Category Archives: Analogia Fidei

Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance, The Modern Versions of Duns Scotus and William of Ockham?

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When engaging the theologians, it is an important exercise to broaden out the frame, every now and then, in order to get a greater, even critical understanding of just who we might be engaging with. This holds true for any of the theologians, including Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance (the two modern theologians who, of course, have had the greatest purchase in my life over the last, almost, two decades). In an effort to expand the scope on the way we might respectively approach Barth and Torrance, I wanted to offer some words from ecclesial intellectual historian, the late, Steven Ozment. In the following, Ozment is describing the way that 20th century, Étienne Henri Gilson, a French historian of philosophy and intellectual history, understood the impact that medieval theologian, Duns Scotus, and philosopher, William of Ockham, ostensibly had on what Gilson took to be the disruption of the pinnacle of all medieval theological acumen in the blessed work of the Angelic doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas.

After the Parisian condemnations, Gilson argued further, the work of the Franciscans Duns Scotus (ca. 1265–1308) and William of Ockham (ca. 1285–1347) further undermined the Thomist synthesis. Scotus was seen to narrow the range of scholastic speculation by finding far fewer theological truths philosophically arguable than had Aquinas and other thirteenth-century theologians. The hallmark of Scotist theology was its appreciation of God’s distance and otherness. The vast differences between God and man moved Scotus far more than areas where reason and revelation overlapped and seemed to suggest a unity of things human and divine. Will, not intellect, became the central theological category in Scotist theology; what God and man did was more basic than what they were in themselves. The primary object of faith ceased to be God as pure being (actus purus) and became God as he revealed himself to man in Scripture. And the latter required trusting acceptance from man, not rational understanding.

Gilson found in Ockham the extreme conclusion of Scotist voluntarism and covenant theology: the confinement of theology to the sphere of faith and revelation and the denial of any rationally convincing knowledge of God. “Ockham is perfectly safe in what he believes; only he does not know what he believes, nor does he need to know it.” Here, for Gilson, the divorce between reason and revelation became final and the golden age of scholasticism effectively came to an end. Faith that was content simply to believe had supplanted faith that sought full understanding.

Other scholars, sharing Gilson’s perspective, believe a natural alliance existed between Ockhamist philosophy, which denied direct rational knowledge of God, and Neoplatonic mysticism, popular in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which sought God in transrational and even arational experience. They also believe that it was not coincidental that the leader of the Protestant Reformation was a careful student of both Ockham and the German mystics.[1]

At a purely superficial level, does the reader see how what Barth and Torrance are doing sound a lot like the characteristics present in the thought of both Scotus and Ockham, respectively? Do you see how theologians like Barth and Torrance might be read as modern-day adherents of what also became known as Nominalism (i.e., what we see, loosely, in the thought-life of both Scotus and Ockham, respectively)? Indeed, some would attempt to argue that Immanuel Kant himself, and the dualism he proposed, was very much so akin to the nominalism developed by someone like Ockham. Without getting into the nitty-gritty of all of that, let it simply be noted that while someone like Barth was indeed conditioned by the impact of Kant on the modern Germanic ideational landscape, what Barth was doing, by way of the analogy of the incarnation (and thus faith), was to flip any sort of Kantian or Nominalistic dualism on its head by bringing the heavenlies into the earthlies as that obtained and concretized in the incarnate Son of God, the Man from Nazareth, the Theanthropos, Jesus Christ.

While the details of these matters go deeper than we will be able to penetrate herein (because of space and attention-span constraints), I think it is important to recognize that what we get, say, in the theologies of people like Barth and Torrance, have historical antecedents that reach much deeper into the well of historical development than many might imagine. Indeed, those who have imagined, in deeper more informed ways, would see something like what we are doing with Athanasian Reformed (Evangelical Calvinist) theology, as in contest with the Aristotelian/Thomism they believe entails the most orthodox way to be orthodox. It is possible to see, as we read Ozment’s distillation of Gilson’s critique, how the ole’ Thomist axiom of grace perfecting nature might become disjointed, indeed, destroyed if we were to follow the via moderna of the Scotuses, Ockhams, Barths, Torrances et al. of the world. They are afraid that if we follow the ‘modern way’ the whole Christian ground of knowing God by way of natural reason will be lost to the winds of the disenchanted moderns; i.e., those who don’t see a necessitarian link between God’s being, as the first cause, and the effects caused by God in the created order. As such, for the opponents of the perceived ‘modern way’, what is at stake is the loss of all theological order; is the loss of all ecclesiastical authority (even if presaged by a ‘paper pope’ instead of a ‘papal’ one). And yet theologians like Barth and Torrance, instead of grounding all of known reality in the ostensible capaciousness of the purely created order, ground such capaciousness in the in-breaking of God’s life for the world in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ (so within the “logic of grace” as TFT would identify that).

Things to ponder. I won’t attempt to tie this off here. I simply wanted to note how there is more than meets the eye when we are engaging with the theologians; even when those theologians are Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance.

[1] Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980), 15.

The Yes-and-Amen-God of the Bible versus the No-God of the Philosophers and Scholastics

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As the epitomised expression of this truth, the homoousion is the ontological and epistemological linchpin of Christian theology. It gives expression to the truth with which everything hangs together, and without which everything ultimately falls apart. The decisive point for Christian theology, and not least for the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, lies here, where we move from one level to another: from the basic evangelical and doxological level to the theological level, and from that level to the high theological level of the ontological relations in God.[1] In that movement a radical shift in the basic fabric of theological thought takes place along with a reconstruction in the foundations of our prior knowledge. This is evident not least in the fact that in formulating the homoousion of Christ in connection with both his creative and redemptive activity, Nicene theology laid the axe to the epistemological dualism latent in Greek philosophy and religion that threatened the very heart of the Gospel; and as such it gave powerful expression to the indissoluble connection in Act and Being between the economic Trinity and the ontological Trinity, between ÎżáŒ°ÎșÎżÎœÎżÎŒÎŻÎ± and ΞΔολογία, which secured the Church in its belief that in the Lord Jesus Christ and his Gospel they had to do directly with the ultimate Presence and downright Reality of God himself. Jesus Christ does for us and to us, and what the Holy Spirit does in us, is what God himself does for us, to us and in us.[1]

 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.[2]

