Category Archives: Tom Greggs

Reading Barth as a Jonah: My Strategy for Reading Barth

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I’ve been struggling, conflicted, whatever you want to call it, since 2017, with reference to what to do with Barth. I publicly began this struggle here at the blog, and you can read that series of posts here. Unlike many, like the recent TGC post on Barth and Von Kirschbaum, I have skin in the game. I’ve been reading Barth since 2002, and on him for just as long. I am a proponent of many of his theological themes, particularly his doctrine of election (which of course, impinges on everything else). This might sound melodramatic, but I’ve been wrestling with the Lord over this since 2017; since I read the Tietz essay. I engaged with world renowned Anglophone Barth scholars on this; with people who knew Barth; with students of TF Torrance’s who also knew Barth, if not indirectly. But my primary audience has been with the Lord. For the last few years I’ve continued to read Barth under the vanguard that he could be received (or not) in an applied (and appropriated) ex opera operato sense. That is, that Barth could be read as a witness to Christ in spite of Barth’s unrepentant lifestyle (just as many other theologians and Christians in general can be and must be received—as the sinners that they all are, that we all are). But recently in light of a heavy spiritual attack I’ve been going through there was a purging, a refining by fire taking place once again in my life. When this happens my holiness barometer runs high in rather extreme ways. Once this started happening, as the Lord was working me over once again, my engagement with Barth had to cease. And even though I’ve been doing better with the attack, the Lord is seemingly bringing His reprieve once again, I have still remained squeamish, as far as picking up the CD again. And yet at the same time because of this lacuna I have started to feel spiritually and christologically malnourished. So, to the wrestling mat I’ve been going. It seems to me, and this will be an experiment, that the Lord has given me a strategy in regard to reading Barth; and yet going beyond simply taking Barth as a witness in spite of his unrepentant and immoral lifestyle.

Indeed, the strategy relates to my second to last post. And tonight as I was reading another book, by Tom Greggs, in a footnote, it seems as if the Lord was confirming this strategy for me. Greggs cited John Howard Yoder, but felt the need (understandably) to qualify his appropriation of Yoder in light of Yoder’s sexual predatory ways with women (which came mostly to light after his death). Greggs writes:

For accounts of these themes from the perspective of ethics, see Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom; and Yoder, Politics of Jesus. While there are highly public problems with Yoder’s own life, the points made within this work nevertheless stand materially—even as they stand in contradiction to the life of Yoder himself.[1]

The reader might be able to see how Greggs’ strategy with Yoder works well with what I articulated a couple of posts ago; with reference to reading Barth’s theology against his lifestyle. So, it’s not just a passive recognition of the fact that Barth can be received as a witness, but instead, an active action wherein I as the reader can read him critically in such a way that he can be read against the grain of his chosen lifestyle. Yes, this has the de jure reception of Barth’s witness in place, but beyond this it offers a de facto lens through which Barth can be seen as Jonah type. That is, Barth can be seen as someone proclaiming the Word of God even though he isn’t in full submission to it. It sees Barth straining under the burden of bearing God’s Word, because ultimately he knows this is the Way, and at the same time see him withering under the worm eaten vine, as he continues to doubt God’s Word as it applies to his own life as a minister of the Gospel.

So, this is my reading strategy with Barth. I think he was used by the LORD in spite of his continuously lived-into lifestyle of marital infidelity. And then let me also say this: I read Barth against my own lifestyle as well; just as sure as Barth, when he does (and he does often), more accurately proclaims God’s Word. And this, not just against himself, but against me. I am just as simul iustus et peccator as Barth or anyone else. My prayer, for the LORD’s mercy, is that I will stay soft and open to Him; that as Torrance says, ‘to live repentantly.’ Repentance is an important aspect of the Christian existence, indeed. Repentance is simply obedience to God’s Word, recognizing and acknowledging when we sin (daily), and seeking the Lord’s grace and mercy for another day of breath before Him.

[1] Tom Greggs, Dogmatic Ecclesiology: The Priestly Catholicity of the Church: Volume One (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2019), 293 n. 47.

On Being Calvinist without Restatement

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Being an Evangelical Calvinist (as defined), or Athanasian Reformed, entails being positive in approach. That is, we aren’t interested in repristination or mimicry of the past; even as we resource and listen intently to it. As Protestant Christians we are regulated by a slavish commitment to a theology of the Word, and it is through that lens that we engage with the communion of the saints; both in the church militant and triumphant. When you read our literature (primarily in our two books, or here at the blog) the characterization you will see is a constructive ressourcement of people like Athanasius, Calvin, Luther, Barth, Torrance, Nevin et al. For the Evangelical Calvinist the ground of theological fidelity isn’t based in being able to dig up the dead, and simply reiterate them. For the Evangelical Calvinist it is the kerygma, the Gospel reality itself that regulates and conditions the way we receive and listen to the past. For the Evangelical Calvinist ‘orthodoxy’ is always already eschatological, insofar that theology’s reality is in fact Jesus Christ; the One who has come, comes, and is finally coming. So, for example, when we appeal to Calvin, it isn’t simply to re-state what he believed, per se; instead, it is a matter of mining of what he said in fidelity to the Gospel reality. We take this type of ‘reverential teaching’ and allow that to pollinate the rest of our theological endeavor; bringing it into conversation with other pertinent sources of Gospel witnessers that fit with the vision that we as Evangelical Calvinists believe most proximately reflects who God is for the world in Jesus Christ. Karl Barth, with reference to Calvin, gets at these points this way:

Those who simply echo Calvin are not good Calvinists, that is, they are not really taught by Calvin. Being taught by Calvin means entering into dialogue with him, with Calvin as the teacher and ourselves as the students, he speaking, we doing our best to follow him and then—this is the crux of the matter—making our own response to what he says. If that does not happen we might as well be listening to Chinese; the historical Calvin is not present. For that Calvin wants to teach and not just to say something that we will repeat.[1]

You will come across many in the theological world, particularly in the Reformed sectors (but also Lutheran etc.) who are simply satisfied with an attempt at restatement of who they take to be the ‘orthodox’ of the past, and then use that as the canon for measuring every other theological offering in the broader church catholic. This is not the way; Barth is right.

[1] Barth, Theology of John Calvin, 4 cited by Tom Greggs, Dogmatic Ecclesiology: The Priestly Catholicity of the Church: Volume One (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2019), 273.

Against Clericalism through the Priesthood of Jesus Christ

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Clericalism ought to be anathema. Whether that be Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant, there is no High Priest save Jesus Christ. And yet, whether it be cult of personality, cult of Rome, cult of Alexandria, whatever iteration of the church we might be looking at, clericalism and its elevation of certain people as “authorities” in the church is present. A major premise of the Protestant Reformation was that clericalism goes immediately awry insofar that said clerics are merely human, and fallen human to boot. What God always already knew was that if the church was going to obtain, it would first have to obtain in His free choice to be one with and for us in Jesus Christ. With Him as the anchor of the church, of our souls, no matter what happens, no matter what inner or outer forces attempt to thwart His church, it shan’t prevail since He, Himself, the Theanthropos is the very ground and esse of His church; indeed as that has taken formation, and continuously does as event, in the glorified and vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ.

Tom Greggs offers a good word contra clericalism as he cites Blumhardt:

In the Reformation time a cry for this Zion arose in Luther’s soul. He sought a people freely surrendered to God’s grace, without self-righteous works, and in this he was right. But what must we say? The clerical element still muddied up the stream of the Reformation. Too many human beings wanted to rule. But Zion is not like this. God’s Zion is the fellowship of where Christ rules.[1]

The author to the Hebrews gets into this matter in the following way:

For every high priest taken from among men is appointed on behalf of men in things pertaining to God, in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins; 2 he can deal gently with the ignorant and misguided, since he himself also is beset with weakness; 3 and because of it he is obligated to offer sacrifices for sins, as for the people, so also for himself. 4 And no one takes the honor to himself, but receives it when he is called by God, even as Aaron was.

5 So also Christ did not glorify Himself so as to become a high priest, but He who said to Him,

“You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You”;

6 just as He says also in another passage,

“You are a priest forever
According to the order of Melchizedek.”

7 In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. 8 Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. 9 And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation, 10 being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.[2]

The old was merely a type, gaining any reality it had from its antitype. Christ’s priesthood, of the Melchizedekian order was archetypal priesthood, such that the Aaronic and Levitic priests were given priesthood only insofar as their priesthood gave way to its reality in Christ’s.

On analogy, this remains the reality. When ecclesial structures re-iterate what has already and finally been iterated in the office of Christ’s eternal priesthood, these are bad ecclesial structures (just as any tradition that nullifies the Word of God is bad tradition). The reduction, as Blumhardt rightly points out, with reference to Luther, is that either ‘Christ rules’ His church, or hirelings do, as they attempt to supplant and impose themselves, and their sense of self-authority and importance on the body of the risen Christ. Semper Reformanda

 

[1] Blumhardt, Action in Waiting, 82 cited by Tom Greggs, Dogmatic Ecclesiology: The Priestly Catholicity of the Church: Volume One (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2019), 161.

[2] Hebrews 5:1-10, NASB95.

Against the Inward Turned Church: Whether Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant

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I am a “low church” evangelical. In other words, my ecclesial heritage has its chops in the congregational form of church government. I am also Free church, so not part of a state endorsed church (like we get with the Church of Scotland, Church of England et al.). But this doesn’t mean us “low-churchers” can’t struggle with the same type of inherent inward turn and focus that high churches have historically been characterized by. That is, whether the theory of the church I follow is grounded by looking to its clergy as its formative esse, or whether I look at the particular church programs (low church) that often typify the very existence of the local American evangelical church, what is similar to both is that they find their relative identity as the Church by looking, in abstract ways, into the ‘heart’ of their own self-asserted referent for what it actually means to be the Church. It isn’t the Church for the world, for the other, but the Church for itself, collapsed in on itself as an end in itself.

My thoughts above were inspired by Tom Greggs and the work he is currently doing in his ongoing trilogy on the Church. Here we pick up with him mid-thought on the problems the churches have, as the Church, when they think themselves in abstraction from her genuine, and ec-static, center in Jesus Christ.

