Category Archives: Theo-Anthropology

Barth’s Leibniz on an Anthropology and Nothingness

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As I continue on with my linear read through of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics I have come across a small print section in CD III/3 Β§50, 30 wherein Barth is engaging with a doctrine of nothingness/sin. In this particular section he is commiserating with that Teutonic, Leibniz’s understanding on such matters. Without providing the necessary context I am simply going to drop some of my reflection on this following:

Leibniz’s anthropology, according to Barth’s reading, was highly monistic in regard to what it means to be human vis a vis God’s perfections. Indeed, a rather dreary prospect for the Eschaton. In the sense, that humanity by its necessary constitution must always live with the negation of privation within themselves in order to remain creaturely. But this would mean that a genuine participation or beatific vision in the eschatological life would never obtain. Because for Barth’s Leibniz, if such obtainment were to occur this would mean that humanity has crossed the Rubicon of divinity; viz., humanity would not just be like the Son, the eternal Logos, by grace, but by nature. So, true perfection, in Leibniz’s frame, always must remain out of reach insofar that what it means to be human for him, to be creaturely, is to always already have an in-built imperfection of the good as the primary component of what it means to be human.

Go in peace, be ye warmed and filled.

On the Thomistic Captivity of the Protestantisms: Knowledge of the triune God

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Human agency is lost in the fall (which remains an inexplicable thing). The only hope for human agency to be reestablished before God is for God to re-create it as He has for us in the human agency of the Second and Greater Adam, who is the Christ. This is one reason people of a certain ilk reject the notion of a natural theology, and its subset in the anologis entis (analogy of being). Hence, knowledge of God is a purely Graced reality, and not a natural one in any way. I am, in fact, of said ilk (shocking!) I will always find it shocking the self-professed Reformed orthodox and Lutheran orthodox folks affirm natural theology as the fundamentum of their theological projects. Don’t you see why? These forlorn Protestantisms claim to hold to a radical form of Total Depravity, wherein what it means to be human, in a fallen sense, is to be so polluted by and riddled with sin, that ostensibly the ontic capacity, along with its noetic counterpart, cannot and will not come to know the true and the living God.

And yet I would suggest these Protestantisms are held within a Thomistic Captivity. That is, for them, as with Aquinas, what it means to be God, and then as corollary, what it means to be human, is to constantly have a resident and active intellect at play. And for the creature, even postlapsarian, this entails that the intellect, at the very least, retains its spark of being. That is, in order for the integrity of God’s being to be upheld, for those in the Thomist Captivity, human being’s intellect must be upheld even post-fall. As Steven Ozment so eloquently describes this chain of being for Thomas and his children:

The assumption that real relations existed between God, man, and the world made possible Aquinas’s confidence inΒ a posterioriΒ proofs of God’s existence; finite effects led necessarily to their origin, because they were really connected with it. The same assumption underlay Aquinas’s distinctive views on the β€œanalogical” character of human knowledge and discourse about God. According to Aquinas, one could speak meaningfully of one’s relationship to God by analogy with one’s relationship with one’s fellow man because a real relationship existed between the values of people shared and those God had prescribed.[1]

With Thomas, for me, it isn’t the idea β€œthat real relations existed between God, man . . . ,” I am a critical/theological realist after all. The problem in the Thomistic frame is that the β€˜point of contact’ between God and man, the point of relation, is predicated by a chain-like continuity between God’s intellect and humanity’s (intact, at whatever level postlapse). But the Bible teaches otherwise in regard to the effects of the fall, on both the world simpliciter, and humanity.

I submit, that in order for humanity to come to have a genuine knowledge of the triune God, that the triune God must become us that we might become Him by grace. Without this participatio Christi all the human can do, even in the name of Christ, is construct monuments of their own intellects and worship them as God. This is why I reject the premises of a natural theology; and this is why I would recommend that you do the same.

[1] Β Steven Ozment,Β The Age of Reform 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation EuropeΒ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980),Β 49.