The passage above, from Torrance, helps us dive into what the remainder of this post intends to cover; viz. how someone like Karl Barth (and TF Torrance after him) attempted to think a knowledge of God. Not a knowledge of God grounded in discursive speculation; not a knowledge of God grounded in the heights of human wisdom; not a knowledge of God latent in the created order as vestiges of the Trinity; but a knowledge of God that is genuinely and concretely provided for in God’s Self-givenness for the world in Jesus Christ. Some, particularly so-called classical theists have identified this way of knowing God as ‘modern’ ‘neo-orthodox’ or even demonic; but it is none of those. Indeed, I would contend, rather vociferously, that this way of knowing has rootage in the type of logoi theology of the Patristics; particularly, as we see that exuded in the passage from TFT. I would argue, that to think God from abstract metaphysical constructs, such as the Aristotelians, the Thomists, the social Trinitarians, the Schleiermachereans, so on and so forth do, is to engage in an industry of idolatrous manufacturing that the genuine knowledge of God came to put to death in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. Some critics of the kataphysical (or kataphatic) way for knowing God, that is the via positiva (versus the via negative) want to claim that this way entails an anti-metaphysicalism; indeed, it may well, but only in the most squeamishly understood of ways.

What is at stake in this discussion is how a theory of knowledge/revelation, one way or the other, implicates just who it is that the Christian ostensibly comes to know as the Christian God. Is the Christian going to come to think the depth dimension of God from the deep well and entryway that TFT describes for us vis-à-vis the Patristic homoousion and kerygmatic (Gospely) way; is the Christian going to think God from the way that God has freely elected to be known as Self-explicated in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ? Or is the Christian going to come to know God through the via negativa or the apophatic way for thinking God; is the Christian going to come to know God through delimiting God’s reality by circumscribing Him by the curtailments that an analogy of [human] being (analogia entis) supplies in regard to negating what it means to be human, and projecting that negation outward into a notion of godness that supposedly represents the Christian God (i.e., so the human understands themselves to be finite, they negate their finity, and presuppose that there must be a causal being who is infinite who functions as a prius to their ability to be finite etc.)?

Karl Barth, has been critiqued by the so-called self-proclaimed ‘classical’ theologians as an anti-metaphysical theologian. Indeed, Barth may well fit this characterization, but only in a highly muted way (that is, in regard to what a metaphysic could entail if understood expansively and Christ conditionally). I think Barth fits the biblical way for thinking God. As the Apostle Paul (by the Holy Spirit) has said: “For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” This theme is pervasive in the corpus of Paul, and other New Testament writers; that is, the theme of knowledge of God that is wholly grounded in God’s Self-revelation (from above) in Jesus Christ. The biblical account for knowing God is purely tied to God first knowing us, as Paul writes further: “However at that time, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God . . . .” This is the theory of a Christian knowledge of God, according to Scripture. It is not a knowledge that leads to a No-God, as Isaiah, Paul, Barth et al. discuss; but it is a theory that comes from and leads back to the Yes-and-Amen-God of the apocalyptic invasion of the living God for the world in the elect humanity of Jesus Christ. This is not a God based on speculations, or pietisms, or human angling. This is the God who was, and is, and is to come; the God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Bruce McCormack helps to detail Barth’s supposed anti-metaphysical approach to thinking God. Ultimately, I would argue that whether or not a theory of knowledge of God reaches some ad hoc high mark of metaphysical acuity is neither here nor there. Barth agrees, and thus as McCormack shows, his thinking in this regard goes thusly.

“Metaphysics”, as Barth understood it, refers to the classical attempt to provide an account for the order which a human subject observes in the world about her. Extrapolating from observed phenomena, she posits the existence of a First Cause or a First Principle. It is the rejection of this order of knowing which is in view when we speak of Barth as “anti-metaphysical”. It is important to clarify this now, for just three years later (in his Göttingen lectures on dogmatics), Barth would not hesitate to reflect upon theological themes which the nineteenth-century mind had been accustomed to regarding as “metaphysical”: the ancient Church doctrines of the immanent Trinity, the anhypostatic-enhypostatic Christology, the being and attributes of God, etc. To the vast majority of nineteenth-century theologians, these themes were “metaphysical” because they referred to alleged realities which lay beyond the limits of human knowing and therefore could only be accessed by means of the metaphysical way of knowing or by speculation. Barth was in agreement with the nineteenth-century theologians to this extent: if one were to be in a position to address the questions which arise in these regions of discourse, it would not be possible on the basis of the metaphysical way of knowing. The ground of the possibility would have to be sought elsewhere: in his view, in God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. So speak of Barth as “anti-metaphysical” refers to his attitude towards a particular way of knowing (the path taken); it does not entail the bracketing-off of particular regions of discourse from discussion in an a priori fashion. Indeed, Barth would always be convinced that an anti-metaphysical stance in theology was thoroughly compatible with the consideration o the themes just enumerated.

The significance of Barth’s anti-metaphysical attitude for an understanding of Romans II is this: Barth has been convinced for some time that the way taken by a person who seeks to know God will, to a large extent, determine the kind of God one arrives at, or even whether what is arrived at is God at all. In Romans II, he took great pains to show that what was typically understood as God in the theology of his time was, in reality, the ‘No-God’ of this world. Seen within the range of possible conceptions arising naturally out of human capacities for knowledge, what is understood under the name “God”:

is always only a something in contrast to another something, a pole in opposition to a counter-pole, a magnitude next to other magnitudes, a yes in relation to a no; not, however, the Either which has already overcome the Or, not the Yes which lies beyond yes and no, not the power of the reversal from death to life. . . . For God who is a something in contrast to something else, a pole over against a counter-pole, yes against no, the God who is not the completely free, unique, superior, victorious God, is the no-God, the God of this world.

