This past November the crew at ReformedForum.org dedicated a pair of podcasts to discussing Karl Barth’s theology, its critique by Cornelius Van Til, and the new book that has emerged from the 2007 Barth Conference at Princeton Seminary — Karl Barth and American Evangelicalism
As convinced students of Van Til, however, they perpetuate a number of false understandings about Barth’s theological project. I’d like to address the central issue they draw out in these two shows: Barth’s understanding of the relationship between divine revelation and history. Cassidy is right in saying that everything hinges on this point: if Van Til is right about Barth, then Barth has divorced divine activity from creaturely history in a way that is disastrous for the whole of the Christian confession (and I’ll voluntarily turn in my Barth Badge and start reading Van Til and Vos). But if the critique is wrong, and if Barth is right about the way in which God has disclosed Himself to creatures, then every theological locus as it has traditionally been done must be re-thought from the ground up. To do so, of course, was Barth’s “christocentric” project.
A great deal rests on this debate, particularly with respect to Barth’s reception and legacy in American Evangelicalism. Van Til was one of Barth’s earliest interpreters in English, and his damning judgments continue to hold sway in some circles. In what follows I will begin with a very short discussion of Barth’s doctrine of Scripture with respect to Kant’s critique of knowledge, and then pick up Van Til’s critique that Barth effectively removes the Christ event from the sphere of human history. (For the sake of this post I’m relying on Cassidy’s summary of Van Til.) I’ll have some things to say there about Barth’s actualistic ontology, where I believe Barth must be properly understood if any accurate account of his theology is to be rendered. Finally, I will conclude with a modest suggestion on how disagreements over the accuracy of Van Til’s critique should be adjudicated.
Cassidy is right that Barth took deeply seriously Immanuel Kant’s critique of knowledge. As Barth read the liberal Protestant tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, theirs was largely an effort to account for the possibility of true knowledge of God — i.e. to find a way around or through Kant’s critique or, alternatively, to falsify it. The gauntlet had been thrown down, and Christian theology could not simply continue on its merry way without responding. Kant had, I think, undercut the very epistemology to which the Van Til school is appealing: a pre-modern fideism of the Bible as a received, objective account of God. (Here the underlying epistemology believes that it has escaped Kant’s critique by way of its doctrine of inspiration, that God Himself created a written document of revelation and passed it across the gap to us, so that we can know true things about Him. I’ll have to leave a full critique of the modern fundamentalist epistemology aside in the interests of the topic at hand.)
Barth saw Friedrich Schleiermacher as suggesting what he thought was the only viable way through Kant’s critique: feeling, the discovery of one’s God-consciousness as the presence of God with men and women. “Knowledge” was, to put it crudely, relocated from the head to the heart. Though schooled in this tradition Barth would ultimately come to reject it, as has been well documented. But he still faced the problem of Kant: How can theologians say anything true about God?
Like Van Til’s school Barth, too, turned to Scripture. But because he was already thinking christocentrically, his doctrine of inspiration does not match that which is held by modern American fundamentalists. Again, Barth’s doctrine of Scripture has been well documented, and Cassidy gets it broadly right: the Bible is a human witness to God’s revelation, which is singularly located in the event of Jesus Christ. But he is wrong to suggest that Barth thereby “denies that the Bible is revelation itself” — if by this he means that the Bible is not the authoritative Word of God that discloses God’s history, will, and plan for salvation.
What Cassidy’s brief account is missing is the agency of the Holy Spirit, by means of which Scripture becomes the Word of God (and Barth means that!) ever anew for us. This is not mere pious rhetoric, hanging on to the Bible for sentiment or tactical expediency. (Barth is explicating his doctrine of the Word according to Heinrich Bullinger’s three forms of the Word of God in the the Second Helvetic Confession — certainly some solid Reformed credentials.) Scripture really is the authoritative Word of God, and in this sense it is “revelation.” But it is revelation in a different way. Scripture is divine disclosure in that it tells us things about God, by means of the Holy Spirit’s accommodating use of the testimony of the prophets and apostles; but only the incarnation of the Son of God reveals God Himself.
