Category Archives: Vicarious Humanity

Herculean Freedom or Divine-Human Freedom at the Crossroads

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Human freedom, “free will,” for theological purposes has always been a deep and abiding riddle for many. Its depths, in regard to understanding it, seems to be akin to the heights of comprehending the inner life and aseity of God; that is to say: human freedom vis-à-vis God is quite mysterious and to the depths. But really, this locus only comes to have the mysterious characteristics insofar that is thought of nakedly and speculatively from a purely philosophical and rationalistic vantage point. If the theologian engages in a genuinely theological method, they will come to an understanding of human freedom before God that is fitting to who God is, and fitting to who humans are as creatures created in the imago Dei, imago Christi.

Without attempting to explicate this seeming paradox, for the philosophers anyway, let us read along with Karl Barth as he does the real yeoman’s work, the real theological work of a theological theologian. Here Barth is referring to his continued treatment on a doctrine of Baptism. In his treatment certain themes are present in order for him to make his baptismal doctrine work. Doctrinal themes such as sanctification, human agency, free will, Divine agency, so on and so forth. The reader will notice that Barth uses the pagan philosophical mythological notions of human freedom, provided for by the Hellenic mythologies juxtaposed with his genuinely theological offering in regard to human freedom in a doctrine of baptism and sanctification, in order to amplify his own offering.

Baptism, then, is the twofold answer of man to the divine justification and sanctification, cleansing and renewal, which have taken place for him and been revealed to him in Jesus Christ. It is the corresponding renunciation and pledge. Hence water baptism, not in and for itself, but as a first model which is to be followed throughout the Christian life, is the human decision which follows the divine change effected for man, and which corresponds to the history of Jesus Christ and baptism wit the Holy Ghost. Is it, then, what Hercules did at the cross-roads? Not at all. The decision taken by this profoundly pagan ideal figure, closely resembling in its character as such the decision of Paris between the gifts proffered him by the three goddesses, is a choice between two ways which are both equally open, i.e., between two possibilities. But the decision of the Christian, executed in his baptism as pledge and renunciation, is not a choice between two possibilities available to him. The one reality which he encounters in God’s work in Jesus Christ is that which in his pledge, sanctified and renewed by God for God, he prefers to the way which is now impossible and closed to him as one who is justified by the same work and word of God, so that it can be the object only of his rejection and renunciation. He chooses that which is alone actual and possible, and therewith he rejects eo ipso that which is absolutely impossible in the light of what is alone actual and possible. To the impossible which he rejects and renounces there belongs also and indeed primarily the idea of the pagan liberum arbitrium [free will], which is illusory because it contests the one true reality, and which, as foreseen already in Gen. 3.5, makes man equal to God, the judge between good and evil, a Hercules at the cross-roads. Justified by God before God, man will justify God, accepting the right which God has against and for and to him, not seeking to establish and execute right himself, resolutely rejecting the role of quasi-divine umpire. In the knowledge that God is his righteousness, he finds not merely an admonition and warning against any such enterprise, but also cleansing from even the will or desire for it. Hence the object of his pledge, that which, sanctified by God for God, he affirms, chooses and grasps, cannot be the arbitrary or futile enterprise of self-sanctification for a service which he has sought out himself, which God ahs not required from him, with which he can only affront God. His Yes to his renewal becomes rather his will and desire for the freedom of a witness to the sanctification in which it has pleased God to call sinners, and himself in particular, to the service of His omnipotent mercy, to make them ready and capable in this service, to use them in it, to open for them the forward way beside which there is no other for them. At issue always in the Christian life are this renunciation and pledge which are not at all like the choice of Hercules. They are at issue already at the beginning of this life, in Christian baptism.[1]

In reduction, if it isn’t sinful to reduce, Barth is saying that the “brute choice” for the Christian for God is non-existent. Indeed, it is non-existent in the very fact that the Christian is for God; and this freedom for God, for the Christian, has first come into existence for the human before God in the human who is truly for God for us, Jesus Christ. It is because of His already No for us that we can now say Yes, in His Yes for us, to the living God. This vicarious representative human action (to riff Bonhoeffer’s language) by Christ for us is in itself what it means to be free for God at the very ground of human agency. This is why Barth so readily does away with anything representing something like a Hercules at the cross-roads, as if there is something deep and inherent within an abstract “natural” humanity that has the innate autonomous capacity to say Yes to God on its own powers of deliberation and rationales.

