Category Archives: Christian Dogmatics

Problematizing a Development of Sacra Doctrina within the Church: With Reference to Peter of John Olivi

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Bernard McGinn writes the following with reference to the apocalyptic-theology-of-history present in the mediaeval theologian, Peter of John Olivi’s (c. 1248—1298) thought:

The invective Olivi directs against the evidences of the carnal Church is concerned not only with the ecclesiastical abuses of the day, especially with avarice and simony, but also, like Bonaventure before him, with the use of Aristotle in theology. The Provençal Franciscan also expressed belief in a double Antichrist—the Mystical Antichrist, a coming false pope who would attack the Franciscan Rule, and the Great, or Open Antichrist, whose defeat would usher in the final period of history. Characteristic of Franciscan apocalyptic is his emphasis on the role of Francis as the initiator of the period of renewal and his hope for the conversion of all peoples in the course of the final events.[1]

Olivi was a student of the infamous mediaeval theologian, Bonaventure. But I thought this treatment by McGinn on Olivi was telling. Telling in regard to the patterns and thematics of theological development. Telling, in regard to how theologies and emphases often repeat themselves in various and all periods of theological development throughout history. As McGinn highlights, Olivi was concerned with a “carnal Church”; he was concerned with the imposition of Aristotle’s categories upon Christian theology (which of course Thomas Aquians was famous for doing). We also observe, that for Olivi, according to McGinn, he saw that the Catholic church itself had corruption riddling it throughout; he saw the Antichrist coming from within the Church, not without. This latter development is interesting to me because it reminds me of Martin Luther’s view that the office of the Pope would finally produce the Antichrist (the Lutheran Church Wisconsin Synod still holds to this position in their confession). And then, we see in Olivi, a belief in something like a postmillennial understanding of the very end of history. He believes, according to McGinn, that the whole world will be Christianized prior to the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Many things stood out to me in this one paragraph on Olivi’s theology. The primary hook for me, and this won’t be surprising to my readers, is that Olivi was critical of Aristotle’s presence in the development of the sacra doctrina within the Church. Olivi, like his teacher, Bonaventure, believed that Aristotle could only serve as an artificial grammar for articulating Christian doctrine. Such sucralose, in the minds of Bonaventure and Olivi, respectively, had no place in affecting a theology for the Church, insofar that Aristotle himself thought a construct of God as a pagan.

It is important for Christian folks in the 21st century to get beyond theology purely sourced from Twitter/X and other social media platforms. What the genuine student finds, if they study the books, is that things are much more complex and less concretized than they might want to think. There have been various strands of development, various traditions cultivated in the Church’s history that transcend the parochial and sectarian and absolutized divides we see today on the interwebs. I think this one paragraph alone on Olivi helps to illustrate that point.

Within evangelical/reformed theology today there is a movement towards retrieval. And yet what this has come to mean, especially through the work of someone like Matthew Barrett and Craig Carter, is that what is really being retrieved is one strand of development that is Aristotelian/Thomist heavy; as if ‘Christian Aristotelianism’ was the only development present within the mediaeval and early and post Reformed churches. This simply is not the case; again, as our passage illustrates.

Conversely, I am anti-Aristotelian myself (no shocker there!) Some might think that this is because of my appreciation for the theologies of Barth and TF Torrance alone. Again, this is not the case. I was anti-Aristotelian way before I ever read Barth and TFT. I was exposed to the Bonaventure-Olivi thread of development twenty-three years ago in seminary. This thread was developed further with the sparker of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther; he looked back to such threads in the via antiqua through his direct mentor, Johann von Staupitz, and before him, Jean Gerson.

Anyway, this post is somewhat of a smorgasbord of hits on various issues; something like a Miscellanies. But I hope, at least, the reader might be able to better appreciate the “problematized” nature of doctrinal development within the Church of Jesus Christ. In other words, I hope that folks might be alerted to the problem of reducing and then absolutizing one’s pet positions. Surely, we ought to be convicted about the theological things we believe. But those convictions ought to first take shape (in a spiraling and continuous way) through the caldron of toiling with the sources (ad fontes) of the history of interpretation and development of the sacra doctrina.

[1] Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 205.

‘At any rate, it is not at all clear that He controls dogmatic thinking concerning Himself.’

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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.

Philosophy of Religion and Christian Theology in Combine

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More thoughts on the properties of God for my philosophy of religion class. As I have been responding, this week, surrounding God’s omniscience, freedom, goodness, and necessity. These are my first two responses.

“Could anyone other than you, right here and now, know what it was like to be you, right here and now? Why or why not? What are the implications of your answer for the notion of divine omniscience?” (this, posed by the tutor for the class, based on our readings of T.J. Mawson)

Omniscience. Someone might have the capacity to know what it is like to be me by way of a general set of shared commonalities. So, they might be able to be empathic, in regard, to “how I see things.” But at a basic level, no, someone else, definitionally, cannot know what it is like to be me from the inside/out. I could explain to them what it is like to be me, insofar that I could in fact explain and articulate that; but that would entail the self-limiting factors of my own capacity, as a finite human being, to express such things. Equally, they could “get” what I’m saying to an extent, insofar that they might have similar experiences and socio-cultural conditioning to my own. But that would be as far as we could get.

Divine omniscience, on the other hand, has no such boundaries. Indeed, the living God can know exactly what it is like to be me because he knows everything. And to stretch further: from a Christian theistic perspective, he can know me from the inside/out because he assumed my humanity, and yours, and everyone’s in the incarnation. From this God has a shared human connection to our humanity. Or it might be said, that humanity has a shared connection with his humanity for us. Even so, more broadly, the Bible says in the epistle to the Hebrews, “that everything is bare and naked before Him to who we must give account.” On my view, we can only really understand divine omniscience analogously. That is to say, that as we look out at being all knowing “conceptually,” as finite beings, as humans we come to apprehend what that entails by thinking about what that could be like. We can do so as we commiserate with each other in regard to shared experiences, and socio-cultural conditioning. We might be able to extrapolate from there, and imagine a greater instance of that in an amplitude that goes beyond that imagination itself. That said, it isn’t we that predicate God’s properties, but he who predicates ours; indeed, as we are created and re-created in his humanity for us in Jesus Christ. So, by way of order, in order to think what it means for a being to be omniscient, I prefer to not work from a negation (of human being), in order to construct a positive property for God. But instead, my preference is to think God from God, as God first has spoken Himself for us in and through the Logos of God, Jesus Christ. Since in His Self-revelation and witness, particularly as that is attested to in Holy Scripture, God has made clear that He knows everything; even down to the very beings of our hearts and minds. Philosophy might be able to posit categories that seem to correlate with that; indeed, with reference to a pure being. But ultimately, I would argue that those are only accidentally correlated with who God has Self-revealed himself to be. Insofar that God’s Self-witness remains pervasively and personally present in the world through the Christian witness. And thus, such logoi, or knowledge points are present, even to the philosophers, because God’s Self and personal witness is always already ubiquitously present in the world.