But (and this is key) Scripture is revelatory in such a way that it never becomes a possession of the creature, as in a textual artifact to be objectively studied (for example, with the tools of historical criticism — which is why Barth finds the question of the “historical Jesus” theologically uninteresting). Instead, though the words of the Bible are fixed, our relationship with it is one of “standing under” (profoundly so, pace Cassidy). We do not have “direct” access to God’s revelation in this fashion, not because this is not to be found in Scripture, but because the pages of the biblical text do not “contain” it in the strictest sense of that word. The true Word of God is living and active, coming to us in Scripture and proclamation both to afflict us and to comfort us.
The text is therefore a tool in the service of the on-going work of the Holy Spirit, who uses it to disclose to us God’s authoritative self-revelation in Jesus Christ. But we rely on the Spirit for that nourishment, and never objectively possess it of ourselves. In both Scripture and the proclamation of the church that Spirit is encountering us — and the revelation of God is in the encounter, the present event of giving, and not the medium itself. Therein lies all the difference between Barth’s doctrine of Scripture and that of conservative American Evangelicalism.
The result is that Barth has a view of Scripture that matches the fundamentalists in the authority and reliability it ascribes to the Bible (though one may wish to give a different reckoning of the nature and source of this “authority”). He simply gets there by another route.
The central critique of Barth’s theology leveled by Van Til that Cassidy still believes sticks relates to the historical nature of revelation. If Barth identifies God’s self-disclosure strictly with the Christ event (rather than in the plurality of creation, Jesus Christ, and Holy Scripture), just what does he mean by that? What is the “event” and where does it take place that we might have access to it?
It seems a given that God’s self-disclosure must take place in history (what Cassidy calls “real, calendar time” — not just “history” as some abstract concept, as it has been construed and reappropriated by some German idealists). It must touch our reality at some point, in other words. If, as creatures, we are to receive and to recognize God in God’s acts, they must take place in the sphere of our created existence — i.e. in history. Otherwise we can only be told about them — in which case it is this disclosure of the acts of God, and not the acts themselves, that are revelatory. Because fundamentalists (I use that term generally and not pejoratively) hold to the Bible as “direct revelation,” and because they affirm natural theology (God’s self-disclosure in the created order, such as the imago Dei), Cassidy suggests, they are able to affirm the requisite historicality of revelation. The life of Jesus, the authorship of the Bible and the church’s inheritance of it, and the imprint of God upon creation all take place in history.
According to Van Til, however, Barth cut this cord. Revelation does not take place in history, but above and outside of it. The event of Jesus Christ, as the event of God’s self-disclosure, is a “transcendent event,” as Cassidy puts it. The man Jesus Christ precedes even Adam — not only as the eternal Son of God, but as a man. Thus the eternal Jesus has already been given and received in God’s time for us — outside of and before human history, and therefore apart from us. The work of Christ in atoning for sin and reconciling creatures to God, and the application of that work to individuals, is collapsed into a single, transcendent event. This event, says Cassidy, “is not history. It’s not our time, not our calendar time. It’s not God’s eternal time. But it is some kind of transcendent in-between — [a] tertium quid. It is a tertium quid.” (Cassidy is working with what Barth says about God’s time and our time in CD I/2, §14.1.)
As Cassidy writes further in the comments thread following the podcast, for Barth “the creator and the creature not only do not meet at any point, but they cannot meet at any point. … We are still rendered separate from Jesus Christ. The best we can hope for is a witness to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ is himself inaccessible to us.” Barth does not account for any “direct revelation” from God to creatures — natural theology is flatly denied, Scripture is relegated to the status of mere witness, and Jesus himself remains historically inaccessible, available to us only in a transcendent moment beyond history. And so Barth finally can’t trust the Bible sitting before him as a revelatory text. The theologian must fall back on his own rational intuition to say anything about God, but because he has no direct source of revelation he cannot know if what he says is right. God remains transcendent and we are unable to know Him.