For Barth, the inner change for the human being, in what it means to be truly human before God, has already been actualized for humanity in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ de jure. This vicarious freedom ‘we’ now have for God has already been blazed a trail in the human heart of God in Jesus Christ for us. As the Holy Spirit awakens the human agent to what is already true for what it means to be human, they come to operate out of the capacity already recreated for them in the heart of flesh they have been given in God’s participation for them in the archetypal humanity, the second Adamic humanity of Jesus Christ. As such, the choice has already been made for the Christian, in God’s choice to be the “Christian for them,” in the humanity of Christ. In this space the individual human agent, in correspondence, in relationis with Christ’s first Yes for them, can now likewise, as corollary say Yes and Amen to the ways of God; indeed, as their raison d’etre as creatures and recreatures for God in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.

I have glossed over many important details in the above paragraph, but alas, that’s all I have the time to offer at the moment.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/4 §75 [163] The Doctrine of Reconciliation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 157–58.

Barth Contra Metaphysics of Causation / God’s Personal Action in Salvation

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I don’t think people realize that Barth (Torrance) isn’t attempting to figure out the riddle of individual belief, as if he can identify a causal system that explains it all. He limits Himself to what is revealed in the Theanthropos, the Godman, Jesus Christ. We know why Jesus believes, trusts the Father; and we know that He does so for us in our stead; and so from thence we know that people believe God because of God’s action in humanity, in the Son. Barth isn’t worried about solving the “causation” enigma, per se; at least not by referring to some speculative metaphysics of causation. But this is why people constantly claim that Barth’s theology must reduce to universalism; even though Barth’s theology only really reduces to the freedom of God to be God as God has always already and eternally been, and continues to be.

Human Being that is Free for God

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How does the would-be Christian come to have the capacity to trust in God in Christ for salvation? In other words, do people have an inherent innate autonomous capacity to seek and believe God? Or, is it required that something or someone external to the would-be believing human agent gives them a capacity to believe? Historically, the so-called Pelagian position maintains that human beings are born in a neutral status, with a natural capacity inherent to their being to freely choose for God, or for self. Obversely, the Christian position has maintained that the human being inhabits a status that is locked into, incurved upon itself, thus requiring that God in-breaks into humanity’s heart, and gives it a new human freedom to be for God and not against Him.

There are a variety of ways various theological positions have attempted to cut this salami. For my money the only way to go is by emphasizing God’s action become human action for us. In other words, what is required for us to be for God is that God first be for us in His saving and believing action for us in Jesus Christ. What is necessary, in my view, is that human beings come to have the capacity to truly be human once again; that is, according to their purposed telos: i.e., to be in right relationship with the triune God who created them for a koinonial (fellowshipping) relationship with and in His free life of Self-given love as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But again, what is required for this reconciliation between God and humanity to obtain?

God freely chooses to create humanity in His image; the imago Christi (see Col. 1.15). Humanity in Adam and Eve inscrutably choose to doubt God’s Word for their own serpentine inspired word. As a result, humanity is plunged into death and trespasses, into a ruptured relationship with the living God. In this rupture humanity’s purpose for being human is lost into a strange wanderlust of sub-humanness. In this new and dead status all humankind can do is to seek themselves, driven by the “purpose” of their own self-possessed base desires. The freedom they once had for God has become sublimated by a “no-freedom” wherein the only choices available to them is to ultimately be for them; driven by sorted and competing self-affections that leads to the passing pleasures of sin.

This has become humanity’s status in the first Adam. But because of who God is, He is free graciousness, He is Self-given love within His interpenetrative subject-in-being life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and because of this “who-ness,” the very who-ness that freely chose to create human beings in His image to begin with, He chose, from the very beginning, to not be God without us, but with us. That entailed that He had already freely and sacrificially bound His being to ours, to human being; not as its predicate, but as the predicator of human life in and through participation, by fellowship with Him. As such, if this status of relationship with Him, which is the very purpose of what it means to be human, was to be maintained, particularly in light of the Fall (but not because of it), God, in keeping with who He is, because ‘He cannot deny Himself,’ became the Logos ensarkos (the Word enfleshed). He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. In this becoming He assumed our subhumanity, our sinful statuses for Himself, and by this poverty made us rich by His riches of resurrection and ascension. It was by, and it is by this Divine action that humanity comes to have the capacity they were always already created for: to be free for God, and for Him alone. As Christ became us, by grace and adoption, by His recreation for us, we became recreated in Him; indeed, He who is the second and greater Adam. In this action He has exalted humanity in His elect status as the Son of Man, as the Word of God, as the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ.