“If you were God but had somehow the choice to be either inside time or outside time (temporally everlasting or atemporally eternal), which would you choose and why? Explain your own understanding of the difference between these two possibilities as part of your answer. Must God’s relationship to time be only one of these? Explain why or why not.”

Eternality. If I was God (God forbid it!), and the only alternatives were to be temporally everlasting or atemporally eternal, I would choose the latter; to be, atemporally eternal. Again, from a Christian theistic (meaning trinitarian) perspective, I take God’s being to be beyond being (to borrow a little from Aquinas); which entails, that I believe that God is absolutely Self-determining, without contingence, to be who he is, and always has been, within the environs of his eternally existing and interpenetrating life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Classically, this type of absoluteness, as Mawson underscores and develops, is a feature of God that precludes God’s life from any type of contingently construed conditionality (i.e., dependence on the natural order, or something). Contrariwise, being temporally everlasting, again as Mawson defines it, entails the possibility that God might have some type of potentiality vis-à-vis the world built into his life. This might be an attractive way out for folks who want to reject the classical theistic alternative, like the open theists among us, but for me it is much too high of a price to pay. It is too high of a price to pay because, in my estimation, it makes God contingent upon us; upon our libertarian freewill, so to speak. But then again, what is freedom?

But I think to think in terms of either a temporally everlasting or atemporally eternal God, as if this binary represents the whole continuum, is false. I think it is false primarily because I believe, confess even, that God’s being cannot be constrained by human reasoning, per se. That isn’t to say that I don’t think some of the grammars developed by the philosophers cannot be of assistance when God-thinkers are attempting to give an articulate and intelligible representation of God in human speech. But it is to say that I believe it is possible, and even necessary, to think God’s triune life as time-predicating in itself. I believe God’s triune life is a novum (‘a new thing’ for which there is no analogy). As such, it could be said that God’s life is both atemporally eternal and also temporally everlasting, insofar that the former, in an antecedent way, predicates and tinges the latter. So, in this way, to take the philosophers’ language, it would be to think the triune God in combine, wherein the persons of God’s life, in their unitary being, condition what is given concretization in the temporally created order. Such that to think atemporality and temporality of God’s being in competition one with the other becomes a non-necessity. In this frame, time has value insofar that God’s life of Father in Son, Son in Father by the Holy Spirit creates the inner-space for time to obtain, as that first obtains in God’s triune and eternal life of communion; one with the other. This would give us a time frame that is conditioned by personal relationality, that is both eternal and everlasting; the former predicating the latter. Much of this remains a mystery (since God is ineffable). But this is how I might attempt to think an alternative theory of time based on the analogy of the incarnation of God in Christ.

The Higher Logic of Dispensationalism: An Antidote in Dogmatics

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Dispensationalism is a product, historically, of the Fundamentalist reaction to the ingress of Liberal theology into the halls of the revivalist and evangelical churches. The Fundamentalist movement, particularly in the late 19th early 20th century, allowed the anti-supranaturalist or naturalist theologians (mainly of German hue) to dictate the terms under which Christian theology felt compelled to develop within. Based on this capitulation, fundamentalist theologians sought to counteract the findings, say of a higher biblical criticism, of the type that saw errors in Scripture, rejected the miracles, rejected the deity of Christ, so on and so forth, by asserting and arguing the obverse. This is where we get 20th century doctrines like biblical inerrancy from; creationism versus evolutionism etc. Fundamentalism is really just a correspondence to its predecessor founded in post-Enlightenment rationalism. It cedes ground to the come of age modernity that the higher critics moved and breathed within.

But, even after such a brief and oversimplified sketch, how does this relate to my initial claim that dispensationalism is a particular product of a reaction to the in-roads that liberal higher criticism had made into the sphere of biblical studies? I think the logic is simple: the dispensationalists, along with the fundamentalists, counter to the terms they were presented with by the higher critics, particularly their manhandling of the text of Holy Scripture, was to say: okay, well look at all of these biblical prophecies that have been and are currently being fulfilled in history and the contemporaneous. Dispensationalism is an apologetic for a doctrine of biblical inerrancy. It ties into the liberal notion of history being purely progressive and linear, thus landing on an absolute futurism, wherein as long as the researcher waits long enough their totalizing theory of reality, including natural history, will bear the fruits of proving this system or that system of thought right or wrong. This is how evolutionists operate just the same; it is the exact same prolegomenon as the dispensationalist thinks from. Or we could bring it back to the Bible and think in terms of inerrancy; with the normal caveat always attending said doctrine: i.e., that the original autographs of Scripture (which we don’t have, but one day might find) are indeed absolutely without factual error. If you listen to early Darwinists, or even neo-Darwinists, or even post-Darwinists, this is the same method. The future, history becomes the final stamp of proof and approval of the validity, the totalizing imprimatur of history’s verification of the explanation of all of reality; we just have to wait long enough, and the proof will finally apocalyptically descend upon us. Dispensationalists, especially popular ones, point people to the fulfillment of prophecy, in a futurist frame, as the sine qua non and proof that Scripture is in fact God’s more sure word of prophecy, indeed.

The dispensationalists aren’t alone in this type of verification processing. There are folks like Wolfhart Pannenberg, who would not fit into the fundamentalist frame, per se, at least not in the North American evangelical sense, who likewise thinks salvation history in terms of a linear progressive reality that is finally proven to be of God by way of the climaxing of history in the resurrection and the attendant second coming of Jesus Christ. Even so, Pannenberg, a German theologian in the heart of it all, in a way, serves as a more sophisticated illustration to what ends up happening in North American fundamentalism. What Pannenberg and the dispensationalists might have in common, though, is that they both, respectively, and from very different vantage points, take the work of the liberal theologians, and higher critics seriously enough to allow said work to set the agenda, to frame the categories that they feel compelled to work within; to respond to; to defeat, but on the higher critics’ terms and categories rather than the positive terms that a robustly confessional theology has set all along, within the ecclesiastical and ‘believing’ frame.

