Category Archives: Kerygma

God is God Theology

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When reality starts with God as the given, as the Self-given one for the world in Christ—indeed as the purpose for the world’s existence—rather than starting from the given, as if the creaturely just is, then everything is flipped on its head. Questions of human freedom, agency, morality, sin, evil, life, death—everything—is from that point on conditioned by God first rather than us first. We at His behest, and He not at ours (i.e., He doesn’t answer to us). Because He is a relational Father-Son-by the Holy Spirit Got, there is ineffable amount of space to dialogue with and know Him, as He has deigned it so.

The sooner folks accept that He is God and that we are not, the sooner an order is given in regard to the character of our questions and His answers. And this because He is the One who sets the questions to be answered, not us.

This is what true dogmatic theology does: it only attempts to speak, after it recognizes Deus dixit (that ‘God has spoken’ in Christ). Outwith this order there really is no order in theological development, or the great questions of life. All that someone can do outside of this God is God order is speculate in discursive forms, hoping to make contact with the source of all reality.

Martin Luther’s Centraldogma, ‘Faith Alone’ by Barth

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Martin Luther preaches in the pulpit, pointing to the crucified Jesus. Among the audience, are his wife Katherina von Bora with the little son and Lucas Cranach the Elder. Woodcut engraving after a painting from the predella (bottom of the altarpiece) of a triptychon (1547) in the church at Wittenberg by Lucas Cranach the Younger (German painter, 1515 – 1586), published in 1881.

Is there a centraldogma for the Protestant Reformation? It depends on what angle we attempt to answer that question by. For Martin Luther, per Barth’s lights et alia, the foundation for his reformational work was the doctrine of justification (sola fide). For Luther, according to Barth, this was the great differentiator between what became Protestantism versus the Latin Catholic church’s position on justification; which would entail a cooperative matrix in the God-human relation (gratia infusa). After Luther read the Greek New Testament for himself, he realized the synergistic salvation that Roma propounded was contradicted by the perspicacious teaching of Scripture alone. Barth offers some rich insight on how he sees this centraldogma operative for Luther:

It was again Luther, above all others, who obviously regarded and described the doctrine of justification as the Word of the Gospel. To him it was not merely the decisive point, the hub, as it were, of the whole of Evangelical theology in controversy with the Romanists. It was this, in the sense of the Schmalkaldic Articles of 1537 (Bek.-Schr. der ev.-luth. Kirche, 415 f.)—in which it is called the first and principial article in this special sense: “In relation to this article we cannot doubt or yield an inch, though heaven and earth or all things passing may fall . . . . On this article stands all that we teach and live against the Papacy, the devil and the devil prevail against us.” The fact that Luther linked together the Papacy, the devil and the world shows us, however, that Luther was not thinking merely in terms of the polemic against Rome. In the praefatio to the 1535 Galatians we are told immediately before the passage quoted earlier: That one article reigns in my heart, namely the article of faith in Christ, by which, in which, and through which all my theological reflections flow back and forth by day and by night. If the doctrine is flourishing, then will flourish all good things, religion, true worship, the glory of God, and assured knowledge of all conditions and matters (l.c., 39). Then in the argumentum of the same commentary we read (l.c., 48, 28): If the article of justification is lost, then the whole of Christian doctrine is lost at the same time. And on Gal. 1.3 (l.c., 72, 20): If the article of justification lies in ruins, then all lies in ruins. Therefore, it is necessary that we sharpen it (in the manner in which Moses spoke of the Law) and cram it in. For it cannot be understood and held enough or too much. According to Luther’s exposition of Gal. 2.20 (l.c., 296, 23) this article and this article alone has the power to refute all sects, anabaptists and sacramentarians, etc., seeing that they are all at error in relation to it. Moreover, it is by the position on justification that Christianity is distinguished from all other religions: For only Christians believe this doctrine and are righteous not because of what they themselves do, but because they receive the works of another, that is, the passion of Christ (Schol. on Is. 53.2f., 1534, W.A. 25, 329, 15; 330, 8). And in the same context (l.c., 332): this doctrine is the basis of the New Testament, from which, as from an open fountain, all the treasures of the divine wisdom flow. Similarly in 1537 Luther could open a disputation (W.A. 39.1, 205, 2) with the words: The article of justification is master and emperor, Lord, ruler and judge over all kinds of doctrines, and it preserves and steers all the church’s doctrine. If it does not know and consider this article, the human reason is defenceless against the vainest errors. But a mind which is strengthened by it will stand against all their assaults. The dominating role which Luther assigned to the matter in his own sermons and other works corresponds to these declarations of principle. The well-known description of the doctrine as the article by which the church stands or falls does not seem to derive from Luther himself, but it is an exact statement of his view. He found in it the one point which involved the whole.[1]

As Barth has illustrated, rather definitively, Luther saw the doctrine of justification as the watershed locus of all that mattered for the Church of Jesus Christ. For, if the Church gets the Gospel wrong, then what type of Church is one left with?

