Category Archives: Keith Johnson

The Contemporary Reformed Are Recovering Catholic Modes of Thinking and Thus Spirituality: The Genuine Protestant Way Against Analogia Entis

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If you’re a Catholic or scholastic Protestant thinker, you’ll follow along with Erich Przywara’s dictum (following Thomas’) of ‘revelation perfecting revelation.’ You’ll see a continuity between the naked philosopher’s machinations, and what comes in perfection through God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. You’ll maintain that humanity, since it is born into an iteration of God’s grace (which is an abstract creation), has the capacity, albeit, finite, to think towards the God of creation. On the other hand, if you’re a genuinely Protestant thinker who takes the noetic effects of the fall, who takes total depravity seriously, and who does not sublate such teaching with a Thomist intellectualist anthropology, you’ll be like Karl Barth and repudiate something like Przywara’s analogia entis. 

In other words, Barth sees the same ‘prefix’ that condemned in ‘The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life’ operative within Przywara’s Analogia Entis. Przywara posits that insights gained apart from God’s revelation of Jesus Christ stand in continuity with those acquired in and through this revelation because the ‘nature’ that philosophers are examining is, in fact, within the realm of grace simply as a result of God’s act of creation. Here lies the problem. Barth believes that this account overlooks the effects of the human sin. In his view, God’s act in creation cannot lead to true knowledge of God because creation is fallen. If nature stands in continuity with grace, therefore, it can do so solely because of the justifying work of Jesus Christ. This means that any relationship with God, or any true knowledge of God, stems solely from the knowledge of our justification. This is where we must start. Knowledge obtained from sources other than this starting point in Jesus Christ — such as the knowledge gained by the philosophers — does not stand in continuity with the knowledge of God given in and through Christ. The revelation of Jesus Christ, rather, comes from the outside as something new and distinct, and it stands in judgement over all other sources for the knowledge of God.1 

We currently have a bunch of scholastic Reformed theologians telling their students, and anyone who will listen, to recover Thomas Aquinas’ way of ‘grace perfecting nature.’ And yet this is at precise crosspurposes with Luther’s reformational move of solafidian. Barth understands the original intention and implications of Luther’s reformation, the scholastics Reformed remain clueless here. If you claim to be a committed Protestant who affirms an actual fall, with all of its ontological and noetic implications, then you ought to repudiate the natural theology of the Catholics, and scholastics Reformed. The scholastics Reformed only re-appropriated the Catholic mode of theological epistemology, and its prior doctrine of creation; they do not operate as genuine Protestant thinkers. Just because that’s ‘part’ of the Reformed heritage, ie the scholastics Reformed, does not make it the orthodox Protestantism that ought to be redivivus; but that is the driving supposition behind this particular recovery movement.

 

1 Keith L. Johnson, Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 149.  

Does Theology Perfect Philosophy? Barth’s Nein / Przywara’s Ja

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Kenneth Oakes’ book Karl Barth on Philosophy and Theology, which I reviewed a few years ago for the blog, presses the same point that Keith Johnson does in his book Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis. The point is the way Barth sees the relationship between philosophy and theology; he doesn’t, not in the way that post-mediaeval classical theism does in its effort to synthesize so-called faith-and-reason. This is one of the primary factors that has drawn me to Barth over the years. His prolegomenon is conditioned solely by what he considers to be both the formal and material principle of a genuinely Christian theology: i.e. submission to God’s Word. The way he does that is different, of course, than the way someone like Catholic Thomas Aquinas submits to divine revelation, and/or the way that scholastic Reformed theologians do that in the Post Reformation Orthodox period of Protestant development. Again, this point cannot be overstated in regard to the work I have been doing for the last many decades; indeed, my work has been driven by this sort of kataphysical, as TF Torrance would identify it, mode of theological development. That is, I see a need, along with Barth et al., to be slavishly submitted to the reality of Holy Scripture’s object in Jesus Christ. Not just in a cursory way, or as Richard Muller might say it, an “extensive way,” but in a principial or “intensive” way, such that Jesus Christ is understood as the warp and woof of every dot and iota within Holy Scripture. To see Jesus as the regnant telos of the heilsgeschichte found in the deposit of Apostolic (depositus per Apostolicum) witness entailed by its canonical reality.

