Category Archives: Theological Epistemology

A Critical Theological Anthropology vis-à-vis a Knowledge of God against a Turn to the Subject

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I put together the following some time ago, and only had it saved as a draft here on the blog. I thought I would publish it now. I actually don’t even recall who my interlocutor is anymore; maybe he’ll see this and remind me.

I shared the following passage on Facebook and X, from John Baillie, as cited by TF Torrance in his book: Theological Science.

The fact is that no true knowledge, no valid act of perceiving or thinking, can be explained by beginning from the human end—whether it be my perception of the number of peas in a particular pod or my discovery of an argument for the existence of God. In either case my cognition is valid only so far as it is determined by the reality with which I am faced.

I’ve had a “friend” on FB who more recently has become somewhat aggressive with me; like he is angry because he thinks I speak in platitudes (which he can’t understand) too much. And so, this our last exchange, just took place under my posting of the John Baillie passage. In the following I have compressed all of his comments, along with mine, as mine were responses to his. Even in compression, the spirit of what is being engaged with should be understandable, I hope. I have removed my interlocutor’s last name; his first name is Chris. He and I and will meet again in the Eschaton. Until then there is no reason to pursue anything further here. I will say though, this exchange reminded me of how the old school blogosphere used to be, on a day to day basis (I actually don’t miss that so much). Anyway, you might find this interesting. You might agree more with Chris, or with me. But I’m unsure, at least from a genuinely Christian theological vantage point, how you could agree with Chris. He is thinking from some sort of ‘pure nature’ ‘pure humanity’ notion, that fits better with the rationalism, and monism, of Enlightenment anthropology, not to mention Augustinian anthropology, as that is understood soteriologically, in regard to the massa of humanity.

Interlocutor’s Assertions

That is an absurdity since anything, whether true knowledge, or false, starts with a human end. Theologians work in solipsisms huh? And yet all that must be experienced and validated or spurned inside a human. Without that what comes of what you write? Nada. Without god there is no man. Without man there is no god to receive. Even as you write you contradict what you’ve written, since it comes from within you, a human end. It is fundamentally solipsistic. And that leads to madness imo. And still all you’ve written comes from you, a human end, which you overlook, or excuse away with abstractions of that end.. Thus the abstraction is yours, friend. The external reality is not in question. Rather, whether a human is an end or a means. I say an end since I cannot escape that end, where I meet external reality, which includes god. Every time you type you contradict yourself since you employ your human end to deny it. I feel the same regarding you. Whatever your human end is grounded in it is met in you, a human end. You assume defacto to assert dejure. And you continue to miss the obvious, which is you. Brother everytime you text you affirm my assertion. So I leave you to it. Peace to you in Christ.