Others within the development of modern history, like Barth, feel the weight of the higher critics as well; but then say: “so what!” That’s a whole other complicated line of thought we will have to visit later. But suffice it to say, following someone like Barth, or TF Torrance, it is better, in my view, to simply move beyond the higher critics (by bottoming out) and allow the reality of Holy Scripture itself, who is the Christ, to set and determine the categories the Christian seeks to think and articulate theology from. If the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the primordial history de-limiting event of all of reality, as it is, then to allow folk, like the higher critics, who are thinking from terms laid down by the old creation to set the agenda and terms for the Christians, is backward thinking that is not befitting a truly Christian Dogmatic way.

We don’t need to “prove” anything about God’s existence, about His ways in history, about His written Word etc.; instead, the world needs to be proven and approved by His life for the world in Jesus Christ. And if this is the case, then the dispensationalists, as a prolongation of the broader fundamentalist way, is on an errand that is highly imprudent coram Deo. We are Christians, if we are; as such, we think “scientifically” only if we think from the triune God given for us in Jesus Christ. He is prior to the higher critics, and all of us. He re-created reality in the resurrection Jesus Christ. This must be allowed to set the ontological, ontic, and epistemological terms by which Christians engage with Scripture and its veritas for the world. The dispensationalists and fundamentalists, whether progressive or conservative, have ceded much much too much to the old-world order.

The Last Word on a Reformed Doctrine of Election and Reprobation

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You go online in the Reformed space, and you get the same old trope on a doctrine of election and reprobation; you essentially get the L (imited Atonement) of the TULIP served up as the ‘hard teaching’ Gospel truth reality about the way God relates to part of humanity in a God-world relation. I am here to set the record straight once and for all! This is simply not how God has related to the world, and this based on the analogy of the incarnation. We aren’t groping around in the darkness for snipes, but as Christians, instead, we have been given God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ in the incarnation. This is a sui generis (non-analogous) event that itself stands behind all epistemic efforts, at a primordial level, to know God. In other words, to know God is to be reconciled to God; and to be reconciled to God comes unilaterally from God’s free decision of Grace to become human (Deus incarnandus) for us that we might know Him as He has first known us in the Son (the eternal Logos). That said, if knowledge of God is slavishly tagged to God’s becoming for us in Jesus Christ, then to think God, and thus all corollary doctrines, in abstraction from God’s Self-givenness for us is neither safe nor Christian. Based upon this pre-Dogmatic reality we have capacity to move into a discussion on election/reprobation.

Christian Election and Reprobation

If we are to think election/reprobation from within the Chalcedonian frame of the homoousion of God’s life as both fully Divine and fully human in the singular person of Jesus Christ, and we follow the Apostle Paul’s teaching that ‘He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him’ (mirifica commutatio ‘wonderful exchange’), then we will think of reprobation as the general human status, post-lapse, that the eternal Logos assumed (assumptio carnis) in the assumption of our ‘fallen-flesh.’ As such, to think the reprobate status from this concrete revealed status of humanity is to think all of humanity, the only type of humanity present in the incarnation, as reprobate. But the force and anhypostatic ground of the enhypostatic person of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, was such that its grandiose power, of the resurrection type, its “election and electing” power as it were, could not be resisted by the reprobate humanity that the Christ assumed. In other words, whilst Christ became fallen humanity, in the assumption of our humanity, the total humanity, or the massa, as Christ put ‘death to death’ (cf. Rom 8.3) in His humanity for us (pro nobis), His elect humanity as the ‘Greater, the Second Adam’ was always already going to win the day. That is to say, the everythingness of God’s triune life as active in God incarnate (Deus incarnatus), as the ground of the person, Jesus Christ, has no rival in the nothingness of the fallen humanity that was assumed in the Son’s enfleshment for the world.

This is the implication of the incarnation when applied to a doctrine of election/reprobation. We necessarily think such locus from God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. Instead of wandering around in the wilderness, as if in exile because of disobedience, we flourish under the fount of God’s Self-knowledge as we have been invited into that in the banqueting table of His Holy and Triune Life. Interesting, isn’t it? This is where a discussion like this, on a topic like this, takes us. Typically, when people enter this fray, whether academic or popular, what is almost immediately bypassed is a consideration of how a properly understood Dogmatic taxis, or order, is necessary to acknowledge prior to downstream material discussions on a soteriological doctrine like election/reprobation represents. In other words, people too quickly gloss past the formal considerations that end up, latterly, informing their material theological conclusions when in fact they are ostensibly “theologizing.” When this type of Ramist, or loci styled schemata is uncritically adopted, when the ‘work of God’ comes to be abstracted, and thus separated from the ‘person of God in Jesus Christ’ we can end up thinking something like a doctrine of election/reprobation as if a procrustean bed; we can imagine a theological system wherein Christology can be thought of in abstraction from soteriology, and vice versa. This is how so-called (as I’ve called it) classical Calvinism and Arminianism has arrived at its conclusions in regard to election/reprobation in a God-world relation.

Conclusion

The moral of the story is this: When election/reprobation is thought slavishly from God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ, when it is thought of in terms of God’s humanity in the Chalcedonian register, what we end up with is something that is in line with what the biblical categories operate from with reference to election/reprobation (as these categories themselves are intended to map onto the biblical categories of ‘those being saved’ ‘those being destroyed’ see I Cor 1.18). What we end up with is the idea that Jesus Christ is both the electing God and elected human, and that by His free choice to become human, by His free choice to take on our ‘poverty’ we come to have the capacity to participate, ontically, in the riches of His elect humanity status as that is actualized in His resurrection from the dead (cf. II Cor 8.9.

Whatever the consequences of adopting this approach to election/reprobation turns out to be, one thing the exegete can rest assured of is that they are thinking in terms of the ecumenical grammar, the ‘creedal grammar’ of the Church catholic. If this is important to the exegete, then wherever this type of ‘Christo-logic’ might lead, said exegete will repentantly follow. Insofar as Jesus thought that the canon of Holy Scripture referred to Him (cf. Jn 5.39), then it behooves the exegete to imagine that their respective repose in the Chalcedonian grammar, constructively received, will present them with solid footing, no matter where that proverbial climb of theological endeavor might lead them. Further, when following Jesus’ lead, as far as thinking the res or ‘reality’ of Holy Scripture, our relative ascription to this or that ‘party theological tribe’ will end up taking second, if not third and fourth seats. In other words, the ‘catholicism’ of Christ’s life requires that a person is willing to think outside (if that’s what ends up happening) of their pet theological demarcations. That is to say, once a person adopts the hermeneutic proposed by the creedal grammar of something like Chalcedon, however that might be constructively received, it is the adoption into this hermeneutical family that said person will be formed by for the rest of their days. If this leads them, in explicit terms, to abandon say something like their beloved classical Calvinism, then so be it. There is no creed but Christ.

