Category Archives: Theory of Revelation

Knowledge of God Through Suffering: With Reference to Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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When we suffer as Christians, we come to know God because we are no longer reliant upon ourselves, we have no resource in ourselves, and so we are pressed deep into the ground of our life in Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul understood this well when he wrote to the Corinthian church,

8Ā For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life.Ā 9Ā Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead,Ā 10Ā who delivered us from so great a death, and doesĀ deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliverĀ us,Ā 11Ā you also helping together in prayer for us, that thanks may be given by many persons on ourĀ behalf for the giftĀ grantedĀ to us through many. -II Corinthians 1:8-11

When faced with the uncertainties of daily life, when pressed against the direst of consequences we really have nowhere else to go; it is really hard to deceive ourselves at that point, we are very vulnerable. This is the perfect scenario for Godā€™s wisdom to reach us where we are truly at; we often do not realize how needy we are until we are needy. And this is whyĀ DietrichĀ Bonhoeffer wrote from his NaziĀ prison cell about Godā€™s wisdom versus the religious wisdom of the world:

Here is the decisive difference between Christianity and all religions. Man’s religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world: God is theĀ deus ex machina. The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help. To that extent we may say that the development towards the world’s coming of age outlined above, which has done away with a false conception of God, opens up a way of seeing the God of the Bible, who wins power and space in the world by his weakness. This will probably be the starting-point for our secular interpretation.[1]

What suffering does for both the Apostle Paul and Dietrich Bonhoeffer is to tear back the un-reality, and un-truth of the human religions of the world; and instead, it shows us humans, especially us Christians (who may well have imbibed the wisdom of the world), how empty everything else is a part from our God who humbled himself to the point of deep suffering and agonizing death. It is in this instance in this moment when our suffering is seen to correlate with his suffering for us at the cross, and our knowledge of God increases in dependence upon his life; the life that death and suffering could not hold down.

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer,Ā Letters and Papers from Prison, 359-61.

*Written, originally, in 2014.

TF Torrance and Augustine in Discussion on a Knowledge of God vis-Ć -vis the Imago Dei

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I find Thomas Torranceā€™sĀ stratified knowledge of GodĀ and St. Augustineā€™sĀ exercitatioĀ mentisĀ (spiritual exercises), and their relative correspondence to be quiteĀ intriguing, and yet in this intrigue there is also recognition of a fundamental difference. Here is how Ben Myers describes Torranceā€™s ā€˜stratified knowledgeā€™ (if you want to read Torrance on this see hisĀ Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons):

Thomas F. Torranceā€™s model of the stratification of knowledge is one of his most striking and original contributions to theological method. Torranceā€™s model offers an account of the way formal theological knowledge emerges from our intuitive and pre-conceptual grasp of Godā€™s reality as it is manifest in Jesus Christ. It presents a vision of theological progression, in which our knowledge moves towards an ever more refined and more unified conceptualisation of the reality of God, while remaining closely coordinated with the concrete level of personal and experiential knowledge of Jesus Christ. According to this model, our thought rises to higher levels of theological conceptualisation only as we penetrate more deeply into the reality of Jesus Christ. From the ground level of personal experience to the highest level of theological reflection, Jesus Christ thus remains central. Through a sustained concentration on him and on his homoousialĀ union with God, we are able to achieve a formal account of the underlying trinitarian relations immanent in Godā€™s own eternal being, which constitute the ultimate grammar of all theological discourse. [Benjamin Myers, ā€œThe Stratification of knowledge in the thought of T. F. Torrance,ā€ SJT 61 (1): 1-15 (2008) Printed in the United Kingdom Ā© 2008 Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd]

And here is how Gilles Emery, O. P. describes Augustineā€™sĀ exercitatio mentis:

Augustine emphasizes in particular that in order to glimpse God, the spirit must purify itself of corporeal representations and ā€œphantasmata.ā€ The spirit must not stop at created images but must rise to what the created realities ā€œinsinuate.ā€ This is precisely the usefulness of the study of creatures and the goal of the exercise. TheĀ exercitatioĀ proposed by Augustine is anĀ ascension ā€¦Ā toward God from the image that is inferior and unequal to him, and it is at the same time a gradual movementĀ toward the interiorĀ (introrsus tendre). From these corporeal realities and sensible perceptions, Augustine invites his reader to turn toward the spiritual nature of man, toward the soul itself and its grasp of incorporeal realities, in a manner ever more interior (modo interiore), in order to rise toward the divine Trinity. The exercise of the spirit is ā€œa gradual ascension toward the interior,ā€ in other words, anĀ elevationĀ from inferior realities toward interior realities. One enters, and one rises in a gradual manner by degreesĀ (gradatim).Ā Such is the way characteristic of Augustine: ā€œpull back into yourself [in teipsum redi]ā€¦, and transcend yourself.ā€ [Gilles Emery, O. P.,Ā Trinitarian Theology as Spiritual Exercise in Augustine and Aquinas,Ā inĀ Aquinas the AugustinianĀ edited by Michael Dauphinais, Barry David, and Matthew Levering, p. 14.]

[For further reading on a Reformed version of ascension theology check out Julie Canlisā€™ sweet bookĀ Calvinā€™s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension.]

One fundamental and important differenceā€”even given some apparent similarity between Torrance and Augustine, like on stratification or graded movement towards Triune knowledge of Godā€”becomes an issue of theological anthropology and the difference between Augustineā€™sĀ a prioriĀ versusĀ Torranceā€™sĀ a posteroriĀ approaches in relation to theĀ imago Dei/Christi.Ā 

For Augustine, knowledge of God is already present (even if soteriologically and christologically construed) by way of analogical reflection upon the image of God (which is opened up soteriologically by Christ). For Torrance, knowledge of God is not a result of turning inward, but looking outward to Christ. So we donā€™t know what it is to really be in the image of God, there is not resonant knowledge of God available in the human being, per se. It is only as we are recreated in Christ in the resurrection by the Spirit that genuine knowledge of God can be acquired by observing and spiritually participating in the knowledge of God through Him. So the analogy for both of the these theologiansā€”by which we come to knowledge of the Triune Godā€”is grounded in reflection upon the image of God. But the difference is that for Augustine, the image of GodĀ isĀ grounded in each individual person (which would help to explain his view of election/reprobation as well); for Torrance the image of God is grounded in Christ (Col. 1.15), and thus the supposition is that Godā€™s image has a ground external to creation in Christ, which allows us to think of knowledge of God as something external to us, and not something resonant within us (even if like Augustine we try to explain this in his kind of soteriological way).

My Reduction

I donā€™t like doing this, but for sake of blogginess and reception let me do so: For Augustine knowledge of God happens by turning inward to the self (by Christ to be sure) and attending to personal piety; For Torrance knowledge of God happens by turning outward to Christ, and attending to personal intimacy therein.

This kind of movement (inwardĀ a prioriĀ and outwardĀ a posterori) has some other interesting implications that get fleshed out in subsequent centuries and theologies that continue to affect us to this day. We will have to talk about this later.

*Originally posted in 2019 at another site of mine.

Being Right About Jesus Versus Being Right About Politics

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Being right about Jesus and the triune God isnā€™t like being right about a political platform or position. When we do our due diligence to be right about various and contingent political platforms and positions, we must make judgments, with the Lordā€™s help. But being right about Jesus isnā€™t ultimately based on our judgments and positions, per se. That is to say: to be right about who Jesus and the triune God are has nothing to do with us. When a person arrives at a saving knowledge of God in Christ it isnā€™t based on judgments and verity; it is based on who God is for us before the foundation of the world. Being right about Jesus is ultimately a human impossibility. If God wasnā€™t right for us first all that we would have would be our own judgments and positions about an abstract ā€œultimate truth,ā€ that potentially is ā€œout thereā€ (like the X Files). In politics, as the counterexample, things remain largely abstract. Indeed, the abstraction comes in at just the point that human governments and politics and politicos are in fact composed of by fallen contingent human beings who purely operate in the liminal spaces of human decisions. In other words, when a person makes a decision about a politico, and its respective position, they arenā€™t doing so from within a personal union, an intimate touch with said politico. At best, the person attempting to make a right political decision about a political person and their respective positions, might be a personal friend of said political personage (which is rare indeed). Even so, even if that is the case, even if we think we know someone, we can never fully have a hundred percent trust that this person might not be compromised by external forces; indeed, because the person is a fallen corruptible person with a capacity to fool themselves and others. And so, we do the best we can in regard to being right about a politician and the politico system and platform in general.