My Rejoinders

Chris only for the philosopher not the theologian. Chris no, they work, in principle, with extra mental/mind independent extra nos (outside of us) objective reality, as God has given Himself for us both as the object of our knowledge, but come as a subject/personally. That’s what Baillie is referring to. Indeed, that’s the whole point of Christian theology; someOne outside of us upon who we are contingent; and Who speaks to us through Himself in the Son. The end of human knowledge, biblically construed, is knowledge of God; which the incarnation “helps” with. It’s called *dialogical theology*. So a praying theology. There is actually someOne there, outside of us who circumscribes all knowledge as He is indeed the Word who upholds all things by the Word of His power. All of reality is Christ conditioned, in other words. As David Fergusson notes “the world was made so that Christ might be born.” No, it doesn’t come from within me as an absolute subject or center in myself; it comes from within a center in Godself pro me, from within His vicarious humanity. So in that sense, I could agree that there is a human end, but archetypal humanity, not abstract as your original comment made it sound. Which again, Baillie’s thinking can be applied to. There is no such thing as an *abstract humanity* in the economy of God, only the concrete humanity of God within which we now find correspondence through the humanity of Christ for us, by the Spirit. Baillie’s passage is simply noting contra the Enlightenment turn to the subject that there is an external reality that grounds humanity; i.e. thus entailing the further notion that humanity is contingent upon God’s Word all the way down. That seems like an uncontroversial teaching. Baillie is referring to, and Torrance takes it from Baillie in his work, as a reference to a non-competitive understanding in a God-human relationship. Show me the contradiction. Or show me the money. Here’s some deeper context for the Baillie passage as TFT utilizes it in his own thinking on a knowledge of God (i.e., theological ontology vis a vis theological epistemology in an order of being to knowing and vice versa: Kataphysics. TFT’s ‘stratified knowledge of God’ and the Christian Existence). What I am noting is descriptive with prescriptive implications. You aren’t understanding, it seems, the idea or the explosive nature of what the vicarious humanity entails. So, you have accepted the Enlightenment turn to the subject anthropology. That’s not reflective a truly Christ conditioned theoanthropology, nor does it take the implications of the incarnation with the gravity it requires. You’re not getting it. You don’t want to, it seems. My human end is grounded in Christ’s end for me, as the alpha and omega of all of reality. My points are de jure, while you are taking them as de facto; which means you’re engaging in the category mistake, not me. You also seem to be suffering from a nihilistic linguistic theory wherein reality and the words used to signify that reality cannot point beyond themselves. That’s how I am using my language to refer to Christ conditionality, and its implications towards knowledge of God, and knowledge in general; insofar that all of reality is circumscribed by the Word of God. So far all you’ve done is assert that I am contradicting myself, when I have explained to you how I haven’t (ie not just by assertion). You need to show how my explanations terminate in the type of contradiction you are claiming. So far you haven’t. Just do it. I have no human end apart from Christ’s human end for me. The objective ground of humanity is Christ’s humanity. I have come to that conclusion insofar that I have the Spirit of God and can now call Jesus, Lord. My conclusion, is in echo of God’s conclusion for me in Jesus Christ. I’ve also explained how you are thinking in terms of an abstract humanity, which a genuinely Christian theology knows nothing of. This is what TFT properly identifies as the *Latin heresy*. An adroit dualism that the incarnation negates. My human end is met in Christ. He is the firstborn from the dead, in whom my life terminates and is born again in correspondence to his resurrection recreated humanity. I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. No man, you haven’t responded to one thing I have said in regard to a theological anthropology and its implications. You have only presumed upon a rationalist turn to the subject notion of humanity that you have received from the secular age. You say you want to learn, but you’re actually hyper arrogant. We part ways, I see no fruit forthcoming in the future. See you in the Eschaton.

The Spoken Word of God Theology for Us: On a Dialogical Theology

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Dialogical theology. It is one of our theses we put forward in our first Evangelical Calvinism book. What is it; what are its entailments; and why am I such a strong proponent of it? In nuce, dialogical theology is exactly what it sounds like: it is a theological “method” that allows the object of theology, who is also Subject for us, to confront us, to speak to us first that we might speak to Him; that we might come to know Him as He knows Himself from a center in Himself for us in Jesus Christ. So, this approach, this theological prolegomenon, starts as God starts with us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. This prolegomenon ingresses as God invades our humanity in and through His assumption of humanity in the humanity of Jesus Christ. It is in this [hypostatic] union that humanity comes to have the capacity to hear God’s Word, as God’s Word becomes us in the grace of Jesus Christ. It is here where a theological coinherence of knowledge can obtain, insofar as God has pre-destined Himself for this coinherence in His free election to become humanity in Jesus Christ; and all of this, in order that humans might come into the parousia (presence) of God, as God presences Himself with us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit’s free unction of adoptive grace. Underneath this total covenantal relationship between God and humanity in Jesus Christ there are the everlasting arms of God’s triune life of love for us. It is a purely relational, even marital and filial relationship wherein a genuinely Christian theology comes to have wings to breathe and fly freely over and within the hinterland of God’s city; where God’s Word serves as the foundation of everything.

As Evangelical Calvinists (or now, Athanasian Reformed), we have taken our cue from TF Torrance (along with Karl Barth) on thinking a dialogical theology. It will serve us well then to read along with Torrance as he develops his own thinking on a dialogical theology; indeed, as he does so as he engages with Barth’s ‘double objectivity’ of God (see CD II/1), in both God’s archetypal and ectypal reality for us (ab intra, ad extra).

We may note three important implications from this double objectivity.

(i) The object of theological knowledge is creaturely objectivity bound to divine objectivity, not just creaturely objectivity in general but that specific creaturely objectivity which the divine objectivity has assumed, adapted and bound to Himself, Jesus. Thus theological activity is concerned with that special creaturely objectivity in its relation to divine objectivity, and therefore with that creaturely objectivity as it is given ultimate objectivity over against all other objectivity within the created universe. We shall see how this distinguishes theological science from other sciences.

