On the Conscious Annihilated Everlasting Existence: Mirifica Commutatio

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Athanasius thought of sin and the fractured life with God, as a dissolution. Annihilationism has been in the news lately (because of Kirk Cameron’s recent disclosure that he now holds to the conditional immortality or annihilationist position in regard to hell). There is a sense that at the last judgment those spiritually outside of Christ will finally be dissolved; we could even say, annihilated. But the fact of the matter remains, according to Scripture’s teaching: the final annihilation of fallen human beings will be an everlasting existence in the midst of a conscious annihilation. Such that, the individual person will exist in the dissolution they currently inhabit nowβ€”apart from union with Christβ€”but like a wandering star for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever, they will be fully β€œalive” in the midst of their annihilated being. It behooves folks to come to Christ whilst there is still time. Maranatha

And yet, there indeed remains hope eternal in Jesus Christ. Athanasius, as noted, maintained that to be out of union with the triune God entails that the human existence, left to itself, would fully cease to existβ€”again, not consciously, but in its dissolved statusβ€”indeed, this is the status fallen humanity currently inhabits (whilst fully conscious). The difference at the final judgment, is that those who die outside of Christ’s righteousness for them, will become fully aware of the fallen statuses they have been inhabiting their whole respective existences now. At that time, the veil will be removed, and the reality will come full weight; whether that be for those spiritually in Christ or those outside. Again, it behooves people to leave this current world-iteration in full union with Christ; simply by saying Yes to Jesus’ offer of eternal life in Himself for you, for us.

Below, Athanasius details the various notes I have been engaging with in the aforementioned. He makes sure to give the fallen, those being currently destroyed (see I Corinthians 1:18), those living in a dissolving self, the Good News of God in Jesus Christ. He makes sure to end on the elevated reality that God has not in fact left us to our vanishing selves, and instead, in a β€˜wonderful exchange,’ given us the very weight and substance of His life that He alone possesses; the only eternal life around.

. . . Yet, true though this is, it is not the whole matter. As we have already noted, it was unthinkable that God, the Father of Truth, should go back upon His word regarding death in order to ensure our continued existence. He could not falsify Himself; what, then, was God to do? Was He to demand repentance from men for their transgression? You might say that that was worthy of God, and argue further that, as through the Transgression they became subject to corruption, so through repentance they might return to incorruption again. But repentance would not guard the Divine consistency, for, if death did not hold dominion over men, God would still remain untrue. Nor does repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from sinning. Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. No, repentance could not meet the case. What β€” or ratherΒ WhoΒ was it that was needed for such grace and such recall as we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made all things out of nothing? His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.[1]

[1] Athanasius, On the Incarnation,Β Β§7, 32-3.

‘The Faith of Christ’ in Contradiction to the gods of the Metaphysicians

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What hath Jerusalem to do with Athens? A question from the days of Tertullian, and now down through the centuries. I would vociferously argue that Jerusalem must condition Athens in such a way that Athens becomes nothing more than a pretext to be used by the textuality of God’s life Self-revealed for the church and world in Jesus Christ. This question of β€œfaith and reason” has been given many iterations and treatments throughout the halls of history, whether that be from someone as boisterous as Martin Luther, or someone as methodologically skeptical as Rene Descartes. Indeed, the reformational scholastics themselves, and their progeny, even into the repristinate of today, ostensibly maintain that the metaphysics of the classical Greek philosophers is in fact univocal towards thinking and speaking the Christian God.

I protest, and so does Eberhard JΓΌngel:

The faith which interposes such questions is a disturbance. But should not faith be seen as a disturber of the metaphysical thought of God, as even its greatest menace? Was it not necessary that a study of religion within the boundaries of pure reason would have to come to the aid of the metaphysical concept of God in order to reduce the all too human discourse about a God who reveals himself in history to a rational level? Did not faith have to be subordinated to that morality which was established without faith, if it were not to become irrational in and of itself and thus be dead?