More than any other human possibility, Barth argues, it is religion which is responsible for creating the dualism of the here and the beyond. But God is not ‘the beyond’. God is not the ‘elongation of nature into a super-nature or a behind-nature (metaphysics)’. The being of God lies beyond what we naturally think of as the here (Diesseits) and the beyond (Jenseits). ‘God is not accidental, conditioned, bound to the opposition of here and there, but rather the pure negation, and therefore the beyond of the “here” and the “beyond”. . .’ . God stands beyond all this-worldly polarities, contrasts, or dualisms, whether they be nature and spirit, materiality and ideality, body and soul, or finite and infinite. God is not the Infinite! The Infinite is only a projection; it is the finite, stripped of all its limitations and projected on to a higher being. But because it is a projection, it always remains inseparably bound to the finite as its antithesis, its mirror opposite. It is not the absolutely free and creative Origin of all things. God is the Eternal, not the Infinite; the Origin, not the First Cause set next to and in a series with other causes; the Creator of all things, visible and invisible. ‘God stands over against humankind as Origin, not as Cause. . . . The human individual in his existence and being is always created; not somehow only conditioned but rather, together with everything which conditions and can condition him (and even if it should be called “God”) created. In other words, everything which can only condition us is still only a created reality like unto ourselves and therefore, to the extent that it is called “God”, is only the No-God of this world. In following Barth’s relentless pursual of this theme, it becomes clear that his purpose is to locate God beyond the realm of any and every conceptuality readily available to us, whether through a via negativa or a via eminentiae or a via causalitatis. The being of God lies on the far side of the ‘line of death’ which separates the world of time, things, and people, together with every conceptuality bound to it, from the eternal.[3]

These matters might seem heady to some, but they are of the upmost import when we consider the implications of getting God wrong. Syncretism has always plagued the people of God, as far back as the Garden of Eden and onward. We trick ourselves if we imagine that just because there might be a long traceable line of interpretive tradition vis-à-vis a knowledge of God, as that has unfolded in the various periods of Christian theological development, that somehow these developments represent a concursus Dei, a causal act of God behind them. But this way of thinking God in a God-world relation is to impose our speculations of how God must be acting simply because the “natural” history of ideational development has turned to and fro in the here and there of what is historically. But that is not how God has revealed Himself to humanity. God has disrupted the “natural order of things,” by the invasion and thus irruption of His gracious and otherworldly life for the world in Jesus Christ. If this is the case, then to think God biblically, must be to think God from the Bible’s res (reality) in Jesus Christ. This way of thinking God, definitionally, is not subject to the machinations of an abstract humanity, thinking speculative thoughts, about a supposed pure being (actus purus) up yonder in the nether regions of space.

More could be said, as it always can be. But I think it is best for us to simply recognize, as Christians, that the God we know is the Yes-and-Amen-God of God’s inner triune life for us in the eternal Logos, the eternal Son become human, that we, by this Grace might become what He is as adopted sons and daughters of the living God. We ought to, in kind then, just say no to the No-God constructed out of the shadowy and wistful constructions of the abstract human imagination.

 

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 95.

[2] The Holy Spirit and Apostle Paul, Galatians 1.11-12: New American Standard Bible 1995.

[3] Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 246–48.

The Relationship of Natural Science to Theological Science in the Thought of TF Torrance

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Here is some TF Torrance on the way he thinks the natural sciences and theological science might relate; might even complement each other from their own distinctive verities.

. . . theological science and natural science have their own proper and distinctive objectives to pursue, but their work inevitably overlaps, for they both respect and operate through the same rational structures of space and time, while each develops special modes of investigation, rationality, and verification in accordance with the nature and the direction of its distinctive field. But since each of them is the kind of thing it is as a human inquiry because of the profound correlation between human knowing and the space-time structures of creation, each is in its depth akin to the other . . . natural science and theological science are not opponents but partners before God, in a service of God in which each may learn from the other how better to pursue its own distinctive function . . ..[1]

But to be clear, TFT was not a proponent of a natural theology; just the opposite, he was a proponent of an analogy of faith, whereby theological knowledge is only available by evangelical encounter with the risen and ascended Christ by the Spirit. He maintained that knowledge of God was purely kataphysical (according to the nature of the revelation) in Christ’s coming and presencing among us. It is only as we come into union with Christ that a genuine knowledge of God can obtain; only from a center of God in Christ for us. This is an aspect of Jesus’ mediatorial and priestly role for us, as He mediates God’s life to us, through His divine life, and mediates humanity’s life before God, as the fully and archetypal human; firstborn from the dead.

[1] Paul Molnar citing Thomas Torrance’s, The Ground and Grammar of Theology, in, Thomas F. Torrance: Theologian of The Trinity, 24.

The Miracle of the Gospel against Worldviewism

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When we think of ‘worldview’ as an analytic tool, in order to categorize various belief systems worldwide, we often think, as Christians, that we have a spot in that type of indexing. But I am not ultimately a proponent of thinking of the Christian reality in the philosophical terms presupposed for thinking in terms of a worldview. Even so, insofar as this discipline of intellection goes, it can be helpful in at least providing a sense of order in regard to thinking about the various juxtapositions of the various ‘belief systems’ that populate the world, and its peoples. But at the same time, when the Christian gets into the ‘meatier’ things what ought to become evidently clear is that the Christian reality, who is the Christ and the triune God, are incapable of being subject to the sociological strictures used to adjudicate belief systems. The Christian reality gets behind such maneuvers; it is basic to the very fabric of seen and unseen reality; it has no analogues in the created order; it is a miracle of sui generis and novum magnitude.

For the remainder of this article, I want to provide a good word from Karl Barth on the problem that thinking about the Christianity reality, in terms of worldview, presents the Christian with. This type of thinking might contradict dearly held beliefs about the very structure of reality, for some. But I think that what Barth is getting at is, indeed, the most faithful telling the Christian can hear in regard to thinking about both protology and eschatology with reference to their center in Jesus Christ. What will be observed, as I develop this a bit further, is the primordial nature of the Christian reality; such that its reality has no competitors, as if in a dualistic duel.

Robert Dale Dawson writes, with reference to Barth’s theology of the resurrection, and the primal significance and reach such theology has towards Barth’s thinking.

A large number of analyses come up short by dwelling upon the historical question, often falsely construing Barth’s inversion of the order of the historical enterprise and the resurrection of Jesus as an aspect of his historical skepticism. For Barth the resurrection of Jesus is not a datum of the sort to be analyzed and understood, by other data, by means of historical critical science. While a real event within the nexus of space and time the resurrection is also the event of the creation of new time and space. Such an event can only be described as an act of God; that is an otherwise impossible event. The event of the resurrection of Jesus is that of the creation of the conditions of the possibility for all other events, and as such it cannot be accounted for in terms considered appropriate for all other events. This is not the expression of an historical skeptic, but of one who is convinced of the primordiality of the resurrection as the singular history-making, yet history-delimiting, act of God.[1]

Dawson sets us up to read Barth well with reference to the problems that world-view presents its would-be practitioners with. The reader will notice how Dawson’s description of Barth’s thinking of “the primordiality of the resurrection as the singular history-making, yet history-delimiting, act of God” dovetails nicely with Barth’s thoughts in general, with regard to thinking the Evangel in the terms that world-view presupposes.

