I wanted to offer a brief word on my last blog post. Let me note what I am attempting to underscore there, and what I’m not. I’m attempting to underscore my desire to do theology from the Self-revelation of Godself in Jesus Christ; in concreto. In other words, my concern, as many know by now, is that we have allowed logical-deductive metaphysics to crowd out the way we think God. This might work for Catholics, and maybe even Orthodox (at least when we think about the role that the Trad plays for them as well); but how this works for a genuinely Protestant approach committed to the Reformed ‘Scripture Principle’ does not make sense to me. When I refer to the scripture principle, I mean the idea that all else, as far as an authority, is actually (not just theoretically) subordinate to Holy Scripture and the reality it attests to in Jesus Christ. If we focus on God’s Self-revelation in Christ, and allow that to dictate the terms through which we receive the Tradition of the Church, then by definition there is going to be reformation that is continuously undertaken insofar as the Christ is an event (and person!) or gift that keeps on giving. ‘And this is eternal life that they may know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’ If theological knowledge is definitionally eschatological in character, then this means that nostra theologia (our theology) will constantly be growing and moving closer towards the reality of who God is as we remain in an open and dialogical posture towards His givenness for us; a givenness which is ever afresh and anew, untrammeled by a static grasp we think we might have upon Him.
So, my desire is to move away from so called ‘metaphysics,’ and instead allow the narrative of Holy Scripture and the revelation it bears witness to, to be regulative and determinative of the theological endeavor. This does not necessarily mean that we will not be reflecting upon spiritual things; to the contrary. But it does mean that the way we reflect and articulate these things will have a concrete (thus non-speculative) character to them. I prefer the terminology of ‘supra-physical’ rather than metaphysical. For me, supraphysical allows for a shift from the usual appeal to metaphysics, when thinking God from the classical theistic mode of philosophical and speculative reflection, and instead recognizes that our reflection of God is determined by the concrete givenness of God in the flesh of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ. It is here we encounter the true and living God the way He wants us to understand Him. He comes effulgent with His own categories and emphases. And it is from this effulgence that the theologian can begin to think God for the Church from a genuinely theological vantage point that is grounded, indeed, in God who is spirit. Do you see what I’m getting at? As TF Torrance notes, there is stratified knowledge of God where we encounter Him evangelically in the face of Christ, and only from this kataphysical point of contact are we finally enabled to move ‘up’ into the theological (inner) life of God as we think God from the Son enfleshed. The ‘enablement’ to think God is not a rationalist intellectualist-centered enablement, but a filial enablement as we become participants in God’s eternal life as we come into that mediated life through union with Christ. So, in my model of thinking, we have a supra (or ‘above’ or ‘before’) about God, that is indeed, spiritual and other-worldly, but because He has graciously and freely chosen to allow us to know Him, we cannot know Him apart from this world, as He has apocalyptically entered it through the particularity and fleshyness of the Son in Christ.
If we follow this mode of theological method we will necessarily be tied to the text of Holy Scripture as that serves as, as it were, the Holy Ground upon which we encounter the burning fire of the living Christ, in the bushyness (cf. Ex 3.15ff) and concreteness of His life made revealed in the hiddeness of the man named Jesus. Holy Scripture, and its narrative reality, at least for the Protestant must be determinative; Church Tradition is not determinative, but only a hand-maid to Holy Scripture. But if the hand-maid becomes the maiden what we have is a mistress and we lose the maiden altogether; in other words, if we displace the reality of Holy Scripture (and its authority) with what is supposed to be its subordinate (Tradition) and help-grammar, then we have given away the whole game. If this means a paradigmatic shift for Protestant Christians to think this way; if this means that being ‘catholic’ is greater than in-stepness with the so called Great Tradition of the Chruch, then so be it. There is a radicality to the Protestant Reformation that I think is being quenched. Maybe even the first and second and third tier reformers didn’t quite grasp what was inchoate within the principles of their reformation movement, but I think it was there. If the Church is supposed to be ‘always reforming’ per Scripture’s reality, and if Scripture’s reality is Jesus Christ, and if Jesus Christ is eschatos (or the eschatological reality), and if Jesus Christ’s paraousia is constantly confronting His Church afresh and anew, then the Church is always on the Way. This does not require that we give away the whole kitchen, but it does mean that the kitchen might need to be updated per the requirements laid down by the ever afresh and ever anew optics provided for the Church by God as He confronts us each day anew in the face of Christ. In other words, we don’t have to give away orthodoxy to engage in the sort of theological method I am suggesting; but we ought to recognize that orthodoxy is only orthodox insofar that she faithfully articulates the right teaching as that is understood under the pressure of God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ.