But then faith will reply with the question whether it really is such a rational capacity that a theoretical or practical use of reason, separate from the event of faith, can prescribe reason’s function. What becomes of God when an abstract β€œI think” or an abstract β€œthou shalt” sets the context from the outset within which one then may and must decide what merits being called God? Although the intention to maintain the strictest possible distinction between God and man cannot be supported too strongly by theology, does not this approach lead to a result which is totally opposed to that intention? And finally, if God has been established as the securing factor for man, has not then the decision been already made that from now on the securing must become the god of man? Is not ultimately the categorical imperative the grand attempt to establish the morally understood security of the human race as its highest good? If β€œnothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a good will,” then does not the good will which secures the welfare of the human race become the god of man?[1]

Prior to the above passage Juengal has been discussing how certainty and non-certainty might work within a theological and philosophical frame vis-Γ -vis God. Without getting into the details, for our purposes, the questions Juengal puts to the God constructed from classical and modern metaphysical premises are sufficient. Sufficient, for drawing attention to the fact that faith itself, if indeed it has to do with a genuine knowledge of the genuine and triune God of the Christians, has its starting point insofar as God starts with us first; that is, rather than us starting with God first. Is Christian faith intended to provide a provision of self-security in a seemingly insecure world for its own sake (something like a β€˜god-of-the-gaps’)? Or is Christian faith purely focused upon knowledge of God that is focused on God as God, as God is in Himself as the reality who indeed is to be worshipped simply because He is, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Well of course, the Christian should want to say the latter rather than the former. But methodologically so much of Christian theology, one way or the other, no matter how much piety and piousness is on display, has given way to thinking God only after God has first been thought by the profane mind. Indeed, the mind that is ultimately seeking a huge scratch for the itch of uncertainties, for the chaos that this world presents each and everyone of us with upon our respective arrivals on planet earth.

I think the moral here is that God’s Self-revelation is categorically distinct, in a sui generis type of way, from the metaphysics. That is, knowledge of God for the Christian entails a vulnerability. But the vulnerability isn’t about assuaging our own anxieties about the ostensible disorder of the world, and our place in it. The vulnerability is that we don’t have the capacity to disentangle ourselves from the chaos of this world order; no matter what type of metaphysical structures we might build in that very attempt. The genuine vulnerability we have is that without being rightly positioned within the order that God has set about, we indeed will seek to create our own veritable towers of Babel; reaching up to a certainty of reality that ultimately has to do with ensuring a salvation for ourselves rather than being reliant upon the One who can actually provide us with a true and rightly ordered salvation, as that obtains in Godself for us in Jesus Christ. And it is this, this faith of Christ, that confronts the metaphysically construed gods, who seek a faith built upon its own internal premises, rather than the alien premises of faith provided for, truly, by the living God for us in Jesus Christ.

[1] Eberhard JΓΌngel,Β God as the Mystery of the World,Β trans. by Darrell L. Guder (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf&Stock [reprint], 1983), 195–96.

God’s Annihilating and Evangelical Word: With Reference to Eberhard Juengal

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Eberhard Juengal is engaging with the address of God, and the role that language plays in that address. He is appealing to Heidegger and others with reference to how certain language games have functioned in the profane world, in regard to anthropologically and socio-linguistically situating people as people; both within their inner-lives, and as that relates to what it means to be a human being in the world at large. After he develops things along these lines for a bit, he gets to the payoff. He receives these types of profane frameworks, particularly within there existentialist hue, and then reifies them from within a Christian theological frame of reference. He shows how God’s address, God’s language towards us, has an eschatological character to it that resituates us in a right and new relationship with Godself. Juengal writes:

The eschatological character of man’s distancing from himself has an eminently critical dimension. For, to the extent that this distancing surpasses everything which is, everything which is for itself is made nothing. Every word which addresses man about God is, in that sense, a negating or destroying word. It brings about an annihilation in that it surpasses not only our being-here, but also our past and our future. But distanced from himself in such a way, the man addressed about God is brought into a new, ultimate nearness to himself. That is, to be sure, a nearness of the ego to itself which includes its being before God. The New Testament understands this as the presence which is eschatologically oriented through the guarantee of the Holy Spirit.