Barth writes at length:

. . . We conclude this introductory consideration with an observation which in the light of this applies to the Christian doctrine of creation as a whole.

Its theme is the work of God which is characterised by the fact that—because the covenant is its basic purpose and meaning and God in Jesus Christ is the Creator—it is divine benefit. The character of its theme, established in this way, is what distinguishes the Christin doctrine of creation from all the so-called world-views which have emerged or may conceivably emerge in the spheres of mythology, philosophy and science. It differs from all these by the fact that it is based on God’s revelation. But this is not merely a formal difference. It is also material. The Christian doctrine of creation does not merely take its rise from another source. It also arises very differently from all such world-views. It not only has a different origin, but has a different object and pursues a different course. The divine activity which is its object can never become the theme of a world-view.

The truth of this assertion is seen at once from the fact that none of the world-views so far known to us has attained to the concept of creation by following to the end the way from noetics to ontology and genesology, but has usually remained stuck either in noetics or at most in ontology. The philosophical equivalent for the theological idea of divine creation would have us to be at least that of a pure and basic becoming underlying and therefore preceding all perception and being. But the world-views normally take their point of departure within the circle of perception and being, subject and object, and are content to describe it according to the relationships determined by a particular view, the variations and differences, progressions and retrogressions, between the individual systems being so great that on the one hand the universe seems to be more like a great thought, and on the other more like a great machine. In some cases the basic problem of becoming, the question of the whence of the universe, whether it be conceived as thought or machine, is not even noticed but naively ignored. In others it is not overlooked but consciously left open, with a resigned or emphatic assertion of its inherent unanswerability. In others again there may be an attempt to answer it, but only in the form of a geneseologically deepened noetics or ontology, so that it is not really answered but only distorted. For the problem of becoming as opposed to that of knowledge or being is a new and independent problem which cannot be answered by any interpretation of knowledge and being and their mutual relationship. It must be viewed independently if it is to escape the suspicion that it has not really been viewed at all.[2]

The reader might better be informed now, at the very least, as to why Barth rejects the discipline and categorization that world-view offers as an analytic tool; at least in regard to thinking the Christian reality. I am, once again (surprise!), in agreement with Barth on this. His rejection of worldview thinking, of course, fits well with his rejection of natural theology; indeed, his rejection of natural theology naturally (pun intended) leads to a rejection of thinking in terms of worldviews.

When it comes to the evangelistic task (gift), personally, I make use of whatever tools seem necessary for that particular engagement. Speaking in terms of worldviews, initially, might be helpful towards grabbing some sort of intellectual footing among the people we are seeking to reach for Christ. But for me, really, the better way is to go the way of Barth; at least when proclaiming the Gospel to people. People (all of us) need to be confronted with the unapologetic and weightiness of the living God; that’s what a genuine presentation of the Gospel does (and comes with). It is the ‘natural man’ who wants to reason their way to whatever they want to reason themselves to. But the Gospel, and its eternal reality, is not natural. The Gospel is supranatural even as it comes veiled in the natural of the human body. It is in this way, on the analogy of the incarnation, that the Gospel (God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ; for ‘revelation is reconciliation’) is in the world, but not of it. God is genuinely and fully human in Christ, but human in the sense that He is, in Christ, the archetype, the firstborn of creation, humanity (cf. Col 1.15). He is the One for the many. Even this movement itself, its unilateral ingress, ought to show the seeker the Way, the order of God; indeed, the order of the Gospel itself. The order, as Dawson, with reference to Barth, and Barth himself have shown is of a primordial nature vis-à-vis the creation (and re-creation) of the world. There is no “worldview” that can account for that since the world has no view without first being created and re-created ex nihilo, as it were, in and from the resurrection of God in the humanity of Jesus Christ. Worldviewism can attempt to give account for these heights via propositions and generalizations, but the Gospel itself ultimately resists such attempts; the Gospel represents, to use philosophical jargon: the scandal of particularity. The claim of the Gospel is that there is only One living God, and that He is for us, for the world in Jesus Christ. The claim of the Gospel is that Christ alone is the way, the truth, and the life; that is the primordiality of the whole thing. The Gospel, and all of its implications, is the MIRACLE.

[1] Robert Dale Dawson, The Resurrection in Karl Barth (UK/USA: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007), 13.

[2] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/1 §42 The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 335-36.

‘The Father’s Theology’: An evangelical theology versus a philosophical theology

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I am a proponent of an evangelical theology. ‘Evangelical’ in the sense that the starting point for theology, I contend, ought to be the Evangel or Gospel Hisself. This is contrary to the philosophical, or hard metaphysical theologies that have characterized much of the Western tradition’s theologizing for centuries (i.e., we could think of Thomas Aquinas all the way into Nietzsche et al.) An ‘evangelical theology’ is a kerygmatic theology; particularly when we understand that the kerygma is the pronouncement and announcement that Jesus is Lord. It is a theology of the Father who declares, “this is my dearly beloved Son, hear Him!”

Eberhard JĂŒngel gets at these matters in the following way:

These two tasks, to learn to think God and thought anew, cannot be separated from one another theologically. It is therefore all the more important from which of the two tasks one approaches the other one. This question, which requires initial clarification, is in actual fact the issue of the self-understanding of theology itself. The first decision to be made will have to do with the difference between philosophical and evangelical theology. A theology which is responsive to the gospel, meaning a theology which is responsive to the crucified man Jesus as the true God, knows that it is fundamentally different from something like philosophical theology in this one thing: single-mindedly and unswervingly, based on its specific task, it attempts to think God from the encounter with God, and thus to think thought anew. For Christian theology, the decision about what thought means is to be made in relation to the possibility of thinking the God who is an event. The possibility of thinking God is, for evangelical theology, not an arbitrary possibility, but rather a possibility already determined by the existence of the biblical texts and claimed already by faith in God. Theology must think God in the concrete context of a history which, beyond the momentary aspect of the “I think,” implies experiences of God which have happened and are promised.

Evangelical theology is distinguished from philosophy in that it does not desire to be lacking in presuppositions, but rather implies certain decisions in its approach to being evangelical theology. A dialogue with philosophical theology, which is really conceivable only as an argument, or a disputation with atheism, must begin accordingly with the exposition of these hermeneutical decisions of evangelical theology. Only in this way does it proceed in a precise and scientific fashion. And above all, this is the only way for it to be honest.

