This is intended to turn our lights on so that we can more critically see how what counts as Christian and Ethical (in America and the West), probably is not as ethical and Christian as we think. This is intended to highlight how it is that “we” so easily become the standard for what is good and right in the world instead of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

[A] large part of Barth’s distaste is his sense that the ethics of liberal Protestantism could not be extricated from a certain kind of cultural confidence: ‘[H]ere 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 morality and religion reaching well beyond itself toward yet better days.’ The ethical question, on such an account, is no longer disruptive; it has ‘an almost perfectly obvious answer’, so that, in effect, the moral life becomes too easy, a matter of the simple task of following Jesus.

Within this ethos, Barth also discerns a moral anthropology with which he is distinctly ill-at-ease. He unearths in the received Protestant moral culture a notion of moral subjectivity (ultimately Kantian in origin), according to which ‘[t]he moral personality is the author both of the conduct with which the ethical question is concerned and of the question itself. Barth’s point is not simply that such an anthropology lacks serious consideration of human corruption, but something more complex. He is beginning to unearth the way in which this picture of human subjectivity as it were projects the moral self into a neutral space, from which it can survey the ethical question ‘from the viewpoint of spectators’. This notion Barth reads as a kind of absolutizing of the self and its reflective consciousness, which come to assume ‘the dignity of ultimateness’. And it is precisely this — the image of moral reason as a secure centre of value, omnicompetent in its judgements — that the ethical question interrogates. [John Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology: Human Action in Barth’s Thought, 35-6]

The ‘Human culture building itself up’ was the German one (for Barth) that ultimately expressed itself in German bourgeois society, and ultimately Nazi Germany. For Barth, for the Liberal Protestant, because of the collapse of the Christian self into the self as the moral self, there no longer remained space for Christ to break in and speak a fresh word of holiness over and against the established norms of what the Liberal Protestant had come to already think of what counted as such. In other words, Barth was against a What Would Jesus Do? society.

I am appropriating this critique from Barth (a la Webster) for the American Evangelical in particular. We have come to think that what counts as moral is captured by the symbol ‘Conservative’. It is this absolutized ‘Conservative Self’ that presumes that what it means to be moral, and Christian is to ask, simply, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ This perfectly illustrates Barth’s critique of the German Liberal Protestant. For them, as for us, to be Christian, was to be nationalist, exceptional, and normal. It is this posture that negates any space for the Word of God to break in on all of these norms or the status quo; since the status quo is synonymous with being Christian. And it is this self-evidential situation which allows for atrocities to take place in the name of Christ; through the “absolute self.”

A Summary of the Issues at the Border by Immigration Lawyer, Scott Hicks: ‘The love of many will grow cold.’

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I wanted to share a summary of what is taking place at the southern border. This is the best I have read after reading countless news stories from all the various “sides.” The following is written by an immigration lawyer who is also a Christian pastor, his name is Scott Hicks. He cuts through all the identity politics and identifies what in fact has taken place, and in light of that what indeed is taking place; things have changed. People can continue to dig their heels in, but what Hicks outlines for us, unless you’re an immigration lawyer who can counter, is definitive. He writes:

The Border and the Kids

I wish there was a one or two line explanation of what is going on. But the situation is complex because there are multiple layers and laws involved. Here is my attempt to simplify it enough to be understandable and be accurate.

A number of people are saying, this is an old law. They are correct to a point. Kids simply are not put in jail with their parents when the parent is taken into custody on a criminal charge. The old law point is also correct that crossing the border illegally is a criminal offense and has been on the books for ever. But the history of that law is important for this discussion. For first time offenders, the offense is a misdemeanor. It is only a felony if the person had been caught before or had been deported. Traditionally, the US Attorneys only went after felony charges, and even that was not a large number overall. It made no sense to clog the Federal District Courts with misdemeanors. Everybody understood that was a waste of time and resources.

The current administration though has adopted a zero tolerance policy and the AG has mandated that the US Attorneys prosecute every single misdemeanor case. That IS new. It also means that when these people are placed into custody their children are taken away (see above). The judges see the ridiculousness of this and are sentencing to time served in mass trials. So the criminal aspect is really accomplishing nothing.

Now, it must be pointed out that these people charged with crimes are still allowed to apply for asylum. But they will do so without their children and the children are on a separate track with their own immigration case, even though the case often needs the parent’s information and corroboration, or the parent is the one with the real claim and the child would be a derivative claim.

So, criminal wise, we are just chewing up resources. But that is not the point for the administration. They are using the criminal law to accomplish an immigration purpose. They want to scare people away from even coming. And that is where it truly gets insidious. Because in so doing, we are deliberately trying to scare people away who are trying to flee persecution and seek refuge here. (Of course some are coming just for economic opportunity,) but for many of the Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans, they have been threatened with terrible violence and are fleeing for their lives or the lives of their children. Our laws state that these people have the right to apply for asylum if they are on US soil or if they present themselves at a POE and ask for asylum. But we are routinely turning people away at the border and telling them they can not apply because we are too busy and full. So these desperate people who try to legally present will then often find another way in. There are numerous instances of people crossing over and then looking for a BP agent to turn themselves in to. Before, such people would just apply for asylum. Now they are criminally charged. And the kids taken away.

Not only that, but these people are now being told, if they will just take an order of removal (deportation) they can get their kids back within a day or so, but if they insist on applying for asylum they will be separated from their children for the duration of the proceedings and really, for an unknown time.

All of this is arguably “within the law,” but it clearly is a violation of the spirit if not letter of our asylum laws.