Johnson helps the reader understand Barth’s mindset as he engaged with the analogia entis (analogy of being1) articulated by his theological nemesis (but friend), Erich Przywara. Here it becomes clearer in just what way Barth thought the relationship of the philosopher to the theologian, and how that, at its very principled base, contradicts the way Przwyara understood the analogia entis as that was conditioned by his ecclesioncentric mode of thinking as a Catholic theologian. Johnson writes,

That Przywara was on Barth’s mind is apparent in the first lecture as Barth explains the title and his objective for the talk. The title, Barth explained, refers to the ‘two boundaries of human thought’, realism and idealism, which form the ‘basic problem of all philosophy’. Barth’s goal is to use those “boundaries’ as the framework from which to ask questions about the proper relationship between philosophy and theology. To flesh out his reason for taking up this task, he draws an analogy between the relationship between theology and philosophy and that of the church and the state. Just as ‘the church finds itself in the framework of the state but does not exist in competition with it . . . so theology understands itself as (the) fundamental reflection about human existence as discussed within the framework of philosophy’. Theology is a human enterprise, and as such, is uses the same tools of language, concepts, and categories that philosophers use in their own attempts to describe the human situation. This correspondence leads to a temptation, Barth says, because while the theologian can speak about the human situation only in the ‘crabbed, constricted, and paradoxical way’ forced upon it by its adherence to divine revelation, the philosopher ‘is in a position to say it all so much better, more freely, more universally’. This situation places the theologian ‘under the insufferable pressure of a situation where [he] can speak only humanly and where this occurs so much better in philosophy’. Hence, just as the church must deal with the temptation of trying either to become the state or be absorbed into it, theology must deal with the temptation of trying either to become philosophy or be absorbed into it. The fact that the shift from theology to philosophy occurs by only a ‘few small shifts in accent’ or a ‘few minor adjustments’ makes it all the more dangerous. Theology can avoid these dangers, Barth says, only if it realizes its true task: adhering to God’s Word. He will develop what this means in more specificity as the lecture progresses, but at this point, he simply means that theology proper is that which ‘thinks and speaks not about those boundaries of human thought, but with all possible objectivity about God’.

The fact that Przywara’s project centers upon the relationship between philosophy and theology — and their point of connection in the analogia entis —is working in the background of Barth’s thoughts here, and the way that he frames this relationship points to a key difference he recognizes between Przywara’s project and his own. As we have seen, Przywara’s account of the analogia entis is built upon the notion that philosophical thought about God failed to recognize the proper relationship between the boundaries of divine immanence and transcendence and thus failed to arrive at any true knowledge of God. The analogia entis is then posited as the alternative that resolves the false dichotomy left by philosophy, since it maintains the proper ‘tension’ between immanence and transcendence. This argument stands directly in line with the Catholic dictum that Przywara cited in Barth’s seminar: ‘revelation does not destroy but supports and perfects reason’. That is, Przywara describes the problem of philosophy, which works form reason, and then proffers the analogia entis, which was derived from divine revelation in Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church, as the solution to that problem. Revelation, in short, works in concert with reason because the two are engaged in the same basic task, and revelation ‘fulfils and perfects’ reason because the Catholic analogia entis accomplishes, on the philosopher’s own terms, what the philosophers themselves could not.2

What must be born in mind is that Barth was a dedicated Protestant theologian, whereas Przywara was, of course, Roman Catholic. What’s at stake in this tussle, as often is the case, is really an anthropological point. Przywara would have been committed to the Thomist Intellectualist anthropology wherein the intellect remained morally solvent, even after the fall. Thus, the noetic effects of sin weren’t as death-dealing for Przywara as they were for Barth. As such, Przywara could and did imagine a world wherein human beings could still think after God even without the direct intervention of the Holy Spirit; that there was still a ‘spark,’ as it were, of the imago Dei operative that simply needed to be ‘restored’ or ‘perfected’ by revelation. For Barth, not only as a Protestant, but a Reformed theologian, this premise does not work. For Barth, as for any principled Protestant Christian, the noetic effects of the fall were so deep and sweeping that humanity itself, in its ruptured status from God, who is the ground and being of all human being, was plunged into an Athanasian ‘subhumanity’; since humanity, according to Scripture is only humanity when it is in right and reconciled relationship with God. Because of this rupture the only hope for a knowledge of God to obtain was if God unilaterally irrupted into humanity, re-create it in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, and give humanity the capacity to rightly think God as God thought Godself for humanity in the risen humanity of Jesus Christ, as humanity is brought into an actualized union with Christ (unio cum Christo) by the Spirit.