The word of God which addresses man about God, has, then, an annihilating effect, for the sake of something new. Evangelical theology may not remain silent about the fact that it is destructive. But, and this is what evangelical theology must chiefly speak of, it is destructive only on the basis of the positive fact that God addresses us about himself in such a way that he promises himself to us. One should not understand it in such a way that God would permit what exists to be made nothing in order then to be able to begin all over again from the beginning, so to speak. The reverse is true: because God, in addressing us about himself in such a way that he promotes himself to us, always creates something new, that which is old becomes nothing.[1]

Juengal elaborates further, particularly with how it relates to the respective theologies of Karl Barth and Friedrich Gogarten, in footnote 6 with reference to the above second paragraph:

Thus sin passes away only when it is forgiven; but the forgiveness of sins is always more than the passing away of sin. And in exactly the same way the godless person passes away because he is justified, not in order that he can be justified; the justification of the godless is always more than the passing away of the godless. The actual contrast between the theology of Karl Barth and Friedrich Gogarten appears to me to consist of this contrasting definition of the theological relationship between the passing away and becoming, of death and life, of judgment and grace. See on this the analysis of Gogarten’s writings with special attention to the Luther statements which he cites in W. HΓΌffmeier, Gott egen Gott; Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zum Gottes- und TodesverstΓ€ndnis Friedrich Gogartens unter besonderer BerΓΌcksichtigung seiner Luther-interpretation (TΓΌbingen dissertation, 1972). On this relationship between Barth and Gogarten I refer to the insightful investigation presented by P. Lange in Konkrete Theologie? Karl Barth und Friedrich Gogarten β€œZwischen den Zeiten” (1992-1993); Eine theologiegeschichtlich-systematische Untersuchung im Blick auf die Praxis theologischen Verhaltens (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1972). Karl Barth’s dogmatic approach, to define the judgment of God on the basis of grace, that is hermeneutically to say that on the basis of the new the old has become old and passed away (II Cor. 5:17), has been taken up chiefly by Ernst Fuchs and independently developed further hermeneutically.[2]

This hearkens me back to what more contemporarily is being identified by folks like Philip Ziegler, Jamie Davies et al., as Apocalyptic Theology. Essentially, the idea is what I take to be the Pauline idea of God’s disruptive grace (to borrow language from George Hunsinger); that is, that when God addresses us by the Word of God, Jesus Christ, He takes us from our present and visible circumstances, and places us into Himself, in the new creation and resurrected life of Jesus Christ. The result being, that the old is β€˜annihilated,’ as it were, as the new has come (and continues to come, and will finally come at the second advent of the Christ). Peter refers to this type of theologizing in this way:

10Β ButΒ the day of the LordΒ will come like a thief, in whichΒ the heavensΒ will pass away with a roar and theΒ elements will be destroyed with intense heat, andΒ the earth andΒ its works will beΒ burned up.

11Β Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness,Β 12Β looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of whichΒ the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and theΒ elements will melt with intense heat!Β 13Β But according to HisΒ promise we are looking forΒ new heavens and a new earth,Β in which righteousness dwells.[3]

As Juengal has underscored for us already, while there is a β€˜taking away’ there is also a β€˜bringing anew’ that is greater than not less than what has been annihilated in the death of death in Christ. This might remind us of Paul’s thinking when he writes, β€œ17Β things which areΒ aΒ mereΒ shadow of what is to come; but theΒ substanceΒ belongs to Christ.”[4] So, accordingly, there is a passing away of the shadows, which in themselves couldn’t handle the weight of what was coming as the antitype of its stead. It isn’t that the original and now fallen creation isn’t real, but that its inner reality had always already stood before it, as it was first created for its second recreation in the incarnation, resurrection, ascension, and advent of Jesus Christ. That is to say, the first creation, we might say, the first Adam, was something of a placeholder for the coming of his intended reality, in the archetypal, second and greatest Man, Jesus Christ; indeed, for the first Adam, and for all of the world therefrom.

