Category Archives: Resurrection

God’s Annihilating and Evangelical Word: With Reference to Eberhard Juengal

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Eberhard Juengal is engaging with the address of God, and the role that language plays in that address. He is appealing to Heidegger and others with reference to how certain language games have functioned in the profane world, in regard to anthropologically and socio-linguistically situating people as people; both within their inner-lives, and as that relates to what it means to be a human being in the world at large. After he develops things along these lines for a bit, he gets to the payoff. He receives these types of profane frameworks, particularly within there existentialist hue, and then reifies them from within a Christian theological frame of reference. He shows how Godā€™s address, Godā€™s language towards us, has an eschatological character to it that resituates us in a right and new relationship with Godself. Juengal writes:

The eschatological character of manā€™s distancing from himself has an eminently critical dimension. For, to the extent that this distancing surpasses everything which is, everything which is for itself is made nothing. Every word which addresses man about God is, in that sense, a negating or destroying word. It brings about an annihilation in that it surpasses not only our being-here, but also our past and our future. But distanced from himself in such a way, the man addressed about God is brought into a new, ultimate nearness to himself. That is, to be sure, a nearness of the ego to itself which includes its being before God. The New Testament understands this as the presence which is eschatologically oriented through the guarantee of the Holy Spirit.

The word of God which addresses man about God, has, then, an annihilating effect, for the sake of something new. Evangelical theology may not remain silent about the fact that it is destructive. But, and this is what evangelical theology must chiefly speak of, it is destructive only on the basis of the positive fact that God addresses us about himself in such a way that he promises himself to us. One should not understand it in such a way that God would permit what exists to be made nothing in order then to be able to begin all over again from the beginning, so to speak. The reverse is true: because God, in addressing us about himself in such a way that he promotes himself to us, always creates something new, that which is old becomes nothing.[1]

Juengal elaborates further, particularly with how it relates to the respective theologies of Karl Barth and Friedrich Gogarten, in footnote 6 with reference to the above second paragraph:

Thus sin passes away only when it is forgiven; but the forgiveness of sins is always more than the passing away of sin. And in exactly the same way the godless person passes away because he is justified, not in order that he can be justified; the justification of the godless is always more than the passing away of the godless. The actual contrast between the theology of Karl Barth and Friedrich Gogarten appears to me to consist of this contrasting definition of the theological relationship between the passing away and becoming, of death and life, of judgment and grace. See on this the analysis of Gogartenā€™s writings with special attention to the Luther statements which he cites in W. HĆ¼ffmeier, Gott egen Gott; Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zum Gottes- und TodesverstƤndnis Friedrich Gogartens unter besonderer BerĆ¼cksichtigung seiner Luther-interpretation (TĆ¼bingen dissertation, 1972). On this relationship between Barth and Gogarten I refer to the insightful investigation presented by P. Lange in Konkrete Theologie? Karl Barth und Friedrich Gogarten ā€œZwischen den Zeitenā€ (1992-1993); Eine theologiegeschichtlich-systematische Untersuchung im Blick auf die Praxis theologischen Verhaltens (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1972). Karl Barthā€™s dogmatic approach, to define the judgment of God on the basis of grace, that is hermeneutically to say that on the basis of the new the old has become old and passed away (II Cor. 5:17), has been taken up chiefly by Ernst Fuchs and independently developed further hermeneutically.[2]

This hearkens me back to what more contemporarily is being identified by folks like Philip Ziegler, Jamie Davies et al., as Apocalyptic Theology. Essentially, the idea is what I take to be the Pauline idea of Godā€™s disruptive grace (to borrow language from George Hunsinger); that is, that when God addresses us by the Word of God, Jesus Christ, He takes us from our present and visible circumstances, and places us into Himself, in the new creation and resurrected life of Jesus Christ. The result being, that the old is ā€˜annihilated,ā€™ as it were, as the new has come (and continues to come, and will finally come at the second advent of the Christ). Peter refers to this type of theologizing in this way:

10Ā ButĀ the day of the LordĀ will come like a thief, in whichĀ the heavensĀ will pass away with a roar and theĀ elements will be destroyed with intense heat, andĀ the earth andĀ its works will beĀ burned up.

11Ā Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness,Ā 12Ā looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of whichĀ the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and theĀ elements will melt with intense heat!Ā 13Ā But according to HisĀ promise we are looking forĀ new heavens and a new earth,Ā in which righteousness dwells.[3]

As Juengal has underscored for us already, while there is a ā€˜taking awayā€™ there is also a ā€˜bringing anewā€™ that is greater than not less than what has been annihilated in the death of death in Christ. This might remind us of Paulā€™s thinking when he writes, ā€œ17Ā things which areĀ aĀ mereĀ shadow of what is to come; but theĀ substanceĀ belongs to Christ.ā€[4] So, accordingly, there is a passing away of the shadows, which in themselves couldnā€™t handle the weight of what was coming as the antitype of its stead. It isnā€™t that the original and now fallen creation isnā€™t real, but that its inner reality had always already stood before it, as it was first created for its second recreation in the incarnation, resurrection, ascension, and advent of Jesus Christ. That is to say, the first creation, we might say, the first Adam, was something of a placeholder for the coming of his intended reality, in the archetypal, second and greatest Man, Jesus Christ; indeed, for the first Adam, and for all of the world therefrom.

These, are heavy teachings; who can hear them?!

[1] Eberhard JĆ¼ngel,Ā God as the Mystery of the World,Ā trans. by Darrell L. Guder (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf&Stock [reprint], 1983), 175.

[2] Ibid., n. 6.

[3] II Peter 3.10-13, NASB95.

[4] Colossians 2.17, NASB95.

Charlie Kirk, An Aroma of Christ

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Charlie, died in Christ. Christ in Charlie was an aroma of life leading to life, for some, and for others, an aroma of death leading to death. It was the aroma of Christ perfusing through Charlie’s witness for his Lord that brought connection for all, through the Holy Spirit. People are longing deeply for the peace of Christ, the speech of Grace that perfumed Charlie’s interactions with others, and we collectively saw that taken away in a violent way. Charlie, was just living the Christian life in public, which is a uniting not a fracturing life. Rest in the peace of Christ, Charlie.