All of the above to say: that outwith this “intervention” of cosmic undertaking, left to ourselves we would remain in the bondage of the self, incurved upon the vein satisfaction of our darkened hearts, with only destruction and non-being as the “purpose” for our existences. Left to ourselves we wouldn’t have the capacity, the resurrection power, the grace of recreation to be for God. As such, what has been, and is required, is that God give us a heart of flesh that is soft for Him, rather than the hearts of stone we are born enslaved to. Without God’s humanity humanity could not and would not ever be; not to begin with, and not in the great forthwith. But because God has covenanted with us in the Son, because He has first unilaterally acted for us in a way that we wouldn’t act left to our self-slaved hearts, we have come to have the freedom for God that God has for Himself as we share in that through the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. God calls, and we respond. He has made a new way for that, new relative to the old of our dead-man statuses, by forging a new humanity, an elevated humanity, in the resurrected and ascended humanity of Jesus Christ. He graciously placed us into Himself, as He assumed our humanity as His in the humanity of His dearly beloved Son, as that pierced through the womb of Mary in that still silent night in Bethlehem. As a result, humanity, by the power and awakening work of the Holy Spirit, has come to have the capacity to genuinely and freely be for God and not against Him. But this only as a share, as a participatio in His original, eternal freedom as He is unboundedly Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

What should be immediately apparent, and with this we close, there is only One freedom to have, to be. God’s freedom is the only freedom available. There is no independent human agency, no autonomous human freedom, no non-contingent life or reality, outwith God’s upholding Logos. So, the “trick” is to come to an understanding whereby humanity can be participant with said freedom. And the answer is God’s choice to not be God without, but with us, Immanuel. He has brought His freedom to us, He has grounded that for us as the anchor of our souls, in the humanity of Jesus Christ. And by this unio mystica (mystical union) between God and humanity and humanity and God in the hypostatic union of the eternal Son with conditional humanity, it is in this union, all of it an ontological reality from the very first creation, that our hearts of stone are removed and we are given to participate with the Son’s human heart for us. It is by this that we might say Yes and Amen to God because God first is the Yes and Amen for us in the face of His Son for us, Jesus Christ.

Barth’s Covenant Theology in Human Action

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Barth’s covenant theology entails this: The triune God acts and becomes for the world in Christ, and in His action He creates the space for free human action in correspondence with Christ’s freedom for the Father by the Holy Spirit. It is a unilateral divine action that re-creates the space for their to be a genuinely free and human action in correspondence with God’s action. So, human action in this covenantal schema has never been grounded in an independent autonomous humanity, but only within God’s humanity for the world in Jesus Christ. Union with Christ by the Holy Spirit is where human freedom comes to spark towards God as God gives us, His creatures and re-creatures in Christ’s risen and ascended humanity, a share in His liberum arbitrium (freewill); but in grace and in creaturely correspondence to His. The circle between God and humanity is closed within the humanity of God for the world in Jesus Christ.

The unBondage of the Will: Liberum Arbitrium

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Latin theological word for the day: LIBERUM ARBITRIUM=‘Freewill.’

Biblically, only God genuinely has liberum arbitrium. But He is a gifting God. Never in abstraction from Himself, but only concretely within Himself, and thus for us in Jesus Christ. As such humanity comes to have liberum arbitrium only because God has freely elected that we come to actually have it, to be for Him rather than against Him, in and through participation with the only humanity that is truly for God; Christ’s vicarious humanity for us. So, the path for human agency, human freedom for God, is only blazed first, by Christ’s humanity for us; indeed, as He is the firstborn from the dead. It is by the Holy Spirit that human beings are awakened to the fact that this is already the objective and subjective reality for them, as Christ has already accomplished that for them, whereby by a node of corresponding faith with Christ’s for us, that the human being can say Yes and Amen for God, just as Christ is God’s Yes and Amen for us, in both the No (to sin) and Yes (for God) that Christ freely chose to be for ALL of humanity, as His humanity is ALL of humanity as humanity’s free turn to God and away from the incurved hearts they have lived in bondage to since conception.

Divine and Human Agency Betwixt a Doctrine of Sanctification

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Human agency, a Theanthropology will be a central piece of development in treating a doctrine of Sanctification in the theologies of Barth and TFT, respectively. Without genuine human agency, human freedom before God, even as that is somehow unilaterally grounded by God’s Self-freedom, it isn’t really meaningful to think of a Christian doctrine of sanctification. That is, because agency without real human freedom only reduces the human to metaphysical abstractions acting out an automated history already done for them absolutely by God. But in reality, if thought well, both accounts of agency, Divine and human, must and can be thought together—hypostatically so.