Contrariwise, as alluded to earlier, being right about Jesus, about the triune God, about God in Christ is not parallel with being right about the profane things of this world; even if those profane things are highly important in regard to the human flourishing, even before God; even as God has set up the framework wherein politico factors and human governments might function in an orderly way in this fallen world. Unlike political rightness (and other rightnesses), being right about God is first about God being right for us. God is first right for us, because God alone is Right. And from within this rightness, from within the inner-perichoretic-life of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, outflows, by His freedom, His election, His choice to not be God without us, but with us; Immanuel. And it is precisely at this primordial juncture wherein being right about God, on our end, is nothing like being right about a political position. God is first right for us, that we might be right for Him, in Christ. In this way, being right about God finds its ontic procedural ground in the very Being (ousia) of God as He has chosen to penetrate our inner depths, by choosing our fallen humanity as humanity, and through this choseness, taking our fallen humanity into the manger, into His lived life on this earth, through the death of the cross, and putting all of that history to death, our fallen history; then rising again, ascending, indeed, still in our humanity, indeed as His risen and ascended humanity is the first instance of archetypal humanity in right relationship with the triune God, and herein, making us right and righteous indeed, as He freely and lovingly tasted that we were wrong, that we were bad, that He might bring us into union with Him, making the impossible possibility possible, by which we might genuinely taste and see that God is good.

This is why being right about Jesus, is fundamentally different than being right about a political position; or whatever else we might lift up and use as for an example of a secondary and contingent matter of rightness and wrongness within this fallen world, within these yet fallen bodies. Even so, as God has made us right about Him in Christ, it is in and from this first fruited ground that we now, as Christians, come to have a capacity to make better and more prudent judgments about politics, political positions and people.

Spitballing on God’s Sovereignty and Contingent Freedom

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How does Godā€™s sovereignty work, in a God-world relation? First, to speak of Godā€™s sovereignty can never be done so in abstraction from Godā€™s cruciform life for the world in Jesus Christ. It is from within this unio mystica (ā€˜mystical unionā€™) of God and humanity, in the particularity of the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ, wherein Godā€™s actions, where His power, His sovereignty and everything else must be thought. When we ponder the end for which God humiliated Himself in the Son for the world, we recognize that this ponderance goes back even before the foundations of the world; indeed, the Lamb being slain even before the foundations of the world. So, it is as we think back from the analogy of the incarnation of God, that we might arrive upon an answer to how Godā€™s cruciformed, Son-faced sovereignty comes to penetrate and engage this world; particularly within its fallen status. We know that Godā€™s sovereignty is first and foremost grounded in His Divine Freedom, within His inner life of triune life, wherein He has the Self-capacity to choose what His act will be for the world which He has created; indeed, created from the seed of the women, in the man from Nazareth. As we attempt to reason from within this inner theological reality of Godā€™s life, indeed, as we have arrived upon this primordial point of liminal access, through first encountering this God in the economy of His life for the world in the face of His Son, Jesus Christ, we come to realize that all things, as Self-determined from within the fellowshipping life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are free and open for God to act as He will. Not from an abstraction, but from the concretion of His eternally triune life. It is here that Godā€™s a-se life Has the freedom to determine an elected contingency, first for Himself, as the Son, Godā€™s image, freely elects to be human, which entails within that space of chosen contingency, within His to-be assumed humanity, wherein human freedom comes to find its starting point. Not as a non-contingent freedom, as the ground of His freedom is sourced by, as the eternal Logos, but as a corresponding contingent freedom with His freedom; one that is finally given agency within even His own assumed humanity for us by the Holy Spirit. So, again, things come back to this Theanthropic mystery wherein God and humanity kiss, unite, in the hypostatic union of God and humanity in the singular person of Jesus Christ.