The Heavenly Dust: Christian Knowledge of God

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As Christians we want to think about God as Christians. Christians, definitionally, arenā€™t profane persons. Indeed, according to Scripture, Christians are saints; i.e., set apart in Christ who is our Set Apart in the presence of the Father for us. This might seem scandalous to even recognize, but Christians are simply in a different place in regard to knowing reality as it is; insofar as the Christ (Jesus) allows us entrĆ©e in these, our bodies of death, in this in-between time. Some might want to push back and describe my observations as idealist. But it is just the opposite, in fact. Only Christians, in regard to thinking God and all else, can operate as non-idealists. That is to say, the Christian is confronted in their very beings with the fact that they, in themselves, left to their profane-selves, are sublated by the very dust and water their flatlander bodies consist of. Further, this entails that Christians, as they are confronted by reality in Jesus Christ, can acknowledge their subhuman statuses as profane persons; repent, because God in Christ first repented for us; and experience life re-created on the primordial plane of Godā€™s elect and elevated life for us in Jesus Christ. On this new plane the dust the Christian consists of is no longer mortal and earthy, but immortal and heavenly; it is of a new body, with new capacities, which entail a capacity to actually think the living and true God from within a center in Himself for us in Jesus Christ. If this is the case, it behooves the Christian, who is distinct from the profane or secular person, to learn to imbibe and think from the sensory-tablet provided for by the Son of Man, as He sits at the Right Hand of the Father.

Torrance writes:

Here we are faced with another fundamental characteristic of the Truth of God as it is in Jesus; it is both divine and human. Knowledge of it, accordingly, is essentially bi-polar. This bi-polarity corresponds to the two-fold objectivity of the Word we have already noted. Knowledge of God is given to us in this Man, Jesus, but that knowledge does not allow us to leave the Man Jesus behind when we know Him in His divine nature. There is an indivisible unity in the ultimate Fact of Christ, true God and true Man. Theological knowledge rests upon and partakes of that duality-in-unity in the Person of Christ. In Him we know God in terms of what God is not, namely, man, for in Christ God, who is God and not man, has become Man and comes as Man, but in such a way that what God is in Christ He is antecedently and eternally in Himself. We know God is indissoluble unity with Jesus as we encounter Him through the witness of men, and we know Jesus in His human and historical actuality in indissoluble unity with God.[1]

The Christian inhabits another world whilst grounded in this world by the grace of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The Christian doesnā€™t have to leave this world to see the antecedent world of Godā€™s Kingdom. Precisely because Godā€™s Kingdom, in the wisdom of the Cross, the wisdom of God in Christ, comes to us; here, where we are in this mortal dust, in order to make us partakers of the heavenly dust of His recreated-resurrected-ascended humanity.

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Theological Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 149.

‘Our end is not a tolerable evil’: On the Concrete Christian Death

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Death, just like life, in the secular and pagan realm, but even in the Christian realm, insofar as the latter mirrors the formerā€”and it does at ubiquitous levelsā€”is thought of in abstract and wondrous terms; indeed, in fearful terms. But for the Christian all things have been resurrected; including our dead bodies. We are now of the ā€˜firstborn from the dead,ā€™ Jesus Christ. But this is to the point: when we contemplate our own mortality, which most of us attempt to hideaway from, most of us conjure some type of ethereal somethingness ā€œout there,ā€ that doesnā€™t seem real to us. That is to say, death is such a seemingly faceless enemy, bringing with it the abyss of the unknown, that we attempt to flee from it in whatever way we can; even if that way is, ironically, just living more fully and out of the death our bodies inhabit and participate in from this to that moment of every single day of our lives. When we think about death, in general, it seems so outlandish to us, at a personal level, that to contemplate it for too long either descends into the morbid or insanity. Personal death, as death in general, represents a limit that human beings were not constructed for, ultimately. And yet this is our status in this current time between now and not yet. And so, outside of Christ, we attempt to withdraw into other things, things that keep us from thinking too constantly about our transitory statuses. It is a scary thing, death that is, for a people who were ultimately created to be in eternal union and fellowship with our Creator, with our Father, in the Son, by the Holy Spirit, to not live and out of that bond of union that God has re-created for us (post-fall) in Christ, in order that He might elevate us to the heights and weight that He has always already shared with the Father in the bond of love wooed by the Holy Spirit. Barth says more:

What is the justification for this negative aspect of our being? What is the basis of the profound necessity of human fear in face of death? It is obviously to be found in the fact that death is an enemy with its own destructive purpose and power to which we have rightly fallen a prey in virtue of Godā€™s right against us, and the wrong which we have done Him. This means, of course, that we are threatened in the frontier of our being by the negation which corresponds to the power and purpose of this enemy. But it also means that in death we are confronted not only with death itself but also with God; with the very God who is in the right against us and against whom we have done wrong. In death He demands that which we still owe Him. He threatens us with the payment which we have deserved. It is not any negation which threatens us in death. It is not a harmless, neutral and finally welcome negation as imagined by Buddha and his kindred. It is the very dangerous and painful negation of our nothingness before God. If this were not so, if death were a tyrant in its own right, we could await it with secret equanimity or even open defiance. But it is not a tyrant in its own right. It rules only but precisely at the point where God is in the right against His creature and His creature is in the wrong against Him. It reigns in the no manā€™s land where God is in conflict with man and man with God. It rules with the authority and power of the Law of God obtaining even in this no manā€™s land. In the rule of death we have to do with the rule of God. It is really our nothingness in His sight which is revealed in the destructive work of death. This is what makes this work so ineluctable, so bitter and terrible. Our end is not a tolerable evil, but the great and serious and intolerable evil, to the extent that in our opposition to God we draw upon ourselves Godā€™s opposition to us. In its perhaps concealed but very real basis our fear of death is the well-grounded fear that we must have of God.[1]

In other words, as Barth rightly notices, death is really coming to terms with the fact that fallen humans harbor sweet kiss me nots for the ā€˜nothingnessā€™ of their own lives; at least, as we perceive them to be: i.e., our own lives. Death is the comeuppance all of humanity has indeed deserved, before the Holy and living God. And yet, the Evangel, the Good News! is that Christ has faced and conquered this comeuppance for us. He has already entered into the ditch of death, faced it, accepted its ā€˜wandering star-ness as if in the darkness of space,ā€™ and shone the bright light of the Sun of righteousness to it; thus, dispelling its wretched cursedness with the bounty of His life, the ever-eternal life-spring that flows upward into the bosom of the Father for the eternity of His life now with ours.