When churches speak of their mission, it is all too often code for self-preservation and survival. The desire is not to go to the world with the good news that it is the world reconciled by God, but to expect those outwith the bounds of the church to come to the church so that—in this or that institutional form or congregation or denomination—it may continue. What has resulted has been an ecclesial “hyperactivity of panic.” The church has grasped after every possible means, manner, policy, idea, and mode of survival. It has resorted to change, to “make itself relevant,” and to employ management and business modes—all of which may instrumentally be good, but are problematically employed for the sake of the church’s own survival. The problem is that the desire to survive, and to focus on organization, is often indicative of the instrumentalization of the world for the sake of the church (which sees the world and its members as the means of its own continuation) and of a non-episcopally oriented focus on the polity of the church which sees the reality of the church’s being as resting on this or that structure, program, or organization. Usually, the emphasis is not continuity of service for the world but continuity of this or that church. The focus, once more, is inwards: the church exists towards and for the sake of itself and the salvation of its own members, and not towards and for the sake of the world and its redemption.[1]

Greggs continues with an antidote for the above problem:

This inwards-orientated self-understanding of the church must be reversed. The essential hierarchy should exist but in its inverse form: the church must understand itself as existing for the sake of the world; the ministers of the church as existing for the sake of the church for the sake of the world; and the overseers of the church as existing for the sake of the ministers who exist for the sake of the church who exist for the sake of the world. The Protestant family of churches would do well to learn from Hans KĂźng:

The phrase “priesthood of all believers” can all too easily remain a negative slogan—even and indeed precisely in Protestant theology—in order to reject the idea of priestly representation and mediation. This may well be a justified reaction to centuries of clericalism in theology and in practice. But it is essential that the positive significance of the priesthood of all believers is realized; the positive authorization and obligation must be recognized and practiced. . . . Hence we must ask what the concrete content of this priesthood of all believers really is.

What is required of us is to explain more fully that “concrete content” of the church’s priesthood. This is not only the priesthood which accounts for the internal ordering and dynamics of the church, but also the priesthood which expresses something of the “positive authorization” to engage in representation and mediation corporately for the world. The church has a priesthood, but this comes about only and strictly as the church corporately participates in the forms of life of its one and unique high priest, Jesus Christ, whose body the church becomes through the Holy Spirit, who forms the church into Christ’s body as the church participates intensively in the same Spirit-filled humanity Christ has.[2]

Greggs traces the inward turned notion of the Church back to Augustine’s notion of predestination, particularly as that is fleshed out in the City of God. Suffice it to say, there is a theo-logic that stands behind the inward turned notion of the Church, and its reality, in the end is what TF Torrance identifies as the dualism of Augustine’s Latin Heresy. That is to think of the people of God, and the people of not-God, in abstraction from God’s life for the World in Jesus Christ. The consequence of not thinking the life of God’s people from God’s life for the world in His second person in Jesus Christ, is to think God’s people in abstract ways leaving room for a vacuum to be filled by some after-thought provided for by the witty among us. In other words, when there are a people of God who thinks their identity into, rather than from the identity of God for the world in Christ, this type of abstract people of God will necessarily elevate their own notions, and construct their own superstructures as the bases for thinking a God-church relation. But it is precisely because of this abstract way of thinking, that is abstract from understanding the Church’s existence as grounded in and by the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, that said people of God are ‘thrust back upon themselves’ to think out what in fact it means to be the people of God; what it means to be the Church.

Hence, by adopting an abstract frame for thinking a God-church relation, such people of God will necessarily turn inward, instead of thinking their life extra nos (outside of us) in God’s life for us in Jesus Christ. To turn inward is the organic consequence of thinking churchly identity from a contractual frame vis-à-vis a relation to God, rather than from a relational-filial frame that God unilaterally provides for us in Himself, in Jesus Christ. In other words, when the people of God think their own identity from a decree of God wherein God has already decided that this or that individual will either be elect or reprobate, and this apart from a grounding in the life of God, it is up to the people of God to think out how it is that the Church in fact comes to have a solid, “assured,” ground in the life of God. The problem, though, that this type of people of God is confronted with is that they can never get back behind the decree of God’s absolute predestination, since the decree doesn’t come in the face of Christ, but instead is simply made in abstraction from God’s life for the world. It is only when people understand that the Church’s existence has come to be purely because before the foundation of the world, God freely chose, in the eternal Son, to assume our humanity, as His, and then give us His resurrected humanity as ours. As Greggs notes, this is how the Church becomes the Church; not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of the living and triune God. The Church in the relational-filial frame is not something we have abstractly constructed as our possession; no, properly understood, the relational-filial frame for the Church recognizes that the Church is simply an event that is given afresh anew to us in and from the vicarious humanity of Christ as we are “unioned” into Him by the Holy Spirit, as He hovers over our dark lives, just as He hovered over Mary’s womb, bringing life where there was none before. Thinking the Church this way, theologically, is the only way out of living the ‘churched’ life as if it is something we are sustaining, rather than her Head, her true sustainer, Jesus Christ. Kyrie eleison

[1] Tom Greggs, Dogmatic Ecclesiology: The Priestly Catholicity of the Church: Volume One (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2019), 128.

[2] Ibid., 128-29.