(ii) In the nature of the case we cannot break through to ultimate objectivity, to the sheer reality of God, simply by an examination of this creaturely objectivity, for of itself it can only yield knowledge of the empirical world of nature.

(iii) Nevertheless we are bound unconditionally to the creaturely objectivity of God in the Incarnation of His Word in Jesus Christ. What scandalizes rationalist man is that in his search for ultimate objectivity he is bound unconditionally to contingent and creaturely objectivity, in fact to the weakness of the historical Jesus. To try to get behind this creaturely objectivity, to go behind the back of the historical Jesus in whom God has forever given Himself as the Object of our knowledge, and so to seek to deal directly with ultimate and bare divine objectivity, is not only scientifically false, but the hybris of man who seeks to establish himself by getting a footing in ultimate reality. Scientific theology can only take the humble road in unconditional obedience to the Object as He has given Himself to be known within our creaturely and earthly and historical existence, in the Lord Jesus Christ.

(d) A fourth scientific requirement for theology arises from the centrality of Jesus Christ as the self-objectification of God for us in our humanity, that is, from the supremacy of Christology in our knowledge of God. All scientific knowledge has a systematic interest, for it must attempt to order the material content of knowledge as far as possible into a coherent whole. It would be unscientific, however, to systematize knowledge in any field according to an alien principle, for the nature of the truth involved must be allowed to prescribe how knowledge of it shall be ordered. In other words, the systematic interest must be the servant of objective knowledge and never allowed to become its master. The order is in the Object before it is in our minds, and therefore it is as we allow the Object to impose itself upon our minds that our knowledge of it gains coherence. In theological knowledge the Object is God in Christ whom we know as we allow Him to impose Himself upon our minds or as we allow His Word to shape our knowing in conformity to Him. Scientific theology is therefore the systematic presentation of its knowledge through consistent faithfulness to the divine, creaturely objectivity of God in Christ.

It is the centrality of Christ that is all-determinative here, for He is the norm and criterion of our knowing and it is out of correspondence to Him that theological coherence grows. Scientific theology is systematic, therefore, only through relation to Christ, but its relation to Christ cannot be abstracted and turned into an independent systematic principle by means of which we can force the whole of theology into one definite and fixed pattern. Some use of formal Christology is necessary in systematic theology for the way that the Word of God has taken in the Incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Christ is the way in which God has revealed Himself to us and the way in which He continues to do so, but we cannot abstract it from dialogical encounter with God in Christ for it is only through sharing in the knowledge of the Son by the Father and the knowledge of the Father by the Son, that we can know God as He has given Himself to us in Jesus Christ.

Thus the organic unity of theology goes back to Christ to the unity of the Godhead, but in the nature of the case theology cannot, and must not try to seek knowledge of God apart from His whole objectivity, divine and human, in Jesus Christ. Therefore the modes and forms our theological knowledge must exhibit an inner structural coherence reflecting the nature of Christ. Moreover, it is because mystery belongs to the nature of Christ as God and Man in one Person that it would be unfaithful of us not to respect that mystery in our knowing of Him and therefore in our systematic presentation of our knowledge. It is upon this fact that every attempt to reduce knowledge of God to a logical system of ideas must always suffer shipwreck.[1]

The astute reader, among other things, will see how the above from TFT implicates a so-called natural theology, or a speculative theology. The aforementioned becomes an impossibility in the type of ‘dialogical’ ‘kataphysical’ ‘epistemological inversion[al]’ theology TFT is proposing. That is to say, for TFT (and me following), to do a genuinely Christian theology first presupposes that Godself in the objectivity of His own eternal and internal life as triune Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, freely chooses to make His objective Self known to His ‘very good’ creation; indeed, as that very good creation, that is “us,” was created to be a counterpoint of koinonia-fellowship that God might share His superabundant life with forever and into His eternal life of pleroma and bliss. The ground of this type of theological endeavor, for TFT, isn’t reducible to a ‘systematic’ frame wherein the would-be knower of God comes with an a priori and immanent frame of reflection to think ‘godness’ from. Instead, as TFT has made clear, it is a matter of God, the God who freely chose to become Creator because of who He eternally is in triune relationship, to impose Himself upon is, with the patterns and emphases of life and love that have always already formed His life as the Monarxia (‘Godhead’).

If you understand what Torrance is getting at in the “short” snippet above, then you will understand what has animated my own theological work for these last couple of decades. It really isn’t a matter of pointing to “my work,” or even “Torrances” though, it is a matter of pointing beyond ourselves to the risen and ascended Christ who intends on coming once again bodily; even as He comes to us moment-by-moment now by the Holy Spirit.