People feign a ā€˜no fearā€™ attitude, often, when the reality of death is brought up; even in the face of their own mortality (as I saw when I was being treated with others for cancer). And yet deep down ā€˜eternity has been set in our hearts,ā€™ as such to be faced with the reality of a faceless non-eternity, such as a Christless death necessarily presents someone with, becomes such an assault on all that ā€œappearsā€ and ā€œfeelsā€ real, that it is dashed on the rocks of the wishfulness of fallen humanityā€™s imaginaries. That is to say, as independent, self-possessed, and thus fallen human beings, we would rather die outside of Christ, and be able to hold onto our own ā€œpreciousā€ selves, even into the depths of a nothingness we really have no possible knowledge of. A fallen humanity would rather die, with hopes of escaping the living God, if this only means that somehow, someway such humanity might finally achieve Ɯbermensch status; indeed, transcending death itself, and finally ascending to the heights of divinity they always knew they possessed in themselves; as if a ā€˜spark.ā€™

[1] Karl Barth,Ā Church Dogmatics III/2 Ā§47 [608] The Doctrine of Creation: Study EditionĀ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 168.

Triune Time as Eternal Life and Rest

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ā€œIf any man be in Christ, He is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.ā€

Time in abstraction, that is, time thought of in a way that is not thought from Godā€™s triune time for the world in Jesus Christ, can only lead to a life of despair and futility. The 21st centuryā€™s busy-ness that most are preoccupied with often has the tendency to glaze over the futility of life, without Christ, which can often last someone a lifetime; that is until they are finally confronted with the reality of their mortality. Indeed, the reality of mortality is ultimately to face the Firstborn from the Dead, Jesus Christ. And to finally meet the ground of all reality, and the purpose of the created order in general, after a person has ā€œexpired,ā€ is a fearful thing indeed. It is as if such a person has finally had to come to terms with the fact that they have trampled the blood of Christ underfoot, counting it a vain thing.

Barth writes:

Again by way of anticipation, the presence of Jesus in His community is full of import for the future. His presence impels and presses to His future, general and definitive revelation, of which there has been a particular and provisional form in the Easter history. Hence even the presence of Jesus in the Spirit, for all its fulness, can only be a pledge or first instalment of what awaits the community as well as the whole universe, His return in glory. But it must never be forgotten that He who comes again in glory, this future Jesus, is identical with the One proclaimed by the history of yesterday and really present to His own to-day. The thorough-going eschatology for which the interim between now and one day necessarily seems to be a time of emptiness, of futility, of lack, of a progressive and barely concealed disillusionment, is not the eschatology of New Testament Christianity. And again it is only an unspiritual community which can tolerate such a view. The fact that the man Jesus will be includes the fact that He is; but the fact that He is does not exclude that He is ā€œnot yet.ā€[1]

For about a decade, starting in the mid-nineties, the Lord, as He began to do a heavy work in my life, allowed me to feel what life would be like without Him as the ground of it all. I can only describe that season of time as a literal hell. Indeed, clinically it might have been ā€œdiagnosedā€ as depression and general anxiety, but it went much deeper than that. Its basis was indeed spiritual. It was tied into a heavy intellectual (although not affective) doubt of Godā€™s existence I was experiencing; even as a Christian. I felt the hell of nihilism whilst in the depths of deep depression and deep anxiety (indeed, these became mutually implicating things). I only made it through that because God is gracious.

Even so, as Barth underscores, we are included in the time of Christ; the new time of God in recreation for us (pro nobis). We have the guarantee of the eschatological time to come even as He in-breaks, by the Holy Spirit, into our broken lives while we continue to inhabit this in-between time. But His parousia (presence) is just as real and weighty now as it will finally be when the consummate reality of the revealing of the sons of God ultimately enfolds us into its full participative esse (ground) as that has been, and always will be, mediated for us in the priestly humanity of our High Priest and Brother, Jesus Christ. Take heart, even though we might experience many and deep tribulations here, Christ has overcome the world!

[1] Karl Barth,Ā Church Dogmatics III/2 Ā§47 [468] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 32ā€“3.

The Gospel of the Forty Days

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The resurrection of Jesus Christ is what all of history is contingent upon. All that we experience, linearly, has a ground behind, underneath, and after it that is in fact the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Without that centraldogma there is no history; there is no nothing. I think we, especially as Christians of all people, really need to get our heads around this reality. When we do we start living as those who have the hope of Christ in us, the purifying hope. We have a critical valence to look at the world from that is not purely conditioned by the immediate hype and circumstance. This is what Barth captures so well:

For the history and message of Easter contains everything else, while without it everything else would be left in the air as a mere abstraction. Everything else in the New Testament contains and presupposes the resurrection. It is the key to the whole. We can agree finally that acceptance or rejection of the Gospel of the New Testament, at any rate as understood by the New Testament itself, depends on our acceptance or rejection of the evangelium quadraginta dierum [gospel of the forty days]. Either we believe with the New Testament in the risen Jesus Christ, or we do not believe in Him at all. This is the statement which believers and non-believers alike can surely accept as a fair assessment of the sources.[1]