Evangelical theology explicates its basic decisions immediately as decisions of thought, and not solely as decisions of faith. There is a difference whether faith believes or whether thought also understands this. When thinking becomes involved with faith, it will also understand that God cannot be thought without faith. That is the initial point from which evangelical theology proceeds.[1]

Ultimately, as Juengal intones, a genuine evangelical theology is really grounded in the concrete and blood of the cross of Jesus Christ; it is a theology of the cross versus a theology of glory (i.e., philosophical theology). This is the type of theology I am a proponent of. It makes a decision to be grounded in the “hard teaching” of Jesus Christ, and to begin its theologizing only after God has spoken, and not in some sort of artifactual antecedents discovered by a profane humanity and history (i.e., philosophical theology). So, it isn’t a theology of inherent self-possession, as if postlapsarian humanity has the vestiges of an analogy of God left to them. An evangelical theology understands and takes seriously the reality that humanity, after the fall, lost all capability to think and speak God. It understands that a theology that attempts to think God, prior to encountering God in the face of Jesus Christ, can only conclude in constructing a notion of God that is ultimately a projection of the fallen self; a Superman even. Further, it understands that its theology is one of dispossession and ecstasy, in the sense that it is fully contingent upon God, unilaterally, encountering us, as event, afresh anew, by the Holy Spirit’s fresh breath hovering over us with the re-creation power of the resurrection. The only stability in an evangelical theology is grounded in the subject of theology, who is the Christ and the triune God. Evangelical theology has a vulnerability to it that is willing to be considered foolish and weak; that is based in a God willing to be misunderstood as a mere mortal, hidden in the flesh of a man from Nazareth.

I commend to you an evangelical rather than a philosophical theology. The Gospel is the power of God. The Gospel disrupts and reorientates humanity’s telos towards the God who has spoken in Jesus Christ. The Gospel is dynamic, organic, and relational. Just be an evangelical theologian already, and leave the philosophy to the philosophers.

[1] Eberhard JĂŒngel, God as the Mystery of the World, trans. by Darrell L. Guder (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf&Stock [reprint], 1983), 154.

The Absence of God and the Rejection of the Self-Projected God: A Word to the Atheists and Theologians Alike

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I happen to believe this. So, what do I happen to believe, you ask? That atheists, when they say they reject God, aren’t rejecting the living God because they can’t without first knowing God; and they can’t first know the living and real God without the Spirit; and if they had the Spirit they would be a Christian; but since they don’t have the Spirit they aren’t Christians; and thus have no capacity to reject the real God. They instead only have the capacity to reject a god who is really just a projection of themselves; no matter how many Christians they are surrounded by. Even if they can intellectually “know” about the God Christians claim to know, they themselves cannot make this claim since the Spirit is required to know this God; to have eyes to see and ears to hear His voice. Since they are not this capacious, they may well be atheists; but they are atheists only insofar that they are rejecting the gods that the philosophers and they themselves have projected. If my premise seems tautologous, it is; but only insofar as God is the beginning and end of the circle. Barth agrees with me when he writes:

The God whose existence or manifestness they doubt or deny is not God at all. And so too His absence, as they think they should assert it, is not God’s absence at all. In order to be aware of God’s absence they would first of all have to know God and therefore God’s revelation. All general intellectual difficulties and impossibilities respecting knowledge of so-called supernatural things assert nothing at all in face of the negation of all other knowability of God which is achieved by God’s revelation itself. God does not belong to those supernatural things which may be believed and asserted to-day, doubted and denied to-morrow. And so, the difficulties and impossibilities respecting knowledge of these things, which the sceptic and atheist fancy they should take so very seriously, have nothing whatever to do with the hiddenness of God for man or man’s blindness for God. The seriousness of the fact that God is not free for us, not to be possessed, first begins with the revelation which delimits this fact, yet also illumines and confirms it in its factuality.[1]

This has tacit relationship to Anselm’s fides quarens intellectum (‘faith seeking understanding’), but is also a bit distinct. Barth’s point here is more publically critical than that. It is more in line with Ludwig Feuerbach’s critique of cultural religionists who worship a god of their own self-projection; it is a constructively critical appropriation of that line of thought.

This has impact on a variety of things, one of which is the way we as Christians engage with non-Christians. As an evangelist it makes me think I shouldn’t be in the business of proving God’s existence to atheists or agnostics, but instead simply proclaiming the Gospel to them which is the power of God. Indeed, this sort of anti-natural-theological/law thinking kicks against the North American evangelical sub-culture in some stinging ways. But then, on the positive side, in the same sub-culture there is this sort of emphasis on simply proclaiming the Gospel to whoever will hear, and allow the seed to fall where it will.

Barth’s critique does indeed have implication towards the way the Christian theologian does their theologizing; no doubt. It is a matter of where the theologian starts their theologizing. Thomas Torrance and Barth were of a piece when it comes to this, even if the way they emphasized certain things made them sound a little different one from another when it comes to a natural theology. Nonetheless, they both are theologians of the analogia fidei or analogy of faith tradition; the tradition that grounds knowledge of God in God Revealed and then given to and for us in the vicarious humanity of Christ in and through the faith of Christ which is the basis for our knowledge of God. We can also pick up entailments of Calvin’s ‘faith as knowledge of God’ in both Barth and Torrance in this instance. These are important things that continue to run over the heads of many theologians in the current evangelical climate. They simply go on their merry-way, and act as if such things really don’t matter; they continue to engage in a textus receptus way of theology, wherein they simply see themselves as inheritors of a by-gone Protestant theology that represents, for them, the only genuine way to be an orthodox, conservative, evangelical theologian. But they are wrong. And more significantly, what is of ultimate import, beyond figuring out if we are in line with an ad hoc conception of who the orthodox are or aren’t, is to simply be focused on doing theology that is most proximate to the Gospel reality itself. In other words, who cares, ultimately, what the genetics are; the Gospel itself is the only genealogy that really matters.

Anyway, atheists, theologians, and all of us ought to be wary of thinking we can have a genuine knowledge of God apart from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. We ought to start everything from that point or not start at all.

 

[1] Barth, CD I/1 §13, 28.

classical Calvinists (and Arminians) Don’t Actually Affirm Total Depravity

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I just wrote the following, off the top, as a long Tweet; take it for what it’s worth.