 

A Riposte to Leighton Flowers and Dr. Brian With Reference to Their Video Response @ Me

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I think after this post I will quit engaging with Leighton Flowers and crew (but maybe not, that all depends). I just came across a video where he and his friend, Brian (a PhD in NT, not theology, clearly), respond to a critique post of mine directed at Flowers’ approach to interpreting Holy Scripture. Here is the blurb I quickly wrote up as I shared this video to my FB and Twitter feeds:

Leighton Flowers responds to a critique post of mine starting at 7:44 and running through 21:00. He and his friend just talk around what I was getting at. Ironically, they end up illustrating my critique of their approach by reverting to their sort of rationalist traditioned reading of Scripture. It is really strange to engage with folks who are not self-perceptive enough to see their own foibles, esp. when those are being pointed out to them. But then they deflect those back onto their critics (me) Lol. Flowers’ friend, a PhD in NT (not theology, clearly) calls my approach postmodern (very strange). But this is what you get when you engage with low church evangelicals who have no clue about the Christian Dogmatic tradition, and how that has taken form in the Church catholic. They dispense with catholicity in favor of re-inventing the wheel based on their own reconstruction (interpretation) of the Christian faith and Holy Scripture. But, again, this is what you get when you start with a turn-to-the-subject hyper individualism out of touch with the confessional nature of the Christian faith. And this is why I find folks like Flowers and his friend so dangerous to the Christian faith; they are the epitome of what has been dangerous to my own faith in the past. So, when I come across it I seek to alert others to its errors, and hope to provide a way forward that is more in tune with a reality contingent upon a source (Jesus Christ and the triune God) outside of themselves.

You can watch Leighton’s and Brian’s response to me here (it starts at 7:44 and runs approx. through the 21-minute mark). I want to expand a little more on their response to me; more than what I just shared in the aforementioned blurb.

Brian was really hung up on my language of all humanity being ENSLAVED to our interpretative traditions. But as Steve Holmes rightly underscores (Stephen R. Holmes, Listening to the Past: The Place of Tradition in Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 6-8):

This is not something that can simply be swiped away, as Brian and Leighton attempt to do, unless of course the person is appealing to their people. Ironically, as I alluded to earlier, Brian and Leighton fall right into this point, even as they attempt to criticize my underscoring of it, by going back to “their tradition of biblical theology and soteriology.” This is ironic, indeed, because it is the very point of my criticism of them. The fact that they cannot see that, and then by not seeing it, appeal to their own particular traditioned way of reading Scripture should alert people to how imperceptive their educators are; viz. if they are looking to people like Leighton, and his friend Brian et al., as their teachers.

Further, Dr. Brian calls my approach, that is my approach to focusing on a Christ concentrated hermeneutic: Postmodern. He claims that I end up deconstructing all other traditions, and then presume that my own ‘christological’ approach is the only viable way forward. In a sense, this is true; but it isn’t just true for me, but for Leighton and Brian et al. I would imagine all sentient people have arrived at particular convictions and conclusions in regard to the way that they engage with reality in general, and the Christian reality (for Christians) in particular. There is nothing inherently “postmodern” about that. Indeed, and ironically, this is simply an attempt to “boogeyman” me into a straw-box that Leighton and his friend think they can easily dispense of once they have placed me therein. Unlike these fellas, I am not averse to labels, indeed, labeling is just as inherent to being human as traditioning is. In other words, labeling positions (you know like Leighton’s self-described provisionism) is a shorthand, precision way of engaging with a complex or basket of ideas as those are held within a sort of systematic frame of reference. But the point is here: my approach is not inherently postmodern, instead it works from a Christian confessional background that is grounded in the Christian Dogmatic tradition of the Church catholic.

But this is the point, which I also alluded to previously: Flowers and company, are situated in the Fundamentalist/Evangelical individualist tradition that starts, by way of theological or hermeneutical methodology, in an abstract rationality that is idiosyncratic and original to the individual knowers. This was my point of critique, which Leighton attempted to respond to, when he pushed back against my claim that his approach is: anthropocentric or as he calls it ‘from-below.” Both Leighton and Brian need to do more reading on problems associated with what has been called: solo Scriptura or nuda Scriptura. They both are proponents of this approach, and as such, they communicate this to the people looking up to them as faithful guides into the world of Holy Scripture and systematic theology.

Further, Flowers takes issue with me saying that he speaks from a ‘resurrected voice of Pelagius.’ He cannot stand this charge. But anyone familiar with what he teaches on so-called ‘total inability’ (or more commonly understood in the history: total depravity, and its noetic and moral implications) knows that he is in line, let’s say, rather than with Pelagius full-blown, with someone like John Cassian. Again, because of Leighton’s non-Dogmatic orientation, he cannot fathom where this charge comes from. He believes that he can simply assert away that this charge just is not true; while at the same time advocating for a position that correlates almost exactly with Pelagius’ in regard to the neutrality of the moral agency latent within a broken, but not completely “inable” orientation towards God. I’ve already spilled enough e-ink in other posts, in regard to Leighton’s inchoate Pelagianism, that I will not belabor that further here. He simply does not understand the broad contours and moods that makeup the landscape of ecclesial historical ideas vis-à-vis their ideational categorizations (i.e. the dreaded “labeling” again).

Finally (although I think I’ve missed some of their response to me), Leighton, in general, hides behind this idea that if someone is going to critique him, they need to provide concrete examples or he doesn’t know how to engage with the critique. I think the article he and his buddy are responding to, of mine, offers all kinds of concrete examples that he could respond to; but it, again, this would require that he is versed in the realm of Christian Dogmatics (which he discounts out of hand; for reasons already alluded to). I give plenty of examples, in regard to the way he interprets and approaches Scripture; in regard to the way he approaches history of ideas; in regard to the way that his approach to soteriology is not grounded in a dogmatic ordering of things. I don’t feel compelled to offer exact examples (although I have done that in some other posts in reference to Flowers) all the time, because I figure that anyone who reads something like an article on Flowers, is already aware of a whole stable of examples that Flowers hits upon, thematically, seemingly everyday in his vlogcasts.