The really crazy thing in this story is that the Protestants of the 16th and 17th centuries, namely, the Post Reformed orthodox, took up the anthropology that ended up informing Przywara’s own Catholic anthropology. As such, what has come to be known as historic Protestant Reformed theology, by and large, is really nothing different, in anthropological-principle, than what we find in the analogia entis way of someone like Przywara. I personally know people, Reformed guys, who will argue with me all day about the value and need of some form of the analogia entis. These guys (and gals) are in the process of retrieving the ideational seeds that gave rise to both Thomas Aquinas’ and Erich Przywara’s analogia entis, respectively, as if this is the Protestant way. And so, in my view, they sadly betray the very Protestant principle (the Scripture Principle, and the attendant anthropology with that as far as the extent of the noetic effects of the fall etc.) they say they are intent on retrieving. They ironically operate like Catholic thinkers rather than genuinely Protestant ones as we see in Barth. Przwyara was an intellectualist, just as his counterparts in scholasticism Reformed are, that’s what this is all about in our current theological cultural moment of recovery. But these recoverers don’t understand the sources of their own religion; they don’t understand how they are really just Catholics in Protestant dress.

I digressed, somewhat. But maybe the digression will help the reader see how all of these types of things are related in the end. Maybe the reader will see why I still feel compelled to alert people to what is going on in regard to current theological developments. At the end of the day this isn’t simply a matter of arid academic complexity, ideas have real life consequences that impact real life Christian spirituality.

 

1 Johnson cites Przywara’s basic definition of what he means by analogia entis:

By virtue of the objective and actual ‘God over us and God in us’ of the analogia entis, all aspiration after God, and all experience of God which solves its riddles, is the dynamic and contemplative consciousness of Being described by Paul in the words, ‘He created the human race . . . if haply they might feel after God and find him, though He be not far from every one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17.26-28). Thus all movements towards God, all illumination by God of the human experience which seeks to enlighten itself, presupposes a tranquil condition of ‘God in me and I in God’, because precisely by reason of the nature of the analogia entis, the relationship between God and man is not a function of man’s activity, but of God’s condescension. (Przywara, Religionphilosophie, p. 410)

See, Keith L. Johnson, Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 78.

2 Ibid., 94-5.

 

Erich Przywara’s antiChrist, the Hydra-Headed analogia entis

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Keith Johnson continues to develop both Karl Barth’s and Erich Przywara’s theories of knowledge of God, respectively. Currently, he is treating Przywara’s existentialist side towards a knowledge of God, as that is juxtaposed with what he identifies as the essence side (which we will not get into at this juncture). The essence side has to do with the immanent, or the horizontal frame of reference in regard to knowledge vis à vis God; whereas the existentialist side has to do with the order of how vertical knowledge of God obtains vis à vis a God-human relation. Is this order from below to above or above to below? According to Johnson, Przywara maintains that an imbalance to either movement, relative to “above” and “below” knowledges of God, has led to what he calls ‘theopanism.’ Theopanism, for Przywara, is really just code for a complex of an active or passive relation to God, in regard to the direction that knowledge of God ingresses; whether that knowledge starts from above and is active on God’s side and passive on the human’s side, or whether it starts from below and is active on the human’s side and passive on God’s side. Either way this is panned, for Przwyara, it reduces to the problematic of what he, again, identifies as theopanism.