The Gates of Hell Will Not Prevail: The Church’s Ec-static and Event Existence

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18 I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.” 20 Then He warned the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ. -Matthew 16:18-20

 

The Church of Jesus Christ is Christ’s, it is not our possession. It is a continuous event of God’s grace for the world. Its being is not generated by an abstract effort of human ingenuity, but instead by the triunity of God’s life for the world in the humanity of Jesus Christ. Even if we are faithless, and we will be, God in Christ is and always will be faithful for the other, for the Church; for He cannot deny Himself. Christoph Schwöbel says it this way:

In a situation which seems to be almost universally characterized by a loss of never on the part of the churches, and where self-preservation seems to be the chief point on the hidden agenda of ecclesiastical existence, it could only be a liberation to see that the Church cannot preserve its existence because it has not constituted itself. That there will always be a Church is an article of faith, but the continued existence of the Church cannot be guaranteed by our programme of Church reform or our programmatic appeals to resist such an attempt. We can only witness to God’s faithfulness who will complete the work he has begun by creating the Church.[1]

Since the Church is a creation, whose existence is extra nos (outside of itself) its aim should not be self-preservation, but like her Lord, it ought to be one where she pours her life out as a drink offering for others. There is a freedom in this, since where the Spirit is there is liberty. There is a freedom in this since the power of the Church isn’t in and from the Church as some type of prolongation of the incarnation; no, the power of the Church is the very power of Godself, the Gospel. And as the Church finds its in-spiration from this evangelical ground, as it moves and breathes from Christ’s breath blown by the Holy Spirit, it has a power to turn the world upside down; to bring reversal where there seems to be only an entropy of death and destruction. When the Church understands its ec-static existence it is operating within the cruciform shape of resurrection power, of the type that can and will move mountains as she bears witness to the reality of the living and triune God.

Next time you feel tempted to become cloistered within your denominational boundaries, don’t! Next time you’re tempted to absolutize the Church as if it is an independent entity in itself, don’t! Recognize that God in Christ has started this whole thing, and that He will be faithful to bring to completion what He started; and this, with or without our geniuses. The aim is to learn how to repose in Christ’s life, and understand that we are continuously receiving our life, as the Church, by the Spirit as He continuously and event[ually] unionizes us with the vicarious-mediatorial-priestly humanity of Jesus Christ; indeed, the Lord and King of the Church!

[1] Schwöbel, “Creature of the Word,” 150 cited by Tom Greggs, Dogmatic Ecclesiology: The Priestly Catholicity of the Church: Volume One (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2019), 19.

God’s Grace ‘All the Way Down’: How God’s Election in Christ Speaks to the Kobe Helicopter Tragedy

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How does my personal theology come to bear in moments like the death of my G.O.A.T, Kobe Bryant? My theology emphasizes the grandiosity of God’s Grace as Christ. As such, when I attempt to reflect on Kobe’s eternal destiny, I can think from this grandiose position. Not knowing Kobe personally makes it really hard to know exactly what his spiritual life was. So, I must rely on the reports of him being a serious Catholic Christian. As I somewhat sketched and detailed in my last post, there is latitude, in my view, because of the expansive and personal nature of God’s Grace, for those who are outside my tradition to equally have a saving faith; albeit, these must be within some gambit of the Christian tradition. Again, and as such, it is reasonable and hopeful for me to conclude that Kobe is now in the eternal Joy of the living God; enfolded into the garb of Christ’s mediating humanity. I don’t know where the others on the helicopter with Kobe were at spiritually, save Kobe’s daughter. I do maintain that children automatically enter the presence of Christ upon their ‘untimely’ deaths (I think of aborted children this way as well); which would mean that Gigi Bryant and Alyssa Altobelli (I’ve made an inchoate argument for that here) went immediately into the presence of the risen Christ the moment the helicopter crashed.

The ground of my thinking, in regard to the grandiosity of God’s Grace for us in Christ, comes from my doctrine of election; a doctrine that was first noticed and articulated (at least in the way he does it) by Karl Barth. To summarize Barth’s doctrine of election, in a sort of in nuce way, Tom Greggs writes:

Election’s nature is . . . Gospel. The dialectic evident in Romans remains and can be seen between electing God and elected human in its most extreme form in terms of election and rejection. Humanity continues to need to be rescued by God in its rejection of Him. What is new is that this dialectic is now considered in a wholly Christological way which brings together the Yes and No of God in the simultaneity of the elected and rejected Christ. It is He who demonstrates salvation as its originator and archetype. It is, therefore, in the humanity of the elected Christ that one needs to consider the destiny of human nature.[1]

 Greggs helps us understand what is at stake in God’s choice to be for and with us in Christ in Barth’s Christologically styled doctrine of election. The ‘destiny’ of human nature itself, which bespeaks the way Barth thinks of salvation in ontological terms (albeit not abstractly from the concrete human nature of Jesus Christ), is the very ground and basis upon which all creation and its purpose finds orientation. Here is how Barth intones such things:

This all rests on the fact that from the very first He participates in the divine election; that that election is also His election; that it is He Himself who posits this beginning of all things; that it is He Himself who executes the decision which issues in the establishment of the covenant between God and man; that He too, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is the electing God. If this is not the case, then in respect of the election, in respect of this primal and basic decision of God, we shall have to pass by Jesus Christ, asking of God the Father, or perhaps of the Holy Spirit, how there can be any disclosure of this decision at all. For where can it ever be disclosed to us except where it is executed? The result will be, of course, that we shall be driven to speculating about a decretum absolutum instead of grasping and affirming in God’s electing the manifest grace of God. And that means that we shall not know into whose hands we are committing ourselves when we believe in the divine predestination. So much depends upon our acknowledgement of the Son, of the Son of God, as the Subject of this predestination, because it is only in the Son that it is revealed to us as the predestination of God, and therefore of the Father and the Holy Spirit, because it is only as we believe in the Son that we can also believe in the Father and the Holy Spirit, and therefore in the one divine election.[2]