Oh, one more thing: Brian (and Leighton) almost seemed dumbfounded by the idea that I said we should think our theologies, and exegetical conclusions, from Jesus. Brian, in particular, couldn’t fathom how that would be possible apart from Holy Scripture. But this, again, illustrates the absolute rationalist approach he (and Leighton), are ENSLAVED to. They don’t think of Scripture, as John Webster rightly does, as if it has an ontology. In other words, they cannot even imagine how we might think Scripture from within a Christian Dogmatic ordering of things (a taxis). As such, just like with soteriology, they think Scripture in terms of an abstraction that only has value insofar as they can mine its data, as if archeologists trying to make sense of an artifact, and construct an understanding of it that fits within the realm of what they have determined biblical theology to entail. But you see who is regulative in this sort of interpretive and value-enriching process, right? It isn’t contingent upon Scripture’s res (reality) being regulated by the catholic Jesus (think the ‘Chalcedonian pattern’ that has served regulative for most of Church history when it comes to interpreting Holy Writ cf. Jn 5.39). No, it is contingent, instead, upon some sort of abstract realm of positivism that abstract wits have the capacity to manage and manipulate, with greater or lesser outcomes, based upon the interpreter’s disposition, training, and aptitude to approach Scripture with a minimal amount of presuppositions and pre-understandings. Because Brain (and Leighton) seemingly are critically unaware of the history and development of modern bible reading practices, as those developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the naturalist bed those were consummated in, they simply cannot imagine what I mean when I refer to: thinking our theologies and exegetical conclusions from Jesus.

My point doesn’t pivot on a competition between Scripture and Jesus—this is the false dilemma and premise Brian critiques me from—but instead, it is grounded in the idea, as John Calvin, Karl Barth, TF Torrance, John Webster, and other luminaries propound, that Scripture is the signum (sign) that points beyond itself to its res (reality) who is the, Christ. In other words, Brian and Leighton fail, in regard to their doctrine of Scripture, and thus hermeneutics, because they essentalize Scripture to the point that it ends in their interpretation of it, instead of being understood as the instrument whereby Christians come to encounter the living God in the risen Christ. I see Scripture from an instrumentalist vantage point, as most  Christians have in history, versus, the Leightonian and Brianian approach, that absolutizes Scripture as an epistemological end in itself; and end that has no idea that there is a theological ontology that stands antecedent to Scripture’s reality as a created medium that serves the instrumental purpose of pointing beyond itself and its many interpreters. Essentially, Brian’s and Leighton’s response to me fails, on this front, because, for at least one reason, they have an inadequate doctrine (and no ontology) of Holy Scripture. This is why Brian (and Leighton) seem so perplexed by my point on ‘from Jesus.’

Again, I would caution folks who are looking to Leighton and company for a healthy theological education. They, in my view, have not done enough homework, particularly in the area of Christian ideas, and the development of Reformed theology in particular, to be of any service to the would-be learner. I know this sounds harsh: but it is my considered opinion after listening to Leighton for about a year and a half now. My reason for saying this about Leighton should be illustrated by the themes I touched upon throughout this post. If someone wants to marginalize the history of Christian ideas, the history of theological grammar, and displace that with their reconstruction of the Christian faith, without engagement with the conciliar faith of historic Christian reality, then you know you are in a hazardous harbor. That’s what I think we get with the ministry of Leighton Flowers. Is he a nice guy? Clearly. Does this necessarily make him a trustworthy guide into the realm of theological and biblical studies? Nein.

 

Dispelling the Mythos that Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God Once and For All

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In an effort to dispel the mythos that the Muslim god is the same god as the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not to mention, Jesus, I want to share a good word from Karl Barth on the processions of the triune God who is eternally and definitionally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Folks like Miroslav Volf, Katherine Sonderegger et al. have been arguing that Christians and Muslims, basically, worship the same God when it comes to His singularity or oneness (de Deo uno); but clearly, at a definitional level, the Christian God, as He has freely made Himself known through His Self-revelation in the Son, is necessarily and only triune without remainder or addition (de Deo trino). For the Christian, the multiplicity of God in the persons of God is just as ‘essential’ as His so called ‘simplicity’ or singularity in regard to His oneness.

Here, Barth is discussing knowledge of God; i.e. how it is that man or humankind has knowledge of God, as man stands before God in and through union with Jesus Christ, and God’s stand with humanity through the humanity of the Son.

But the inner truth of the lordship of God as the one supreme and true lordship revealed and operative in His proclamation and action—the inner truth and therefore also the inner strength of His self-demonstration as the Lord, as this Lord, consists in the fact that He is in Himself from eternity to eternity the triune God, God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The fact that, according to that self-demonstration, man is indebted to Him for everything and owes Him everything is grounded in God’s own eternal Fatherhood, of which any other fatherhood can be only an image and likeness, however much we may owe to it, however much we may be indebted to it. And that self-demonstration constrains us to gratitude and indebtedness and therefore to the knowledge of God the Father as our Lord, because in eternity God is the Father of His own eternal Son and with Him the source of the Holy Spirit. Further, the fact that according to that self-demonstration God Himself is and does everything for the man who still owes Him everything is grounded in the fact that God is in Himself eternally the Son of the Father, eternally equal to the Father and therefore loved by Him, although and because He is the Son. And that self-demonstration constrains us to adoration of His faithfulness and grace and therefore to the knowledge of God the Son as our Lord, because in eternity God is the only Son begotten of the Father, and with the Father, and along with Him the source of the Holy Spirit. And finally, the fact that according to that self-demonstration God is the One from whom we have to expect everything is grounded in the fact that God is Himself eternally the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, and their unity in love. In this way the self-demonstration, and in this way the proclamation and action of God through His Word in the covenant concluded with man, is grounded in God Himself. In this way and on this ground it has its compelling force. Because God is in Himself the triune God, both in His Word and in the work of creation, reconciliation, and redemption, we have to do with Himself. It is therefore impossible for us to postpone the decision—which means the encounter with Him—on the grounds that He is perhaps quite different from the One who proclaims Himself and acts in this way. And because God is in Himself the triune God, in this His Word we have to do with the final revelation of God which can never be rivalled or surpassed. It is, therefore, quite impossible to ask about other lords alongside and above this Lord. In the life of God as the life of the triune God things are so ordered and necessary that the work of God in His Word is the one supreme and true lordship in which He gives Himself to be known and is known. When God speaks about Himself He speaks about the fact that He is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And therefore everything else that He has to say to us, all truth and reality, all enlightenment and salvation, depends on the fact that primarily and comprehensively He is speaking about Himself.[1]

Barth works with a traditional Western oriented doctrine of God, one that thinks with the filioque attendant to it; we won’t hold that against him (e.g. Thomas Torrance, in my view offers a better way forward in regard to thinking the Monarxia of God. Even so, he still speaks in the terms we have here in Barth, in regard to origins or relation).What is fundamentally important about what Barth is communicating, particularly for our purposes in this post, is to demonstrate just how essential the threeness of God is vis-à-vis the oneness of God, and how the latter, for the Christian, cannot be understood to be what it is without the former, and vice versa.