Once this spark lit on fire Luther’s affections his reformation was underway. It wasn’t the 95 theses on the Wittenberg church’s door that was motivating Luther—that is on the matter of the indulgences, per se, even as that was directly relatable to this matter—it went into the theoanthropological roots of the teaching of the New Testament itself. What was required for humanity to be justified before God? What in fact, were the fundamental entailments of the Gospel? Was it what the Latin church had taught Luther the Augustinian monk; the gratia infusa way? Or was it instead the iustitia aliena (alien righteousness) of Jesus Christ which when the would-be believer comes into union with Christ, by faith alone and grace alone (sola fide sola gratia), all of these benefits of Christ’s person and work become theirs? For Luther, and for the other reformers, it was clearly the latter; it was solo Christo (Christ alone). Soli Deo Gloria

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1 §61 [521–22] The Doctrine of Reconciliation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 8–9.

The Church’s ecstatic Existence and Evangel[istic] Mandate

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The Church is for the world, because God in Christ is for the world:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life. -John 3:16

The Gospel gives us life eternal; the Gospel is God’s life for the world, for us, in Christ; thus, genuine life, of the eternal type, of God’s triune type, comes ecstatically to us. It comes to us from the vicarious humanity of Christ as ‘He becomes us that we might [by grace] become Him, and share in the superabundance of God’s triunity that has always already been. This ‘alien’ form of life becomes native to us only as we come into union with Christ (unio cum Christo); it, again, is a life given to us, afresh anew, as the grace of God in Christ by the Holy Spirit, continuously sustains and paracletes us with the risen and ascended body of the Son of Man. Since this life is extra nos (‘outside of us’) this presupposes or implies that life for all, for the world, is outside of them. That is to say, the new creation, that is the resurrected and ascended vicarious humanity of Christ, has universal inclusion. All of humanity is only humanity insofar that God is humanity for them, for us, in Jesus Christ. As such, the constitution of the Church necessarily includes all of humanity, insofar that the Christ’s humanity is archetypal humanity. This calls the Church, as the Church is constituted by the esse of God’s life for the world in Jesus Christ, to a kerygmatic existence. This is an existence that, by definition, is populated by ‘worldings,’ by people like us. This mission of God (missio Dei), as first given for the world ad extra in the economy of His life in the assumptio carnis, is one that requires for the Church’s flourishing (and telos) that she constantly goes out into the highways and byways of the world seeking the lost sheep for whom Christ has shed His eternal blood. The Church is a ‘go out into the nations and make disciples reality,’ or in the end, it is nothing but an incurved sociality of people who are living for themselves, in the name of Christ; thus, forming institutional bonds that keeps the world out there, and the Church ‘in here’—hence, quenching what, and who in fact the Church is ultimately for.

Matt Jenson writes this about the Gospel as Church:

. . . It is the very logic of the gospel which both judges and justifies Christian theology and then compels and frees it to engage widely and deeply with and in the world.

The material implication can be seen in ecclesiology. To be the church, the ekklesia, is to be that body of people who have been ‘called out’ — out of the world, yes, but also out of ourselves. It is to be those who live excurvatus ex se, finding our lives, ourselves in Christ and in one another. A relational account of ecclesiology, particularly one with an ecstatic dynamic, will yield a doctrine of the Church that emphasizes its missional, eschatological and, above all, doxological character. This is a Church open to the world, the future and God; but even more it is a Church open for the world, the future and God. Living in and as the Church is not living self-satisfied in the possession of eternal life but is instead living ecstatically in a continual outreach which hopes for an ever-widening ‘inner circle’ and lives towards the vision of Revelation 7 in which people from every tongue, tribe and nation bow in worship before the Lamb of God.[1]

The Apostle fleshes this very pattern out in the context of his Philippi hymn:

 5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.14 Do all things without complaining and disputing, 15 that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, 16 holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.17 Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. 18 For the same reason you also be glad and rejoice with me.