These, are heavy teachings; who can hear them?!

[1] Eberhard JΓΌngel,Β God as the Mystery of the World,Β trans. by Darrell L. Guder (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf&Stock [reprint], 1983), 175.

[2] Ibid., n. 6.

[3] II Peter 3.10-13, NASB95.

[4] Colossians 2.17, NASB95.

A Special Thanks to My Financial Donors

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I just wanted to drop a quick note of appreciation and thanks to those who support my work financially. That is meaningful to me. In fact, because of the contributions, it might help supplement my funding for a DMin (Doctor of Ministry) degree program (fully accredited by ATS) I have applied to (currently waiting to hear back). I will let you all know how that turns outβ€”should know before Christmas, hopefully.

I use my Substack account as the means by which folks can provide financial support if they so choose. I don’t do what I do for money, but money never hurts LOL. I appreciate all of my readers from over the years, and currently! I just wanted to give a shout out to those, again, who have decided to give some financial support as well. Here is the info on how you can support my work similarly, if interested. Click.Β 

‘To the Sewer with Them!’: On Christian Vocation

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The Christian place of vocation has been given its famous Protestant explication by Martin Luther. But not to be outdone, Karl Barth, has his own offering on the subject. Here he is writing on, in a small print excursus, what ultimately matters as the Christian lives coram Deo (before God).

As an instructive example, we may cite the verdict of August Bebel (Die Frau und der Sozialismus, ed. 1913, 1,409 f.): β€œStrictly speaking, the worker who drains sewers to protect humanity from unhealthy miasmas is a very useful member of society, whereas the professor who teaches falsified history in the interests of the ruling class, or the theologian who seeks to befog the brain with supernatural, transcendental doctrines, is an extremely harmful individual.” We must be careful not to be guilty of what is here stated to be the activity of theologians, and if we cannot do better than this we should make all haste to become good drainers of sewers. Similarly, if the professor of history cannot do better than teach history which is falsified in the interests of a class, to the sewers with him also![1]

With reference to the theologians, per Barth, to the sewer with them if all they have to offer the church, the people of God, is speculative metaphysical non-sense that has no contact with the concrete reality of God for us in the Man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ.

Part of my aim through my ongoing writings is to bring truly theological theology to the people of God. To let them know that to be a theologian is to be a worshipper of the triune God, as God has Self-revealed and explained Himself to us in Jesus Christ. That when we see Christ, we see the Father. And that it is from this filial kerygmatic point of contact that the Christian can genuinely know and speak God; indeed, from the heart of God for us, in Jesus Christ. If the Christian desires to know God ever deeper, and if they attempt to read the theologians in this pursuit, and all they find is a notion of Godness that is indeed constructed on a speculative, discursive model of human and philosophical reasoning, then to the sewer with such theologians; they have indeed failed their calling to edify the body of Christ.

As far as vocation goes, in general, the Christian has ultimate purpose in all they say and do, insofar that they bear witness to their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ and the triune God. And this holds true whether someone is a plumber, or the head of the theology department at the most prestigious divinity school in the land.

[1] Karl Barth,Β Church Dogmatics III/4 Β§55 [534] The Doctrine of Creation: Study EditionΒ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 202.

Everyone is a Theologian, Even the aTheologians

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Friedrich Nietzsche

I don’t think most know this: but every decision a person makes in this life is informed by theology. That doesn’t mean it is being informed by a genuinely Christian theology, but theology just the same. Many people presume that they aren’t religious, and thus further presume that they simply live a-theological lives. But the problem with that, one anyways, is that in a world that is contingent upon God’s Word, His eternal Logos, Jesus Christ, for its ongoing existence, everything in such a world necessarily becomes theological (“religious” even). If this is true (and be sure, it is!), it behooves the Christian and the non-Christian alike to work at having the good theology; indeed, as that is delivered afresh anew as Jesus Christ at the Father’s Right Hand, in-breaks into this world by the Holy Spirit into each one of our lives on the daily (second-by-second). You might think you’re free from this, oh dearest self-proclaimed “non-religious” person. Jesus makes clear that the Holy Spirit comes convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and the judgment to come. And so, this invites each and every one of us to live the repentant life. The life that Christ first lived for us every step, every breath He took for us as He lived here among us some two-thousand years ago. It is the life of the cross; we are called to take up the cross of Christ daily and follow Him. To be sure, He has already done that first for us. Hence, He has called us, and is calling us, and is calling you to walk in the power of His might, who is the Holy Spirit of the living God.