On one hand you can hear in Barth a critique of Bultmannā€™s demythologizing project. But more theologically significant is simply the establishment of the fact ā€œthat Christ is risenā€ explains everything immediate, in regard to the composition of the New Testament itself. But even more, the resurrection makes sense of the whole of reality in a very organic rather than totalizing way. That is to say, the resurrection of Jesus Christ presents us with an openness of life towards the triune God. It is here where a theology of nature, and a theology of everything else is resident; that is, in the resurrected humanity of Jesus Christ. Without His humanity there would have never been any tinder for this world to be formed by; never a purpose for it to rotate in the Milky Way. Until this radical reality is apprehended the Christian will continue to inhabit a wilderness like experience. They wonā€™t have the eyes to see or the ears to hear the depth reality and intonation of Godā€™s still small voice as it breezes by them afresh anew by the Spiritā€™s hovering life. The resurrection makes all things new. It puts to death the old (sorry natural law/theology), and presents humanity with Godā€™s humanity for the world in Jesus Christ. If we are going to have any chance of knowing God, of accessing His created order, and its telos, we will only come to this through participation with Jesus Christ; through His union with us, that we might be in union with Him, in the triune life of the eternal God.

[1] Karl Barth,Ā Church Dogmatics III/2 Ā§47 [444] The Doctrine of Creation: Study EditionĀ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 7.

On a Crucifixional ‘Certainty’ of Faith as Knowledge of God: With Reference to Herbert McCabe

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Herbert McCabe on the certainty of the Christian reality (contra wishful thinking, so on and so forth):

Now there are some people who will admit even this. They will admit that Christianity is reasonable even in this sense, that it is not merely logically coherent, but also a pretty reasonable hypothesis. They will admit that there is a lot of evidence of one kind and another to suggest that Christian beliefs are true, just as there is a lot of evidence of one kind and another to suggest that telepathy is quite common or that Queen Elizabeth I was in love with Essex. What they find so unreasonable in Christians is that, instead of saying that Christianity is highly probable, they claim to be completely certain. When you do establish something by this kind of probable and convergent argument, you have every right to hold it as your opinion, but you have no right to claim absolute certainty and to be sure that you will never meet a genuine refutation of it. This is what finally seems unreasonable about faith to the openminded liberal sceptic. And here I can agree with him. In this sense I am prepared to admit that you might call faith unreasonable.

It is not unreasonable in the sense that it is absurd or incoherent. Nor is it unreasonable in the sense that there are not good reasons for it. But it is, if you like, unreasonable in that it demands a certainty which is not warranted by the reasons. I am completely certain that I am in Oxford at the moment. I have all the evidence I need for certainty on this point. It is true that I admit the logical possibility that I may be drugged or dreaming or involved in some extraordinarily elaborate deception. But this doesnā€™t really affect my certainty. Yet the evidence which makes it reasonable to hold, for example, that Christ rose from the dead comes nowhere near this kind of evidence. One might say that the evidence is spite of all probability does really seem to point to this fantastic conclusion, but it is certainly not the kind of evidence which makes me quite sure and certain. And yet I am more certain that Christ rose from the dead than I am that I am in Oxford. When it comes to my being there, I am prepared to accept the remote possibility that I am the victim of an enormous practical joke. But I am not prepared to envisage any possibility of deception about the resurrection. Of course I can easily envisage my argument for the resurrection being disposed of. I can envisage myself being confronted by what is seems to me to be unanswerable arguments against it. But this is not the same thing. I am prepared to envisage myself ceasing to believe in it, but I am not prepared to envisage either that there really are unanswerable arguments against it or that I would be justified in ceasing to believe it. All this is because, although reasons may lead me to belief, they are not the basis of my belief. I believe certain things because God has told them to me, and I am able to believe them with certainty and complete assurance only because of the divine life within me. It is a gift of God that I believe, not something I can achieve by human means.[1]

As a Christian, full of the Spirit, doesnā€™t McCabeā€™s thinking resonate with you? It certainly has resonance with the thinking of Barth on faith, and Christā€™s faith for us as we find correspondence with His and from His by the Holy Spirit. It isnā€™t that there is no physical or historical evidence for such things, itā€™s that it goes way beyond such parameters. It isnā€™t that it is some type of existential foray into the mystical; indeed, as that might be generated by an abstract humanā€™s innards. It is that God has made concrete contact with us through the interior life of His life for us, with us, and in us, in Christ. McCabe isnā€™t referring to some sort of epistemic certainty that satisfies our base hopes. Instead, He is referring to the triune Godā€™s unilateral Self-determination to bring us, to elevate us into the very heart of His inner life; to share in the glory that the Son has always already shared with the Father by the Holy Spirit. This type of certainty of relationship comes with an inherent vulnerability to it, of the sort wherein a child is dependent upon their parent. This knowledge of God, of our relationship with Him, comes with a desperateness to it; of the type where the Christian knows that they know that they donā€™t continue to stand without their Father standing for them in the Son, the Savior of the world. It is a primordial situation wherein we just show up in this world, and our Father graciously comes to us, as if a babe tossed into the weeds and dust of the wastelands, picks us up, cleans us up, and brings us into the eternal life spring that is showering forth from the One in the bosom of the Father; indeed, in the Son.