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Theological Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 137–39.

The Vultures Have No Knowledge of God’s Kingdom: Living in the Theology of the Cross

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for we walk by faith, not by sight . . .[1]

It is certain that man must utterly despair of his own ability before he is prepared to receive the grace of Christ. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the »invisible« things of God as though they were clearly »perceptible in those things which have actually happened« (Rom. 1:20; cf. 1 Cor 1:21-25), he deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross. A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is. That wisdom which sees the invisible things of God in works as perceived by man is completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened.[2]

Above we have both the Holy Spirit/Apostle Paul and Martin Luther underscoring the same thing. That is, the Christian, in the far country of this world, in this in-between time, doesn’t see, doesn’t endure, doesn’t know, lest it be by seeing the things that are unseen; the things re-created in the blood drenched soil of the cross of Jesus Christ. It is when the seed falls into the ground and dies that new life, a new creation comes into existence. The vision the Christian operates from comes from this new order of the apocalyptic and disruptive reality of God become man in Jesus Christ. The profane has no quarter here. This seems radical, foolish and weak even, but indeed, it is the via crucis. When daily life, even at its deepest possible reality, is understood as the measure and boundary of what and who can be known, all that we end up with is a superficial and immanentist knowledge of things. But the reality of the world, as Barth says, the reality of the external world (i.e., creation) is the inner life of the covenant bonded between God and humanity in the hypostatic union of God the Son with humanity in the visceral and concrete humanity of the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ. The Christian reads reality from this type of unio mystica (‘mystical union’), which indeed is not of this world, even while being fully and freely for it.

If the Christian misses this most basic insight, then they will be well on their way to living a highly disillusioned life as a Christian. They will attempt to force things into place that are impossible to force, simply because the ultimate ground of reality is in fact a Miracle. And yet, this isn’t an abstract ethereal thing; i.e., as has already been noted, it is grounded in the concrete of God’s life for the world in the flesh and blood humanity of Jesus Christ. This ought to lead the knower into the realization that they sit in a vulnerable place, as if a newborn babe thrown to the side of the road in its mother’s afterbirth, waiting either to be eaten alive by the circling vultures, or instead, to be picked up, dressed in swaddling cloths, put to rest in the manger, and finally ascended to the right hand of the Father. It is indeed this radical. The vultures have no quarter in the kingdom of God.

[1] Holy Spirit and the Apostle Paul, II Corinthians 5.7 (Macedonia: GNT, 55/56 AD).

[2] Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation 1518.

‘Epistemological Inversion’: God Knowing Us First So We Might Know Him

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I remember when I was in Bible College, studying apologetics vis-à-vis worldview class, an axiom of sorts was presented to us in regard to a God-world relation: 1) God is prior to us ontologically, 2) humanity is prior to God epistemologically. Does the reader spy a problem with this arrangement; maybe an inherent dualism wherein there is seemingly both an abstract God from humanity, and an abstract humanity from God? When I first heard this axiom it intrigued me, but didn’t sit all that easy with me either. It took me awhile, like years, including going through seminary, and then further study following. I finally saw the inherent theological error to this mode of theorizing a knowledge of God; i.e., that it is de jure entirely nonChristian to think about God and humanity in a competitive way. That is, it is antiChrist to presume that ‘we,’ as a people, can ever come before God in any way. The very first verse of the Bible says so: e.g., ‘In the BEGINNING God . . ..’ Further, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Even more, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained [ἐξηγήσατο exegasto exegeted] Him.” And the Apostle, “For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation [ ἀποκαλύψεως apocalypsis apocalypse unveiling] of Jesus Christ.” This small smattering of passages, from both the Old and New Testaments ought to suffice in making the point; for the Christian knowledge of God doesn’t come prior to God, from an inherent sparkle of knowledge in the human; knowledge of God, according to Scripture, comes from God Self-revealing, Self-exegeting Himself for us in the Theanthropos GodMan, Jesus Christ. Accordingly, it follows that in order to have an actual ‘theological’ knowledge of God, this must come first through an ‘evangelical’ knowledge of God. That is to say, that in order for a fallen human being to have a genuine knowledge of the triune God, they must have union, participation with God, through the mediatorial and vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ: for He alone is the center of God for us (pro nobis).