The Elect of God: Jesus, the Torah-Keeper

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Interesting, as Jesus becomes human for us, and fully obeys and keeps the Torah (Law) for us, at the same time, because He is for us, He dies as if He hadn’t kept the Law for us, cursed, hung on a tree. And yet because He remained perfectly complete to the Law for us, all the way to suffering the consequences of no-Law-keeping, He is understood as simultaneously both the reprobate and elect of God for us in His consubstantial nature as fully God and fully Man for the world. There is a double electionβ€”an election for our reprobation and His elect status for us as the Holy One (for the many) of Israel, wherein through His participation with us, and thus ours with Him, we might experience both His death which is indeed for us (which should have been our death alone), and His resurrected, elevated and ascended life for us, as He has taken us in His Torah obedienceβ€”all the way down and upβ€”to the Right Hand of the Throne of the Father. Through His vicarious humanity He has graciously given us not just the letter of the Torah, but the spirit of the Torah, which has always already pointed beyond itself to its reality in Jesus Christ.

No Human Freedom Outwith Participatio Christi: On an Order of Being to Evangelicum

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Karl Barth being rightfully critical of a reformed Federal or Covenantal theology. Here we see what it looks like to think from a noncompetitive relationship between God and humanity; and to simply think humanity from God’s life for us. It is God who is genuinely free in His inner and eternal life, and not us (β€˜Not unto us, not unto us, but to God be the glory’ Ps 115). It is God’s being in becoming for us, wherein the β€œus” comes to have the type of creaturely, and thus contingent independence (as TFT would say it) vis-Γ -vis God that the creature has. That is to say, it isn’t us, apart from Him, or prior to Him, that grounds a relationship, a knowledge of Him; indeed, quite the contrary! God in Christ is the condition for all that is, and ever will be. The primacy of Christ (see Col 1.15ff), the β€œpantocrator-ness” of the living God is indeed that. As such, as we abide as humans, in the Branch of God’s life for us, it is here where we come to move and breathe and have our being; since this is the only place where human being obtains in and through the free humanity of God in Jesus Christ.

. . . If we hold fast to God’s decree of grace in Jesus Christ, and to His activity of grace in the history of the covenant, we can never dream of setting the creature over against God as a kind of second party to the contract, knowing as we do that the creature has no freedom but that which is grounded on the unconditioned and irresistible freedom and supremacy of God, having no power to concur but only to corroborate and understand and glorify. If we take absolutely seriously the meaning and character of the divine lordship, we are in a position to take with equal seriousness recognition of it as such.[1]

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3 Β§49 [119] The Doctrine of Creation: Study EditionΒ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 121.