I take what McCabe is referring to as a ā€˜taste and see that God is good,ā€™ or an Anselmian fides quaerens intellectum (ā€˜faith seeking understandingā€™) mode of being. And as I already noted, there is a primordiality to all of this. That is to say, as Barthā€™s theology does, that the Christian has entered into a new creation in the resurrected humanity of Jesus Christ. We are on a new playing field wherein the eyes to see the invisible as the concrete, are the eyes of the faith of Christ that we have come into union with by the grace of adoption into the family and triune life of the eternal and living God. Barth scholar Robert Dale Dawson communicates these truths in the following way, with reference to Barthā€™s theology of the resurrection (Iā€™ve used this quote multiple times because I think it is helpful towards piercing into what Barth is after throughout his theological oeuvre):

A large number of analyses come up short by dwelling upon the historical question, often falsely construing Barthā€™s inversion of the order of the historical enterprise and the resurrection of Jesus as an aspect of his historical skepticism. For Barth the resurrection of Jesus is not aĀ datumĀ of the sort to be analyzed and understood, by other data, by means of historical critical science. While a real event within the nexus of space and time the resurrection is also the event of the creation of new time and space. Such an event can only be described as an act of God; that is an otherwise impossible event. The event of the resurrection of Jesus is that of the creation of the conditions of the possibility for all other events, and as such it cannot be accounted for in terms considered appropriate for all other events. This is not the expression of an historical skeptic, but of one who is convinced of the primordiality of the resurrection as the singular history-making, yet history-delimiting, act of God.[2]

According to Barth, and I think the Gospel implications themselves, we are not thinking of reality in terms of a grace perfecting nature or a revelation perfecting reason (ironically, McCabe is a Thomist, but uniquely so); we are thinking from the new theo-logic that comes from a city not of our own making or machination. As Christians, and I see this in McCabeā€™s thinking, our bases for knowing God come from an otherworldly, that is indeed thisworldly reality. As such, we have a certainty about it in the ways already noted, but also in a way that this world considers both foolish and weak. There is a staurological (crucifixional) ground to this type of thinking that understands that knowledge of God comes first from a putting to death of what we consider ā€œreasonable,ā€ by our inborn lights, and a resurrection unto a new creation wherein what is reasonable is only determined by Godā€™s pre-destination for His consummate and concrete Kingdom to come, and currently coming minute-by-minute. amen

[1] Herbert McCabe, Faith Within Reason (London: Continuum, 2007), 28ā€“9.

[2] Robert Dale Dawson, The Resurrection in Karl BarthĀ (UK: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007), 13.

Living in the ‘Feeling’ and Reality of Freedom from Sin that God Desires For Us In Christ: From Gestation to Resurrection

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I really struggled with a false sense of guilt and condemnation for particular sins from my past for years upon years. The enemy of my soul kept me living under ā€˜a yoke of bondageā€™ that Jesus said I ā€˜would be free indeedā€™ from. The Lord did not leave me as an orphan though, by the Spirit he ministered to me through a sort of rigorous exercise of training me to think rightly about reality as declared in the evangel of His life as borne witness to in Holy Scripture. After many years of anxiety and depression, particularly stemming from living under this false yoke of condemnation the Lord used the reality of creation and recreation to bring the freedom that I so desperately desired. I am sure that I am not alone in this walk, and so I thought I would share a little bit of how this ā€˜trainingā€™ from the Lord looks; at least the way it looks for me.

As I just intimated a doctrine of creation and recreation, along with Godā€™s sovereign providential care of all reality, played the required roles for me to finally see that I truly was and am free (for God and others). As already noted this sort of education from God was motivated by a crisisā€”we might refer to it as a theology of crisisā€”a crisis that brought the realization home that I did not have the resources in myself to bring the freedom that God alone could bring.[1] So how does this relate to God being Creator; and not just in an intellectual sense, but how does that reality relate to these real life spiritual issues in a existential felt manner?

In order to help explain what Iā€™m attempting to detail let me offer a very brief definition of the theological concept creatio ex nihilo (ā€˜creation out of nothingā€™). Keith Ward offers this definition:

Creatio ex nihilo (Latin for “creation from nothing”) refers to the view that the universe, the whole of space-time, is created by a free act of God out of nothing, and not either out of some preexisting material or out of the divine substance itself. This view was widely, though not universally, accepted in the early Christian Church, and was formally defined as dogma by the fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Creatio ex nihilo is now almost universally accepted by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Indian theism generally holds that the universe is substantially one with God, though it is usually still thought of as a free and unconstrained act of God.[2]

There are many important theological implications we could explore simply based upon this brief definition, but for our purposes I wanted to inject this definition into this discussion to elevate the idea that God is the Creator, and thus all of creation is contingent upon his Word. It was this idea that God started to use in my life, years ago, before I ever had any understanding of ā€˜creation out of nothingā€™, that I could have freedom from my past. This concept, before I knew the theological parlance was captured for me in this Bible verse, ā€œ3And He is the radiance of His glory and the exactĀ representation of His nature, andĀ upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had madeĀ purification of sins, HeĀ sat down at the right hand of theĀ Majesty on highā€¦.ā€ (Heb. 1.3). Interesting how even in this verse the concept of being purified from sins and Godā€™s ā€˜upholding all things by the word of His powerā€™ are connected. It was this connection that God used to bring freedom for me. The lesson took many years, and was full of ā€˜anfechtungā€™ (trial-tribulation). The Lord allowed me to existentially feel the weight of what this world might look like without him as the One holding it together. It is very hard for me to verbalize the sense that I experienced, but it was as if I was questioning all of reality; even physical reality. I would look out at the world and based upon the sort of nihilistic logic that had infiltrated my mind (as a Christian!) over the years I would have this excruciating condition of feeling the transitoriness of all of reality. It was living in this reality, accompanied by ā€˜intellectual doubtsā€™ (not spiritual) about Godā€™s existence, that of course!, threw me into great pits of despondency and despair. But it was also through this that my perception of reality was transferred from one contingent upon my wordā€”and this world systemā€™s wordā€”to Godā€™s Word. It was this process, ironically, that allowed me to finally understand that ā€œIf GodĀ isĀ for us, whoĀ is against us?Ā 32Ā He whoĀ did not spare His own Son, butĀ delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?33Ā Who will bring a charge againstĀ Godā€™s elect?Ā God is the one who justifies;Ā 34Ā who is the one whoĀ condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who wasĀ raised, who isĀ at the right hand of God, who alsoĀ intercedes for us.ā€ (Rom. 8.31ā€“32) Again, like with the Hebrews passage, we see here in Paulā€™s theology that a connection is made between freedom from condemnation and the creational reality of Godā€™s Word; except here what is emphasized is not creation in general, but creation in particular as that is particularized in the re-creation of God in Jesus Christā€™s resurrection. Once Iā€™d been schooled enough with the reality that ā€˜realityā€™ is Godā€™s reality based alone upon his given and sustaining Word; once I could ā€˜feelā€™ that weight, not just intellectually, but spiritually-affectively, the resurrection and re-creation therein had the real life impact I personally needed to be ā€˜freeā€™ and stand fast in the freedom that the Son said I would be free within (Jn. 8.36); his freedom in the re-creation; the resurrection; the new creation; the new humanity that is his for us.