This is a catastrophically false reading of Barth’s mature theology. It would be akin to calling Martin Luther a Papist or Charles Hodge a raving Schleiermacherian liberal. The notion of an ahistorical Christ event is deeply opposed to Barth’s most basic theological commitments.
Like the tradition before him, Barth insists that the life and work of Jesus Christ took place in the sphere of human history — an act of God not only with us, but as one of us. This is “the Christ event” — the history in which God the Son entered into time, was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, dead and buried, and raised from the dead. This took place in history and had to take place in history. In describing “eternity,” Barth says, we should be careful not to de-historicize it; eternity is not timelessness, nor infinite time, but instead comprehends time (without being exhausted by it):
If we try to cling to the idea of a divine eternity that is purely timeless, we must be careful that we are not compelled to deny both God’s revelation and reconciliation in Jesus Christ, and also the triune being of God revealed and active in them.1
Barth is aware, then, of the sort of pitfall into which Van Til is convinced he falls. Revelation and reconciliation take place in time, even if the divine decision of election to which they correspond is eternal. The incarnation is an historical happening, as the orthodox tradition has always confessed:
If we say Jesus Christ, we also assert a human and therefore temporal presence. Every moment of the event of Jesus Christ is also a temporal moment, i.e., a present with a past behind it and a future in front of it, like the temporal moments in the sequence of which we exist ourselves. ‘The Word became flesh’ also means ‘the Word became time.’ … [Revelation is] a temporal reality. So it is not a sort of ideal, yet in itself timeless content of all or some times. It does not remain transcendent over time, it does not merely meet it at a point, but it enters time; nay, it assumes time; nay, it creates time for itself.”2
The issue for Barth is not whether this event is historical, but whether it is accessible to us, and if so, how. According to Barth, revelation “does not become a predicate of history in that God reveals Himself through the medium of history. God remains ontologically distinct (or ‘other’) than the various media He takes up in revealing Himself.”3 One result of this is that the event of Jesus Christ is not subject to the control of historical-critical inquiry. (The distinction Barth makes between Historie and Geschichte, as well as his use of Saga and his relationship with Rudolf Bultmann, commonly lead his unsympathetic critics in the wrong direction — particularly when reading him uncarefully and in translation.) This is the problem of Gotthold Lessing’s “broad, ugly ditch” — that historical events are so remote from us today that we cannot trust that we really know about them with certainty. Where history is taken to be the sphere of God’s self-disclosure (as in Christianity), the problem diagnosed by Lessing becomes all the more acute.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries this problem prompted fundamentalists to dig in and defend the accuracy of the Bible on historical grounds. The ditch is overcome, Evangelicals suggest, by virtue of 1) the historical proximity of the witnesses to the events; 2) divine inspiration of the accounts rendered, since God is not subject to the same divide between historical events and our contemporaneity; and 3) presumably, the preservation of these accounts by means of the Holy Spirit’s interaction with redactors, copyists, and finally the church and her ecumenical councils that established the canon. With respect to Holy Scripture as God’s “direct revelation” the fundamentalist account is not so simple and straight-forward, then, but requires these dominoes to be set up in precisely the right way and to remain standing. Otherwise, the reliability of the Bible as a point of direct divine encounter is suspect (granting, for the moment, that the very presence of redactors, copyists, and a canonizing church do not count as mediating factors between the speaking God and His hearing people). This is because fundamentalists accept Lessing’s critique as a real problem (unlike that of Kant), though the event of revelation is not just historical but historically past (revelation takes place as the books of the Bible are written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and not — or not so much — in the more subjective moment of the church’s hearing of Scripture).
