Yesterday Craig Carter tweeted the following: “The days of revising & despising CT w/o challenge are over. I’ll be arguing that the proofs are missing from much recent theology b/c of “the Barthian gambit,” i.e. the attempt to do theology w/o metaphysics & ground it in Xology alone. My conclusion: the Barthian gambit failed.”¹ I have had a couple exchanges in the past with Carter on Twitter, with reference to Barth’s theology. What stood out in those exchanges was that he is rather clueless about Barth’s theology; the newest tweet above continues to illustrate this. But Carter isn’t alone in his disregard, and even animus toward the Trinitarian theological revolution that Barth was a huge part of in the 20^th century; Katherine Sonderegger in her Systematic Theology V1, also takes aim at Barth’s supposedly errant ‘Christomonism’ when it comes to doing Christian theology. The assumption, particularly as evinced in Carter’s mis-characterization of Barth, is that Barth’s mode is purely a modern aberration with no historical or paleo antecedents; as if nobody in the history of the Church operated with the sort of Christ concentration that Barth does in his theologizing. Carter et alia want to engage in a sort of subtraction process by claiming that Barth is simply representative of a modern method of erasing the classical way of doing theology by way of imposing Kantian postmetaphysics on the whole antique gambit of theological reflection. 

But does Carter’s misunderstanding withstand critical scrutiny; that is when he isn’t able to simply appeal to his people? What Carter doesn’t understand is that Barth’s whole program, particularly his Church Dogmatics, only ever took off when he got hold of the Patristic mechanism of an/ -enhypostasis. This gave Barth a way to engage in the sort of Christ concentration that would have made Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria quite proud. Indeed, and I will use this to prove my point about Barth’s classical chops, one of Barth’s best Anglophone students, TF Torrance, developed what might be called an Athanasian stratified knowledge of God that is in lockstep with Barth’s own theory of revelation. Here’s a taste: 

The economic Trinity might well be spoken of as the evangelical Trinity and the ontological Trinity as the theological Trinity. ‘Evangelical’ in this sense refers to the truth content of the Gospel as it is revealed to us through the incarnate or human economy (ἡ ανθρώπινη οικονομία) which Christ undertook toward us, in the midst of us, and for our sakes. . . ; and’theological in this sense refers to the truth of the eternal Being and Activity of God as he is in himself, the essential Deity . . . or ‘Theology’ (Θεολογία, which Athanasius equated with divine worship). While for Athanasius economy and theology (οικονομία and Θεολογία) must be clearly distinguished, they are not to be separated from each other. If the economic or evangelical Trinity and the ontological or theological Trinity were disparate, this would bring into question whether God himself was really in Jesus Christ reconciling the world to himself. That is the evangelical and epistemological significance of the homoousion (‘consubstantial’, of one substance, or of one and the same being with the Father) formulated by the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. If there is no real bond in God between the economic Trinity and the ontological Trinity, the saving events proclaimed in the economy of the Gospel are without any divine validity and the doctrine of the Trinity is lacking in any ultimate divine truth. The trinitarian message of the Gospel tells us that the very contrary is the case, for in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit we really have to do with the Lord God himself as our Saviour. Thus, as we shall see, the designation of Jesus as ‘Lord’, ie Κύριος = YHWH, is found more than a hundred times in the New Testament Scriptures.² 

This is the sort of “Barthian gambit” that Carter bombastically claims he will be defeating in the near term. Barth is part of the Athanasian tradition of Christ concentration, just as much as is his student: TF Torrance. When Carter refers to CT (classical theism) he clearly has something nearer in focus; oh yeah: Thomas [Aquinas], and the Christian Aristotelianism that he thinks serves as a capstone for the classical theistic, so-called, tradition. But I’m afraid that what he doesn’t seem to grasp, Carter that is, is that Athansius would have been on Barth’s and Torrance’s side, and not his. You see, Athanasius understood what a rank Hellenic approach to God does to God. He understood that it didn’t actually get you to the God who is Father of the Son, but instead that it gets you to a notion of godness that is constrained by the rationalist projections of the philosophers and theologizers supposedly thinking this God. Here is how Athanasius would respond to the sort of unbridled and unevangelized Hellenic god that Carter believes classically reflects the true God: 

Therefore it is more pious and more accurate to signify God from the Son and call Him Father, than to name Him from His works only and call Him Unoriginate. For the latter title, as I have said, does nothing more than signify all the works, individually and collectively, which have come to be at the will of God through the Word; but the title Father has its significance and its bearing only from the Son. And, whereas the Word surpasses things originated, by so much and more does calling God Father surpass the calling Him Unoriginate. For the latter is unscriptural and suspicious, because it has various senses; so that, when a man is asked concerning it, his mind is carried about to many ideas; but the word Father is simple and scriptural, and more accurate, and only implies the Son. And ‘Unoriginate’ is a word of the Greeks, who know not the Son; but ‘Father’ has been acknowledged and vouchsafed by our Lord. For He, knowing Himself whose Son He was, said, ‘I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me;’ and, ‘He that has seen Me, has seen the Father,’ and ‘I and the Father are One ;’ but nowhere is He found to call the Father Unoriginate. Moreover, when He teaches us to pray, He says not, ‘When you pray, say, O God Unoriginate,’ but rather, ‘When you pray, say, Our Father, which art in heaven Luke 11:2.’ And it was His will that the Summary of our faith should have the same bearing, in bidding us be baptized, not into the name of Unoriginate and originate, nor into the name of Creator and creature, but into the Name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. For with such an initiation we too, being numbered among works, are made sons, and using the name of the Father, acknowledge from that name the Word also in the Father Himself. A vain thing then is their argument about the term ‘Unoriginate,’ as is now proved, and nothing more than a fantasy.³ 

Is Carter’s God the Arian god? No. But not because of methodology, only because of Piety. By way of methodology Carter’s God only gives us a god who is in turn a monad; a singular essence from whence the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit accidently subsist. It is Barth’s and Torrance’s and Athanasius’s God, the One known through the Son (grounded in “Xtology alone”) whom allows us to have actual ‘inner’ knowledge about Who God is. The Athanasian tradition Barth thinks from doesn’t yield a monadic god, as Carter’s necessarily does; instead, it yields a knowledge of God wherein God is God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  

Can’t wait to see how Carter defeats the Athanasian conception of God with his Arian methodology. 

 

¹ Craig Carter, Twitter.

² Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 7-8. 

³ St. Athanasius, Contra Arianos 1.9.34.