Thomas F. Torrance agrees with the above, and identifies this type of knowledge theory as an ‘epistemological inversion’ (kataphysin). That is, contra the classical theistic way of knowing God, an epistemological inversion sees an order to knowing God as that is, as a prius, grounded in God’s being in becoming for us in Jesus Christ. So, for Torrance, there is an order to being-order to knowing relationship between God and humanity that starts in God being for us; then moves in actualization in God becoming us; resulting in our becoming Him, by grace not nature, through union with Jesus Christ (unio cum Christo), by the faith of Christ. There is nothing abstract, but only concrete in this theory of Christian knowledge of God; it is grounded in ‘God’s grace all the way down.’ In this frame, there is no dangling creation running amok, thinking God or not thinking God on its own terms. For Torrance, and me, there can be only one way, one starting point, for knowing God, and that is in and from the triune and perichoretic interpenetrating life of God which is eternal Love. This ground, necessarily negates the possibility for an abstract humanity having an inherent ‘pure’ capacity to conjure the true and living God. This reality, necessarily defeats the notion that a naked humanity could speculate themselves into the heavenlies and come back with a more accurate knowledge of the true and the living God (indeed, isn’t a naked humanity what got us into this mess to begin with?).

So, TFT:

Inevitably we have already had to discuss some of the specific requirements of theology as a science in order to distinguish the way in which general scientific activity takes place in theology from ways appropriate to other sciences, but we have now to examine more closely the distinctive characteristics of theological activity. Some repetition is therefore inevitable. All of these requirements arise directly out of respect for and devotion to this unique Object, God in His Revelation, or rather all are required of us from the side of the Object, as adaptations of our rationality in modes of activity congruent with it.

The primary thing we have to note is the utter lordship of the Object, its absolute precedence, for that is the one all-determining presupposition of theology. Theological activity would not be scientific if it did not yield to it its rightful place. This prescribes for theology a unique form of inquiry in which we ourselves altogether and always stand in question before the Object. We know only as we are known, and we conduct our research only as we are searched through and through by God. The main point we have to single out here is that knowledge of God entails an epistemological inversion in the order of our knowing, corresponding to the order of the divine action in revealing Himself to us.

In all our knowing it is we who know, we observe, we examine, we inquire, but in the presence of God we are in a situation in which He knows, He observes, He examines, He inquires and in which He is ‘indissoluble Subject’. He is the Lord of our knowing even when it is we who know, so that our knowing is taken under command of the lordship of the Object, the Creator Himself. We can only follow through the determination of our knowing by the Object known who yet remains pure Subject. This relation, in which the ultimate control passes from the knower, who yet remains free, to God who is known in His knowing of us, is an important aspect of what we call faith. Faith entails the opening up of our subjectivity to the Subjectivity of God through His Objectivity. Faith is the relation of our minds to the Object who through His unconditional claims upon us establishes the centre of our knowing in Himself and not in us, so that the whole epistemological relation is turned round—we know in that we are known by Him. His Objectivity encounters our objectivity and our objectivity is subordinated to His and grounded in His. But it is precisely in knowing us, in making us the objects of His knowledge, that He constitutes us subjects over against Him, the lordly Subject, and therefore gives us freedom to know Him even while in our knowing we are unconditionally bound to Him as the Object of our knowledge. Here our effort to subdue everything to our knowledge is halted and obstructed by God, for He is the one Object we cannot subdue. We can know Him only as we are subdued by Him, that is, as we obediently rely upon His Grace.[1]

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Theological Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 131–32.

Contra epistemological Arian[os]

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Too often, a stress on the centrality of the incarnation is dismissed, by liberals and conservatives alike and without clear argument, as “Barthian” or “Christomonist,” thereby giving them permission to function as epistemological Arians.[1]

What do Alan and Andrew Torrance mean: ‘epistemological Arians?’ They are simply noting that if there is some type of general independent free-floating ontological knowledge of God without being radically grounded in God’s own Self-revelation in the Son, the Logos of God, Jesus Christ, that in fact such knowledge would be something that is finally subordinate to God; something that was abstract and a thing that once was not but came to be, as that sparkled in the minds of a pure and abstract humanity. Abstract, because humanity’s knowledge of God would come epistemologically prior to God’s ontology as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (thus artificially implicating God’s ontology by imposing an abstract human and thus epistemological procrustean bed on God). That is to say, an epistemological Arianism operates from the notion that a knowledge of “Godness” can be conjured, a more accurate knowledge that is, without first encountering said knowledge through the reconciling and revelational work of God in Christ for the world.