There is an interesting aside in Bucey and Cassidy’s discussion with respect to the revelation that does take place in Jesus Christ. Cassidy suggests that, for the Van Til school, this revelation has an eschatological character. I could be misreading between the lines and would appreciate a fuller explication of this point, but my guess is that this is an attempt to retain Christ as a locus of divine revelation while still accounting for the problem of historical remoteness suggested by Lessing. How can this man, who lived 2,000 years ago, be an objective source of the knowledge of God for you and me today? Of course, we believe that what the authors of Scripture recorded about him are true. But this encounter between us and this “direct” revelation in Jesus is mediated by the text (that is, by a different form of revelation). How can we have a direct, unmediated encounter with Jesus Christ? In the eschaton, when we see him face to face, when we know him even as we are known by him (1 Cor. 13:12). If this is indeed the explanation Cassidy or Van Til would give for the fact that Jesus is a direct revelation now absent from our immediate access, I would ask: Is this what Calvin and the Reformers believed? Is our personal encounter with God in Jesus Christ strictly an eschatological reality? Or is it also mediated through the church and the work of the Holy Spirit, here and now? Does the Spirit not unite us to Christ? Does He not raise us up in the sacrament to where Christ is? This existential communio Christi is the only true “transcendent” quality of the Christ event, and it is the real locus of our encounter with the Lord.
With those two digressions registered, let’s move forward with the debate over whether or not Barth believes that God reveals Himself in history. The quotations above clearly show that he does. Cassidy also recognizes that Barth scholars are arguing that Barth does, in fact, believe just this — that God reveals Himself in history, and not in some transcendent sphere. Specifically, he’s interacting with Bruce McCormack’s afterword on Van Til in Karl Barth and American Evangelicalism. McCormack argues that the distinction Van Til draws between history and a transcendent “primal history” is not present in Barth but is a distinction largely of Van Til’s own creation.4 Yet, in the face of this sharp claim, Cassidy only manages to reiterate the Van Til line:
But we have to remember that according to Karl Barth revelation did not take place between the years 1 and 30 A.D. Revelation takes place … in the transcendent event of Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ is not ‘Jesus of Nazareth,’ understand. Jesus Christ, according to Karl Barth, existed before Adam. Jesus Christ is the revealing God and the receiving man [in the 'tertium quid' that is neither God's time nor our time, but God's time for us].
For Karl Barth, revelation does not take place in real, calendar time. That’s his whole point. Karl Barth is concerned to take God out of our grasp, as it were.
Cassidy has thus read and dismissed the analysis of one of the world’s leading Barth scholars5 because he is already convinced that he is wrong. While McCormack’s essay sets out to prove Van Til’s interpretation false, the response is that McCormack must be wrong because Van Til’s reading is right. Not because McCormack has misunderstood Van Til, or because Van Til has a critical insight that Barthians have not engaged. Revelation is ahistorical for Barth, therefore when a Barth scholar claims that the opposite is true, it is he who must be missing something.
Finally, Cassidy derides Barth’s radical christocentrism on the grounds that, because Barth regards the existence of the man Jesus Christ as eternal (and thus true man, existing before Adam), the theological loci of creation, humanity, etc. are reduced to zero. There is no doctrine of man as a creature of God, only man as Jesus Christ — and no doctrine of creation, only of Jesus Christ as creator and creature. This Cassidy identifies as Barth’s “christo-monism.” Thus Barth’s greatest strength is also his great weakness: when everything is interpreted in the light of Jesus, other doctrines are left with no autonomy.
There is an important critique here with respect to the systematic ordering and balance of doctrines. But the way in which Cassidy makes it, I believe, rests upon a failure to understand the nature of what McCormack has identified as Barth’s actualistic ontology. Barth regards the eternal ‘moment’ of God’s decision and the historical moment of its realization as existing in a dialectical relationship; so the promise of God to enter into covenant and save men and women from their sin is eternally true (it will take place), and as it is enacted it is temporally true (it has taken place). Are we therefore saved by God in eternity, or in time? This is somewhat like asking a good Calvinist when she was “saved” — the day she accepted Jesus, or 2,000 years ago on the cross (or when God predestined her in Christ before the foundation of the world, Eph. 1:4-5)? Barth’s ontology suggests that both statements are true, but more accurately they are true only together — in their relationship of promise and fulfillment.