The problem of existence raises a different question: ‘Does religion, as relation between God and humanity, come into being from above downwards, as ultimately an “act of God,” or is it formed from below upwards, from man, and therefore ultimately as an “act of man?” This question has been problematic, Przywara explains, because the tendency has been to choose one answer to the exclusion of the other. Here Przywara follows arguments he had developed in earlier essays and lectures. On the one hand, those who emphasize that the relationship is the result of an ‘act of God’ rob the world of its own reality by making the human relationship with God—and thus human existence itself—an extension of divine action. The result is that creation becomes nothing more an [sic] extension of God’s own life. This is the error of ‘theopanism’, and Przywara associates it with Luther and his modern heirs, including Barth. On the other hand, those who argue that this relationship is the product of an ‘act of man’ commit a form of pantheism because God merely becomes the ‘ultimate basis for all rationality’ and the ‘ideal meaning of humanity’. In the end, Przywara insists, the two errors merge into one as theopanism ‘appears at bottom to be only camouflaged’ pantheism. While pantheism is built on the rationalism of the active human being, theopanism is the rationalism of the passive human being; underneath these surface differences, however, they are nothing more than ‘two forms of one and the self-same rationalism’. God becomes simply ‘the cloak of an inward dialectic’, meaning that once again, any notion of true communion with God has proven impossible.1

Przywara’s critique, as presented by Johnson, is interesting in light of the fact that, with reference to Barth, he sees Barth, not to mention Luther et al., as endemic to the theopanist specter. The issue becomes, for me, not whether or not Barth et al. fall prey to Przywara’s critique, but whether or not Przywara’s premises are sound to begin with.

On face, I would claim that Przywara identifies a potential binary, that is between the divine and human, but this binary seems unremarkable in the sense that it is simply the classical identification of the Creator/creature distinction. To suggest that one side of that equation can be played off against the other, in the way Przywara seems to suggest, seems to presuppose an implicit and inherent dualism that God’s Self-revelation itself vitiates into the dither of no-thingness. That is to say: even with a classical Creator/creature distinction in play, that distinction, by revelational definition (V philosophical) is always already asymmetrical at greatest. God is God, as such, knowledge of Godself will always already, and necessarily be anterior to human knowledge of God; whether or not the latter knowledge be construed in active or passive categories. Thus, from the get-go, Przywara’s premise, in regard to his theopanism, begins to fail precisely at the point that he misrelates a God / human relation in a knowledge of God combine.

Johnson is just about to get into treating Przywara’s solution to this above-below / below-above dilemma vis Ă  vis knowledge of God, as Przywara has presented the supposed problem. But, from the get-go, I have already spied a methodological and definitional problem in the way he has framed this dilemma. God is God is the all-important frame, particularly as that relates to the way humans know God. Jesus is the answer; what’s the question?

 

1 Keith L. Johnson, Karl Barth and the Analgia Entis (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 69-70.

Knowledge of God: Irruptive Rather Than Domestic

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I think sometimes folks aren’t appreciating the rub between what Barth (Torrance et al.) are doing when they offer an alternative—to classical theism—theory knowledge of God. It orbits around a question; a question Keith Johnson articulates with great clarity:

Romans I

Barth began concentrated study on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans a few months after delivering ‘The Righteousness of God’. The experience was slow-going, at least by the standards of his later output. The extra time spent on the manuscript, however, meant that Barth’s understanding of the distinctions and categories that had been working subtly throughout ‘The Righteousness of God’ had time to develop and mature to the point where they could become more prominent and central to his theology. We see the fruit of this development in the final manuscript of the first edition of Barth’s commentary on Romans. One of Barth’s concerns as he works through Paul’s text is to explain how the relationship between God and humanity can be a relationship-in-distinction. His goal, as becomes clear in the text, is to find a way to remove the human consciousness from the centre of our understanding of the creator-creature relationship while also upholding some way of talking about true human knowledge of God. Barth is convinced that human knowledge of God cannot be conceived as something constant or always available—since this leaves it under human control—but rather, it must be understood as something that comes afresh and anew in each moment. But what does this kind of knowledge look like in practical terms? In other words, how can one see God as, on the one hand, existing prior to and apart from all human knowledge of him, and, on the other, as one who really is known by the human?1