So I had this doctrine of creation out of nothing in place, in a ā€˜feltā€™ way; with the emphasis being upon the reality that God alone holds all of reality together. It was within this conceptual frame that the doctrine of re-creation and resurrection came alive for me; in an existential-spiritual-felt and lived sense. This is why Karl Barthā€™s doctrine of resurrection has resonated with me so deeply. It is tied into the type of ā€˜primordialā€™ thinking that creatio ex nihilo operates fromā€”as part and parcel of Godā€™s upholding Wordā€”and then explicates that from within a theology of Godā€™s Word wherein the primacy of Christā€™s life is understood as the telos the fulcrum of what created reality is all about. Robert Dale Dawson really helped me to appreciate this sort of connection between creation out of nothing and Barthā€™s doctrine of re-creation as he wrote this:

A large number of analyses come up short by dwelling upon the historical question, often falsely construing Barthā€™s inversion of the order of the historical enterprise and the resurrection of Jesus as an aspect of his historical skepticism. For Barth the resurrection of Jesus is not a datumĀ of the sort to be analyzed and understood, by other data, by means of historical critical science. While a real event within the nexus of space and time the resurrection is also the event of the creation of new time and space. Such an event can only be described as an act of God; that is an otherwise impossible event. The event of the resurrection of Jesus is that of the creation of the conditions of the possibility for all other events, and as such it cannot be accounted for in terms considered appropriate for all other events. This is not the expression of an historical skeptic, but of one who is convinced of the primordiality of the resurrection as the singular history-making, yet history-delimiting, act of God.[3]

Threading out the academic technicalities (that are important in their original context), and focusing on the concepts that serve our purposes, what I draw from this is the significance of what Dawson identifies in Barthā€™s theology as ā€˜the primordiality of the resurrection as the singular history-making, yet history-delimiting, act of God.ā€™ Can you see how all of this might provide the sort of apocalyptic freedom we are in need of in order to live the sort of ā€˜freeā€™ life that God wants us to before him? It does seem rather mechanical and academic; I agree. Let me try to summarize and draw together the themes Iā€™ve been attempting to highlight in order to provide you with a maybe-way forward in your own spiritual walk and life as a Christian.

The Conclusion. It is actually rather basic, but deeply profound; at least for me. What is required is that we ask for eyes of faith to see what God sees in Christ. He will school us in his ways as we seek him first in the Scriptureā€™s reality in Christ. He will work things into our lives that will shorn away the accretions of the ā€˜worldly-system-wisdomā€™ with his wisdom; the wisdom of the cross. He will allow you to ā€˜feelā€™ the existential weight of his life, and the reality that that upholds, and within this, this apocalyptic reality of his in-breaking life into ours, the reality that the God who could rightly condemn us has broken into the surly contingencies of our sinful lives and become the ā€˜Judge, judged.ā€™ If the God who holds all reality together by the Word of his power in Jesus Christ invades this world in the Son, takes his just condemnation of our sins (no matter what they are!) upon himself for us, puts that death to death in his death on the cross, and then re-creates all of reality in his resurrection; then there remains no space for condemnation. The One who could condemn me stands in the way and has eliminated the sphere for condemnation insofar that he has re-created a world wherein only his righteousness reigns and dwells in his enfleshed life for us in his Son, Jesus Christ. What I just noted is the key to grasp. There is another world in Christ; a world accessible by the eyes of faith, provided by the eyes of Christ, in his vicarious humanity which we are enlivened into by the Holy Spirit. This is the real reality that Christians live in and from; and it is this reality that I cling to whenever the enemy of my soul wants to bring me into a life of bondage that belongs to the world that he is king over; a world that is dead and no longer real by virtue of the reality of Godā€™s new world re-created and realized in the primacy of Jesus Christ.

I hope this small reflection might help provide some liberation for some of you out there as well. I realize this all might seem pretty academic, but I donā€™t really see things that way; Iā€™m hoping youā€™ll see as a result of this post why I donā€™t see things in terms of the ā€˜academic.ā€™ I think good theology, whether people think it is ā€œacademicā€ or not can begin to see that at spiritual levels these ideas can have real life impact and consequences, and that God can use them for the good; he did so, and continues to work this way for me. Just recently, as recent as yesterday, the devil tried to bring me back into a sense of false condemnation and guilt, and I found relief in the very ideas I’ve just outlined. The process, in the head, can be somewhat mechanistic, when working through things this way, but, at least for me, it is what is required for to live a life of freedom that God wants me to live in and from his Son, and my Savior, Jesus Christ.Ā Soli Deo Gloria.

 

[1] This might also explain why I have so much resonance with Karl Barthā€™s theology. Early on Barth was known as a theologian of crisis. Martin Lutherā€™s theology was spawned by deep angst, and his theology is often related to what is known in German as Anfechtung (trial/tribulation). This is why I have found these theologians, among others, as some of my most insightful teachers; they understand that the ā€˜wisdom of the crossā€™, that a theologia crucis and a theologia resurrectionis are the key components for knowing God and making him known to others. This is where God meets us; itā€™s where he knows we must be met if we are going to meet him.

[2] Keith Ward, Creatio Ex Nihilo (Encyclopedia.com), accessed 05-18-2018.