These might seem like weighty and technical matters, and they are. But let’s attempt to regroup. The Barth[ian] understanding of divine election—which is the bringing together of divinity and humanity in inseparably related but distinct ways—grounds the outer reality of creation in the inner reality of God’s triune life and choice to be freely with us and for us in Jesus Christ. This means that creation’s ground is God’s Graciousness ‘all the way down’ (as TF Torrance says it).

If the above is the case, as Barth presses, we have no space to ‘speculate’ (i.e. decretum absolutum) about who God is in Himself and for us, and what He is about in the creative process. So, when I attempt to think about Kobe’s eternal destiny, and the others with Kobe, my very first thought as a Christian must be to think that God’s choice has always already been for and with them; rather than against them. If this is so, there is a correspondence of faith available and waiting for each of them, or there was prior to death, wherein they could say Yes to God, from God’s Yes for them in Christ. Not knowing where these folks were at with this choice for God, clearly, it is not really possible to dogmatically state where they all went when they died in the helicopter crash (except for the exceptions already noted). What is possible though is the possibility for hope; hope because creation’s eternal destiny has always been oriented toward Christ rather than away from Him; hope because God has freely chosen to not be humanity’s enemy, but instead, to be its brother, friend, and bridegroom. As such, because of the grandiosity of God’s Grace, there is always room for eternal hope, because God is an eternal God of Grace in Himself and then for us.

True, there are things in this post that are suggestive, but hopefully some sort of gist comes across. Maranatha

[1] Greggs, Barth, Origen, and Universal Salvation, 26.

[2] Barth, CD II/2:111.

Karl Barth’s Reformulated Doctrine of Election, And Its Implications Towards the Way We Speak of Others; Including Donald Trump

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I want to share some quotes from Karl Barth and Tom Greggs. All of these quotes either come from the body or footnotes of my personal chapter for our latest Evangelical Calvinism book (2017). I want to share the quotes, comment a little on their material presence, and then offer some sort of reflective application of them for the churches. In other words, the aim of this post is to attempt to take a technical theological locus and show how it has so called ‘practical’ value; say for human relationships, and maybe even political ones.

Karl Barth writes,

This all rests on the fact that from the very first He participates in the divine election; that that election is also His election; that it is He Himself who posits this beginning of all things; that it is He Himself who executes the decision which issues in the establishment of the covenant between God and man; that He too, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is the electing God. If this is not the case, then in respect of the election, in respect of this primal and basic decision of God, we shall have to pass by Jesus Christ, asking of God the Father, or perhaps of the Holy Spirit, how there can be any disclosure of this decision at all. For where can it ever be disclosed to us except where it is executed? The result will be, of course, that we shall be driven to speculating about a decretum absolutum instead of grasping and affirming in God’s electing the manifest grace of God. And that means that we shall not know into whose hands we are committing ourselves when we believe in the divine predestination. So much depends upon our acknowledgement of the Son, of the Son of God, as the Subject of this predestination, because it is only in the Son that it is revealed to us as the predestination of God, and therefore of the Father and the Holy Spirit, because it is only as we believe in the Son that we can also believe in the Father and the Holy Spirit, and therefore in the one divine election.[1]

And Tom Greggs offers commentary on the sort of sentiment we just witnessed in Barth’s reformulation of election, as a Christ concentrated conception:

There is no room for a prior decision of God to create, or elect and condemn before the decision to elect Jesus Christ (no decretum absolutum); instead, Jesus Christ is Himself the ultimate decretum absolutum.[2]

Further:

Election’s nature is . . . Gospel. The dialectic evident in Romans remains and can be seen between electing God and elected human in its most extreme form in terms of election and rejection. Humanity continues to need to be rescued by God in its rejection of Him. What is new is that this dialectic is now considered in a wholly Christological way which brings together the Yes and No of God in the simultaneity of the elected and rejected Christ. It is He who demonstrates salvation as its originator and archetype. It is, therefore, in the humanity of the elected Christ that one needs to consider the destiny of human nature.[3]

Maybe you can infer how I would use these quotes in the chapter I wrote on assurance of salvation. But the most important point I want to highlight, currently, is that in the Barthian reformulation of election the focus is no longer on individual/abstract people scurrying around on the earth, but instead upon the ground of all humanity as that is realized in the archetypal and elect humanity of Jesus Christ. There is a universalizing underneath in the doctrine of election in Barth’s theology, with the result that our focus is not on ourselves, as if we have some sort of inherent value or worth in se; but instead the realization is always present that we find our life and being in extra nos or outside of us, only as that extra enters into us by the gift of God in the grace who is the Christ.