Actualism is also a post for another day. The point is that a proper understanding of Barth’s ontology clarifies a great deal of that to which Cassidy (via Van Til) is objecting. God does not relate to time in the same way that creatures relate to time. As the Son of God, Jesus Christ relates to time from the eternal point of view — that of the Creator; and as Son of Man, we might say that his relation to time is “temporally determined.” The sense in which Jesus Christ is “before Adam” is not as the Logos incarnatus or ensarkos but as the Logos incarnandus — that is, in the mode of anticipation of the incarnation that takes place in time. This is real for the being of the eternal Son — but it is not so without the corresponding moment of its actualization. With respect to revelation, then, because God is its subject it must come into history from without.6
We see, then, that Barth’s Christology and the theological ontology that undergirds it are not “transcendent” and do not exclude history, or include it only incidentally. Rather history — our real, calendar time — is fundamentally necessary to Barth’s thought because it is the sphere in which the very being of God is actualized according to God’s free intention. History, with the rest of creation, is the outer basis of the covenant, the sphere of God’s work of redemption, and without it God would not be the God He is.
Not only, then, are we to reject the thesis that on Barth’s reckoning the Christ event is not historical — but, in fact, it is more radically historical than perhaps anything that had come before (including federal Calvinism).
It is clear that a great deal of the impasse between these two sides stretches across matters of theological epistemology, the nature of history, and the doctrine of inspiration and the ontology of Holy Scripture. Further work needs to be done in this area with respect to both Barth and Van Til, and the one’s criticisms of the other. Will Van Tilians be able to acknowledge that Barth’s views in this area — even if they differ radically from their own — do not exclude him from the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy? What is it that Barth has anchoring his theological epistemology, if he does not have an inerrant text handed down by God? Can revelation remain indirect, veiled, and still be God’s authentic self-disclosure? And does Barth actually use Scripture in a different way in engaging the task of dogmatics?
There is a way forward for conversation between the students of Van Til and Barth, as Cassidy and Bucey suggest. They rightly observe at the close of the discussion that the central issue here is simply whether or not Van Til’s critique of Barth is right or wrong. Clearly my argument is that he is wrong. But beyond other texts I could muster from the Church Dogmatics to make my case (in a much, much longer post), the fact remains that no serious Barth scholar I have ever encountered, English- or German-speaking, has reaffirmed Van Til’s reading as accurate — outside of the fundamentalist tradition that is predisposed to oppose Barth (primarily because of his doctrine of inspiration). Barth’s theology is vulnerable at a number of points, and there are significant disagreements among Barthians themselves; but the Van Til critique is not one of them. That this critique has now reached a third generation of students unchecked is a serious pedagogical oversight.
How does one judge whether one theologian’s critique of another is right or wrong? Most obviously, read the figure whose work is under scrutiny carefully and as much without prejudice as we can manage — on his own terms, as Cassidy says — and see if the claims stack up. Then secondarily, I suggest, see what the experts on that figure think. If the overwhelming consensus in the secondary literature is that the critic is misreading his subject, that ought to count for a lot in a world of peer-reviewed scholarship. (Cassidy suggests at the end of the second discussion that there is a lot in Barth scholarship today that does vindicate Van Til’s reading.7 This bibliography needs to be put forth and subjected to scrutiny.) The very best examples of theological understanding take place where each side can say, “They understand what we believe. They don’t agree with it, but at least they have shown that they understand it rightly.” I hope that as much can be said about my evaluation here. Those who continue to maintain Van Til’s critique of Barth without engaging the critical scholarship within Barth studies embody the opposite ethic. When the world’s leading scholars agree that Van Til simply didn’t understand Barth, that should be taken seriously and engaged on the textual level.