Before further comment, one point of quibble. When Johnson writes: “Barth is convinced that human knowledge of God cannot be conceived as something constant or always available . . .” it almost leaves one with the impression that knowledge of God for Barth, theoretically, isn’t ‘always available.’ Of course, the rest of the context from Johnson helps to clarify, but I think this could “sound” a certain way for the casual reader. It isn’t that, for Barth, knowledge of God isn’t always available, it’s just that the way it’s always available comes from the miracle of God’s irrupting grace into our lives moment by moment, afresh anew. And this gets us to the point: as Johnson is eloquently developing, Barth is intentionally operating with a non-possessive or dispossessive theory of knowledge of God. Instead of the ‘classical’ model wherein ‘grace perfects nature,’ thus collapsing grace into nature, for Barth, and I think the Apostle Paul, grace is a constantly in-breaking reality into the lives of Christians in particular, and the world in general. It isn’t something, but someOne, Jesus Christ, who by the Holy Spirit confronts, contradicts, and challenges the would-be knower of God to know God on God’s terms, and not the abstract human agent’s terms. This is implicit in what Johnson is after: i.e. the critique of the classical theist notion that as corollary with its actus purus (pure being) God, there is a natura pura (pure nature) operative such that grace becomes the natural predicate or end of nature’s perfection independent of the immediacy and agency of God; something like a ‘deistic’ notion of a God-world relation wherein God relates to the ‘pure world’ mediated through secondary and middle causative powers (decrees etc.) at a ‘distance.’ When this is applied to a theory of knowledge of God, knowledge of God becomes immediate and ‘constant’ to the human agent in abstraction from God, per se, and instead in concreto by way of the creature’s active accessing of the created order as a vestige by which God is known (from effect to cause in a chain of being).

Barth, as Johnson is underscoring, is registering a resounding: Nein! For Barth, nature presents no independent access to God, even through a ‘created grace’ provided for ostensibly by God. For Barth, the created order is so befuddled by sin, that in order for it to be redeemed, it must be re-created. But this requires a miracle from the type of resources that only God has available to Him; which we see in creatio ex nihilo. As such, knowledge of God can only be provided for by God of God; not by way of an abstract accessing of vestiges of God woven into the taxis of the fallen created order, but by way of God’s re-created order in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is only through a relation of faith, the faith of Christ for us, that this knowledge of God can obtain. Only after God has thought Himself for us in Jesus Christ, wooed us into His womb through participation with the Son’s humanity, that the human comes into the center of God’s inner-life and theological knowledge of God obtains (from the evangelical to the theological, as TF Torrance would say it). But this an ongoing miracle of God’s parousia, of God visiting us moment by moment in the freshness of the breath of the Holy Spirit as He enlivens Christ’s voice into ours. This naturally leads to witness. Knowledge of God for Barth reduces to witness insofar as this is the organic unfolding of the Christian’s knowledge of God. The point being that human agents cannot think God in abstraction from God on their own created energy, since such energy is fallen energy that required a total scrapping, which occurred in the incarnation and the cross of Jesus Christ. There is a new way, a new creation, a new time that Christian’s bear witness to: the Kingdom has come, is coming moment by moment, and is to come in its eschatological bliss of the many finally seeing their One, the One for them, God in Jesus Christ.

As Johnson leaves us with, what Barth is left with is how to think God, and knowledge of God under his proposed terms, in such a way that the Godness of God’s transcendence, His hiddenness (Deus absconditus), becomes accessible to the creature; accessible in a way that retains the integrity of God’s Godness, and the creature’s creatureliness. The answer is always Jesus; what’s the question?

 

1 Keith L. Johnson, Karl Barth and the Analgia Entis (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 21-2.

 

A Genuinely Protestant-evangelical Ecclesiology as Corrective to the Current Resourcement Movement in the North American evangelical and Reformed Churches

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I just recently attended a theology conference sponsored by the Davenant Institute. The Davenant Institute is an institute that seeks to provide resources, from the classically Reformed tradition, for the renewal of the church. Attending the conference they put on here in Portland, OR reminded me once again of how important ecclesiological consideration is; and how significant it is in regard to how we think of God’s relation to people in general. It made me think about issues having to do with authority; in other words, what is the place of the church in the economy of God? Does the church serve a mediatory role between God and humanity, or is that reserved for Christ alone (I Tim. 2.5-6)? Indeed, this issue of authority, and definition of the church seem pretty important for understanding what the renewal of the church might look like. If we don’t have a proper doctrine of the church we might be renewing something that should be discarded instead; and I’m referring to our respective concepts of the church, not the church itself.