The shift that happens, juxtaposed with a classical double predestinarian view, is that election first and foremost is about a doctrine of God; but a doctrine of God that can never be thought of apart from or abstracted out of His choice to not be God without us. In other words, in this reified doctrine our knowledge of God and selves is contingent always already upon God’s choice to be with us and for us in Christ. This transforms the way we think humanity, for one thing. In other words, we are unable to think about what genuine humanity is without first thinking about humanity in union with God in the Son’s union with us in the vicarious humanity of Christ.

One immediate consequence of this is that the way we think people is no longer from a class structure, or from the psychological vantage point that God loves some and not others (as the classical notion of election/reprobation leaves us with). As such, we are genuinely free to look out at others and recognize a humanity, in full, that God loves; a humanity, no matter how wretched (maybe as we think of ourselves) that is valuable precisely at the point that Jesus is the Yes and not the No for them and us. This is not to suggest that a blind eye is given to the sub-humanity that people continue to live in—because we love the darkness rather than the light—but it is to alert us to the fact, in the Barthian reification, that all people have inherent value, just because God first loved us that we might love Him. It is to recognize that even if people choose to reject the election freely offered to them in Christ, that because that election is not contingent upon their choice, but God’s, they live in suspension from the imago Dei who is the imago Christi (cf. Col. 1.15), and as such continue to have inherent value, and even capacity to say yes to God in correspondence to Jesus’s Yes for them. Here, we can agree with the evangelist that ‘God so loved the world, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.’

The premise is that there is no person outside the reach/grace of God. A contemporary application of this might be directed Donald Trump’s way. Trump, by many sectors of people, and many Christians in fact, has come to be considered the scum of the earth. He is the target of untold ridicule and vitriolic attack. At base though, it ought to be recognized, that even Trump’s life is encompassed by the life of God in Jesus Christ; which is why we should continuously be praying for him. This is not to suggest that we can’t be critical of Trump’s policies, speech, and other negatives; but it is to suggest that in this critique what should be characteristic is one where we keep on recognizing what God does about Trump. That is, that Trump is valuable to God, as a person. Indeed, that God in Christ pledged His life for Trump’s, and at the very least our rhetoric ought to be seasoned with this reality of Grace; even in our critiques.

I think this represents one possible application of the implications of Barth’s doctrine of election. It ought to cause us to pause in our speech, at the very least. We ought to bear witness to Christ in our speech and act, even when we have people like Trump in front of us, or others we think of in ridiculing ways. We can be critical, like I noted, of Trump’s policies or even personality, but at the same time we can bear in mind that Jesus loves Trump, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. And I’m only using Trump as a symbolic example for anyone else we could fill in the blank with. What Barth’s doctrine of election does to me, in this sense, is it makes me continually cognizant of the fact that I am no different than Trump; or any of my enemies. Without God’s Grace, who is Christ for us, we would all sink into the sub-humanity we were born into. In other words, as Christ is the One for the many, the many come to have that in common; viz. that we are now all grounded in the One humanity of Jesus Christ. This does not mean we have anonymous brothers and sisters in Christ, at a spiritual level, but it does mean at a ‘carnal’ (de jure) level, that we share a universe with every other person who derives their value and worth from the same reality we do—Jesus Christ! This ought to do something in regard to the way we treat others (I’m preaching to myself).

 

[1] Barth, CD II/2:110.

[2] Greggs, Barth, Origen, and Universal Salvation, 25.

[3] Ibid., 26.

Barth the non-Arminian, and the Particularity of each Individual in Salvation

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I wanted to briefly highlight something in the theology of Karl Barth offered up by some commentary provided by Tom Greggs. Barth believed individual people had particularity, that they weren’t objectified and swallowed up in the mass (so to speak) of an ostensibly metaphysical humanity; i.e. the humanity of Christ. Instead, as Greggs notes, humans have their own particularity and pipebarthindividuality, particularly in the appropriation of salvation by faith, but only after the work has been done in Christ’s humanity for us (I’m somewhat reading in-between the lines a bit). Here is what Greggs writes on Barth’s theology of the Spirit, salvation, and the particularity of each individual person:

However, one must consider what the place of the Spirit is with regards to the individual for Barth. It is the Spirit through whom Jesus Christ calls an individual sinful person to the community of the Christian faith. The Spirit is thus the one who leads a person to conversion. Barth discusses this theme in his incomplete IV/4, in which he considers how it can happen in time that the one off event of Jesus Christ can become for certain people a renewing event. Barth concludes that this is a work of the Spirit who allows for the ‘here and now’ of each individual person. This work is such that it ‘does not entail the paralysing dismissal or absence of the human spirit, mind, knowledge and will’, but is a work in which the Spirit of God bears witness to the human spirit (as in Rom. 8.16). The Spirit reaches out to the specificity and particularity of each individual human.[1]

Note: some might want to argue that Barth sounds Arminian; that he seems to hold that each individual person has the power to reject or accept the grace of God for themselves based upon some sort of inherit particularity within themselves as human beings (even if that ‘power’ is said to be based upon a prevenient grace provided for by God, a “created grace”); as if human being is an abstract concept. But that would be mistaken! Barth’s theological anthropology knows nothing of what it means to be human in an abstract or non-Christological sense, just the opposite. For Barth, and this is why he avoids the semi-Augustinianism (when it comes to a theological anthropology) of Arminianism, the ground an d history of all human being is found in Christ’s elect humanity for all; as such the choice for salvation has been taken and made for humanity in the archetypal humanity of Jesus Christ. It is this history, this life lived by the Spirit, that the same Spirit, on mission from the humanity of Christ comes bearing gifts to each individual human; a gift that offers the individual person the real life opportunity to participate in the Yes of God in and through the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, and find the telos and/or purpose for their life in His.