I’m calling on students of Cornelius Van Til, then — and particularly on the faculty and students at Westminster Theological Seminary — to read Barth and sympathetic Barth scholarship alongside Van Til, and to include this in classroom assignments and bibliographies; to work toward an understanding of Barth’s theological project more nuanced than Van Til himself accomplished, which includes reading across the entirety of Barth’s corpus (in particular, redressing a neglect of CD III and IV) and attending to his theological development as well as to the current secondary literature; and to subject these findings to scholarly peer review and allow them to be altered.
Karl Barth does, in fact, have a rock-solid anchor to his epistemology. Unlike Van Til, it isn’t the event of God’s inspiration of texts — it is God’s revealing and reconciling appearance in history in Jesus Christ. This is the truth to which those inspired scriptures themselves attest. And it is a gospel no Christian should be ashamed to confess.
1. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1, p. 618.
2. Barth, CD I/2, p. 50 (emphasis mine).
3. Bruce L. McCormack, “Afterword: Reflections on Van Til’s Critique of Karl Barth,” Karl Barth and American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2011), p. 373.
4. See ibid, p. 377.
5. In his review of McCormack’s Orthodox and Modern Cassidy himself states that “McCormack has time and again proven himself a deft interpreter and pedagogue of a system of theology that evades the comprehension of even the most astute and sympathetic disciples of the dialectician.” Westminster Theological Journal 71 no 1 (2009), p. 236. McCormack, says Cassidy, is one Barthian who allows Barth to be Barth in all his radicalness.
6. McCormack, p. 374.
7. A hint of this thesis is also in Cassidy’s review of Orthodox and Modern, where he suggests that McCormack agrees with a thesis put forth by Van Til in The New Modernism (1946) that Barth’s theology is in continuity with Schleiermacherian liberalism and did not, in fact, make a break with it. See Cassidy, pp. 236-7. That Cassidy has McCormack in mind with these comments is also evident in an October 1, 2010 podcast, where he shows simply that McCormack and Van Til agree that Barth was influenced by the “modern epistemology” of Kant. This Cassidy takes as a vindication of Van Til’s critique as a whole, as if the modernist quality of Barth’s thought was alone sufficient to justify fundamentalism’s reconciling him to the dust bin of theological history.
While it is true that Barth is engaged with the challenge presented by Kant’s critique (as is the whole of contemporary theology, save those who simply ignore it), and that McCormack demonstrates elements of Barth’s thought that locate him in a “Schleiermacherian tradition” broadly construed, it is false to caricature this simply as the sort of “liberalism” opposed by Van Til. See further: Bruce L. McCormack, “What Has Basel to Do with Berlin? Continuities in the Theologies of Barth and Schleiermacher,” Orthodox and Modern (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), pp. 63-88; and “Revelation and History in Transfoundationalist Perspective: Karl Barth’s Theological Epistemology in Conversation with a Schleiermacherian Tradition,” ibid, pp. 21-40. The content of McCormack’s essay on the Van Til thesis (see n. 1) is sufficient evidence that he cannot be counted as one Barth scholar who countenances Van Til’s reading.
Nevertheless, though I disagree with many of its interpretive conclusions, I should also point to Cassidy’s 2009 essay as a first step forward in an engagement with the Van Til thesis viz. what Barth and contemporary Barth scholars actually say. See Cassidy, “Election and Trinity,” Westminster Theological Journal 71 (2009): pp. 53-81. This provides plenty of conversational fodder for future engagement. Cassidy’s central thesis in the more recently published podcasts, however — that Barth removes the Christ event from history — is not (overtly) presented or defended in this essay.
January 26, 2012 at 1:37 am
Darren,
Thanks for this thoughtful post. I am in complete agreement with you on VanTil’s insufficient reading of Barth. Hopefully this is a helpful correction that the more Westminster-inclined-Reformed will take to heart.