An Engagement with Philosophical Personhood in Theological Relief

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𝐼𝑛 π‘šπ‘¦ π‘β„Žπ‘–π‘™π‘œπ‘ π‘œπ‘β„Žπ‘¦ π‘œπ‘“ π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘™π‘–π‘”π‘–π‘œπ‘› π‘π‘™π‘Žπ‘ π‘  𝑀𝑒 π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘’ π‘Žπ‘™π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘Žπ‘‘π‘¦ 𝑖𝑛 π‘€π‘’π‘’π‘˜ 2. π‘‡β„Žπ‘–π‘  π‘€π‘’π‘’π‘˜ 𝑀𝑒 π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘’ π‘’π‘›π‘”π‘Žπ‘”π‘–π‘›π‘” π‘€π‘–π‘‘β„Ž πΊπ‘œπ‘‘’𝑠 π‘Žπ‘‘π‘‘π‘Ÿπ‘–π‘π‘’π‘‘π‘’π‘ , π‘Žπ‘  π‘‘β„Žπ‘œπ‘ π‘’ π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘’ π‘β„Žπ‘–π‘™π‘œπ‘ π‘œπ‘β„Žπ‘–π‘π‘Žπ‘™π‘™π‘¦ π‘π‘œπ‘›π‘ π‘‘π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘’π‘‘. π‘‡β„Žπ‘–π‘  π‘€π‘’π‘’π‘˜ π‘€π‘’β€™π‘Ÿπ‘’ π‘’π‘›π‘”π‘Žπ‘”π‘–π‘›π‘” π‘€π‘–π‘‘β„Ž π‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘ π‘œπ‘›β„Žπ‘œπ‘œπ‘‘, π‘‘π‘Ÿπ‘Žπ‘›π‘ π‘π‘’π‘›π‘‘π‘’π‘›π‘π‘’, π‘–π‘šπ‘šπ‘Žπ‘›π‘’π‘›π‘π‘’, π‘Žπ‘›π‘‘ π‘œπ‘šπ‘›π‘–π‘π‘œπ‘‘π‘’π‘›π‘π‘’ 𝑣𝑖𝑠 π‘Ž 𝑣𝑖𝑠 πΊπ‘œπ‘‘. π»π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘’ 𝑖𝑠 π‘€β„Žπ‘Žπ‘‘ 𝐼 π‘€π‘Ÿπ‘œπ‘‘π‘’ π‘€π‘–π‘‘β„Ž π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘“π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘›π‘π‘’ π‘‘π‘œ π‘€β„Žπ‘Žπ‘‘ 𝑖𝑑 π‘šπ‘’π‘Žπ‘›π‘  π‘‘π‘œ 𝑏𝑒 π‘Ž π‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘ π‘œπ‘›. π‘Šπ‘’ π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘’ 𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑇.𝐽. π‘€π‘Žπ‘€π‘ π‘œπ‘›’𝑠 π‘π‘œπ‘œπ‘˜ *𝐡𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑓 𝑖𝑛 πΊπ‘œπ‘‘* π‘Žπ‘  π‘œπ‘’π‘Ÿ 𝑑𝑒π‘₯𝑑. π‘†π‘œ, π‘šπ‘¦ π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘ π‘π‘œπ‘›π‘ π‘’ 𝑖𝑠 π‘€π‘–π‘‘β„Ž π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘“π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘›π‘π‘’ π‘‘π‘œ β„Žπ‘œπ‘€ β„Žπ‘’ 𝑑𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠 *π‘π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘ π‘œπ‘›β„Žπ‘œπ‘œπ‘‘* (𝑖𝑑 𝑖𝑠 π‘Žπ‘π‘‘π‘’π‘Žπ‘™π‘™π‘¦ π‘‘π‘œπ‘œ π‘™π‘œπ‘›π‘” π‘“π‘œπ‘Ÿ π‘œπ‘’π‘Ÿ π‘“π‘œπ‘Ÿπ‘’π‘š, π‘œβ„Ž 𝑀𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝐿𝑂𝐿).

Boethius

I disagree with Mawson out of hand on the entailments of what makes a person a person. Mawson, is taking a classical way, one we would find in Boethius, Aquinas et al. (most of the Latin tradition). To define the base ground of what it means to be a person, on terms of a purely intellectualist or rationalist ground, is to imbibe a philosophical/speculative tradition; indeed. Unfortunately, for my money, to use this type of speculative ground as one’s major premise, in regard to developing an anthropology, can only lead to a speculative conclusion. Indeed, it might be self-referentially coherent, as I think Mawson’s accounting is; but ultimately, in my view, the conclusion is only as sound as the first premise.

As a Christian theist I would argue that personhood ought to be defined by reference to the imago Dei/Christi (image of God/Christ). That is to say, in my view, to understand the entailments of personhood cannot (or at least, should not) begin with an abstract thought, but instead with the concrete givenness of God’s life for the world in the face of His Son, Jesus Christ (see Colossians 1.15). In this way, personhood’s definition finds an antecedent ground beyond the immanent frame, and has a β€˜transcendent’ starting point not from within itself (as an immanent abstraction), but outwith itself in the personhood of the divine Monarchia, as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (the hypostases/persons of the Godhead coinhere one in the other in a filial and eternal relationship of interpenetrating life). If this mysterious (yet revealed) life becomes the ground by which personhood comes to have definition, at the very least what it means to be a person, is to be in a community of love for the other; living a life of self-givenness, one for the other, wherein what it means to be a person isn’t defined by having β€œrationality” or β€œself-consciousness,” per se, but to be in person-al relationship one with the other. And what serves as the ground of this community-fellowship-based personhood, only can come first, as gift, as God has graciously invited us into participation with His triune-person-grounded life through Jesus Christ.