In other words, Barth’s theology here, far from being Arminian, doesn’t really attempt to answer the same types of causal questions that both classical Arminianism and Calvinism does. Barth works from God revealed in Jesus Christ rather than God and the decree[s].

[1] Tom Greggs, Barth, Origen, And Universal Salvation: Restoring Particularity (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 135-36.

Jesus Loves Me This I Know … But what is love?

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Not surprisingly, for Karl Barth what it means for a human being to love first comes from what it means for God in Jesus Christ (enfleshed) to love. In Barth’s theology human love is not generated from some sort of deep abyss in the human soul; it is not self generated or directed; it is not correlative to anything in creaturely reality; it is instead, as are all things in Barth’s theology, found in (a blackwhitegrunewalddoctrine) of God, which conditions his (Barth’s) Christology, and hence, anthropology. Tom Greggs comments on how this is so in Barth’s theology with particular focus on the person and work of the Holy Spirit; he writes:

For Barth, the possibility of the human ability to love is found in Jesus Christ. Yet the actual founding of love in the human is a miracle of the Holy Spirit. Even in this love, there is only ever a correspondence to the love of God in Christ: love begins with God’s unique love for us, and it is only through this that one is able to measure the concept of love. Human loving must, therefore, be understood as an answer to the love of God for us. Under his section ‘The Holy Spirit and Christian Love’, Barth notes:

By the Holy Spirit the individual becomes free for existence in an active relationship with the other in which he is loved and finds that he may love in return. The one who is most deeply filled with the Holy Spirit is the one who is richest in love, and the one who is devoid of love necessarily betrays the fact that he is empty of the Spirit.

Thus, the Spirit provides the condition for the Christian to love, establishing the freedom to know that she is loved by Christ and may love, therefore, in return. Moreover, it is necessary first to know this love, which is revealed, rather than to make Christian love fit a preconceived category of love: true love is known only through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Again, one sees here the dual direction of the Spirit’s movement: He establishes the church in the identity of love; but this very identity calls for the other in order to love.[1]

As I recently opined on Facebook: “Loving Jesus is a product of being loved by him first,” which really is just a paraphrase of I John 4.19. But as we consider the implications of what we just read from Greggs things get a little risky! Did you catch what he was developing in regard to Barth’s theology of a Christ concentrated love? Love is not something that humans generate or discover, instead genuine love is a reality that is revealed in the Self-revelation and interpretation of God’s life for us in Christ (see Romans 5.8); a reality that is iterated in our lives as we come to participate in God’s life in union with Christ by the Holy Spirit.

Love in this frame comes directly from God’s life of love. It is a love that is sacrificial and for the other rather than generated from the self; it is ecstatic and for humans it is receptive through participation in God’s mediated life for us in Jesus Christ. This puts a bit of a damper on conceptions of love that are merely portraits of self-actualization at the expense of someone else (i.e. lust). It even puts a damper on religious or “Christian” conceptions of love that overly push certain types of emotional experiences as if that is what love primarily produces. Revealed love terminates in trust, sacrifice, service, and obedience (to God). It compels us to think about the other before ourselves

[1] Tom Greggs, Barth, Origen, And Universal Salvation (Oxford/NY: Oxford University Press, 2009), 138.

God is Salvation. The Idea of Two Classes of People Rather than One in Christ

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I once wrote a post that touched upon what I will further elaborate on in this post; i.e. the idea that the classical/Augustinian concept of election has some very damaging consequences for thinking about humanity/people in general, and for thinking about salvation and a thus a doctrine of God in particular. Most people associate this kind of thinking—election for some to salvation and active (or even passive) reprobation for most to an eternal conscious tormented hell for the many—with John Calvin; but of course that would be too reductionistic. Yes, Calvin did hold to a double braziljesuspredestination, but he was only reflecting the dominate belief of his day inherited from the Augustinian/Latin heritage that shaped the whole of the Western (Roman Catholic and Protestant) church. It is this type of thinking that remains pervasive today, particularly in and among ‘conservative’ evangelical theology (think of the type of theology promoted by the popular Gospel Coalition); which itself is funded by the classical Reformed and/or what is known as Post-Reformed orthodoxy, and its categories (given definitive expression in the Westminster Confession of Faith and its Longer/Shorter catechisms). For some reason it is this expression (conscious or not) that is considered the only orthodox way for rigorously understanding things salvific for evangelicals (at least for many; I obviously generalize here). For some reason there is something sacrosanct about thinking about Divinely determined classes of people; the elect and reprobate; the saved and the damned. And unfortunately, I would contend, when this perspective is adopted it can have a deleterious effect upon those who view the world this way. Even at an unconscious level, when this view is allowed to inform people’s daily lives as the reality, even at a sub-conscious level, we start looking at people, at the massa of humanity with harder tones rather than softer ones; divisive and class oriented even. We begin to use this lens, at an ethical level, to view the world as us and them; using this lens to explain why most of the world seems like it is living like hell because from our perspective (if we hold to this type of determinist perception of reality) most of this world is in fact the damned; that’s just who they are (in their very being without any hope otherwise), and thus that’s just what they do—i.e. live like hell.