I do, however, have a question for you and others in the actualist ontology clan. You mentioned that Cassidy’s point “rests upon a failure to understand the nature of what McCormack has identified as Barth’s actualistic ontology.”
I’m not interested in arguing at this point whether Cassidy has or has not understood McCormack’s actualism.
My concern is that I seem to hear this kind of critique quite a bit (David Congdon, who I greatly appreciate, wrote something similar here: http://fireandrose.blogspot.com/2011/12/actualistic-ontology-word-of.html). The argument usually proceeds by someone disagreeing with actualism by critiquing it on the basis of classical metaphysics and such a critique in turn being labeled as a “failure to understand actualism.”
Now, I imagine that there are some legitimate misunderstandings of actualistic ontology out there (perhaps thinking it can be critiqued on the basis of classical metaphysics is indeed one of these misunderstandings). But I wonder if jumping to misunderstanding is too quick. How would you–a proponent of actualist ontology–urge me–a proponent of classical metaphysics–to interact with actualism? I realize that it would be foolish on my part for me to read something you write on Barth’s Christology and simply say that you fail to understand concepts like essence and contingency. I’m sure you understand those concepts, but they are not relevant parts of your actualism.
I’d like to think that I *understand* actualistic ontology (though you may tell me otherwise). However, I’m not sure what the best way to proceed is. How can I go about critiquing actualism? It is clear that merely critiquing it on the basis of classical metaphysics is not a live option (VanDriel did something similar to McCormack, and though he did it well based on classical metaphysics, the critique won’t hold for those who hold to actualistic ontology).
So must I assume the truth of actualism and look for an internal incoherence in the system? Or, must I evaluate its claims against theological conclusions derived from Scripture (however that would be done)? Can I still use concepts such as entailment to critique actualism? I don’t want to ignore actualism and say “You have your ontology, and I have mine”; such a decision will not lead to helpful dialogue. So perhaps you could help me understand what the terms of the argument must be from your perspective. I greatly appreciate any technical attempts from actualistic ontologists to clarify the system and spell out the minutiae (which I why I appreciated David’s piece). I’ve spent a lot of time ensuring that I understand what I’m critiquing; yet I want to go about critiquing it in a way that would be satisfactory.
So ultimately, my question is “How do we decide between classical metaphysics and actualistic ontology?” I’m guessing you might saying something like McCormack’s proposal has shown a great inconsistency in classical metaphysics (like he tried to do this past Fall at the TEDS Kantzer Lectures). However, the problem is that from the standpoint of classical metaphysics, the concerns he raises are just not that significant. Most in favor of classical metaphysics don’t worry about “speculation” or about the potential for God’s revelation to not be entirely identical with Godself.
Anyway, I’ll stop here. I really want to have genuine dialogue, and I appreciate what supporters of actualist ontology are doing in theology, so I look forward to your response.
January 26, 2012 at 4:06 am
Nice post Darren. I too think you have the American fundamentalist critique of Barth correctly spelled out and have laid down the challnge for Van Tillians to take up – good work! (We face the same issue in NZ) I also think James’ post above is spot on and I would concur with his question – as a non-actualist-ontologist (but also critical of classical metaphysics and in favour of a relational ontology – whatever that is), how do we go about interacting? I think McCormack would say on the basis of the Biblical texts, and yes, that is right. But it is only initially right. I do get annoyed at certain ‘Barthians’ who sem to take the supposed high ground in debates (this is NOT aimed at you Darren!) when they say they are merely folowing Scripture and anything else we (I) might do is speculation! Rubbish. I do not think St Paul had a self-conscious actualistic ontology – so for us all there is something that helps us read Scripture (what is theological interpretation of Scripture if not this!). So can I add my support to James’ fine question? Thanks Darren.
January 26, 2012 at 9:25 pm
It seems I need to write a much longer post on actualistic ontology (AO), since the confusion about it appears widespread and extreme. I’ll do what I can at the moment (and under a lot of stress regarding other responsibilities).