If I reject Mawson’s definition for personhood, which I do, of course, then his dilemma of attempting to provide nobility or sanctity for humans without brain-activity is non-starting for me.

Based on my first long response, in regard to the constituents of what makes a person a person, I would argue that the triune God is the personalizing person. So, in this frame, can someone be β€œmore” of a person than someone else? That seems to make an attempt at quantifying what it means to be a person in terms of a quality (or substance) or something. God in Christ by the Holy Spirit, I would argue, is the person making person, in eternal relation; which would make Him the archetypal personalizing person maker. In this sense He is the Alpha and Omega. But since He graciously invites us into participation with Him through Christ, at a purely human level, there isn’t one person who is more person than another. God’s life is sui generis. All people are equal, insofar that all people are created in the image of God/Christ.

According to Scripture (John 4.24) β€˜God is spirit,’ and spirit is not gendered, per se. That said, God has Self-revealed Himself as Father of the Son (as Athanasius is wont to press). In the Christian reality God enfleshed came as a Man, as the Son of God (the second person). The Bible refers to God in masculine terms, by and large (except with reference to the Holy Spirit); and for me that ought to be determinative for how we refer to God.

PS. a struggle, which I knew I was bringing to this course of study, is that I am already committed to a certain Christian orientation with reference to thinking God, and everything subsequent. I had attempted to study God philosophically, at a formal level, many years ago now, and found it wanting. Even so, I still think there is value in learning to contemplate and think deeply and rigorously with regard to anything (which is why I paid for the class).

The Father, The External Power of Our Existence

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All creatures, since that are from nothing, to that extent share in nothing . . . and are in need of some external power for every moment that they exist.

–H. Heidegger cited by Heppe cited by Barth (CD III/3, 74)

All of humanity is sustained by the Word of God’s power. He came into this world, having made the world, and yet the world knew Him not. He is closer to us than we are to ourselves. If people could begin to lean into this point, made by the Reformed theologian, Heidegger (not the other Heidegger), we would lose so much of our angst and anxiety that we generate all the days of our weary lives. If we could come to recognize that the world is not contingent upon our waning ideas and breaths, and instead, that it is contingent upon God’s indestructible life; all of sleeplessness and depressions could be cast upon the One who cares for us. If we could submit to the idea, in worship, that God is God and we are not; we could finally repose in our Father’s everlasting arms of rest.

God’s Humanity Against Annihilation

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The ground and continuity of human being is first God’s election to be human being for us in Jesus Christ. It is upon this solid rock that the wick of humanity can never be extinguished. There are some out there who affirm what they call β€˜conditional immortality,’ or what of old was called β€˜annihilationism,’ which affirms the idea that the human being can be thrown into the β€˜outer darkness’ of non-existence. That is to say, this position holds that people who reject Christ will indeed suffer β€˜eternal judgment’ by being snuffed out of existence. They contend that human being only has the possibility for immortality, as this is contingent upon the person’s response to God’s gift of salvation for them in Jesus Christ. The annihilationist contends that as humans are born in their sins, that in this state they are simply born into a status of vanishment. That is to say, that their beings as human do not have an inherent vouchsafe that keeps them β€œexisting” from conception into eternity. And yet, as already noted: since the anchor of what it means to be human is universally and archetypally grounded in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, it is my contention that it is impossible for human being, whether on the left or right side, to be vanquished into non-existence at any point.