Godself is a dumb word. Does zip. To be scrapped I reckon. Trevor
Trevor Faggotter 4 Berwick St. Clare, SA, 5453 M 0438259206
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I like it. I like it in reference to the Monarxia.
I thought we now knew the Father. Why regress?
How is it a regress when in reference to the whole God-head?
I think one of the problems you address in your article on Zizioulas – is wrongly answered by Torrance.
In the life of the trinity ‘Super-ordination and subordination’ does not mean ‘superiority and inferiority’.
When God is revealed as eternal Father, it is never apart from the eternal Son, nor the eternal Spirit.
When Jesus says ‘My Father is greater than I’ he also says ‘I and the Father are One’.
I think your statement below is erroneous:
“the subjection of Christ to the Father in his incarnate economy as the suffering and obedient Servant cannot be read back into the eternal hypostatic relations and distinctions subsisting in the Holy Trinity.”
I think it can. With joy and wonder at the Mystery of the truth of superordination and .
the glory of subordination.
‘Here and I, send me’.
This is not to advocate for an Arian-like subordination-ism. It is rather to say something wonderful, that is contrary to our fallen logic. It is to magnify the Father.
This is knowing of the Farher (John 17) and of Jesus Christ whom he sent – is eternal life.
Namely that God ‘The Father’ in his dynamic life with the Son and the Spirit, may be “all in all”.
correction:
Here am I, send me. Not ‘and’.
Also the reference should be:
Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.'”
Hebrews 10:7
So, you think there is no distinction between the ad extra economic Trinity and the in se Trinity? You see an eternal obedience of the Son to the Father? This actually does lead to what has been rightly critiqued as tri-theism and/or Arianism. To collapse the antecedent life of God (ie the ingenerate) into the revealed, ontologically, does indeed result at least in tri-theism if not Arianism. Just asserting that it doesnt and appealing to mystery doesn’t solve that problem. And my post on Zizilous and TFT is dealing with a different issue; the issue of origin of relation in the eternal procession of God. While that can have impact on how we think the economic, it is not directly related in the way you seem to be imagining.
Trevor, you still have to deal with the theo-logical problem of reading the economic back into the immanent trinity in an ontological fashion. This leaves you with the result that the Son is ontologically and thus eternally subordinate to the Father. That’s a real problem your view must overcome. And judging from the history it doesn’t end well for your position.
We only have the revealed work of God, on which to bae our thinking. Unfortunately … few people can think of the Word “subordination” without their mind jumping immediately to a different word, namely “inferiority”.
And few people can think of the word “super-ordination” without equating it with “superiority”. That is the first Adam doing the word studies, not Christ, the last one.
I think you may be missing my primary point. (But.. Perhaps not).
Rather than bat back and forth in this semi-combative manner, I will inbox you with an expanded outline of my thinking.
No, I’m not missing what you’re saying. And I don’t understand how this can be construed as combative. When you identified my comments on JZ as erroneous, which actually w/o you substantiating that does come off pretty aggressive, that is very clear; cause what I said there was clear. I’d rather have you post the outline in this thread since that’s where this all started.
Oh Ok.
But you misread aggression.
To return to the use of Godself. I understand this is your way of saying ‘The Triune God’. When you first said it was referring to the Monarxia, I assumed at very first that you meant ‘the Father’. But …
On reading your blog, I find you meant The Trinity, and I then begin to follow the reason why it is that you meant the whole God-head.
This is the thinking of TFT. Responding to JZ. So I listen to that article.
Then I take up my point -not aggressively – but as what I think is a legitimate criticism.
(Granted, I have done so without detail – except to say that I think there is hierarchy within the Godhead, not merely in the external activity of the economic Trinity. But such hierarchy has not a whiff of Arianism. This is difficult for many to comprehend.
(I think it was Moltmann who said the Father was the Monarch within the Godhead).
At the same time I have understood that ‘Godself’ is a trendy way of avoiding saying ‘he’ in speaking of God. That seems to be a backward step, language-wise, when God is revealed as Father, Son and Spirit. Better to just to clarify that we are not assigning Gender to the persons of the Godhead.
I don’t use Godself that way; I use it when I’m referring to the Godhead, not to avoid gendered language w/ reference to God.
The “erroneous” language comes off pretty aggressive. Usually that can only be used after a thorough argument has been made.
You’ll have to explain your point further. On the face it sounds Arian or subordinationist. If you are simply attempting to follow someone like JZ or the Cappadocians, then we have other issues like social trinitarianism. But I have about 10 posts I wrote back in 2016 contra the EFS people. The posts address everything you’ve said thus far from different angles. An important aspect is how “wills” function. I’m on my phone more later.
The classification of erroneous is not aggressive. Not aggressive.
It is just my immediate view. It does warrant substantiating, I concede. That was what I felt needed doing via inbox, rather than via short phone text replies.