We are all theologians in this world, whether we might like it or not. Even if you think you’re an a-theologian (think atheist or agnostic, or “non-religious”), even so, you make “theological” decisions every day of your life. It is impossible not to whilst we inhabit a world that has been graciously created and recreated by the triune God; in a world where every single human life is held and made in the image of God, who is the image of Christ.

On the Fructification of the Church: The Church of the Theologians of the Word

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Barau, Emile; The Village Church

Barth is opining on the place that each Christian has within the Christian community, even as individual members in it. This gets him into a discussion on the role that theology, the Word of God, the teachers and the listeners each have, respectively, within the Church. In a way, I think the following passage, abridged as it is, represents the core of Barth’s heart, as that has been and is being expressed throughout the writing of the Church Dogmatics. And for that reason, I felt compelled to share some of this section with the readers, who will.

. . . At every place and timeβ€”and this is basic to all elseβ€”it must be a life in knowledge, a life with and under and from and in the Word by which it is commissioned. It may be noted that as such it cannot satisfy itself, nor can it try to be an end in itself. As the edification of the community generally is not an end in itself but edification with a view to external service, so it is not an end in itself in its basic character as edification by and in the Word, as theological edification. Its ministry of the Word has an external goal; it does not seek only a fundamentally egoistic enjoyment of the Word. For the sake of this external ministry, however, however, there must be an internal. Hence the assemblies of the community are assemblies for the proclamation of the Lord and His kingdom as this is to be continually heard afresh by Christians themselves. The worship of the community in all its conceivable forms implies a reestablishment of the community by a new and common perception of the kingdom. Since this is a common perception, the human service to be rendered therewith must be understood and put into effect as a joint responsibility in this matter. We should never lose the sense, however, that this is only a quid pro quo, a practical makeshift. The division of the community into a teaching and a listening Church must never be accepted in principle. In principle the inner edification of the community in this concrete sense, i.e., as theology, is a matter for every Christian. What is at stake is not theology in its erudite technicalities but in its essence and spiritual function, i.e., reflection, orientated on and inspired and guided by the prophetic and apostolic testimony concerning the mystery of Jesus Christ, the reality of the kingdom as it has appeared in Him, and the bearing of this event for the men of all nations, tongues and times; in other words, investigation of the original meaning and the present significance of this event.

Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β  To participate in this, and therefore to accompany even the work of erudite theology in the stricter sense, is the task of the community and therefore of each individual member. . ..[1]

I had planned on sharing more of the second paragraph, but it is another page and a half of meaty prose that might end up off-putting some of my readers (because of length). The above should suffice in regard to grasping the gist, the spirit of Barth’s heart for the Church. He sees everyone, respectively, as both the listeners and teachers; even if the latter, might rest on some more than others (by calling etc.) Even so, as the last clause indicates, for Barth, every Christian has a duty, a responsibility to be involved in the acquisition and communication and proclamation of the β€˜erudite theology’ that we have all become participant in, as those in participation in and with God in Jesus Christ, the man from Nazareth. So, for Barth, indeed as the Christian is by definition in participation with the triune life, she has been given to both an external and internal service; as if a centripetal-centrifugal dialectal movement is inhering within the body itself. For sure, as the Church is being fructified by the umbilical cord of the Holy Spirit into the bosom of the Father, where the Son is seated at the Right Hand always living to make intercession for us. It is the Christ, for Barth, who ultimately is the inner reality of the Church, even whilst those adopted, are the external expression whereby He proclaims Himself, through the Church’s lips; first for herself and upbuilding, and in the overflow of this exuberant worship, to the world. Barth is contending that the Church operates as a correspondence of Christ’s faith for us; as a correspondence of His intercessory work for us, for the world, the us for whom Christ died. Amen.