The moral: Don’t be an epistemological Arian. (it is sort of heretical and such)

[1] Alan J. Torrance and Andrew B. Torrance, Beyond Immanence: The Theological Vision of Kierkegaard and Barth (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2023), 153.

Dark Heart-Inscrutable Sin Contra Natural Theology-Law

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“The heart is more deceitful than all else
And is desperately sick;
Who can understand it?
“I, the Lord, search the heart,
I test the mind,
Even to give to each man according to his ways,
According to the results of his deeds. –Jeremiah 17:9–10

This is going to be a very brief screed on the inscrutable reality of sin and evil. As the prophet Jeremiah speaks for Yahweh, or as Yahweh speaks directly through Jeremiah, something is quite clear about the human fallen heart: i.e., it is beyond our comprehension. The only commentary or explicator provided for its depths comes in the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. It was this that was required in order for the ‘desperately sick’ and ‘deceitful’ heart to be dealt with. Just as with the torture and evil happenings that befell Job, God never explained the background behind it all to Job. Via dramatic irony the reader understands that it was the devil who was given permission by Yahweh to “slay” Job, but Job didn’t know that while in the midst of it all. I bring Job up merely as an analogy for the depths of sin and evil, and the way God explains it to us; He doesn’t. Even so, what can be gleaned from this is that sin and evil have an inexplicable core-depth to it that the human mind could never grasp; God alone has real knowledge of good and evil; God alone is good, as Jesus said of His life in the triune Monarxia. Yahweh’s engagement with evil, with sin as a subset, is to become human, be put to death for all of humanity, and by so doing reverse the dissolving effects of evil and sin into the nothingness-reprobate status that it entails.

The above has many implications. One of those implications has to do with the impact that the dissolvent of sin and evil has upon the intellect. According to Scripture its effect is so far reaching that it kills humanity; that is, it kills humanity’s capacity to be in right relationship with Yahweh; to have a real knowledge of the triune God; to even have the capacity or desire to follow God. We know from Jesus, particularly in the Gospel of John, that the fallen heart loves the darkness rather than the light. That is to say, the human fallen heart is ensconced within the darkness and loves it that way. Without an outside “intervention” or intrusion we would stay captive to our greatest affections, even as those find their source in a heart always already inward curved.

The aforementioned is why I reject any form of a so-called natural theology. The noetic-ontic effects of sin in an evil world are so deep and dread that the fallen human’s knowledge of God is always and only contingent upon a person’s participation within God’s life as that is mediated through the vicarious-priestly humanity of Jesus Christ. This is a purely biblical theological account. When you have folks within Protestantism, especially those who claim to be the Reformed orthodox or Lutheran, claiming that a natural theology, natural law is in play for developing a Christian theology, you know that they are relying on an extrabiblical account of things. You know that they are relying on some type of intellectualist anthropology (typically, Thomist) wherein they maintain that while humanity is totally depraved, some small spark of the intellect, which is the essence of what it means to be human, just as it is the ultimate essence for God to be God (as the Big Brain in the Sky), has remained untouched. It is in this small space of a spark that they reason even a fallen humanity, through a naked reason, has enough inherent intellectual power to rightly think Godness; to think the categories of God’s life. But biblically this cannot be sustained. This, at its very reduction, is why Barth forever rejected natural theology, particularly as that was juxtaposed with his in-person and Roman Catholic correspondent, Erich Przywara.

No Chain of Being Between God and Humanity, Just Jesus

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Christians don’t believe in a chain of being between God and the world. Christians believe that God in-breaks into the world with irruption that this world could never produce. Without God’s gracious and free election to invade this world, this humanity, we would have no access into God’s inner life; which is eternal life. The Christian believes in a life that was first set for them in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ; indeed, a life, a Deus incarnandus (‘God to be incarnate’), that was there ever before this world was this world. Deus incarnatus (‘God incarnate’) is humanity’s only access point into the heavenlies. God, in Himself, in His eternal fellowship of triune interpenetrating self-givenness, has freely deigned that this be so; indeed, in fitting correspondence with His choice to not be God without us, but with us in Jesus Christ.