Spitballing on God’s Sovereignty and Contingent Freedom

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How does God’s sovereignty work, in a God-world relation? First, to speak of God’s sovereignty can never be done so in abstraction from God’s cruciform life for the world in Jesus Christ. It is from within this unio mystica (‘mystical union’) of God and humanity, in the particularity of the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ, wherein God’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 God’s cruciformed, Son-faced sovereignty comes to penetrate and engage this world; particularly within its fallen status. We know that God’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 God’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 God’s a-se life Has the freedom to determine an elected contingency, first for Himself, as the Son, God’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, God’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 God’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 God’s triune life circumscribes the whole event of the contingent, is indeed, the fact of God’s sovereignty in action for the world. Contingency finds its freedom to act only as an asymmetrical correspondence with God’s act within His own humanity for the world. So, ultimately, God’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 God’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 “unelected” and inscrutable reality of sin and evil in the world. This complicates things. Not as far as thwarting God’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 God’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 God’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, God’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., God’s choice to become Creator, even as He was first Father of the Son by the Holy Spirit.

Really, all I’m saying is that the relationship between God’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.

Against the Augustinian-Lombardian Penitential Theology: From the Singular Person of Christ

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TF Torrance often refers to what he calls ‘The Latin Heresy,’ when discussing Western theology; especially with reference to its fountainhead, Augustine. The Latin Heresy for TFT entails the neo-Platonist dualism that funds Augustine’s theology, and all other theologies that follow Augustine’s categories. For TFT, this dualism involves a competitive relationship between God and humanity; such that, humanity is thought in abstraction relative to God’s life, rather than finding its concrete ground therein. This shows up most clearly in Augustine’s doctrine of election. JND Kelly masterfully describes this,

The problem of predestination has so far only been hinted at. Since grace takes the initiative and apart from it all men form a massa damnata, it is for God to determine which shall receive grace and which shall not. This He has done, Augustine believes on the basis of Scripture, from all eternity. The number of the elect is strictly limited, being neither more nor less than is required to replace the fallen angels. Hence he has to twist the text ‘God wills all men to be saved’ (1 Tim. 2, 4), making it mean that He wills the salvation of all the elect, among whom men of every race and type are represented. God’s choice of those to whom grace is to be given in no way depends on His foreknowledge of their future merits, for whatever good deeds they will do will themselves be the fruit of grace. In so far as His foreknowledge is involved, what He foreknows is what He Himself is going to do. Then how does God decide to justify this man rather than that? There can in the end be no answer to this agonizing question. God has mercy on those whom He wishes to save, and justifies them; He hardens those upon whom He does not wish to have mercy, not offering them grace in conditions in which they are likely to accept it. If this looks like favouritism, we should remember that all are in any case justly condemned, and that if God makes His decision in the light of ‘a secret and, to human calculation, inscrutable justice’. Augustine is therefore prepared to speak of certain people as being predestined to eternal death and damnation; they may include, apparently, decent Christians who have been called and baptized, but to whom the grace of perseverance has not been given. More often, however, he speaks of the predestination of the saints which consists in ‘God’s foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits by which those who are to be delivered are most assuredly delivered’. These alone have the grace of perseverance, and even before they are born they are sons of God and cannot perish.[1]

As Kelly describes Augustine’s doctrine of predestination, election-reprobation, what stands out is the way God stands over humanity, as if humanity has no correspondence to God by God’s grace. As if humanity must find a way to God, even as God finds His way to humanity. And for Augustine God only finds His way to humanity through an ad hoc arbitrary election of certain individuals, who he snares out of the ‘massa damnata’ (the ‘mass of damnation’ of humanity). But it is this that represents the inorganic notion of a God-human/God-world relation for Augustine; i.e., that humanity has no ground in God’s life organically, creatively; that it is only by God’s voluntary act that He brings ‘some’ into a contractive relationship with Him—as some would call it later, the absolutum decretum (the absolute decree of election/reprobation/predestination).

So, all of the aforementioned to bring up another application of this type of Augustinianism as it relates to soteriology. In Book 4 of Peter Lombard’s infamous Sentences, he writes the following:

Chapter 2 (110)