[1] Karl Barth,Β Church Dogmatics III/4 Β§55 [498-99] The Doctrine of Creation: Study EditionΒ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 168–69.

‘Always Reforming’

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All Christian theology, 𝑑𝑒 π‘—π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘’, is eschatological. This is what makes space for π‘’π‘π‘π‘™π‘’π‘ π‘–π‘Ž π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘“π‘œπ‘Ÿπ‘šπ‘Žπ‘‘π‘Ž, π‘ π‘’π‘šπ‘π‘’π‘Ÿ π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘“π‘œπ‘Ÿπ‘šπ‘Žπ‘›π‘‘π‘Ž π‘ π‘’π‘π‘’π‘›π‘‘π‘’π‘š π‘£π‘’π‘Ÿπ‘π‘– 𝑑𝑒𝑖 (β€œreformed and always being reformed according to the Word of God”). Selah

Are You a Pietist; Am I? Who is First, God or the Humans?

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The Pietists, 1898. Creator: Venny Soldan-Brofeldt

A few years ago, I was at a regional ETS theology conference. A theologian friend of mine was there giving a paper. Afterwards he, and myself, and others got together for a little theology talk. In that talk my Lutheran theology friend said: β€œyou’re a Pietist, and I’m an Anti-nomist.” And yet, I was wondering what exactly my friend had in mind by calling me a Pietist (some make take this as derisively as being called a Pelagian). The thing is, there are many expressions of a Pietism, all the way from the Puritans down to Zinzendorf and Spener, and further down to Schleiermacher, and then the Revivalists and the Keswicks, and as far down to someone like a Lewis Sperry Chafer. So, where does my friend see me on this continuum of Pietists? And what in fact is a theological Pietism?

I think a shared and uniting theme that might unite all Pietists together is that there is a concern and focus on the inner-spiritual life of the Christian; as if this focus is the sine-qua-non of what being a Christian entails. To generalize: a Pietist, denotatively, might be someone who is simply focused on being in love with Christ, and hoping to cultivate that marriage relationship with Him, in ways that entail a deeper growth and trust in the One they love as Christians. Conversely, while that would be a good thing mutatis mutandis this type of mood might come with a sinister and de-spiritualizing flipside. That is, the critique of Pietism is that it methodologically so focuses on β€œmy love relationship with Jesus, with the triune God,” that it gets stuck with an inward focus on the self, rather than an a priori outward/upward look to the God who first loved us, that we might love Him. And so, the critique is that Pietism in all of its forms suffers from a methodological misstep where the starting point, in a God-human relationship, starts from a center in ourselves, rather in the center of God’s life for us in Jesus Christ. So, if this is the way my friend thinks of me as a Pietist, I would reject that label. If at a base level the label was simply meant to denotate someone who has a deep love of Christβ€”in the right theological orderingβ€”then I will gladly accept that nomenclature.

In the spirit of the above discussion, I want to share for us the way that Eberhard Busch characterizes the German and European Pietists of the 1930s juxtaposed with Karl Barth. Indeed, Busch is describing the way the Pietists of the 30s were attempting to pushback against young Barth’s critique of them (and his critique is basically of the same material I just described above; i.e., in regard to a disordered methodology vis-Γ -vis who comes first in the β€˜loving movement’ between God and humanity). Busch writes (in extenso):