One final note – Obama’s administration also detained asylum seekers, but did so as a family, often for years, in what immigration lawyers referred to as “baby jails.” Also, you may have heard of the Flores Settlement- this applies to unaccompanied minors. So, if a child is without a parent, they can only be detained for a short time. The problem is that the administration is using Flores as a weapon. By criminally charging the parents, they can not keep the child with them. The administration then declares that the child is an unaccompanied minor. It is important to note also that the lawyer who was the lead litigator on the Flores case has come out and said all of this is clearly a violation of the agreement.

Hope this helps.

As always, feel free to share, but do so politely.

I appeal to you conservative Christian and progressive Christian don’t take your eye off of what matters in the midst of this whole scenario. Are there people who have been and are currently abusing the system? Yes. But you don’t punish the masses for the minority (the abusers in this case); more importantly you don’t punish children and their families for seeking a better life for themselves. You say: ‘well, they need to do so through legal means.’ Oh really? You say: ‘if they want asylum they need to do the proper paperwork or come to the border and properly request that.’ Oh really? You don’t think many of these people haven’t attempted to do it ‘legally’; you don’t think many of them don’t even have the proper resources to actually do the paperwork (education, access to transportation, access to communication, access to their local government officials etc.)? Or you don’t think that people haven’t come to the border and requested asylum that way only to be turned away (as Hicks underscores for us)?

Jesus said that in the end ‘the love of many will grow cold.’ He was right.

 

Reflection on the Happenings at the Southern Border

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If you aren’t friends with me on Facebook or Twitter then you will have missed all of my posts about the current crisis unfolding at our southern border. It’s not that this is a new crisis; it’s that it is now a crisis that we have all become aware of—the political reasons are non-consequential. I see many ‘conservatives’ taking the position that this is about keeping the law; illustrated by the Attorney General, Jeff Session’s appeal to Romans 13. But there is a greater law; as Christians we are committed to the principled reality of the sanctity of human life. Some people (almost always ‘conservatives’) are attempting to make the erroneous argument that it is the immigrant parents themselves who should be held at fault because they are the ones breaking the law and putting themselves and their children into this scenario. How non-starting can an argument get?! This is circular reasoning of the first order. Or others have been citing statistics making it seem as if the United States has a very liberal immigration policy already. Seriously?! Even if a million Mexican and South/Central Americans are legally admitted into the US each year, on ratio, how does this relate to the multi-millions more that require admittance as well? This isn’t about identity politics, this is about the children who are without a doubt being separated from their parents; it is about children who are being taken from their parents with the potential of never seeing their parents again. People say vote; I say rubbish! Voting and legislation takes years and years; the situation is way more urgent than that! The primary thing is to keep families together. To label these kids’ parents as “criminals” because they are coming to America seeking a better life for their kids and themselves is utterly absurd. This idea that we must wait until immigration law can be modified or changed is utterly absurd! Do you realize how long that takes? Don’t you think that people have been attempting for reforms like this for years? Where has that gotten us?! It has gotten us to where we are currently. Is this just a Trump issue? No. This was going on under Obama as well. So what! Again, this is not about that, this is about the people caught in the middle. Why do you think people feel compelled to leave their countries of origin to begin with? Do you feel compelled to do that as a United States citizen? So there is obviously a reason why people from south of the border are fleeing here by the masses. Maybe it is because they live in the slums and ghettos; maybe it is because they live in the middle of drug cartels and the wars and blood baths they cause innocent people to live in the midst of; maybe it is because these people’s governments are so filthy corrupt that they will not and cannot take care of their own people. In this case why aren’t these people who are indeed fleeing counted immediately as political refugees and granted political asylum the moment they are able to cross into the ‘homeland?’

But we are Christians. We are followers of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is our Lord; he is the LORD. We are of a people group that transcends national identities, political associations, and whose citizenry is in the heavenlies with Jesus Christ. We are a people group that is for all human beings, and we thus bear witness to them of that invading reality that is grounded in the Kingdom to come and that has come in Jesus Christ. Our principled reality in Jesus Christ, and in his vicarious humanity, does not concern itself with what might happen to us; we commit ourselves into the hands of the Father. But when we have been given much much is required; when we have an abundance out of that abundance we are to share until we are in need ourselves. This is the way of the Christian. So we don’t ultimately fall back on an ethic that requires us to sustain a sense of national self-preservation or security, instead we push into the reality that all of human life is sacrosanct; precisely because God’s life for us in Jesus Christ is sacrosanct. When I see Christians pushing their heals into the idea that we live in a ‘land of law and order,’ and then see how they are callously using that to dehumanize the situation we are currently presented with at the southern border; I wonder who they think is the ultimate source of the very law and order they pretend to be in submission to. It is as if Nebuchadnezzar has constructed a great golden idol and demands that his citizens bow down to it; as if Christians in such a citizenry have failed to recognize that we are citizens of another Kingdom that has already come and is coming like a great Stone crushing not only Nebuchadnezzar’s idol but all such idols in the world. Unless the Christian has forgotten, we aren’t our own, we have been bought with a price; and the price is the blood of Jesus Christ. If nothing else this precise moment in American history has revealed just how complicit and how conflated the ‘conservative’ Christian identity has become with an outright nationalism rather than with the Kingdom of Christ that stands against such heinous evils. Such Christians cannot consistently repudiate the evil of abortion and at the same time, at best, remain indifferent to the plight of these children and families in the name of ‘law and order.’ I’m sorry (but not sorry), the Kingdom of God in Jesus Christ is always already an apocalyptic reality; one that in-breaks upon our own kingdoms of self-projected feelings of safety and security and contradicts them. Wanting to feel safe and secure is not an evil—that is the very reality these migrant families are seeking—but it is an evil when an ‘elect’ group of people who have a sense of that in their own country will not extend that offering out to others who seemingly are the reprobate of this world. God damn such evil!