It is time to break my blogging fast. It is fitting, the topic of this post, because I am nearing the end of my Philosophy of Religion class at the University of Oxford (next week is the last). There is one unit left, it is on Faith, Prayer, and the Spiritual life. The class is largely populated by atheists and agnostics. The text we used for class (which was augmented by many other readings and lectures) was written by an Oxford philosopher named T. J. Mawson, Belief in God. He is a Christian theist, but a panentheist who holds to a Christian universalism. What became stoutly reinforced to me was that the god of the philosophers (or the no-god) has no correspondence with the God Self-revealed in Jesus Christ. Mawson is arguing for the existence of a philosophical Monad; a Pure Being; an Unmoved Mover; Pure Act (actus purus). Indeed, he is arguing from within an analytic philosophical key; but, nevertheless, this key is still funded by the Hellenic Monad of the classical philosophers.
Unfortunately, too much of that “key” has been pressed into the development of Christian theologies; both antique and modern. This has always been at the basis of my critique of what I have called classical Calvinism (as a riff on classical Theism). Too much of the ‘being’ that can be proven is synthesized with the God of Christian revelation, such that the God produced is something of a hybrid notion of God wherein God functions more like a philosophical monad rather than a personal and relational God of triune Self-given love, one-in-the-other as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The god of the philosophers has no place with the God who we have come to know in the face (prosopon) of Jesus Christ.
Karl Barth, observes the same thing as that has largely taken place in the ‘older orthodox theology’ of the Protestant Reformed of the 16th and 17th centuries, respectively. Indeed, what is imbibed by the orthodox, it could be said, is simply just the re-gestation of a mediaeval theology as that developed on the ‘Western front’ of the Latin church. Barth writes:
The weakness of the older orthodox theology was that in all its doctrine of the divine providence, and of the creation and man, and earlier of God and the election of grace, it believed that it could dispense with this relationship either entirely or almost entirely. It thought and spoke about the divine ruling as an idea. With all of its divergence from individual philosophical systems, its development of the concept was far too like the philosophical development of a concept. In spite of the testimonies from Scripture, it was content with what was basically a quite formal and abstract consideration of the subject. It did not make it at all clear to what it ought really to be looking at as a Christian theology, and more often than not it did not even look there, but somewhere else. This was the root of all its uncertainties and deviations, of all the dangers to which it more or less openly exposed itself as it proceeded, and above all of the insipidity or colourlessness of all its thinking to which we drew attention at the outset. The One who is described as King in Holy Scripture is acknowledged to be such, but He does not act as such. At any rate, it is not at all clear that He controls dogmatic thinking concerning Himself. At many points He seems in fact not to control it. What does control it, and what is passed off as the authority which controls the whole universe, seems rather to be the concept of a supreme being furnished with supreme power in relation to all other beings. And the credibility of what is ostensibly said about the rule of God seems to depend upon the existence of this being. With regard to this, we may say: 1 that the existence of such a supreme being is itself highly doubtful, and therefore the credibility of a doctrine of God’s rule cannot be a Christian doctrine because the God of Christian teaching is certainly not identical with that supreme being. If we are still under the shadow thrown by this twofold difficulty, it is high time that we moved away from it.[1]
I clearly concur with Barth’s last clause (and the whole passage!): “. . . it is high time that we moved away from it.”
[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3 §49 [176] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 180.
Yes it is high time that we moved away from the hybrid or cross-bred mongrel dog of a god – and began to moved towards and mutually indwell the relational
…the relational triune God “I in thou and thou in me…” whom we meet in Jesus, and see in Him by Spirit’s power.
Amen, Trevor. At a certain point enough is enough!
The mongrel pseudo ‘legal’- god does a lot of damage!
Good to be with you again, Bobby!
Simply put, Divine ruling that is understood as superintendent rather than sacrificial can in nowise be accounted as consistent with the intimate message of Scripture that is finally found enfleshed in the person of Jesus Christ, the True Face of God.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him — this one bears much fruit, for apart from me you are not able to do anything.” (John 15:5)
Good to be with you again, Bobby!
Simply put, Divine ruling that is understood as superintendent rather than sacrificial can in nowise be accounted as consistent with the intimate message of Scripture that is finally found enfleshed in the person of Jesus Christ, the True Face of God.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him — this one bears much fruit, for apart from me you are not able to do anything.” (John 15:5)
Amen Bobby!