If what Barth is articulating is the case (and it is!), then eo ipso, Christians and Muslims cannot worship the same God. There is not an inchoate or seminal understanding of God for the Christian; there is only the full-blown and flaming understanding that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit without compromise. The Christian only knows God by the Son’s revelation of the Father, and the Holy Spirit’s come-alongsideness by whom we say Jesus is Lord. The Christian does not, and cannot conceive of God in any other way. So, to confuse the Muslim God, with the Christian God is an absolute equivocation. And it is rather startling to see Christian theologians of some repute operate under and forward this confusion in their theologizing. I would suggest that this confusion is driven more by a social desire to be ‘ecumenical’ and ‘catholic’ rather than a commitment to be slavishly committed to the fact that God is three in one and one in three.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics. The Doctrine of God II/1 §25 (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2009), 46-7.

The Freedom of the Christian and Church Authority in the Word of God

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Continuing on with what has come to be a theme of my last many posts, I want to continue to visit the idea of Church authority. I am working my way through Barth’s Church Dogmatics (linearly), and am currently at the end of I/2§21. In this section Barth is delineating the way he sees the Church’s authority vis-à-vis the ‘Freedom of the Word of God.’ Barth’s two targets are Roman Catholicism, and what he calls ‘NeoProtestantism,’ respectively; his reference to the latter has to do with the theological liberal tradition he was birthed into, and yet came to repudiate (which his CD does in magnanimous ways). He offers much development prior to what we will read from him here, but I think the quote I offer captures much of what he has developed, thus far, in a summative sort of form. You will notice the strong critique he makes against Roman Catholic ecclesiology, and the authority he thinks they presume upon as the topos of God’s voice for the world. And so, you now know that we will only focus on Barth’s critique of Roman Catholicism authority rather than his critique of NeoProtestantism. Even so, it should be noted, that the principle he is using to make his critique is the same for both the Tridentine as it is for the Teuton Church; it is just applied uniquely one way rather than the other, and vice versa. Let’s read along with Barth, and then we will highlight some of the points that stand out most significantly; at least what I think is most significant in regard to his critique. As usual, the quote will be longish, but bear with me; and Barth. Herr Barth writes:

This must be particularly remembered in the polemical use of these ideas. It is a temptation, too great a temptation, to say that in the reference to freedom we have the specifically Protestant answer to the that question, in direct opposition to Catholicism. We can only issue a warning against this idea. It will fare ill with the Protestant Church if it is more protestant to speak of freedom than of authority, if the demagogic notion is true that in the last resort the aim of the Reformers was to enthrone the reason and conscience of the individual as opposed to the authority and judgment of the Church, that they were, therefore, the forerunners of Pietism, the Enlightenment and Idealism. It is true that, confronted by an authority that was no longer a real, divine or genuinely ecclesiastical authority, they proclaimed the freedom of the Christian man as a free lord of all things and subject to no one. But how can one fail to see that by this very proclamation they were, in fact, fighting on precisely the opposite front? As though Luther did not see in the enthusiasm of his time, to which all the later forms of liberalism are traceable, the same enemy as in the Papacy! How can we fail to observe that, according to Luther, the same Christian man is the slave of all things and subject to everyone? As though Calvin did not do more for the recognition of the authority of God and the Church than all the mediaeval popes and Scholastics put together! The Church of the Reformation, provided it does not allow itself to be confused by that demagogic apologetic, need not wait to be reminded by Roman Catholic polemical writers that through an ill-considered affirmation of the principle of freedom it will inevitably fall into heresy and become a sect. Neither in origin nor in essence it is in any way involved in the impasse in which the free individual is suddenly to be the measure of all things. To go no further, how can this optimism be combined with the Reformers’ insight into the wretchedness of man, and his incapacity to know God and to do the good? This part of Reformation theology has had to be prudently erased for the Reformers to be represented and extolled as the fathers of the modern aspirations after freedom. Still more fundamentally, the Evangelical view of the unique glory and saving power of the divine Word excludes the possibility of attaching to Protestantism even the intention or preparation of those aspirations after freedom. By all means let Catholicism fight for authority against freedom in its opposition to all kinds of other heresies. But in opposition to Catholicism itself we do not have to espouse first the cause of freedom, but of authority, and only then and from that standpoint freedom. For with its doctrine of the unity of the Church and revelation (together with its doctrine of nature and grace), it has attributed to man a freedom and capacity side by side with God and over God. So, then, it has really given birth to all the other heresies—however hostile it may be to them. It has made them necessary as opponents on its own level. It has destroyed the recognition of the authority of God, and in so doing—in spite of clericalism—it has destroyed that of a genuine ecclesiastical authority. That is our decisive charge against it. It is also true that with this destruction of authority it has also destroyed the freedom of the mind and conscience, the necessary freedom offered to the individual member of the Church. But how can this be understood and seriously maintained if it is not perceived and maintained first that Roman Catholicism is rebellion against the authority of the Word of God, rebellion against canonical Scripture, rebellion against the fathers too, and against every genuine confession? When at the Reformation the Word of God re-established its rule in the tottering Church, “Catholicism” refused to obey it, and continued to destroy the Church; not by knowing too much, but by knowing too little about authority, by making new opportunities and new forms for the arbitrary freedom of man to manipulate the Word of God according to its convenience. Therefore the Evangelical Church must not take its stand where according to Roman Catholic theory it ought to be, especially when it has to represent true evangelical freedom over against that theory. It must not define this libertas Christiana as the inner independence of the soul which is bound immediately and exclusively to God, as though it did not realise how short a step it is from this independence to its counterpart in the form of papal infallibility. But it must define freedom, as it in truth is, as man’s real dependence on the God who has mediately addressed and dealt with us. It must define freedom as the faithfulness with which we can and should trace the divine testimonies. It must define it as a cleaving to canonical Scripture, to the fathers and to the confession, and therefore to ecclesiastical authority. It must define it as the unique proud independence which as real submission to real authority is attributed to every individual member of the Church, or rather is conferred by the Holy Spirit of the Word of God. It is only this way, that is, by a complete reversal of the front on which Catholicism would like to see us stand and where modern heresies would like to push us, that the strong and clear contrast between it and us can be made manifest, as is needful and also hopeful. Again, this must be done in the interests of the truth itself. But again, we must fail to recognize that Roman Catholicism can listen to us, that a renewal of conversation between us, and at least a common outlook upon the una sancta catholica [one holy catholic (Church)] can be achieved, only when it sees that in regard to the recognition and assertion of authority we are not inferior to it but rather superior, that with the proclamation of evangelical freedom we do not aim at a worse but at a better obedience.[1]