So, Godā€™s sovereignty works, in such a way, that humanity, and then the rest of the created order (cf. Rom 8.18ff), invades the contingent world order, which He first created, and then re-created in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, in and through the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. It is as His non-contingent Logos life interfaces with the human contingent life that the miracle of Godā€™s sovereignty comes to shape the world; both the world now, and not yet. It is within this mediating space as that inheres within the conversating person of the humanity of God in Christ, and Godself. The fact that non-contingency and contingency can communicate, and interface one with the other, whilst the non-contingency of Godā€™s triune life circumscribes the whole event of the contingent, is indeed, the fact of Godā€™s sovereignty in action for the world. Contingency finds its freedom to act only as an asymmetrical correspondence with Godā€™s act within His own humanity for the world. So, ultimately, Godā€™s freedom, as the ground of human freedom, as that is mediated for the world in the archetypal humanity of Jesus Christ, yeasts in such a way that Godā€™s purposes, within the cruciform of His life, are made manifest as humanity in union with Him, through His union with humanity in Christ can be accomplished without violating, indeed quite to the contrary, the contingent events of created and recreated history. His will is done first and foremost because He is the One who is free within Himself. And it is within this freedom in His eternal life of love wherein He has come to sovereignly Self-determine to not be God without us, but with us for all eternity; indeed, in the face of Jesus Christ. It is within the economy of this determinate choice to be for, with and in us, wherein the contingent order comes to serve His purposes, whilst the contingent humanity finds their respective freedom with His.

But then of course there is always the ā€œunelectedā€ and inscrutable reality of sin and evil in the world. This complicates things. Not as far as thwarting Godā€™s sovereignty (as we have already defined that), but by introducing a perversion into the mix of human freedom that attempts to gain a life of its own, whilst parasiting on the real freedom God has determined for humanity in His Free Grace choice to be not-God without us; that is, not without humanity and the created order He has made humanity, His humanity in us, and ours in His, stewards over. And yet, even in the facet of sin and evil Godā€™s cruciform humanity perdures, it yeasts in such a way that it finally gives birth to a babe, wrapped in swaddling cloths, born in a manager in Bethlehem. It is here where, when finally eventuated in the ascension, that humanity comes to have the capacity to make genuinely free choices that are in keeping with Godā€™s sovereignly Self-determined plan and purpose for the world; indeed, as that purpose and plan has always already found its fund and orientation by its reality and elevation in the supra planned incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. And yet, there remains a battle between the old first Adam world, and the now greater and new second Adam world. Even so, Godā€™s plan has been pervasive throughout both epochs of the first and second Adams. That is, because God first elected all of the sundry events of created history to unfold in the reality of the Deus incarnandus (God to be incarnate). This has always already been the inner reality, the beating im-pulse of the created order; i.e., Godā€™s choice to become Creator, even as He was first Father of the Son by the Holy Spirit.

Really, all Iā€™m saying is that the relationship between Godā€™s sovereignty and humanity in the created order, turns out to be rather miraculous. And there remains many holes in what I have been torturously attempting to articulate. But you gotta start somewhere. And I had the urge to just sit down and spitball.

Discoursing Our Way to an Angelology; Philosophy V the Bible; Thomas V Barth

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Barth attempts to offer a Biblical Angelology. In the process he surveys some of the most primary developments on an angelology, in the history, as those were offered by Dionysius and Thomas Aquinas. Just on that level his treatment is interesting and rewarding. But in the midst of that, since he is slavishly beholden to the Protestant ā€˜Scripture Principle,ā€™ he also identifies what I also take to be primary to a truly Christian presentation on the angels. As is typical, especially with reference to my own interests, Barth rightly recognizes the role that a prolegomena/hermeneutic will end up having on how a respective thinker will arrive at their veritable conclusion on what in fact angels (and demons) are. This a priori commitment to whatever hermeneutic someone deploys in their attempt to understand the supraphysical verities in Godā€™s world, will in the end determine whether or not said thinker actually has a point of contact with Godā€™s world or not.

In the following passage the reader will observe how Barth believes a philosophical/speculative attempt at developing a doctrine of the angels, as is present in Aquinasā€™ guiding habit, ends up providing something highly interesting and imaginative to contemplate; but beyond that, for Barth, this speculation only generates a notion of ā€˜angelnessā€™ that only can get as high as the virtuosoā€™s genius. That is, Barth believes, for example, in Thomasā€™ attempt to prove the existence of angels, that insofar that he stays correspondent within his self-referencing universe, that Thomas does indeed offer something on ā€œthe angelsā€ that entails a coherence. But thatā€™s what makes it something of interest to Barth, rather than something of substance (pun intended).