  1. CONCERNING THOSE WHO DO NOT COMPLETE THEIR PENANCE. But if it is asked whether those who do not complete their penance in this life will pass through the fire to complete there, as it were, what they have left unfinished here, we say that the same is to be supposed concerning these as of those who repent at the end.—For if their contrition of heart and their disapproval of crime were so great as to suffice for the punishment of sin, they will pass into [eternal] life free from other punishments, even if their penance was not completed, because they perfectly repented and groaned in their heart.—But as for those who are not so contrite in heart, or who do not so groan for sin, if they died before the completion of penance, they feel the purging fire, and are punished more gravely than if they had completed their penance here, for it is an awful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
  2. For since God is merciful and just, he forgives the penitent from mercy, not reserving the sin for eternal punishment; but from justice, he does not leave a crime unpunished. Either man punishes it, or God. Man punishes it by repenting. And penance is inward and outward. And so, if the inner sorrow is such as to suffice as retribution for sin, God, who knows this, does not exact any further punishment from someone who repents in such fashion. But if the inward sorrow does not suffice as retribution for sin, and the external penance is not fulfilled, God, who knows the ways and measures of sins and punishments, adds a sufficient punishment.
  3. “Let each one, then, see to it that he so corrects his crimes, that it will not be necessary to sustain a punishment after death. For some mortal sins become venial in penance, but are not immediately healed. Often a sick person would die, if he were not given medication; but he is not healed as soon as he receives medication: he who is going to live languishes, who before was about to die. But one who dies impenitent, dies wholly, and is tormented eternally. For if he were to live forever, he would sin forever.”[2]

The above longform to simply point out one simple, but profound reality: if humanity is not thought from God’s grace for us in His hypostasized life for us in the person of Jesus Christ; if humanity is not from God’s unilateral givenness for us in His election to be for all of humanity, indeed as He assumes all of humanity into His vicarious humanity pro nobis (for us) in Jesus Christ; then, humanity will always be left destitute, even ‘elect’ humanity, not to mention the mass of humanity who God does not elect, to pursue God and fill up the gap between God and humanity through the various means of grace God has given them. The dualism, if not obvious, is present in the penitential theology of Augustine, and the Latins, both on the Catholic and Protestant sides, insofar that the human being must constantly strive, and constantly reach out and hope that ‘they’ have done enough to be found worthy before God; even in the supplicant of His freely given grace. Grace in this frame becomes detached from God’s personal and triune life in Christ for the world, and instead it becomes a created grace, a quality, that the elect (they hope they are) must rightly habituate in and handle in the right ways if they ever hope of being in the Beatific Vision, and maybe, just maybe getting to avoid the ‘purging fires’ (Purgatory) along the way.

It ought to be clear though, in a soteriological frame, how Augustine’s “individualistic” understanding, as detailed by Kelly, and illustrated by Lombard in an Augustinian penitential theology, throws the would-be elect individual upon themselves, rather than upon Christ, in their pursuit of salvation and eternal life, coram Deo. God forbid this! God has singularly brought Godself and humanity together in His pre-destination, within His own life, in His elected elect humanity in the eternal Logos, the Son of God, as He hypostatically united His divine life with our human life, in His assumptio carnis (‘assumption of the flesh’), and made His human life our life, as we rose from the dead with His humanity, which is total humanity, by which all of humanity has been objectively saved (note: this does not entail a universalism, per se).

[1] J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, Revised Edition (New York: Harper Collins, 1978), 368-69.

[2] Peter Lombard, The Sentences: Book 4, On the Doctrine of the Signs, translated by Giulio Silano (Toronto-Ontario Canada: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2010), 122–3.

Miscellanies On Barth Reception and the Homoousious as Hermeneutic

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I wrote these for other social media outlets of mine. I thought I’d share them here as miscellanies. 

People reject Barth out of hand simply because they’ve been told that Barth is ultimately a liberal (still). But these same people have never actually read Barth enough to know whether that be true or not. Coming from someone, an evangelical conservative Christian (me), who has both read Barth and Barth literature extensively, and published on Barth, these people are simply living in a willful land of ignorance. Granted, Barth’s 𝑜𝑒𝑢𝑣𝑟𝑒 is extensive. But there are ways into Barth that can introduce you to him without having to read all of him, or even a substantive amount of him. But most will never give him a fair hearing.

One reason Barth is pertinent to theology today is because he elides so much of the pop debates surrounding Reformed and non-Reformed theology; among many other important offerings. He truly offers an 𝑒𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑐ℎ 𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 way forward that is actually true and correspondent with the best of what even a North American evangelical theology has striven for.

There is a hermeneutical logic inherent to the ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑠 articulated and thought out at the Council of Nicaea (and post). It offers a ‘depth dimensional’ understanding of Holy Scripture that functions well within what can be called the 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑠. That is, it understands that the Bible has an ontology (a givenness by God), and thus an antecedent context wherein it comes to make meaningful sense in the 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝𝑜𝑛 (face) of God in Christ. It realizes that Scripture is simply a 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑢𝑚 (sign) to its 𝑟𝑒𝑠 (reality) in Christ in the triune life. The fact that so many would-be exegetes of Scripture gloss right past this in favor of a higher critical approach, ought to be a warning of what being a theologian of glory looks like rather than a theologian of the cross (seeing the unseen things as seen).