What if we were to reduce this whole paragraph to a couple base notions? One of them would be Barth’s hard commitment to a radical conception of total depravity; radical to the point that Barth thinks that the ‘fall’ has reduced the human capacity to know God to null. A second, and related notion, would bring us into the modern; what some have called a ‘turn-to-the-subject.’ Ultimately the bond that Barth sees tying Roman Catholic and NeoProtestant ecclesiology (among other things) together is a subjectivism that is grounded in a noetically dead human agent[s] who is incapable of arriving at accurate or genuine knowledge of God and His ways. Barth sees Catholicism, in this instance, as absolutizing or instutionalizing this subjectivist anthropology into the magisterial foundation of the Holy Roman See. As such, Barth, sees no place for the Freedom of God’s Word to actually have genuine freedom in Christ’s Church, precisely because that has been taken captive by the subjects and thus the Church it is supposed to have capacity to contradict and nurture. For Barth, the Catholic Church has collapsed the Word of God into itself, and as such has enslaved any semblance of God’s Word to its own subjectivity; thus, no genuine freedom is there to be found.

More positively, Barth believes that God’s Word has Freedom, and authority in the Church, when we simply submit ourselves to it as a predicate of the eternal Logos rather than making the Word a predicate of our own subjectivities. There is a genuine authority the Church has, but it is only when it understands that from within the freedom that comes by God’s Word as the foundation of all that the Church is. In this sense, then, the Church can only speak authoritatively insofar that it coheres with the freedom of the Christian that comes as the saints are in a participatory fellowship with the Christ. He is the authority of and for the Church, and only as the Church imbibes or bears witness to His authority is there a genuine freedom for the Church to obey; because there is someone to obey other than the Church.

[1] Barth, CD I/2§21, 215-16.

God’s Governmental Providence as Cruciform in Shape: Human Suffering and Death, with Reference to Nabeel Qureshi

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“The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; 2. for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.” Psalm 27:1-2

The Psalmist captures a reality that many in the world do not like; he identifies a truth that kicks against a self-possessed humanity who thinks it belongs to itself. But the Christian finds great comfort in realizing that this is the reality; that the world and all its bounty belongs to the living God of heaven and earth. The Apostle Paul sharpens this idea from a Christocentric angle; the idea that not only is the earth the LORD’s, but that we, as his people do not belong to ourselves; that God in Christ, owner of the heavens and the earth, penetrated our humanity with his in Christ and replaced our self-possessed selves with the recreated reality of a new humanity that realizes that it is only possessed by the living God. Paul writes pointedly: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”[1] This is almost an unfathomable reality, but one that has been made known as what is real through the goodness and graciousness of God revealed in his cruciform life in Jesus Christ.

These passages could be applied in a variety of ways, but what I want to highlight, at a theological level, is how this works towards thinking about God’s care, about his providential sustenance of the earth. And I want to use that context to discuss life and death; with particular focus, in this instance, on the life and death of Nabeel Qureshi, and all those in the world who are suffering in untold ways. I want to see if I can work toward making sense of it all from the big vantage point of God’s providence.

There are at least three ways to think about God’s providence: 1) Conservation, 2) Concursus, and 3) Governance. I want to focus on God’s governance; i.e. how in a God/world relation we might conceive of his inter-action with his creation in an active way; but in such a way that he remains in control, and thus not conditioned by the creation even as he enters it in the Incarnation (Logos ensarkos). In an effort to bring clarity to what is meant by the third prong of God’s providence—his governance—let us read how Dutch theologians Brink and Kooi develop this idea:

3 Finally now, the third aspect of divine providence: God’s gubernatio (governance), or directio (leadership). Traditionally, this part of God’s providence was conceptualized in rather static terms, as if God rules the world as a manager does a company, doing what needs to be done, minding the store. The Bible, however, speaks in much more dynamic—more precisely, in eschatological—terms about God’s rule. The fact that God rules the world means, first and foremost, that he guides it in a particular direction, toward the final realization of his plans and promises. Therefore, history is geared toward the kingdom, for also in his rule the Father works via—and thus in the mode of—the Son and the Spirit. For the time being, God rules “from the wood of the cross” (Venantius Fortunatus, sixth century), that is, in spite of all kinds of misery, setbacks, and experiences of loss. History becomes ever more similar to Jesus’s road to the cross, just as the apocalyptic portions of the New Testament teach. In addition, it should be noted that God works through his Spirit and not by (human) might or power (Zech. 4:6). We should often pay more attention to small things than to powerful revolutions or major changes in society. Where people are touched by the s/Spirit of the gospel and on that basis experience a decisive renewal in their lives, there God is at work, guiding the world to its future destination. So, God’s direction often proceeds via small things and detours, another reason that God’s providential rule is first and foremost a matter of faith and not something that can be gleaned from a newspaper. But it is precisely this faith that is certain that the outcome will not be a failure.[2]

My guess is that when you first heard the words God, providence, and governance, that your mind, like mine did, turned immediately to the description Brink and Kooi started their paragraph with: “…Traditionally, this part of God’s providence was conceptualized in rather static terms, as if God rules the world as a manager does a company, doing what needs to be done, minding the store.” But, as was encouraging to see they made the turn, as they should, to the reality that God’s governance of the world, of his good earth, is cruciform in shape; that he rules this earth by penetrating it in and through the humanity he assumed in Jesus Christ. That his governance is in his humiliation and vulnerability in his being in becoming man, and his reign climaxes in his exaltation of humanity in his risen and ascended humanity as the God-man who can sympathize with the yet broken humanity; but as the one who has conquered the brokenness of this world precisely at the point where it looked like he was going to lose it.