Paul knew where His life came from, that is from the One who ‘humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” As such, by the Spirit, he lived out of the life being poured into His, afresh anew, moment by moment, as the sustenance of His life has come for His life in Christ’s. This pattern is continued in Paul’s life as he ‘pours himself out as a drink offering,’ since this is the character of the ecstatic life He is receiving from Jesus. It is this freedom, the freedom of God, which God has graciously invited us into through becoming us in Christ, that Paul is compelled by the love of Christ for others; for the Church; for the Gentile world at large.

The Church in this instance isn’t a prolongation of the incarnation, instead it is a testimony, a witness to the fundamentum of its life as that is given to her by the risen and ascended body of Christ. The Church is not the head, but the ambassador to this world that Christ is risen, ascended, and coming again! The Church is the sanctorum communio only insofar that she receives God’s eternal life for the world in Jesus Christ. It is this ‘release of the prisoners’ that the Church is to proclaim loudly from the rooftops; that is, that Christ is Lord, and that because of who He is in the triune life, He is the One for the many. The Church has life only as that is ecstatically given to her, and the life that is given for her is, indeed, given for the sins of the world.

[1] Matt Jenson, The Gravity of Sin (New York: T&T Clark a Continuum Imprint, 2006), 190.

Kataphysics. TFT’s ‘stratified knowledge of God’ and the Christian Existence

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Either something is, or it isn’t. Surely, there are nuances on a continuum, and we should all be aware of that as we approach any system or maybe better, organism of thought. Nonetheless, in the end, either a framework of thought is sound and corresponds to reality or it doesn’t. This seems like a good working definition of critical realism. If we apply this to a theological prolegomenon, what, in the end, will obtain, is that we will use various criteria to determine whether or not some belief structure, that we may or may not adhere to, is actually true or not. This process is undertaken, often unspoken, and uncritically, by the masses, in our case, the Christian masses, as we approach whatever interpretive tradition, we think is most proximate in regard to explicating the entailments of the kerygmatic (‘Gospely’) reality as revealed in Jesus Christ. But is this process as smorgasbord as I’m making it sound?

According to TF Torrance, Christian theology, if it is to avoid being Pelagian, is an exercise pre-determined by God’s Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. In other words, for TFT, the theological task is either kata physin (‘according to the nature of thing’ under inquiry) or it is simply a self-projection of the would-be knower in regard to thinking God; and thus, self. So, for TFT, who God is, is not known by a prior optics developed by people attempting to think an idea of an abstract infinite, or actus purus (‘pure being’), a part from Godself. For TFT knowledge of God is purely ordered by God’s free choice to be for us in Jesus Christ. It is this antecedent, extra nos (‘outside of us’) reality that is the ground by which any true knowledge of God will obtain. This is, for TFT, the basis for a theological or critical realism. That is, that knowledge of God is not discovered, but instead it is Self-revealed by God for us, because of who God is as triune love, that a potential theologian might actually come to know the true and the living God. TFT calls his approach to a knowledge of God a ‘stratified knowledge of God.’ He explicates what that entails in his book Christian Doctrine of God. Ben Myers offers a nice distillation of what TFT is after with his theory of a stratified knowledge of God:

Thomas F. Torrance’s model of the stratification of knowledge is one of his most striking and original contributions to theological method. Torrance’s model offers an account of the way formal theological knowledge emerges from our intutive and pre-conceptual grasp of God’s reality as it is manifest in Jesus Christ. It presents a vision of theological progression, in which our knowledge moves towards an ever more refined and more unified conceptualisation of the reality of God, while remaining closely coordinated with the concrete level of personal and experiential knowledge of Jesus Christ. According to this model, our thought rises to higher levels of theological conceptualisation only as we penetrate more deeply into the reality of Jesus Christ. From the ground level of personal experience to the highest level of theological reflection, Jesus Christ thus remains central. Through a sustained concentration on him and on his homoousial union with God, we are able to achieve a formal account of the underlying trinitarian relations immanent in God’s own eternal being, which constitute the ultimate grammar of all theological discourse.[1]

This movement of knowledge of God, as Myers helpfully details, starts when even as a mere child a person is confronted by the reality of God in a simple Gospel presentation. As the child responds to the ‘Good News,’ that is as objectively grounded in Christ’s vicarious response for them first, this movement into a more and more refined knowledge of God starts the process. It is a movement from an evangelical to a theological knowledge of God. Where the child matures and grows in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, moving into the Holy of Holies of God’s life as the One who has eternally been in the ‘bosom of the Father’ takes us into the bosom, even as He first took our humanity for Himself. But this is the kataphysical (V metaphysical) basis upon which the child comes to see God from within His inner triune life, as that has been revealed and provided access to through His outer life for the world in Jesus Christ.