It cannot be contested that in a specific sphere and on a specific assumption proof is here given of the existence of a specific object interesting to the one who conducts the proof. It might be asked whether this sphere is real, and if so accessible, and if so able to be marked off in this way and approached with this assumption. It might be asked whether the proof furnished on this assumption and in this sphere is really conclusive and convincing either in detail or as a whole. But if we assume that everything is in order in this respect, and that Thomas has legitimately proved what he really could prove, there can be no doubt that with this assumption (or with the criticism or partial or total rejection of his demonstration) we are merely making philosophical and not theological decisions. Whether there are intellectual substances without bodies, and whether their existence can be proved in this or some other way, may be a question which is interesting and important in the sphere of philosophy. It may be one which can be discussed and even decided in this sphere. It may even be one which is decisive. But it is purely philosophical. On the basis of the Word of God attested in Holy Scripture we are not asked whether there are or are not substances of this kind, nor are we required to prove their existence in some way. If there are, and if their existence can be proved, this does not lead us to angels in the biblical sense of the term. And if there are not, and their existence cannot be proved, this is no argument against angels in the Christian sense. What are called angels in the Bible are not even envisaged in Thomasā€™ proof of the existence of these substantiae separatae [distinct substances], let alone is anything said for or against their existence, or anything meaningful states about them at all, with the eight proofs. And what Thomas later constructed upon the demonstrated existence of these substantiae separatae is very different from a doctrine of angels in the Christian sense of the term. In his demonstration Thomas has given us philosophy and not theology, and he has done so far more exclusively than Dionysius. He does so occasionally refer to Holy Scripture, and therefore it may be asked whether he does not incidentally and in some sense contrary to his own intention make some contribution to theological knowledge. But fundamentally and as a whole he simply offers us a classical example of how not to proceed in this matter.[1]

In nuce, if the Christian is going to attempt to offer a genuinely Christian doctrine of angels, they will, as Barth so rightly presses, be committed to the biblical categories rather than the philosophical ones. And of course, it is this methodology that funds the whole of Barthā€™s style of a confessional trinitarian-dialectical christologically conditioned way of doing theology from the reality of the Bible. The Christian philosophers among us would sneer at this; the classical theologians, the ā€˜Great Traditionersā€™ in our midst, would mock; how ironic.

Stay Biblical my friends.

[1] Karl Barth,Ā Church Dogmatics III/3 Ā§50ā€“51 [393] The Doctrine of Creation: Study EditionĀ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 104.

The Miracle of Gospel Time and the Antidote it Provides for Our Political Time

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Godā€™s covenant life of grace is the inner reality of the external creation and order that we are agents within as His creatures. This implicates everything; especially history, politics, theology, so on and so forth. Godā€™s life of grace joins His life of eternal-time with the tangent of ā€˜calendar-timeā€™ in such a way that the latter finds all of its predication in and through the former. One thing this does is that it at the same miraculous time universalizes and particularizes time and history all in the same go. That is to say, it so expands the horizons of the so-called space-time continuum that it ends up being an inane posture to think that our experiences of our personal-times could serve as the fulcrum for our perception of reality to begin with.

An application of the aforementioned notion on the relationship between eternity and time, as that is conjoined within the miracle of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, could be to use that as the basis for the Christianā€™s approach to matters related to politics, and everything else. In this time, in 2024 in America, we are currently faced with a POTUS election whose ramifications for time to come seem to circumscribe and even eclipse all of time, and all of reality for time to come. And yet in light of the miracle of the incarnation, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, such happenings are relativized by the greater and realer time of Godā€™s time, Godā€™s predication of the world in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. If nothing else, the greatness, the ineffableness of Godā€™s in-breaking, and His continuous in-breaking, into this world, into ā€œourā€ supposed time, ought to place all the fears and anxieties of these times into the womb of the Father where time in reality was first birthed for us in the Theanthropos, the Godman, Jesus Christ.