What this conference reminded me of, as well, is that there is a whole movement among younger evangelical and reformed types who are attempting to resource the past found in the Protestant development of Reformed theology in the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to renew the 21st century Protestant Reformed and evangelical churches. But something of concern, to me, is that in this resourcement there seems to be a heavy emphasis upon a very ecclesiocentric approach; something we see prevalent in the work of someone like Peter Leithart and his Reformed Catholic move. In other words, even though these folks are Protestant and Reformed, they appear to give the church more of an absolute authority when it comes to the way Scripture is not only interpreted but applied. For some this means a turn back to Rome itself, and for others a turn to a more Anglican or Anglo-Catholic approach; and for a large bulk it simply means a turn to the confessional Protestant Reformed church, and seeing the confessions and catechisms, therein, as magisterial compendia that help to not only articulate the most faithful interpretation of Scripture; but as we see in the three forms of unity, these folks see the confessional web providing an ecclesial and authoritative structure wherein a catholic identity can be founded for the Protestant mind and church. These folks, in my view, end up imbuing certain structures of the church (whether that is formal or material structures or doctrines) with divine ordinance, such that the church itself is seen as a mediator and means of grace between God and humanity. Someone I have been interacting with on Facebook on this issue wrote this (this person was actually at the conference I mentioned, and is representative of the young evangelicals I have in mind):

Yes, but as her Founder, the Church inevitably draws her authority from Christ. Since He has instituted it, it is not a natural body but a supernatural one. Those who submit to Christ, therefore, will do so through His Body, and, in fact, have few means to exercise such submission or any true devotion EXCEPT through His Body, the Church. Point being, you’re [sic] statement is technically accurate, but far from slighting the authority of the Church, it serves only to further solidify it.[1]

He is responding to a post I put up on Facebook where I merely stated that: “Jesus is Lord, not the church.” But maybe his response helps to illustrate what I am describing in regard to the way many of these younger evangelical/reformed think of the church. Keith Johnson summarizes all of this this way:

In The Younger Evangelicals, Robert Webber provides and often surprising account of the changing commitments of the most recent generation of evangelical scholars and church leaders. One shift that he notes among these younger evangelicals is their desire for “a more visible concept of the church.” This desire stems, in part, from their reaction against what they perceive as the overly individualistic tendencies of modern evangelicalism. They believe that these tendencies lead to the same kind of “ahistoricism and spiritual subjectivism” that Philip Schaff called “the great disease which has fastened itself upon the heart of Protestantism.” Younger evangelicals have dedicated themselves to fighting this disease. Right doctrine and a commitment to evangelism are no longer enough; they want, in Webber’s words, “an embodied presence of God’s reign in an earthed community.” To find it, they are turning to high forms of liturgy, ancient spiritual practices, sacramental worship, and a renewed engagement with the historic faith through catechisms and confessions. They are, in other words, looking beyond the evangelical tradition for resources that supply new and more concrete forms for their faith and ministry of their churches.[2]

In and of itself there doesn’t seem to be anything problematic about this; i.e. a desire to find more depth, both doctrinally and ecclesially, among the younger (and even older) evangelicals. But the concern, for me anyway, is that as these folks are looking into the depth dimension that stands behind evangelical and reformed theology is what we have already noticed previously. There is this abiding desire to have substance, but when folks look back what they find is not only a catholic tradition in the church, at a doctrinal level, but they also start to see how this type of catholic tradition comes with an almost inextricable linkage to a certain theory of both the church and authority therein (or at least that’s what they think); viz. there is an association with the development of orthodox doctrine with a church government that comes to be the place wherein such development necessarily and absolutely inheres. With this realization the church—whether Catholic or Protestant—comes to have a prevalence and authority such that it is the means by which God’s grace and proper understanding of him necessarily is mediated to the seeking humanity. In other words, the church becomes conflated with the Lord of the church, such that the church necessarily speaks for the Lord with the result that the Lord and the church are no longer distinguishable in any meaningful sense. Yes, these folks, after gaining understanding, will attempt to make principled or localized distinctions between Christ and his church, nevertheless, de facto, the church comes to be the space wherein God speaks without remainder, and the church practices become the means by which God’s grace is mean[ingfully] mediated; my unnamed Facebook interlocutor illustrates this type of sensibility in some ways.