Being in a Personal, Relational Relationship with God, On Triune Terms

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God is not an analogue to analyze. God instead is a triune and eternal relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God (de Deo uno) in three persons (de Deo trino) to be inhabited, through Christ, and enjoyed. The Christian is in an immediate relationship with the triune God through union with Jesus Christ. We are indeed, as Christians, in an intimate and personal relationship with the living God. Not because we are persons in relationship with God—thus predicating what God’s relationality and personalist reality must be—but because God is eternally personal and [onto]relational within the inner-reality (in se) of His life. In other words, we have intimacy with God not because of some type of from below emotionalism we foist upon God, but because of who He is as personal and relational within His inner being.

It seems to me that there are some, especially those of the intellectualist orientation (often academics), who want to poo-poo the idea that Christians ought to be in this warm-hearted love relationship with God. They want to think, seemingly, that because of an identifiable movement within Protestantism, particularly as that is found in the work of Phillip Jakob Spener and Nikolaus Ludwig, count von Zinzendorf, in 17th and 18th century Germany, and then later in England, through the Keswick spiritual tradition, and also in America, within the revivalist movements, and many more threads, that such intimacy talk and religion vis-à-vis God can be dismissed and relegated to an index and categorization of church history (and sociology). Indeed, while many movements within the history of the church can be described by the intellectual and theological historians, this in and of itself doesn’t negate the theological substance that may or may not stand behind these types of shifts and orientations among the people of God through the centuries.

I am simply wanting to register that at a purely theological level the idea that the Christian is growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ entails a deeply personal and warm-hearted relationship with God, indeed, a dialogical (prayerful and worshipful) one, wherein the sheep can know the Shepherd’s voice. And this, as already noted, is not because of anything inherent to an ‘below’ urge from us to God. But instead, it is from an ‘above’ movement of who God freely has chosen to be for us in Jesus Christ; and this in correlation with who God eternally is in His triune Self. This is how the Christian encounters God, by the Spirit, through whom we affirm that Jesus is Lord. The Christian doesn’t encounter a speculatively produced pure act (actus purus) or pure being God whose reality is adumbrated by our philosophical negations and projections upon what this being must be like. No, the Christian, by definition, only is such as they come into encounter with the One who is their Brother, who is their Father, in the bond of the Holy Spirit. God determines, He pre-destines who He is in Himself to be who we become in Christ by Grace (not nature); that is, co-heirs with Jesus Christ, beholding the glory the Son has eternally shared with the Father in the bondage of the Holy Spirit.

The sum of it is that we ought to pursue this personalist, relational relationship with the living God because that is what He has already determined to be the case for us in Jesus Christ. We ought to be in doxological adoration of who He has Self-revealed and exegeted Himself to be for us in Jesus Christ; in the kerygmatic reality of the Good News that He is in proclamation. He isn’t a God out there, but a God with us, and God ‘closer to us than we are to ourselves’ (per Barth). That said, He isn’t available to be taken captive by our own untoward passions and desires. He instead sets the frame in the sobriety of His own life for us. As such, our worship and relationship with Him is predicated upon this type of discoursing, dialoguing intercourse with Him wherein what it means to be personal, relational, and intimate is dictated by who He is for us, rather than who we are towards Him (in our fallen frames of dust). He sets the boundaries of relationship relative to who He is, and because He created us to be in relationship with who He is, our re-creation in Christ finds a relational correspondence, in a fitting way, as that has been already laid for us in His telos (purpose) for the world in Jesus Christ.

Hopefully the reader is seeing how I am attempting to thread this needle. I.e., We are in a personalist, onto-relational relationship with the living and triune God on His terms rather than an abstract set of terms that we determine about Him based upon our own fallen and broken dispositions.

Thanks for reading me thinking out loud again.

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 Bultmann’s demythologizing project. But more theologically significant is simply the establishment of the fact “that Christ is risen” 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 won’t have the eyes to see or the ears to hear the depth reality and intonation of God’s still small voice as it breezes by them afresh anew by the Spirit’s hovering life. The resurrection makes all things new. It puts to death the old (sorry natural law/theology), and presents humanity with God’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, Church Dogmatics III/2 §47 [444] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 7.