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

Can-o-Worms: Robert Jenson and the Resurrection

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As usual I have opened a can-o-worms with my posts on Robert Jensonā€™s doctrine of resurrectionā€”I say ā€œas usualā€ in the sense that often over the years Iā€™ve touched upon a variety of controversial issues. So I have been processing all of this out in the open allowing you all to provide me feedbackā€”if you willā€”and this opening has garnered response from learned people; particularly on Facebook (through contacts there). But letā€™s be clear, just as is the case for anyone, we all must come to our own convictions and conclusions based upon a best faith effort; thatā€™s the effort I am attempting to put forth in regard to understanding Jensonā€™s doctrine of resurrection.

I received a copy of an essay/chapter a friend of mine, Oliver Crisp, contributed to the recently released volume The Promise of Robert W. Jenson’s Theology: Constructive Engagements. As Divine Providence would have it Oliverā€™s chapter just happens to be on the very issue that has been causing me some angstā€”letā€™s not be too overwrought, whether or not Jenson did affirm the actual and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ has no long term bearing on what I actually believe relative to the bodily resurrection of Christ as attested to by the Apostolic witness. Nevertheless, insofar as we are beholdenā€”as people of the truthā€”to represent each other in a more accurate way, it is important to do due diligence in representing the theology of Jenson vis-Ć -vis resurrection.

I have actually been getting it from both barrels; as is the case in the theological endeavor there are of course competing angles from, it seems, infinite sides of a position or doctrine. Jenson, just as any theologian worth their salt, has presented us with no cause for small polarization; in other words, his offering, theologically, has the potential to divideā€”Iā€™d expect nothing less from any sober attempt to divulge the implications and inklings produced by the reality of the God of the Gospel, of Jesus Christ. I have been presenting one line in regard to Jenson, that his presentation on the resurrection comes from a Bultmann-inspired angle; one of demythologizing in light of the ā€œmodern progressā€ and scientific age we currently inhabit. One push back Iā€™ve received on this front from someone who has done their PhD work on Jenson went like this (this is from Facebook interaction, I wonā€™t share the name of the interlocutor since Iā€™m not sure he wants me to):

Jenson isnā€™t saying that the body of Christ remains dead. He is saying that bodily resurrection is a new body, not a resuscitated old one. I donā€™t know how one could bracket off the sacramental question. His entire understanding of what a body is is central to his interpretation of the resurrection; ie, objective availability. To say that Jesusā€™ body could have remained in the tomb is to say that it is no longer the way he is available. One neednā€™t agree with this interpretation, but it isnā€™t accurate to suggest that Jensonā€™s interpretation of the resurrection is subjective or beholden to demythologization. I think thereā€™s much to say about the fact that the old body is the object of resurrection, and therefore that it must be related to the risen body. Thatā€™s a valid critical question of Jensonā€™s theology. But I think what youā€™ve said in this thread misfires a bit.[1]

TheologianJ, just to reiterate says this: ā€œJenson isnā€™t saying that the body of Christ remains dead. He is saying that bodily resurrection is a new body, not a resuscitated old oneā€; and this: ā€œTo say that Jesusā€™ body could have remained in the tomb is to say that it is no longer the way he is available.ā€ There are many thought experiments taking place in all of this; particularly by Robert Jenson. TheologianJ, in his attempt to represent Jenson more accurately, wants to emphasize that for Jenson there is an asymmetrical relationship between the pre-resurrection and crucified body of Jesus, and the post-resurrection and glorified risen body of Christ. And to get this point across, as TheologianJ rehearses Jensonā€™s point, the hypothetical of a body remaining in the tomb, even after Jesus resurrected, is the idea that presses into the mystery that actually took place at the resurrection. Yet, the image, maybe strangely, that is conjured in my mind as I reflect upon TheologianJā€™s words here, is to think of a caterpillar and butterfly; as if the pre-resurrection body of Christ is the caterpillar and the post resurrection body the butterfly; as if when Jesus resurrects he sluffs off the old body (as if a shell or husk), and assumes the new body that has an inextricable relation to the old ā€˜carrier-bodyā€™, but nonetheless is a brand new body of a different sort. Even though this analogy breaks down, especially on the biblical front, at least at some levels, it does have some purchase to it in regard to noting the miracle that the resurrection body entails and the discordant yet concordant relation that remains present between the old and the new.

Okay, I can accept some of this. But I donā€™t think this line of thought is neither necessary nor required. As I noted in response to another interlocutor on Facebook, the way Iā€™m approaching this is from a pre-modern/pre-Copernican way of viewing the resurrectionā€”like from a cosmology that simply accepts that what Scripture says about the resurrection simply maps onto what actually is the primal reality of all creation (i.e. without reference to modern scientific theories in regard to cosmogony and cosmology). Jenson, on the other hand, feels compelled to work his thinking in and from under the pressures presented by the modern scientific world; a post-Copernican world. This is why I will remain at disparate odds with Jenson. But there is some irony, because even as Jenson is attempting to work his theological project into the modern 21st century world (late 20th century as he wrote his Systematic Theology) he re-mystifies how he thinks resurrection through his Lutheran antecedents found in Swabian Cosmic Christology and in his stylized mode of sacramental theology.