Karl Barth writes:

On this living and trustworthy basis in God Himself, it is decided, and continually decided, that the creature may have permanence and continuity. Without this living and trustworthy basis in God Himself, without the continuity in which God abides by His election, by His free but overflowing goodness, and finally, without the election of His grace which is the basis of His goodness, the creature could not and would not continue. But the living and trustworthy basis in God continues, and therefore the creature continues. Because of God it cannot not continue; it cannot perish.[1]

You see God’s humanity stands against non-human being. He has so freely tied Himself to us by His free election to be God with us in Jesus Christ, that it would require that that choice be undone in order for humanity to perish into a final non-existence.

[1] Karl Barth,Β Church Dogmatics III/3 Β§49 [071] The Doctrine of Creation: Study EditionΒ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 31.

On the Mundanity of Learning vis-Γ -vis the Humanity of Christ

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Genuine learning is much more tedious and mundane than many would like to think. In the tedium of the process exciting horizons and ideas confront the learner in the types of ways that only time and commitment can bring to fruit. Genuine learning leads to further learning, and is a never-ending process. There are peak moments along the way, but those moments are never (or should never be) an end in themselves.

As a Christian, learning is in fact what eternal life is all about. “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (Jn 17:3). Christian learning is an embodied knowledge compelled by a heart set aflame by the love of Christ. Its inner reality is being in relationship with the triune God; participant in the interpenetrating and eternal interchange between the Father in the Son, the Son in the Father, by the Holy Spirit’s bondage of love. This is the Christian’s school of faith wherein there are peace and joy forevermore in the knowledge and presence of the triune God. So, genuine learning, for the Christian in particular, while in these bodies of death (see Rm 7), entails what might seem tedious and mundane; but no more so, than the veiled Godness of the living God in the everyday humanity of Jesus Christ for us.

God’s Triune Love-Knowledge as the Ground of Our Knowledge of God

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β€˜Without love all knowledge means nothing.’ Some, many, take this to mean that gaining knowledge, like deeper theological and biblical knowledge, necessarily entails that this is an unloving thing to do. Of course, the passage in I Corinthians 13 does not say that. It just says: that knowledge without love means nothing. So getting knowledge, like of Jesus Christ and the triune God, is really everything. And entailed within that, as that is first established for us in the vicarious humanity of Christ, the object of our knowledge, who turns out to be the subject and ground of our very lives,Β isΒ in factΒ love. All I’m struggling to say is that being β€œanti-intellectual” (for lack of a better term) in the Christian frame necessarily fails precisely because the Christ-frame is in fact full of the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Also, I’m not promoting what is called anΒ intellectualist anthropology, in fact, just the opposite. There are plenty of theologies out there, particularly in the Latin or Western world, that start in the intellectualist anthropological ground. This is primarily because these traditions have falsely appropriated philosophical notions of godness wherein what it means to be God is to be theΒ Big Brain, theΒ pure actΒ (actus purus) in the sky by and by.

And of course, the aforementioned isn’t who God has Self-revealed Himself to be for us. He has Self-revealed Himself to be Father, our Father, of the Son, in the eternal felicity and bond of the Holy Spirit. This is why God justΒ isΒ love; because He’s an eternal Subject-in-Being interpenetrating perichoreticΒ koinonialΒ co-inhering communion of intimate oneness-in-threeness / threeness-in-oneness.

 

God’s Freedom First, As the Ground of Human Freedom Second

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There’s no human freedom without God’s freedom first; because He is the only truly free being (beyond being, as it were). In order for humans to be free they must come to participate in God’s triune life, and this only through the grace of union with Jesus Christ. To be genuinely humanly free is to be free for God, as that is the purpose for which we were created and now recreated in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. As such, the oft debates about human freewill and God’s sovereignty, as if competitive things, is a theological non-starter. This is to think in abstract ways (from God) about such things, which in itself is fallacious since all of humanity, as is all of creation, is contingent upon God’s free upholding Word. Without God there is no freedom (indeed, there is nothing), and without humanity being in right relationship with God, there is no possibility for humans to be truly free; since “our freedom” is predicated by God’s freedom to be for, with, and in us by the grace of Jesus Christ through the bonding agency of the Holy Spirit.