Likewise W. HΓΌtzen defines the concern of Pietism as the β€œclearly articulated biblical doctrine of the inner life as the personal experience of the living God who really lives and works in us through his Spirit.” He adds that this understanding of the Pietistic concern is not controversial β€œamong those who consciously move in the thought patterns of Pietism and approve of them.” According to F. Mund, it is the manifest working of the Spirit which constitutes the essence of our community movement and for whose sake we speak of the mission of the community movement. Our mission is to awaken natural, β€œchurch people” from the sleep of death so that they β€œcome to faith, are spiritually alive, born again, converted and receive in their heart the Holy Spirit who comes directly from above. All of these things are facts experienced a thousand fold and noticeable to others.” According to L. Thimme, an interest in living β€œreligious possession” is characteristic of Pietism. β€œThe new possession of the community movement was their victory in aggressively laying hold of the assurance of salvation as well as of sanctification. This led to a revival of genuine, early Christian community life as well as the spirit of evangelization.” And according to W. Knappe, Pietism is at the same time concerned to emphasize the whole Bible and activate a practical life of faith. The latter is clearly not a second concern alongside the former. Knappe sees Pietism’s emphasis on the whole Scriptures in the way it rediscovered and advocated the β€œforgotten truths of Scripture: the personal laying hold of salvation, the assurance of salvation and sanctification.” This is the central concern of the community people in their own view.

It is important to notice that as a rule this understanding of its concern is linked to a particular evaluation of the movement. On the one hand, this concern is claimed as a special gift of Pietism in contrast to other manifestations of the church. This gift identifies it as Pietism. On the other hand, at the same time they resist an interpretation of this special insight as a special find made by Pietism. Rather they are inclined to identify it with the whole Bible, with mere biblical Christianity. Pietism’s representatives boldly conclude from the fact that it has faithfully upheld the concern described above not only that it is not just any β€œschool of thought” but that β€œthe community movement is . . . a work of God,” not made by human beings β€œbut accomplished by God.” And they further conclude from this that it not only has a right to exist in the church but that it is absolutely β€œessential” for the β€œhealth” of the church. Pietism is basically God’s action, Christ’s offer of grace to the modern church, and fighting against it is tantamount to β€œfighting against God.” Therefore the history of Pietism can be depicted in correspondingly vivid colors. The older Pietism emerged against the dark background of the eighteenth century, for which β€œthe dissolute spirit of the French in fashion and morals and the dead orthodoxy of the church” were typical. In Pietism β€œthe spring water of the apostolic and Reformational witness suddenly bubbled up again in a barren time.” In the view of G. F. Nagel, the names of Francke, Bengel, Zinzendorf, Tersteegen as well as Spener shine β€œon the tablets of history in a light that has its source in Jesus’ abundant light.” Likewise, β€œstreams of light and salvation flowed into the believing church” from β€œthe men of the revivalist movement in the 19th century.” And in the same way, vital spiritual power is pouring into human lives from the community movement of the present day which again is a time of β€œdecadent laxity” and β€œmoral decline.” In short, β€œtime and again the waves of the Pietistic movement have carried death-overcoming life into the world.”[1]

In my view, Pietism’s heart (pun intended) is in the right place, it’s just that the order (taxis) of their spirituality is grounded in the wrong direction. If we were to refer to Thomas Torrance, he might detect what he calls the β€˜Latin heresy,’ in and among the Pietists. That is to note, that the Pietists presume upon theological anthropology wherein humanity and God are thought in terms of a competitive relationship; wherein the bridge between humanity and God is conceived of through mechanisms like pactums, covenants, promissos, or even Pietisms. In other words, there is a ditch between God and humanity, and something is needed to bridge that ditch. As a matter of methodological priority, Pietism essentially looks inward first, before they look upward to find a way to be in union with God; at least, this is the spiritual function that inheres for the Pietist’s way to God. Ultimately, it is an inert navel-gazing that has become the absolutized way of making your way from yourself to God. Barth would say the opposite is the case; as of course, would the Apostle Paul.

So, am I a Pietist? I’d say in letter, nein! In spirit, yes. The Pietists have the right spirituality, as far as intention, but the wrong theological superstructure to properly get them there. They need something like what we have identified in Evangelical Calvinism (after Barth) as a Christologically Conditioned Supralapsarianism wherein the movement between God and humanity starts as a prius in God’s free election to be God with us, not without us, in His choice to become us in the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth. Pietists need this type of fertile theological soil to have a proper β€˜feeling’ towards God; a feeling that has first come from God’s heart for us in Jesus Christ.