Johnson summarizes all of this further as he reflects upon Karl Barth’s concerns with this approach to the church:

The ecclesiological cost of this type of solution, however, proves to be too high, and this is especially evident when we consider this solution’s effect on the form of the church’s vocation. To see the nature of this problem, we turn to Barth’s worry that an ecclesiology which focuses upon the mediation of God’s grace through church practices inevitably makes the reception and possession of this grace the primary end of human action in the church. In his view, when the telos of the church is the facilitation of the ongoing reception, preservation, and cultivation of Christ’s benefits in our lives, then the distribution of these benefits through ecclesial practices becomes the church’s primary vocation. This is the action that “counts” in the church. The task of witnessing and proclaiming God’s Word to those outside the church become secondary to the task of cultivating God’s grace in the lives of those inside the church. As a result, Barth argues, the “being and act of the church [becomes] a circle closed in on itself”: the church’s reason for existing resides in the reception of the gift of God’s grace, and the church witnesses to God precisely in its reception of this gift. This description sounds very much like Webber’s account of the vision many younger evangelicals have for the church. For them, “The church does not ‘have’ a mission. It is mission, by its very existence in the world.” The inevitable result of this kind of ecclesiology, Barth contends, is that the “Church becomes an end in itself in its existence as the community and institution of salvation.” I never needs to look outside its own walls to realize its true vocation.[3]

As an evangelical, and as someone who wants depth in my relationship with God in Jesus Christ, as someone who wants a deep understanding of what the church is; what we have been sketching thus far is very dissatisfying for me. Not only that, I think at a purely theological level, at least for an evangelical Protestant this understanding of the church does not jive with the evangelical sensibility of seeing Jesus as Lord of the church in distinction from the church, and yet as its always already constituting voice and reality; and with seeing the evangel as the primary point of the church’s reality. This is where Barth’s critique of the classical Protestant and Catholic turn, and the ecclesiology therein, offers a helpful alternative; indeed, an alternative outwith I would feel a real sense of loss, and lack of intelligibility when attempting to think a genuinely (in the spirit) Protestant understanding of who and what the church is. Johnson provides some very helpful description of Barth’s understanding, and indeed corrective of what I think is a faulty way forward for Protestants (what we have been engaging with thus far, in regard to what many evangelicals and Protestant Reformed are resourcing as the way forward for the evangelical/reformed churches). At length Johnson writes (if these images aren’t clear enough click on them to enlarge):

.[4]

I hope some of this resonates with you, and allows you to see the vision I have when it comes to who and what the church is. It is a church that flows from the Missio Dei of God’s life for the world; for all of humanity. The church’s reality is founded not in an ongoing quest to instantiate and mediate God’s life for the elect, but instead it is found in the life and history of God’s life for us in Christ; it is found in his finished work of redemption, and in that completed reality the church has the freedom to be who she was intended to be for the other.

As we can see, at least according to Johnson’s treatment of Barth, the church was never intended to be a terminus in and for itself; instead it is intended to be the people of God who by this relationship are those who freed up to bear witness to the Lord of the church. The church in the Barthian account is opened upward and outward, it is freed up to look away from herself, and to listen to and hear the voice of her Lord; and then bear witness to that voice by proclaiming the goodness of his life to each other (in fellowship and discipleship), and the other who is found in the world. I am afraid that this reality of the church will be lost if the trend that we are seeing take place in the church continues; there is an inherent inward turn to the resourcement movement we are seeing in the church. And in this turn there is an elevation of the church as an absolute voice and means of God’s grace that the church was never intended to bear; her capacity instead is a witness bearing one.

 

[1] Unnamed Facebook Source, accessed 01-15-2018.

[2] Keith L. Johnson, “The Being and Act of the Church: Barth and the Future of Evangelical Ecclesiology,” in Bruce L. McCormack and Clifford B. Anderson eds., Karl Barth and American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: WM.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2011), 201-02.

[3] Ibid., 224.

[4] Ibid., 224-26.