When I think about the death of Nabeel Qureshi, and think about it from the backdrop of God’s governance as described by Brink and Kooi, I have hope. I don’t have all the answers to the questions that I have, but I have hope because the God who is in control is not an aloof deity governing the world like some sort of removed corporatist; he instead became the One for the many, by becoming one of us, entering our fallen humanity and redeeming it from the inside out. He reigns supreme and providentially over the creation as one who has tasted his own creation; all along remaining distinct from his creation in the miracle of the hypostatic union, of God become human in the singular person of Jesus Christ. This is the hope that Nabeel Qureshi lived and died his life from; from the death and life of Jesus Christ.

Not only is Jesus the Lamb Slain, but he is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah risen; the One who is prime and supreme over all of creation. He governs the world from the reality of his resurrection, with hands still bearing the scars of their piercing for us. Nabeel, and all those who die in Christ, currently behold those nailed scarred hands; the hands that hold this world together, and for the purpose that all creation, that the sons and daughters of God in that creation, will finally behold the hands of such a King and ruler as this.

 

[1] I Corinthians 6:19-20, NIV.

[2] Cornelius van der Kooi and Gijsbert van den Brink, Christian Dogmatics: An Introduction (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2017), 243-44.

‘A Theological Mode of Existence’ theologische Existenz: The Place of the Theologians and Their Jargon for the Church of Jesus Christ. More Kooi and Brink

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I just got Cornelius van der Kooi’s and Gijsbert van den Brink’s freshly translated (from their native Dutch) Christian Dogmatics: An Introduction; and thus far it is wonderful! My last post touched upon what they think about the relationship between apologetics and Christian Dogmatics (which I’m still pondering); in this post I want to get into what they have to say about what they call (After Barth) the ‘theological mode of existence’ (theologische Existenz). This is an existence the Lord graciously put me into back about twenty-two years ago, and one I would never give up; it’s this existence in Christ that is life to me, without it I’d have no sanity.

I will share at some length what they have to say about this type of existence, and then offer up a few of my reflections on it in closing. Kooi and Brink write:

1.9 Theology as Mode of Existence

So far we have described theology and dogmatics primarily as a particular discipline—one of the many that one might study at an academic level. But many who are involved with it feel that theology is more than this. Theology carries with it a unique mode of existence. Barth and his followers referred to this as a theologische Existenz (theological mode of existence).

This theological mode of existence involves more than acquiring a substantial amount of knowledge, more than doing theology as creatively as possible. It concerns the cultivation of a certain underlying passion. This passion is, first, a passion for God and his kingdom. As the word indicates, a true theologian speaks about God. But his or her passion also concerns the people of God and the world of God. This dimension will perhaps not radiate from every page the theologian writes. It is a cultivated passion; that is, it lies in the background and will typically surface in a restrained manner. This limitation relates to the ability to maintain distance, which is part of the theological mode of existence. That is to say, as a theologian, one is able to look at the faith that is lived by people from a distance. It is possible to formulate abstractions and speak about them in intelligible language. Dogmaticians perhaps speak more about pneumatology than about the Holy Spirit, and more about eschatology than about heaven. This preference may be risky, but things will go wrong only when they speak exclusively in a detached kind of language. To a certain extent they must speak in terms of “–ologies” if they want to maintain an overview of the various parts (loci) that together form the content of the Christian faith, and to quickly see how, in a particular array, these elements may fit together. A sentence like “Barth suffers from pneumatological anemia” is typical theological jargon (apart from the question as to whether or not it is true).

As can happen in other areas of scholarship, such concepts help to create a jargon that is understood by representatives of different denominations and worldviews, enabling them to carry on a meaningful communication. Where believers without theological training will often listen to the views of others without understanding them and with great distaste, a common terminology enables theologians to learn about each other’s views in a fruitful—but often critical—dialogue. In other words, part of the theological mode of existence is the ability to change one’s perspective and, through a common theological language, to empathize with the faith-worlds of other groups of believers.

At the same time, it also belongs to life-as-theologian that one will always return to the “simple faith” and not get lost in a critical attitude, whatever one’s ability to talk about faith in abstract terms and to retain a critical distance. It is crucial to know when you must be critical, but also when you must leave your critical attitude behind,  in order to believe as a child in what Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) has called a “second naïveté.”[1]

This is very well said. This has been something that has personally dogged me over the years, even, and in particular online. When you enter into this arena you necessarily learn a bunch of jargon, but it is not an arbitrary education; it is intended to provide the Christian thinker with a lexicon filled with precision language in order to communicate clearly and pristinely among other initiates. Some gripe that such jargonese is necessarily elitist, but this is not the case; as Kooi and Brink so eloquently highlight.

There indeed is a ‘theological mode of existence,’ not all Christians, in fact most Christians probably never enter into it. But this is okay. Not all of us are called to be teachers, but if we are it should be expected that as teachers and theologians we would imbibe a certain mood filled with its realm of special symbols, and grammar for the express purpose of edifying and building up the church. Indeed these symbols or ‘words’ might seem abstract and removed from anything edifying at all, but they are present so that the theologian can help build a solid foundation wherein the practice of the church can move ‘rightly’ and grow deeper and wider in the grace of Jesus Christ. Theologians, or in Pauline language, teachers in the church have their place (Eph. 4). True, as for anyone in the body, there is always the danger of making one’s office an end in itself; an end where the potential glory of the office becomes inward curved and self-focused. And those who spend all their time thinking about the deep things of God, those who glean insights about God that are unique and special might be tempted to start glorying in this; in what they’ve come to understand about God. They might lose sight of the church, and the perspective that they have been given this gift of insight for the edification of others. But even with this always lurking danger, theologians have their place in the body of Christ; it is a place that I think needs to be appreciated more, particularly in our experienced based individualistic church culture.

As Kooi and Brink end, they mention Ricoeur’s second naïveté; I personally love this! Barth adopted this Ricoeurian approach himself, particularly in the way he navigated his engagement with the higher critics of the biblical text. Maybe we will have to unpack this jargon at another time, but it signifies something that I think can be of benefit for the body of Christ catholic.

 

[1] Cornelius van der Kooi and Gijsbert van den Brink, Christian Dogmatics: An Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2017), 29-30.