Here is how father and son duo, Alan and Andrew Torrance, write about these matters as developed in the theology of Karl Barth:

An additional positive point that comes up in Barthā€™s discussion of the moment is that the unity that God establishes between eternity and time is a unity with the whole of timeā€”a unity that holds together in the past, present, and future in the oneness of Godā€™s historical narrative. The idea that moments such as the moment of resurrection and the moment of faith are interconnected in the whole of time is again incomprehensible to us. This is because our thinking is caught up in and conditioned by the ā€œstream of time,ā€ preventing us from seeing the bigger theological picture sub specie aeternitatis. Insofar as we reduce history to our immediate experience of it, we close history off from the one who unites it as a whole. In so doing, we hold ourselves back from seeing that we are living in ā€œthe invisible New Ageā€ in which ā€œeach moment in time is a parable of the eternal ā€˜Momentā€™.ā€ As hard as this is to fathom, the fact that God, for Barth, unites Godself with history means that ā€œevery moment in time bears within it the unborn secret of revelation, and every moment can be thus qualified.ā€ Time, he writes, ā€œis swallowed up in eternity,ā€ which means that flesh is swallowed up ā€œin the infinite victory of the Spirit.ā€ Therefore, every event in history must be understood according to the unity that the eternal God establishes with history and for history.[1]

These are deep considerations, but important ones if we as Christians are going to faithfully fulfil our role as witnesses to Godā€™s meritorious works for us, for this world in Jesus Christ. It ought to keep us from being swallowed by the fear of the absolute immanentizing of this world, as if its own inner source and reality is all there was, is, and is to come. The point, ultimately, as this world, and all that happens within it are predicated by Godā€™s life and redemption of this world, as this world has become Godā€™s world, both as He originally created, and then recreated it from the flesh and blood, from the Eucharist of His life for the world as that has been eternally generate in the bosom of the Father by the hovering and creative movement of the Holy Spirit. The takeaway, for one thing, ought to be that nothing and nobody is greater than historyā€™s reality as that reality has always already been such in the face (prosopon) of Jesus Christ. Christians have a hope and redound that this world currently needs in ways that this world does not understand without Godā€™s Self-revelation and our witness to that as we repose in the surly concreteness of Christā€™s life for this world. Ultimately, what I am getting at with all of this, is that we ought to continue to remain and ā€œoccupyā€ this land, this time, as God-worshippers. This is the basis and telos (purpose) of all of reality, of all of time as that has been gifted for us through Godā€™s pre-destination for us, in His free and gracious election to not be God without us, but with us in the humanity of Jesus Christ. If knowledge of this reality reigns supreme in our movings and breathings we will offer this world, at this time, at Godā€™s time for the world in Christ, a hope that the principalities and powers could only dream about in some sort of perverted parody of self-actualization.

[1] Alan J. Torrance and Andrew B. Torrance,Ā Beyond Immanence: The Theological Vision of Kierkegaard and BarthĀ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2023), 210.

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 ā€œmethodā€ 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 Godā€™s Word, as Godā€™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 Spiritā€™s free unction of adoptive grace. Underneath this total covenantal relationship between God and humanity in Jesus Christ there are the everlasting arms of Godā€™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 Godā€™s city; where Godā€™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 Barthā€™s ā€˜double objectivityā€™ of God (see CD II/1), in both Godā€™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 ā€˜dialogicalā€™ ā€˜kataphysicalā€™ ā€˜epistemological inversion[al]ā€™ 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 ā€˜very goodā€™ creation; indeed, as that very good creation, that is ā€œus,ā€ 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, isnā€™t reducible to a ā€˜systematicā€™ frame wherein the would-be knower of God comes with an a priori and immanent frame of reflection to think ā€˜godnessā€™ 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 (ā€˜Godheadā€™).

If you understand what Torrance is getting at in the ā€œshortā€ snippet above, then you will understand what has animated my own theological work for these last couple of decades. It really isnā€™t a matter of pointing to ā€œmy work,ā€ or even ā€œTorrancesā€ 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), 137ā€“39.

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

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forĀ we walk by faith, not byĀ 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 Ā»invisibleĀ« things of God as though they were clearly Ā»perceptible in those things which have actually happenedĀ« (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, doesnā€™t see, doesnā€™t endure, doesnā€™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 (ā€˜mystical unionā€™), 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 isnā€™t an abstract ethereal thing; i.e., as has already been noted, it is grounded in the concrete of Godā€™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 motherā€™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.

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: ā€˜epistemological Arians?ā€™ They are simply noting that if there is some type of general independent free-floating ontological knowledge of God without being radically grounded in Godā€™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 humanityā€™s knowledge of God would come epistemologically prior to Godā€™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 ā€œGodnessā€ 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: Donā€™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.

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.