My bewilderment is quite personal and relational. By analogy, I have a father, most of us have fathers who raised us, who loved us and disciplined us as seemed right to them at the time. They revealed themselves to us personally. Why on earth would I go to academics to bang my head with a philosophical hammer to try to logically figure out what my father is?
So too, Father has given us his Son Who Is The Image of our Father. We can know God through his chosen communication – Revelation of Himself through his Son – through all his Son’s life and communication with us.
It is strange that they would choose an idol that sees not hears not and speaks not. My heart aches (but not enough) for people who choose a two dimensional self made academic idol over The One Who formed us for Himself, and gave Himself wholly for us and to us.
Duane D
p.s. Thank You Lord that our brother is back. We value his fellowship and your Word repeated and reflected in his blogging.
Bobby, candidly, for my part, I worry when you are not around, and pray for you often!
I don’t understand how you can dispense with some of the classical categories (e.g. simplicity or impassability) without ending up with a god who’s basically a big man in the sky.
What’s that now, Julian?
I guess I am never sure what it would mean to make the kind of radical critique of Classical theism in favour of a ‘biblical approach’. I think some of those classical categories are the fundamental basic grammar of God that we need to respect. Are you suggesting that things like simplicity, or impassibility are incompatible with a scriptural view?
Are you saying that the reception of philosophical categories, unevangelized categories as it were, are the fundamental basis for thinking God? As far as a grammar, I’m unsure what led you to the impression that Barth is dispensing full on of grammar like impassibility , simplicity etc.? His doctrine of election serves as a good illustration of how he goes about evangelizing and retexting such grammars under a Christological conditioning. He does the same with impassibility and simplicity, preferring the language of Constancy instead. Have you read Barth in any significant way?
Hi Bobby, I’ve read a bit of Barth and some secondary stuff (Huntsinger etc) so I wouldn’t claim to have more than a basic understanding.
I don’t know if I would describe how, say the early Church picked up philosophical categories as “unevangalized”. After all, you could describe Barth’s critique of natural theology as simply following a Kantian paradigm.
I appreciate your description of Barth as “evangelizing and retexting such grammars under a Christological conditioning”
I was thinking of theologians after Barth who want to ascribe emotions to God because impassability is a “Platonic” concept. I think you can think of other ways that a rejection of some of these categories goes off the rails. (See the recent Hays book claiming that God changes his mind)
If you’ve written on this, I would be glad to read more
Richard, amen. Good words! Good to be back … even a month was too long 🙂 .
Duane, I think that is in fact a good analogy; in regard to our own biological familial parents. I was thinking of that one myself. It is indeed an idol of constructivist powers. To me, at this point, if folks can’t see that by now I don’t know what else to say. And thank you for the prayers I always need them!
Julian, in what way could you describe Barth’s critique of natural theology as following a “Kantian paradigm?” That is often a facile type of critique made by people who haven’t really read Barth (and I’m saying in general); like a stereotype caricature that is often trafficked among Barth’s antagonists (who haven’t invested the time in reading Barth through in any meaningful ways, that includes Van Til). But when someone actually reads Barth that is a false claim. Read Bruce McCormack in his book on Barth *Orthodox and Modern* and he rightly shows how Barth in fact flips the Kantian paradigm on its ugly head. Compare Thomas Aquinas’ synthesis of Aristotelian categories to say Irenaeus’ or Athanasius’ appropriation of the “grammar” of the philosophers and see if the difference isn’t apparent (Peter Leithart’s book on Athanasius offers a helpful treatment on how Athanasius evangelized the metaphysics of the Greeks). I have written quite a lot on this here at the blog, but don’t have the time to do a search for all the pertinent posts for you. Hays isn’t a serious theologian or even exegete in my view, so I don’t worry about folks like that so much. I might share one more post on this directly from Barth, in the following context from the passage I share from him above in CD III/3. My post is focused on Barth and how he evangelizes and uses the grammars of some of the philosophers in retexted ways (see Kenneth Oakes’ excellent treatment of this in his book on Barth and Philosophy https://growrag.wordpress.com/2018/01/14/book-review-karl-barth-on-theologyphilosophy-by-kenneth-oakes/).
Trevor, no doubt; a “mongrel” pseudo god indeed.