There is an ancient way, even a via antiqua for doing theology in the history of the Church. This fact is undeniable, and is something to praise the Lord for. But this doesn’t mean that this ancient way is the absolute and Divinely sanctioned way for doing theology. Some refer to ‘the Great Tradition of the Church’ (particularly in the West), and/or the Consensus Patrum of the Church (mostly in the East). What is being referred to are the identifiable doctrinal contours of the Church that are said to coalesce the orthodox among all traditions that make up the historic Church catholic (whether that be Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant). The Church catholic and the Great Tradition or Consensus Patrum are often thought together, such that anything that falls out of these ‘ancient’ ways are thought, at best, to be heterodox; if  not heretical. But for the Protestant the criterion for determining ‘catholicity’ is not ultimately the councils, confessions, and creeds that make up the Great Tradition of the Church; instead, for the Protestant it is the Word of God, and a robust theology of the Word by which we come to conclude whether a doctrine is catholic (universal) or not.

With the above noted, I want to get into what has become a pet-theological-project of mine. That is engaging with the issue of knowledge of God. This locus implicates how we think of the Great Tradition of the Church, and what theological method was used, by and large, to arrive at its various theological conclusions. But what I have in mind doesn’t undercut, per se, the intent of the Great Tradition; rather, it reifies it through a radical or robust theology of the Word. By now I am sure you know what I am referring to, or rather who: Karl Barth’s theological alternative to what has come to be called the analogia entis (analogy of being), particularly among the Thomist Roman Catholics, but also as that has been imbibed by contemporary Protestant Reformed theologians, which is known as the analogia fidei. Barth’s analogy of faith seeks to definitively pronounce the only way a genuine knowledge of God can obtain. He argues against Catholic forms of the ‘entis,’ by forcefully pointing out how the analogia entis, in his mind (and mine), ends up projecting creaturely modes of intellection onto transcendent and Divine reality. David Congdon writes of Barth’s critique thusly: “Barth means that metaphysics is a projection of the phenomenal onto the divine, and thus a confusion of immanence and transcendence.”[1] Barth sees a common bond between the ancient way, as developed in the scholastic theologies of both the Catholics and the Protestants, and what eventually flowered into what came to be known as ‘Liberal theology,’ most notably associated with Friedrich Schleiermacher and the tradition he spawned. Barth sees an anthropological starting point among all theological parties herein, and as such seeks to despoil this hallowed ground by offering an alternative way towards knowing God that is principially grounded in God’s explicit Self-revelation (Deus revelatus) of Himself in the special face of Jesus Christ. Barth’s analogy of faith is decidedly grounded in a patently revealed theology, rather than in the speculative theology of the ancient way currently being retrieved by many Protestant Reformed theologians in the Western Church.

Congdon offers an excellent summary of what Barth’s doctrine on analogy of faith entails, and how it is intended to dagger the analogy of being, and natural theology more broadly, with the blade of a theological frame that starts in Christ rather than in an abstract humanity and knowledge of God therefrom.

By the time he reached his mature dogmatics, however, Barth had crystallized his criticism as a protest against what he described as the analogia entis, or thinking about God in abstracto. The metaphysical concept of God is abstract in that it describes God in terms derived from general categories and having general validity, that is, in terms not derived from the particular event of God’s self-communication. Speaking about God in abstracto (according to the analogia entis) occurs whenever creation functions effectively as the norm for theological speech. This occurs principally in the employment of what Barth elsewhere identifies as the Dionysian via triplex, which attempts to derive conceptual categories for God from those that pertain to the world, whether through causal derivation, negation, or infinite elevation.[2]

In footnotes Congdon elaborates further on what Barth’s critique is getting at, and what its reference entail in regard to historical antecedents.