When someone states that something is erroneous in a triumphalist way without substantiation, then it comes off in an aggressive manner. This is not Facebook, comments are not limited. There is ample space to share.
But the problem with what you’ve shared so far, as far as I can see (based on what you’ve shared and denied) is that no matter how you parse it, if you read the economic trinity fully back into the ontological trinity—not just soteriologically as TFT does—then you end up with a modal collapse. You have to read a flesh and blood Jesus into the eternally Triune life. Beyond that, the obedience that we see evinced in Christ is an obedience in the stead of humanity. This is not the provenance of the eternal and filial relationship between the Father and the Son. Instead it is an act of Grace that the Son freely entered into for us; again, as an act of grace. There is a way to see a greater continuity here than TFT does (which is what the so called “Barth Wars” orbit around), but I’m not seeing those qualifications in what you’re saying thus far.
But we are way afield from the premise of my original post.
When the writer of Hebrews says:
“But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. Hebrews 2:9, that verse can be translated:
“Crowned with glory and honour For the suffering of death…”.
Further, we find something similar in Philippians:
5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8).
He humbled himself – not in order to become man (that was no humbling matter) but in order to suffer and die on a horrid cross.
It had been said of Jesus; ‘He walked as Godhead concealed’. Again, the corrective would be ‘he walked as Godhead revealed’.
Thus, that God becomes Man is not the centrepiece of grace, but rather grace is revealed in that God willingly suffers and bears our sin – as Jesus lovingly wills to be made sin, and the Father spares not his own Son, to redeem his people and his creation.
……
My friend Geoff Bingham In ‘All Things Are Yoirs’ says, of Barth in CD vol. 4, p.199,
“Barth insists that God —as the Trinity—cannot be one thing ontologically and another economically. He therefore says”:
“It is a matter (3)—and this is the connecting point—of the one true God being Himself the subject of the act of atonement in such a way that His presence and action as the Reconciler of the world coincide and are indeed identical with the existence of the humiliated and lowly and obedient man Jesus of Nazareth. He acts as the Reconciler in that—as the true God identical with this man—He humbles Himself and becomes lowly and obedient. He becomes and is this without being in contradiction to His divine nature . . . God chooses condescension. He chooses humiliation, lowliness and obedience . . . The God of the New Testament witness is the God who makes this choice, who in agreement with Himself and His divine nature, but in what is for us the revelation of a novum mysterium, humbles Himself and is lowly and obedient amongst us . . . Granted that we do see and understand this, we cannot refuse to accept the humiliation and lowliness and supremely the obedience of Christ as the dominating moment in our conception of God.
Barth also insists:
“We have not only not to deny but actually to affirm and understand as essential to the being of God the offensive fact that there is in God Himself an above and a below, a prius and a posterius, a superiority and a subordination . . . that it belongs to the inner life of God that there should take place within it obedience . . . His divine unity consists in the fact that in Himself he is both One who is obeyed and Another who obeys.” (P.200-201).
Trevor, these are all things that are not uncontroversial. Indeed, it is as I noted what represents the riff between McCormack and Hunsinger/Molnar on a reading of Barth. But even in Barth, the Son’s free election to assume humanity is the preeminent act of grace—ie God for us.
Molnar offers a strong critique of this particular problem in Barth’s theology. Barth, because he retains the Western emphasis on the filioque and in this operates with a notion of eternal obedience of the Son, unfortunately has a whiff of subordinationism in his theology. Molnar in his second book on Barth and Divine Freedom offers the best most thorough critique of Barth here.
The only way out of this dilemma for Barth’s theology is to emphasize a strong doctrine of divine freedom as the prior to its execution in time. It is only in this way that he can maintain a Creator/creature distinction in theory. But even so, I think he still ends up collapsing the processions of God into the missions. And this is also why your claim that my comment is erroneous does not ultimately work. You haven’t yet proven how this problem with Barth’s theology—on this point—isn’t a problem. I’ve seen how McCormack attempts to get around this, again by emphasizing divine freedom in election, but I don’t think this ultimately works; and it actually falls prey to ‘natural theology’ just the same, if in fact appealing to any form of metaphysics is natural theology. I think appealing to divine freedom as McCormack must do—to present an ostensible postmetaphyscial theology—actually does commit him to a metaphysic of divine freedom that is not fully actualist in the way the Barthian might hope for. Anyway, there are complexities here that make TFT’s work far from erroneous.
What I’m after in my original post is to signal a mood I’m interested in. But that is not to say that I’m fully committed to a postmetaphysical position, because I don’t really think that’s ultimately possible; even if that’s the desire. What I do find helpful in this desire is the over-correction that it supplies towards the hyper-metaphysical accounts we get in classical theism (particularly of the medieval and ff types of classical theisms).