But Jesus, and the Gospel operate from a different metaphysic, from a different doctrine of creation, from a different anthropology, from a different soteriology, from a different doctrine of God and election (I would contend). Tom Greggs (University of Aberdeen professor) agrees with me, and gets at this in a much more elegant and precise way than me; he writes (as he explains the motivation for his book, which I’m quoting from here):

The primary motivation for engaging in this research is to understand salvation better. In an age in which fundamentalism is being so loudly articulated, the divisive and binary nature of certain understandings of salvation is being clearly heard. The sense that being a member of a community of faith separates and divides is not only heard in sermons but also in the explosion of bombs directed at causing terror for those unbelievers who await the terrors of hell anyway. It is, after all, only a short step from stating that God wills eternal terror for those opposed to His will and uses that terror in the world among those understood to be against God’s will in order to influence their decision-making in the present. Salvation needs, therefore, to be expressed in a way which does not divide humanity into binary groupings, but which allows for a simultaneous discussion of the salvific plan of God for all humanity as well as those who profess faith. In an age of multiculturalism in which our neighbours are people of many faiths and none, this is of paramount importance.

The division of humanity into saved or damned, elect or reject, awaiting heaven or hell is not only dangerous in its implications for the way in which humanity is seen, but it is also dangerous in terms of its doctrine of God: it presents a doctrine of God in which the will of God is separated from His love, or else is flouted by the sinful choices of humans, or else is cajoled into conditional love (which is no love at all) by the faith of humans. This can lead to an almost modalist approach to the doctrine of God: the second and third persons of the Trinity can seem to come to exist to save humanity from its failings. Moreover, such a view of salvation imprisons God in human constructs of justice and love, creating in God the failings all too evident in humanity (to love only when first we are loved, wrath etc.) instead of allowing the doctrine of God to define these points. God is salvation: it is not simply an action He performs; this action is an act in which one can understand His being. Thus, the contrary is also true: if one fails to understand salvation, one will fail to understand God.[1]

It is true that the Bible itself speaks of ‘those being saved’ and ‘those being destroyed’ (as active realities, see I Corinthians 1.18 etc.), but it does not do so in static or absolute ways; nor does it do so in metaphysical ways. In other words, the conditions for dynamism and change relative to one’s personal orientation to the Gospel remain open for all ‘who will’ (to use the Bible’s language cf. Jn 3.16).

Theologically the Bible’s disclosure is focused upon Jesus Christ (cf. Jn 5.39) in rather intense, and dare I say ‘principial’ ways. If we think from the logic of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, if we think from the hypostatic union and the Chalcedonian pattern of God and humanity unified fully in the eternal Son, Jesus Christ (unio personalis); we will have to re-think the binaries spoken of above, we will have to rethink the Augustinian division of an elect status of people over against an reprobate people. If we allow Jesus Christ, and the reality of his life as Theanthropos (the ‘God-man’) to impose itself upon our thought patterns we will have to think God’s election/reprobation from there; in particular from Christ’s vicarious humanity in-the-stead of and representative of all humanity. If we do this we will not look out at humanity as a great abstract mass, some of whom God has chosen to redeem, and others he has arbitrarily chosen to damn to eternal hell. Instead we will look out on the mass of humanity from the concrete humanity of God in Jesus Christ; we will think universally and globally about humanity from the particularity of God’s humanity given for us in the eternal Son’s choice to be for us and with us as one of us, instead of against us. We will think of all of humanity, not in principle, but in concrete fact from God’s love (cf. Rom 5.8); as if the mass of humanity is God’s humanity (cf. Acts 20.28) taken up in the Son (Phil. 2.5-8; II Cor 5.21)—the Son who the Father said ‘is dearly beloved.’

Theology, like any ideas, has a creeping effect in our lives. It is given expression in manifest, and often unconscious or un-intentional ways. There are examples of how thinking about humanity in two different classes gets expressed; one example can be as extreme as apartheid in South Africa (which was in many ways funded by the importation of Dutch Reformed theology into its civil and governmental life and policies). But more typically it can be expressed more subtly in our daily lives by having less compassion for people than we ought; this ‘less compassion’ though can lead to sinister things like nationalism so on and so forth.

Ultimately the problem with viewing humanity this way, though, is that it is not coordinate with the Gospel or God’s life revealed in Christ. God is for humanity in all-inclusive ways, even if his way remains exclusive, but only because that is limited to his life in the Son; thus he remains the only way, but he remains the only way for all not some. Ultimately if we think from the Gospel, from Jesus, we will understand that what it means to be human is ontologically grounded in Jesus Christ’s humanity; that his humanity grounds all of humanity. And that because he has united that humanity to his divine life in the Triune life, all of humanity is represented before the Father; which leads to the reality that all of humanity has the opening and invitation to participate in the life that God has given for them in his own life in the Son’s humanity. Our job, as Christians then, is to bear witness as ambassadors to the world of what true humanity looks like (i.e. their humanity too) as it actively participates in and from the Son’s real life humanity for them, for us.

[1] Tom Greggs, Barth, Origen, and Universal Salvation: Restoring Particularity (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 2-3.