Let me back off the idea that Bultmann is the primary point of departure for Jenson. But let me maintain that I still think that what Jenson is doing is a kind of de-mystifying and then re-mystification of what the resurrection of Jesus Christ entails; so in this sense I think we can at the very least, insofar as both Bultmann and Jenson are modern theologians (to one degree or another), come to the conclusion that while Jensonā€™s project of ā€œevangelizing the cosmology of the Christā€ is distinct, in his own ways from Bultmannā€™s, there remains an incidental over-lap between the two insofar as they are indeed working intentionally from modern soundings and categories. Note Jenson:

Copernicusā€™ new cosmology undid this accommodation. The Copernican universe is homogeneous; no part of it can be more suited for Godā€™s dwelling than any other. It can map no topologically delineated heaven. There is in a Copernican universe no plausible accommodation for the risen Christā€™s body; and, indeed, within any modern cosmology, the assertion that the body is upper there some place must rightly provoke mocking proposals to search for it with more powerful telescopes, or suggestions that perhaps it is hiding on the ā€œother sideā€ of a black hole. But if there is no place for Jesusā€™ risen body, how is it a body at all? For John Calvin was surely right: ā€œ. . . this is the eternal truth of any body, that it is contained in its place.ā€

The disappearance of heaven from the accepted topography of the universe has had powerful and destructive impact on the actual theology of believers. It is safe to say that most modern believers, whatever doctrine they may formally espouse, actually envision the risen Christ as not embodied, as a pure ā€œspirit,ā€ or perhaps as embodied in a a [sic] very thinned-out fashion, asā€”not to be too fine about itā€”a spook. A body requires its place, and we find it hard to think of any place for this one.[2]

We cannot go back, or maybe we can, according to Jenson. Here it becomes apparent the type of world Jenson believes we must do theology in; the world that has been bequeathed to us as moderns and now post-moderns. He immediately (following the quote I just shared from him) anticipates that folks, like me, might simply fall back to a traditional pre-Copernican position on thinking resurrection and body-place in the heavenlies. He says thatā€™s not advisable, and that even reversion to the past, prior to Copernicus, as far back as the 9th century, we have Christian thinkers attempting to understand how the bodily presence of God in Christ, in the continued reality of the incarnation in the resurrected body, relates to the world of time-space. This is where he refers, and turns his focus to the Swabian theologians, post-Copernicus, who he thinks provides him with the kind of pregnant theological resource to fund his own incarnational theology of sacrament and how the body of God in Christ continues to be mediated to humanity in the ā€œbodyā€ of the broken bread and red juice.[3]

I will say that Jenson is a complex; arenā€™t we all. He is a modern theologian attempting to think modernly about a reality that transcends all analogies and human categories of wit. His modern impulses, or at least the way he self-consciously owns those, drives him to say things about the ā€œempty tombā€ and the resurrected body of Jesus Christ that I wouldnā€™t say in the way he does. I think this is the rub for me, and will continue to be when I read Jenson. I still can learn from him, but Iā€™d rather learn from people like Thomas Torrance, Karl Barth, John Calvin, Martin Luther, Maximus the Confessor, Athanasius, Irenaeus et al. Jenson looks back and listens to the past too, but his impulses are his own (which of course makes some sort of sense if you think about it). I donā€™t want to misrepresent Jenson, Iā€™m just thinking all of this out-loud; bear that in mind as you not only read these posts on Jenson, but on every single post I have ever written or will write here at The Evangelical Calvinist. Pax Vobiscum

 

[1] TheologianJ, Anonymous Facebook Source, accessed 11-14-2017.

[2] Robert W. Jenson,Ā Systematic Theology Volume 1: The Triune God(Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 202.

[3] Ibid., 202-03.

Staying with Robert Jenson’s Doctrine of Resurrection for a Minute Longer

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Let me hit on this one more time; i.e. the topic of the last post. Here is the quote I referred to from Jenson in regard to the resurrection of Jesus:

Most of the Gospelā€™s resurrection stories are of appearances, in line with the tradition followed by Paul. But the other ancient account, transmitted by Mark writing perhaps ten years later than Paul, is of finding Jesusā€™ tomb empty. The historical difficulties of Markā€™s story have, one may think been much exaggerated. It is nevertheless noteworthy that other empty-tomb stories in the Gospels may well be dependent on the single story in Mark, and that the New Testament contains no trace outside the Gospels of a conviction that the tomb was empty, or even of any interest in the matter.

In any case, the two claims are not conceptually symmetrical. The assertion that the tomb was empty could be true while Jesus nevertheless remained dead. But if the claim was true that some saw Jesus alive after his death, then Jesus had indeed been raised. Therefore, whether or not the tomb was found empty, only the appearances could be the actual occasion of the Easter-faith.[1]

The question is basic (I think): Is Robert Jenson waffling some on the actual resurrection, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ? The feeling I get as I read Jensonā€™s whole chapter on Resurrection is that he remains ambiguous as to whether or not there is a correlation between the pre-resurrection crucified body of Jesus Christ and the post-resurrection body of Jesus Christ. In the quote above it does appear that Jenson affirms the resurrection (and as the other quote I shared from him attests, he does conclude that there was some sort of resurrection), but what remains ambiguous with him is the reality of the bodily resurrection; in the sense that there is a one-for-one correspondence between the preresurrection and postresurrection bodies of Jesus Christ. I canā€™t help but see, for Jenson, that there is indeed a type of Bultmannian Jesus of history/Jesus of Faith distinction; the Jesus of Faith corresponding to the Easter-appearances and Jesus of Faith that the Apostleā€™s had some sort of mystical experience of.

Some have wanted to respond that because Jenson is subsuming his doctrine of resurrection (as well as other loci) under his doctrine of the church that his ambiguity on the bodily resurrection of Christ is neither here nor there; i.e. that Jenson has bigger concerns in regard to narrating for the church where her significance comes fromā€”even if for him whether or not Jesus genuinely or physically did raise is an incidental.

I donā€™t really appreciate posturing types of responses to such things (which is some of what I received). Some people responded to my first post by trying to suspend the obvious observation that there is indeed this kind of Bultmann existentialism attending to Jensonā€™s own formation in regard to his doctrine of resurrection. Just because someone is a devotee to Jensonā€™s theology in the main doesnā€™t mean he didnā€™t have weak spots, and is not vulnerable to any sort of critique in any way. And yet this is the sense you get when trying to elevate something like this vis-Ć -vis Jensonā€™s theology. Iā€™m not interested in subterfuge or suspension. Jenson is a clear and good communicator; heā€™s not unclear in regard to the types of antecedents present for him when it comes to his developments on resurrection.

 

[1] Robert W. Jenson,Ā Systematic Theology Volume 1: The Triune God(Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 195.