It’s ironic when you think about it: classical Calvinists claim to be strident proponents of a doctrine of total depravity. But when you actually look at the historical ideational development there, what you get from them is a Thomist intellectualist anthropology. This entails that the intellect is the defining component of what defines a human being as a human being in a faculty psychology. The classical Calvinist (and Arminian), following Aquinas and Aristotle, requires that at the time of the fall the intellect and will remain intact, and only tarnished; and that the affections (or emotions) are what fell in the eating of the forbidden fruit. They need the intellect to remain intact, at some level, in order for the chain of being between themselves and the Big intellect or brain in the heavens (God) to have analogous connection, insofar that human beings are effects and images of their final cause in and from the pure being of God. It is upon this basis, i.e., the radical interconnectivity between God as the cause, and everything else, in a hierarchical chain of order, that is put into effect by the primary cause of God, wherein a knowledge of God, by way of natural and intellectual means (so, natural law/theology) can be appealed to by both the Catholic and Post Reformed orthodox theologians. And so, their actual doctrine of total depravity isn’t ultimately an accurate depiction of what someone might think. Humanity remains humanity after the fall insofar that they are connected to their primary cause by way of analogous intellects. As such, humanity, in this frame, maintains a point of contact with God through the intellectual prowess. After the fall what fallen humanity needs isn’t ultimately re-creation (from actual death to life), but a medicine of grace wherein nature is once again perfected to its original perfection in God. This is why it can be effectively argued that Post Reformed orthodoxy offers a semi-Pelagian soteriology, just as much as the Catholic system does (they are of apiece).

Barth, on the other hand, rejected this type of intellectualist anthropology, and maintained what you’d think a doctrine of total depravity would entail. Viz., that humanity, after the fall (and even before), has nothing inherent in itself to make connection with God; i.e., nothing natural, so to speak. As such, it requires an absolute re-creation of humanity, in the vicarious humanity of Christ, in order for there to be a correspondence, or analogy of relation, between God and humanity (contra the analogy of being and natural theology). Humanity comes to have a correspondence for knowledge of God, insofar that Christ re-creates that for us in His resurrected and ascended humanity; and in His humanity come and coming.

 

God Alone is Good

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17 And as he was setting out on his way, one individual ran up and knelt down before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do so that I will inherit eternal life?” 18 So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.’” 20 And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have observed from my youth.” 21 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: Go, sell all that you have, and give the proceeds to the poor—and you will have treasure in heaven—and come, follow me.” 22 But he looked gloomy at the statement and went away sorrowful, because he had many possessions. -Mark 10:17-22

“No one is good except God alone.” Ponder that, think about it. I have been lately, it’s the premise of the whole thing. If we are going to see God, we must likewise be good. But we are creatures, and fallen creatures at that. How are we supposed to bridge the gap between God, who alone is good and Holy, and we ourselves, who are fallen and sinful human beings? We somehow have to come to have ‘eyes to see and ears to hear’ the Holy face and voice of God.

Humans are worshipping beings by design. Born into a fallen and ruptured state with the living God, we think ourselves to be all knowing gods, and this by nature. God alone is good according to Jesus. If we are to see and hear God, we must also be good. Good not in the sense of relatively good (i.e., compared to our neighbors), but good in the absolute sense; like God. This is the only avenue that leads to being able to see God in His fullness, and not die.

Many in the world falsely comfort themselves with the idea that: “I’m not that bad, I’m a good-hearted person etc.” But where does the notion of good even come from for such people; where do they derive their notion of goodness from? For people in the culture, writ large, goodness, as alluded to above, is largely derived from what counts as good in their own eyes. They look around at people who are “worse” than them, societally speaking, and conclude from their that they are a relatively good person. Even if that’s the case it still doesn’t explain where the notion of goodness comes from in the first place.

Some natural theologians would appeal to the idea of natural law, natural theology, general revelation, and conscience to explain how people seemingly just have some flickering notion of what goodness is. But I protest (surprise!) I would argue that the notion of goodness that Jesus has in mind is of another world, the world He came to mediate us into; as He came into the far country of His fallen creation as one of us. In other words, as we read above, Jesus’ interlocutors, as a matter of simple and seemingly self-evident engagement with Jesus, simply presumed to call Him ‘good.’ But He knew they were doing so based on superficial appearances, by what they could see with their own eyes. He knew that they couldn’t see the depth dimension of goodness, like He could as the Son of God. And it was this goodness that He was calling people to, a goodness that can only obtain as the heart of stone is replaced with the living heart of flesh that Christ alone formed for them, for us in His resurrected humanity. What Jesus was telling them, telling us, is that there is an alien (relative to us) goodness that can not be perceived by the human mind alone; that there must be an irruption, an in-breaking from the heavens if human beings are to experience goodness as it really is in the triune God.

Hence, there is nothing ‘natural’ about goodness according to Jesus. Goodness doesn’t underwrite this world system, nor any of its children. Goodness can only be encountered as a person is confronted by God’s goodness for them in Jesus Christ. So, the idea of a natural theology, a general revelation, or a conscience funding some sort of abstract or general notion of goodness is confounded. According to Jesus, God is good, and the only way this can be known is through Jesus. Even in the account we are looking at in Mark, ironically, it is Jesus telling his questioners that the goodness they thought they knew was more than flesh deep. That goodness is more than humanity alone can imagine; that goodness must break into this world afresh anew, each and every moment, by the Holy Spirit’s Christ conditioned ministry for the world; that goodness isn’t something any human being possesses, but can only become possessed by as the Holy Spirit comes to reside in them, and He unioning them, us to the goodness of God in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ (who is God for us enfleshed).

This is why Christian witness is so significant. The world has a sense of goodness not because it is something inherent to them, to the ‘natural’ universe. The world has a sense of goodness because God broke into this world in Jesus Christ, and revealed Himself to the world; even while ‘hidden’ in the flesh of a man of sorrow acquainted with grief. It is the Christian witness that serves as the Light to the world, that Christ is risen and God is good. But as is typical of the world, and those Christians who subscribe to natural knowledge of God, this reality of God’s goodness, as given in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, and in the Christian witness to Christ, is abstracted and collapsed into a notion of goodness that they discovered. And it is this notion of goodness that gets superimposed onto a natural construction of godness through which people come to have control over God; that they are then able to make Him a predicate of their wills, their desires, their suppositions about metaphysics, so on and so forth.