[1] Eberhard Busch,Β Karl Barth & the Pietists,Β trans. by Daniel W. Bloesch (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 137–38.

Suicide as Self-Deicide, A Theological Thought

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Barth in his continuing development of a Christian Ethic, in this section, has been discussing self-power versus real power, which is God’s. In this development he has arrived at a discussion on suicide. He is taking self-power, in abstraction from God’s power, to entail a pseudo-power (self-power), and reducing it to its logical conclusion; which ironically, is at the heights of illogicality. He refers to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thinking on this, even as Barth goes on to paraphrase Bonhoeffer’s position.[1]

To the best of my knowledge, the Ethik of D. Bonhoeffer (1949, 111–116) gives us the most cautious statement so far written on this matter. We cannot expect every man at every moment to know from his own experience the meaning of real affliction and assault, β€œwhen we are in the greatest distress and do not know which way to turn.” A man assailed and afflicted is hid from all others and sometimes even from himself. He is alone with God, and tortured by the terrible question whether God is really with him and for him, or whether he must regard himself as an atheist, i.e., a man who God has rejected and abandoned. Many theologians and theological moralists do not in practice know properly what affliction is because exegetically, dogmatically and even pastorally they know only too well in theory. In all cases, however, suicide is consciously or unconsciously this final assault and affliction. Even the most confirmed theological moralist ought to see this, and therefore to remember that perhaps he does not finally now what takes place between God and the suicide, nor therefore what is the decision which drives him to this dubious act. Is he really a self-murderer? A readiness to recognise that he may not have been a self-murderer at all is required of all who know what it is to be assailed and afflicted, even if only in theory.[2]

So, a twist. Indeed, suicide represents a complexity. In order to actually go through with a suicide a person must be at such a point of travail, by whatever antecedent and present circumstances, that it seems like the only choice left; the one last choice to take control in the midst of the utter chaos, pain, tribulation of whatever the moment is presenting the person with, and end it all (at least on the side where the visibly and physically seen predominates). I have been at these points myself; whether that be in the years long spiritual battle I had with anxiety, depression, dark nights of the soul; or whether that be at the tail end of my incurable/terminal cancer treatment (being so worn down, in so much pain, that it was starting to seem like β€œending it all” might be the way out).

Conversely, as Barth paraphrases and riffs Bonhoeffer, even though it starts to become understandable why someone might feel the ultimate desperation of ending it all, even so, this remains a matter of self-power. It is an appeal to the body of death we inhabit to muster all of its resources and conjure up a solution to the desperation; particularly in the absence of that, in regard to the pastors, the doctors, the psychologists, psychiatrists, so on and so forth. Our frames are but dust, and God in Christ knows that, even experientially; and at heights we cannot begin to imagine. And yet, there are seasons of life when God seems utterly absent, as if he has left us alone to travail the path without the Light of His Lamp for us. And again, like Job, it is at this point that we have come to despair of existence itself. Job’s resolve, even in the face of β€œcurse God and die,” was β€œthough You slay me, yet shall I praise You.” This is the resource, beyond our bodies of death, that God in Christ alone provides for us. It is as we come to realize that we are genuinely participatio Christi, that we are constantly being given over to Christ’s death for us, that the mortal members of our bodies might exemplify Christ’s body in us, that we can have the Jobian resolve. Even so, it is as if we are merely hanging on at that point. The enemy of our souls keeps pushing us to refer to the resource and reserve of our bodies of death, which, as we have noted, concludes in suicide. It is only when we have bought the lie of Deicide, that suicide seems to be the final solution for our personal and individual existences. When we have self-deified, and concluded that the body of death we inhabit, these dusty apparatuses, in the face of tribulation and despair, that the only way forward is self-deicide (as if our body of death is ultimately the only real deity left to turn to).

[1] It isn’t often that you get a Barth paraphrase on Bonhoeffer.

[2] Karl Barth,Β Church Dogmatics III/4 Β§55 [404] The Doctrine of Creation: Study EditionΒ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 77.