On Being a Real Protestant: Calvin and Barth against Thomas and the Thomists on a Vestigial Knowledge of God

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Is God really knowable, secularly, in the vestiges of the created order? In other words, does God repose in the fallen order to the point that vain and profane people can come to have some type of vestigial knowledge of the living God? According to Thomas Aquinas, and other scholastics of similar ilk, the answer is a resounding: yes. Here is Thomas himself:

as we have shown [q. 32, a. 1], the Trinity of persons cannot be demonstratively proven. But it is still congruous to place it in the light of some things which are more manifest to us. And the essential attributes stand out more to our reason than the properties of the persons do, for, beginning from the creatures from which we derive our knowledge of the personal properties, as we have said [q. 32, a. 1]. Thus, just as to disclose the persons we make use of vestigial or imaged likenesses of the Trinity in creatures, so too we use their essential attributes. And what we call appropriation is the disclosure of the persons through the essential attributes.[1]

Karl Barth makes appeal to John Calvin to repudiate this type of ‘vestigial’ knowledge of God, as we find that in Thomas Aquinas previously. Calvin might not develop an anti-natural theology in the ways that Barth does, but he does share with Barth a principled and prior commitment to a radical theology of the Word, to a knowledge of God as Redeemer prior to Creator. And so here we have Barth and Calvin joining forces, even if only in incipient ways, on Calvin’s part (mediated through Barth), against the Angelic Doctor, St Thomas Aquinas:

To my knowledge, the strongest testimony of theological tradition in this direction is Calvin’s foreword to his Commentary on the Book of Genesis (1554). In this work he recalls 1 Cor. 1:21: “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” What Paul obviously means is: it is in vain for God to be sought by reference to visible things, and indeed that anything should remain, except so that we should be brought straight to Christ. Therefore we should make our beginning not with the things of this world, but with the gospel, which puts forth one Christ with his cross and holds us in him. In view of this, Calvin’s conviction is also: indeed it is vain for any to philosophize in the manner of the world, unless they have first been humbled by the preaching of the gospel, and have instructed the whole compass of their intellect to submit to the foolishness of the cross. I say that we will find out nothing above or below that will lift us to God, until Christ has educated us in his school. Nothing further can be done, if we are not raised up from the lowest depths and carried aboard his cross above all the heavens, so that there by faith we might comprehend what no eye has ever seen, nor ear ever heard, and which far surpasses our hearts and minds. For the earth is not before us there, nor its fruits supplied for daily food, but Christ himself offers himself to us unto eternal life; nor do the heavens illuminate our bodily eyes with the splendor of the sun and stars, but the same Christ, the light of the world and the sun of righteousness, shines forth in our souls; nor does the empty air spread its ebb and flow around us, but the very Spirit of God quickens and enlivens us. And so there the invisible kingdom of Christ fills all things, and his spiritual grace is diffused through all things. To be sure, this ought to prevent us from looking to heaven and earth as well and in this way fortifying ourselves in the true knowledge of God. For Christ is the image, in which God not only allows his breast to be seen, but also His hands and feet. By ‘breast’ I mean that secret love, by which we are enfolded in Christ; by ‘hands’ and ‘feet’ I understand those works which are set before our eyes. But: As soon as we have departed from Christ, there is nothing is so gross or trivial that we can avoid being mistaken as to its true nature. (C.R. 23, 10 f.). We do not find in Calvin any more detailed explanation or exposition of this programmatical assertion either in the Commentary on Genesis or in the relevant passages in the Institutio. Yet there can be no doubt that he has given us a stimulus to further thinking in this direction. The step which we ourselves have attempted along the lines he so impressively indicated is only a logical conclusion which is as it were set on our lips by the statements of the fathers, although they did not draw it for themselves.[2]

This is one reason among many why any serious Reformed person who would ever think that resourcing Thomas Aquinas and his Aristotelianism as a ‘congruous’ means by which to think God becomes quite staggering. Such a move flatly contradicts a principled and intensive commitment to the so-called ‘Protestant Scripture Principle.’ And yet, as the Post Reformed orthodox history bears out this is exactly what many of these Reformers did; they built their “Reformed” systems of theology on the Thomistic and Aristotelian ground provided for them in the Latin theological heritage so bequeathed. I’m still of the mind that it’s better to actually be principially Protestant rather than functionally Tridentine and Roman Catholic in my theology, as a Protestant. Many like Matthew Barrett, Craig Carter, and more seriously, Richard Muller and David Steinmetz et al. disagree.

[1] Thomas Aquinas, ST 1, q. 39, a. 7 cited by Gilles Emery, OP, The Trinitarian Theology of St Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 328–29.

[2] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/1 §40 [031] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 30–1 [italics mine, they represent the translation of Calvin’s Latin].