Jesus came to tell the world that this notion of goodness, one abstracted by the human mind (by whatever means, and under whatever conditions) is false. His interlocutors presumed to know what ‘good’ entails, but Jesus clearly confounded them by pointing them to God alone as the circumscription of what goodness is. He pointed away from Himself, only for the Father, by the Spirit, to point back to Him and say: “this is my dearly beloved Son, hear Him!” This is how the triune God operates, by finding their life in their relationship with the other; this is God’s oneness in action. Likewise, our life, and the goodness therein can only come to be known and lived as we look away from ourselves, and look upward to God, as He has made a way for that in and through Christ’s vicarious eyes for us. As we participate in this vision, in this life, we can bear witness to genuine goodness, to the living God, and provide the salt the world needs to come to have the flavor of heaven it needs to “taste and see that God is good.”

 

All You Ever Wanted to Know about Barth’s Analogy of Faith

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The Deus absconditus (‘hidden God’) is the Deus revelatus (‘revealed God’) in Jesus Christ. But how do we know this? Because Jesus said so; He demonstrated so. A genuine Christian theologian isn’t given to fits of speculation about godness. A genuine Christian theologian is definitionally such simply by the confession that they are Christian. But much of this has gone by the wayside in the development of dogma in the catholic Church. In Latin theology for example, where Thomas Aquinas has been canonized, for both the Catholic and Protestant theologian alike, the method for developing a doctrine of God is based in speculation, and an analogia entis (‘analogy of being’). But this kicks against the premise of Scripture itself. Holy Scripture is Holy without proof. In other words, God just shows up in Scripture. He says I AM. Likewise, Jesus says: I AM. This represents the character or ethos of a genuine Christian theology. That is, the Christian knower of God only knows who (and even what) God is by way of God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. It is as the Christian comes into union with Christ by the Spirit that they come to have a genuine ground for thinking who God is; that is, a ground grounded in Godself for us in Jesus Christ. In other words, in this frame of relation, the Christian can think and know God concretely as they have been granted eyes to see and ears to hear from Christ’s vicarious eyes and ears for us in His mediating humanity. It is here that the Christian theologian can know, think, and speak God. It is in this Holy and sanctified ground where the Christian’s knowledge of God isn’t based in a center in themselves (and thus a speculative, discursive model), but from the center of God for us in Jesus Christ.

The aforementioned is what characterizes Karl Barth’s way for thinking and doing Christian theology. For Barth, and for me, the centraldogma of Christian theology is Jesus Christ. We know this because in the Dominical teaching Jesus says that the ministry of the Holy Spirit, who inhabits the Christian’s heart now as a guarantee, is radically Christ concentrated. The Holy Spirit isn’t given to fits and flights of speculation of an abstract notion of godness; nein, the Holy Spirit’s sole ministry is to push us deeper and deeper into the words and reality of Jesus Christ. It is from whence that the Holy Spirit comes alongside, hovers about, and comforts us. Not by pointing us to an actus purus (‘pure being’) notion of God, but pointing us to the Son of the Father (see Jn 14—16).

With the above in mind lets read along with Bruce McCormack as he describes Barth’s approach to knowledge of God, which is both a terminological analogia relationis (‘analogy of relation’) and analogia fidei (‘analogy of faith’).

. . . Beintker says, ‘the Denkform of the analogia relationis sive proportionalitatis, which sets forth a correspondence between the God-human relation and the human-human relation, forms a constant in Barth’s work from the time the Tambach lecture on.’[1]

The crucial passage appealed to in order to confirm this view is this: ‘The human being does indeed do something corresponding, parallel, analogical in her own creaturely sphere of being in view of that which God does in His, in that He reveals Himself.’.. . What is at stake in this passage is indeed an analogical relation between divine speaking in the act of revelation and human knowing in the act of faith. Beintker is right to see in this an example of what Barth would later call the analogia fidei. It must be pointed out that the Göttingen Prolegomena only came into Beintker’s possession as he was correcting the final draft of his book for publication. Had he had the earlier version of the prolegomena, he would have had to adjust his thesis slightly, placing the first instance of the analogia fidei in 1924 rather than 1927—as he himself implicitly acknowledges through the provision (in the final draft) of the parallel passage in Unterricht to the one just quoted.[2]

McCormack continues:

The ‘analogy of faith’ refers most fundamentally to a relation of correspondence between an act of God and an act of a human subject; the act of divine Self-revelation and the human act of faith in which that revelation is acknowledged. More specifically, the analogy which is established ins a revelation event is an analogy between God’s knowledge of Himself and human knowledge of Him in and through human concepts and words. There are three aspects of this analogy which need to be highlighted. First, the analogy in question is not posited with creation. It is not an analogy between the being of Creator and the being of the creature—which Barth refers to as an analogia entis in contrast to an analogia fidei. The focus here is not being but rather a highly concrete event: the event of revelation. Second, there is nothing in the being or knowing of the human subject which helps to bring this event about—no capacity or pre-understanding which might be seen as a necessary precondition to its occurrence. The only capacity needed for the analogy is one which God Himself graciously provides in the event itself as a gift, namely faith. In the event of revelation, human knowledge is made by grace to conform to its divine object. Thus (the reader will forgive an overused metaphor, but it is good Barthian language), the direction in which the analogy works is always ‘above to below’. That is to say, God’s Self-knowledge does not become analogically related to a prior human knowledge of Him in revelation; rather, human knowledge is conformed to His. God’s act is the analogue, ours is the analogate; His the archetype, ours the ectype. Third, the ‘analogy of faith’ is to be understood ‘actualistically’, that is, strictly as an event. The relation of correspondence which is established in the revelation-event endures. Thus, the ‘analogy of faith’, once realized, does not pass over into human control. It must continue to be effected moment by moment by the sovereign action of the divine freedom if it is to be effected at all.

The central area of theological reflection to which this understanding of analogy was applied by Barth is that of the relation of the content of revelation to human language (concepts and words). Barth’s view is that human language in itself has not capacity for bearing adequate witness to God. If human language is nevertheless able to bear witness, it will only be because a capacity not intrinsic to it has been brought to if from without. But that is grace, not nature. In a gracious and sovereign act, God takes up language of human witnesses and makes it to conform to Himself. God must therefore speak when spoken of by human witnesses if such witness is to reach its goal. He must reveal Himself in and through the ‘veil’ of human language. It is at this point that the inherently dialectical character of the analogia fidei is seen.[3]