For TFT, the aforementioned is the basis by which a genuinely Christian theological framework can be ‘verified’ as to its veracity as truly corresponding to the reality of the living God or not. Insofar that various theological systems stray from this kataphysical center in God for us in Christ, it can be determined whether or not a system of thought and theological reflection ought to be pursued or not. These are the critical bases by which the would-be Christian theologian might come to have a genuinely accessing approach to God. All other approaches, approaches grounded in abstract and speculative metaphysics, with pure beings, actual infinites, unmoved movers, and the like are understood as imposters in regard to genuinely offering an accessing entrée into the throne room of the living God. Since God in Christ, our high priest, and the mediator between God and humanity / humanity and God is the only one who has penetrated either side of the Creator/creature distinction, it is only through Him, in an intensive and principial way, that the would-be theologian could ever hope of crossing into the near country of God’s inner life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

So, as you are confronted by a host of seemingly competing theological systems, all claiming, to one degree or another, to be the most proximate way to think God; ask yourself, are these systems radically grounded in God’s Self-revelation of Jesus Christ or not? Are they based in an intensive understanding of what it means to be in union with Christ (unio cum Christo), and thus founded in a ‘participatory’ ground, in Christ, for thinking God with Christ by the Spirit? Or are they offering an alternative way that presumes an abstract natural way for thinking God from an abstract analogy to an abstract humanity for thinking God from abstract effects in the world back to their abstract and monadic first cause in a simple pure being known, abstractly, as God? Depending on what way you choose to go at this fork in the road will determine, really, the trajectory of your whole Christian life. Indeed, that is what these matters reduce to. Ultimately, whether or not we have a good way to think God, or not, that does not change the objective de jure reality that God is for us in Jesus Christ; i.e., it doesn’t change a confessing Christian’s eternal destiny. But what does potentially change, is how a person’s Christian life unfolds here and now. Will it be based on a solid foundation, the foundation that God alone has laid for us in Jesus Christ (cf. I Cor. 3.11), or instead, will it be based on a self-asserted construct for thinking God that presumes as if the person’s own abstract givenness, and collectivistically and historically so, is good enough for thinking God; as if nature only needed to be perfected and not re-created. Without orthodoxy there can be no orthopraxy, and it is the latter that is really of ultimate concern for the Christian existence.

[1] Benjamin Myers, “The Stratification of knowledge in the thought of T. F. Torrance,” SJT 61 (1): 1-15 (2008) Printed in the United Kingdom © 2008 Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd doi: 10.1017/S003693060700381X.

On the Simplicity of the Gospel: Against Sectarian gospels

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I feel compelled to write something very brief with reference to the simplicity of the Gospel. When a person goes online, in the main, and comes into contact with theology and Bible people, especially those who are selling their particular ecclesial tradition or denomination, what seemingly ends up happening, at least in my perception, is that the Gospel becomes layered over. There is an accretion, a slab of barnacles, an encrustation of peoples’ takes about the reception and appropriation of the Gospel that seemingly obscures the simplicity of the Gospel/kerygmatic reality. If I didn’t have the years of training I have, and the countless hours of reading in theology and biblical studies that is ongoing, I could see myself as a zealous well-meaning Christian, without such training and background, being overwhelmed with questions of doubt about the genuineness of my salvation. Whether it be questions about the role of baptism, the role of the Eucharist, my membership in this or that tradition, and various other issues I might be confronted with when interacting with these various online theological discussions, the seeming perplexity of it all could potentially blow my mind.

I write this as a person who is hyper-sensitive to things like this. I write this as one who has personal experience with these sorts of existential and spiritual quandaries. Some people are more self-assured, and potentially superficial, when it comes to things in general; and for these types that can serve them well, right up until it doesn’t. But I think people “out there,” in general, need to be much more sensitive to the things they assert in regard to the appropriation and means of salvation. Clearly, there are people out there who genuinely believe that their view of baptism, or that membership in their particular tradition within the Christian reality, is necessary to be right before God. But of course, that all goes beyond Scripture. So, my pause here comes, clearly, from a Protestant perspective where the Bible is the norming norm of all other subsequent norms within the broad Christian tradition, catholic. I simply want to leave this post with the following passage:

I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness; but indeed you are bearing with me. 2 For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. 3 But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. 4 For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully. 5 For I consider myself not in the least inferior to the most eminent apostles. 6 But even if I am unskilled in speech, yet I am not so in knowledge; in fact, in every way we have made this evident to you in all things. II Corinthians 11:1-5

12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. John 1:12-13

Many other like passages could be adduced. The point though is this: ‘believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved!’