Barth explicitly equates the terms in abstracto and analogia entis when he says that to speak of God in abstracto is to claim that “God is knowable—knowable even without God’s revelation,” which means that one “acknowledges an analogy between God and humanity and therefore one point at which God is knowable even without God’s revelation: the analogy of being [Analogie des Seienden], namely, the analogia entis, the idea of being, in which God and humanity are in all cases comprehended together” (KD 2.1:88–89/81). In this context Barth has Roman Catholic theology in view. The subsequent part-volume on the doctrine of election levels the same charge of in abstracto God-talk against Protestant orthodoxy’s concept of the decretum absolutum. The common ground is the attempt to speak about the creator by first looking to the creature. See KD 2.2:46–53/44-50.[3]

Further:

The via triplex bases knowledge of God on any of the following three ways: (1) via causalitatis (way of causality), in which one begins with a creaturely reality and then posits a supernatural cause (God as first cause); (2) via negationis or via remotionis (way of negation or remotion), in which one begins with a human attribute and then negates it (God as infinite or impassible); and (3) via eminentiae (way of transcendence), whereby one begins with a human attribute and then raises it to the level of infinite perfection (God as omnipotent or omniscient). See Barth’s discussion of this in KD 2.1:389-91/346-48.[4]

Congdon expands further, as he more broadly places Barth’s critique into a critique of theologia naturalis or natural theology:

Barth’s comprehensive concept for the above is “natural theology” (theologia naturalis), a term he applies to both liberalism and scholasticism. In one fine-print passage he connects the two genetically by arguing that it was the very methodology of Protestant orthodoxy that led to the rise of modern liberalism, precisely because, as the “scientific consciousness after the Renaissance” demanded, the true object of theology (i.e., God) was “moved from a transcendence [Jenseits] that was genuinely opposite from the place of humanity into the sphere of humanity itself.” The loss of a genuinely transcendent god is manifest not only in orthodoxy’s talk of God ad intra above and without God’s economic actions ad extra but equally in liberalism’s talk of God in terms of human experience. From Barth’s perspective both modes of theology are determined by a general anthropological starting point and are for that reason inappropriate forms of analogous God-talk.[5]

Understand the significance of this, and you will understand my whole theological mode! This cannot be overstated enough; I find the analogy of being and natural theology to be the most fundamental point of departure we might find when thinking about what defines good theology from bad theology. This is not to say that theology done under the pressure of the analogy of being hasn’t generated any good theology, but it is to say, for my money, that as a theological prolegomena or way for doing good theology it does not provide one.

As a Protestant Christian it is exceedingly hard for me to understand how what Barth is after isn’t simply the intuitive approach. I do not understand these sorts of artificial divides that people present between theologies done under certain periods of time; as if the more ancient just is the Great Tradition in static and absolute terms, and the more modern, insofar that it might demur from the ancient, is heterodox or heretical. The theologian is interested in translating the kerygma in such a way that the pressures it works from are not determined by period-conditioned realities, per se, but rather by the weight of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ. And yet, most simply respond to critiques like Barth’s by superficially slumping back into a supposed ancient way, and never actually offer rejoinders to Barth; other than asserting, ‘oh, haha, you must be a Barthian,’ or some such nonsense. And this is why I remain ultimately dissatisfied with the theology that is mostly being done by evangelicals today. There is this attitude, which is just noted, but then there is also a posture of just ‘receiving’ a static body of tradition that has no dynamism or life to it by definition. And the only life it does have is based in the speculation of their masters, and their own wits, which really only gets them as far as their collectively bounded frontal lobes. We can construct conceptions of God all day long; we can tie those to a supposed established hierarchy of theological and intellectual development without end; but if those conceptions are not ultimately and principally based in God’s own Self-revealed knowledge of Himself; then all we end up with is an idol no different than Aaron’s Golden-Calf.

The Deus ex Machina of evangelical Protestantism will continue, and it will blithely continue on without so much of an acknowledgement of a ‘Barthian tradition.’ But it will do so to its own eternal loss. Not in the sense that justification before God is not present, but in the sense that sanctification and discipleship will be severely quenched; to the point that spiritual growth will be stunted by devotion to a conception of God that falls short by not adhering to a Self-given notion of the living God. This is why I take this so seriously. It is not merely an academic exercise to consider these things, but one that impinges on our daily Christian lives. If we get God wrong we get everything following wrong. Our knowledge of God is to be a growing and lively thing, not one settled down in a static body of knowledge that requires constant apology and assertion in order maintain its viability. Barth’s tradition, I’d argue, offers a way towards a knowledge of God that is not ultimately contingent upon Barth’s period, but instead the lively reality of the risen Christ who is present in all the centuries and millennia time immemorial. Solus Christus

[1] David W. Congdon, The Mission Of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann’s Dialectical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortess Press, 2015), 621 n. 128.

[2] Ibid., 622.

[3] Ibid., n. 130.

[4] Ibid., n. 131.

[5] Ibid., 623.