There are many trails we could take out of this concise explication on Barth’s analogia relationis-fidei, but let me highlight just a couple. The basic premise of Barth’s et al. understanding of the analogia fidei versus an analogia entis is anthropological; but of course, as is typical with Barth, anything that is anything in theology is first and always Christological. What is underwriting Barth’s doggish commitment to his ‘analogy of faith’ is the biblical teaching of a radical human depravity. You will notice that as McCormack was sketching these things for us, he kept pressing that in Barth’s theology God acts both sovereignly and unilaterally for us; if He didn’t, then knowledge of God left to our own machinations could only conclude in idolatry. So, for Barth (for me) there is no ‘grace perfecting nature’ or ‘revelation perfecting reason,’ there is only the impossible possibility that has actualized in the event of God’s free choice to Self-reveal for us in Christ. In Barth, as we also observed in McCormack’s development, there is nothing inherent to natural humanity (because of the fall) that could correspond, even analogously, to a knowledge of who and what God is; again, such endeavor could only end in an idolatry of self-projection. This is key, when considering Barth’s thinking on his ‘analogy of faith’: i.e., human language in itself, or by nature (precisely because of the fall) has been lobotomized to the point that it can only operate in sub-human ways. As such, when a ‘natural’ person, such as the classical philosophers, attempt to think God, all they can do is build a construct based on negation; all they can do is look within, negate their obvious finity, and then posit that God must be humanity’s opposite and thus infinite so on and so forth.

Hopefully, if you were wondering about these things, this post has cleared it up for you.

[1] Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909—1936 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 10 n. 32.

[2] Ibid., 10-11 n. 33.

[3] Ibid., 16-18.

Against Speculative Scholastic Theologies: For Confessional Cruciform Theologies

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Being a genuine Christian theologian starts at the point that we become Christians. The same confession made to become a Christian, is the same confession that remains as the ground of our theological witnesses as Christians. The fact of our sin never leaves us. We are constantly sinning, and the person who says otherwise “is a liar and the truth is not in them.” But the Good News, indeed, is that we have an Advocate with the Father; we have a Savior, and His name is Jesus Christ! This is the ground of all Christian theologizing; the only other ground is unbelief. And as Jesus chides the Pharisees of in the Gospel of John, it is seeking the praise of others, rather than God’s praise, that is the core of unbelief. And so, for the true Christian theologian they will always remember that they sin daily, and thus are in need, afresh anew, moment-by-moment, of the fresh in-breath of the Holy Spirit as He brings Christ’s power of resurrection into our lives as the reversal of what would intend to keep us in belief; of what would intend to makes us atheologians rather than genuine theologians (of the cross). Eberhard JĂŒngel says it this way:

8. Unbelief — inability to speak, and our cry for deliverance

One of the problems of being sinners turned in on ourselves is that we lose our ability to speak our faith. Our guilt makes us dumb. Instead of talking to God, we talk about him. Of course, we can hide our speechlessness behind vapid chattering. The fact remains that we have nothing to say about God. By refusing to utter the one thing we have to says as sinners, our confession of sin, we have nothing at all to say before God or about God. By remaining silent at the wrong time, we are forced to remain completely silent. We can find no words that are true. The sin of unbelief is matched by sinners’ inability to speak before God.

Such speechlessness is the passive dimension of that active urge to relationlessness of which we spoke. It comes home to roost when sinners find themselves unable to speak. And with that inability, sinners suffer the whole lack of substance and insecurity of their sin. They suffer it while alive in the form of a shadow constantly cast over them by death. And they suffer it in death because the silencing of sinners in death is final.

Sinners can only be released from this state of speechlessness by the power of the resurrection. They can only be saved by the vitalizing Spirit of Truth and the Word of Truth bringing forgiveness from guilt. For the Spirit of Truth testifies and the Word of Truth proclaims the encouraging news of forgiveness and blotting out of sins, so that where sin increases, the grace of God abounds all the more (Rom. 5:20b), so much so that it sets sinners free to confess their sin.

A confession of sin of this sort will, of course, not be satisfied with what Peter said: ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man’ (Luke 5:8). Sinners could not have a more foolish reaction. The abundance of divine grace towards the excess of our human need and guilt rather suggests that we pray: ‘Lord, come in to us, for we are sinners!’ Where such a prayer is prayed, in a world full of death and darkness the Christian church emerges, drawing its life from God’s compassion and sharing it with others.

Such a prayer is the only way. It is, in fact, the way which has been given to us to participate in the overcoming of sin, to work together with the grace of God as ÏƒÏ…ÎœÎ”ÏÎłÎżáœ· ΞΔοῊ. Given this one, this unique way, we cannot be synergistic enough. By crying out for forgiveness of sins, for deliverance from evil, for that matchless fellowship with God the Redeemer, sinners are doing the only thing  they can to become justified sinners. To cry out for forgiveness of sins and deliverance from evil, despite the apparent simplicity of such an action, is the one great thing that human beings can do to contribute to their justification by faith alone.[1]

Much to consider, but for our purposes I want to hone in on one aspect that Juengal touches upon: viz., the idea that if the base of our theologizing is not the crux of the Gospel itself, insofar that that crux is ‘He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him,’ then what other theologians speak of is indeed only idle chatter. When the theologian attempts to think God from a theological methodology rooted in speculation, as scholasticism does for example, all said theologian is doing is pretending to talk about God rather than with God. As Juengal rightly identifies, the genuine theologian is one who dialogues with God; the genuine theologian is the one who prays out loud for others to hear; the genuine theologian is the one who, as they speak to God, and as He speaks Himself in Christ back to them by the Spirit, proclaims this Good News con-versation with others. Speculative theologians, and theologies don’t, indeed, cannot do this.

You see, all of this comes back, really, to a theological anthropology; or lack thereof. If a person operates from a Thomist intellectualist anthropology, one wherein the intellect is understood as the definitive component of what it means to be human—indeed, after the notion that God is the Big Brain in the sky—all that the retainer of such anthropology can do is attempt to imagine God, as if God is corollary with their own creatednesss; albeit, by analogy (think, analogia entis). Juengal rightly notes, that such theologizing is only straw ready to be burned at the Bema judgment seat of Christ.

May we be theologians of the cross, rather than theologians of glory. May we do theology as we speak to theology proper in Jesus Christ by the breath of the Holy Spirit. May we repudiate vain speculations and imaginations about God, as if such speculations could be anything other than the self-projections, and thus self-impositions upon a cipher-god that we attempt to force into the God Self-revealed in Jesus Christ. There is no power in speculative theology, only in the concrete theology pulsating through the veins and flesh of the risen Christ. It is here, at the Right Hand of the Father where genuine Christian theology is done; Christ, living to make intercession for those who have confessed their sin, and from this ground the theologian articulates a theology that is worth shouting from the rooftops!

[1] Eberhard JĂŒngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith (UK: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 145-46.