First, let’s clear up some misunderstandings:
1. AO is not a system. It is not in itself a new philosophy or ontology alongside other philosophies and ontologies. The word “ontology” here is thus misleading.
2. AO is not the starting-point but the conclusion. Neither Barth nor Jüngel nor McCormack begins with AO. It is simply a way of describing the kind of theology implied in Barth’s explication of the gospel.
These misunderstandings aside, let’s try to establish what AO actually is:
1. AO is first and foremost an issue of theological epistemology. How do we come to a true knowledge of God? Barth here makes some axiomatic decisions that necessarily conflict with “classical metaphysics,” so there will not be mutual understanding about AO until there is first a mutual understanding about these axiomatic decisions. What decisions are these? Fundamentally, there is just one decision that takes multiple forms. I will describe this decision in the following way: “Jesus Christ is the sole and exclusive self-revelation of God.” Barth grounds this axiom in passages like the prologue to John’s Gospel, where the Son is understood as the only one who knows the Father and who has made the Father known. This axiom has a number of crucial implications for Barth, which we can list as follows:
(a) As *self*-revelation, God’s communication to the world is a personal event. It is not the communication of ideas about God, but rather the communication of God’s own being and reality. Revelation is self-communication.
(b) The object of theology is an event in history, i.e., the reality of God—and thus the reality of the gospel of our reconciliation—takes place as an event in the contingent historical occurrence of Jesus. (This is obviously a massive implication.)
(c) Knowledge of God is determined or normed by the event of God in Jesus Christ.
(d) Knowledge of God is also an event. Epistemology is the subjective correlate of the objective event of reconciliation. True knowledge of God happens as the Spirit of Christ awakens us to faith, which is a true knowledge of who God is and who we are in Christ.
Thus far, these implications set forth the basic conditions for Barth’s christocentric method in theology. Other than an implied aspect of (b), I have not yet made the explicit turn to AO. In order to make that move, we need one additional axiom: “God’s essence and existence are identical.” The essence=existence axiom is a classical aspect of medieval metaphysics. The crucial difference is methodological. Where the classical metaphysicians presupposed a definition of the divine essence (immutable, impassible, simple, etc.), Barth proposes to let’s God’s existence define God’s essence. Instead of trying to figure out how to connect what God has done in history with this assumed definition of what is divine (hence the convoluted mess of the Chalcedonian Definition), Barth proceeds by letting God’s self-revelation (i.e., God’s existence) determine what we can and cannot say about God’s being or essence. In short, God is what God does. Implications:
(a) God does revelation. Ergo: God is revelation.
(b) Revelation is (the event of) Jesus Christ. Ergo: God is (the event of) Jesus Christ.
(c) Ergo: actualistic ontology.
I’m sure this raises more questions than answers, but I hope this helps get at some of the issues at play here.
January 26, 2012 at 9:41 pm
Thanks, James and Myk, for the comments.
Just following David’s comments briefly, let me try and give a brief response with respect to the discipline, and then suggest we table the topic of actualist ontology and pick it up in another post so it doesn’t distract too much from any further conversation that might emerge on the main points of this post. If I can’t come up with a post on actualism in the near future, we could at least toss up a comment thread as a place to talk further. (David has given us plenty to talk about, so I might go ahead and set that up today.)
The suggestion being made, of course, is not that actualism is an interpretive method to be applied willy-nilly to shed new light on any theologian. Rather, figures such as Barth are actualist in their own work. If it can be sustained that this is indeed the case, then it follows that interpreters of Barth won’t be able to get him quite right without attending to Barth’s own approach. If Barth’s theology has an actualist character, then it’s simply not correct to read him as an essentialist, or to critique him using the tools of classical metaphysics; to do so only leads to the sort of errors that Van Til makes (here, for example, with respect to the eternal quality of Jesus’ humanity). You don’t need to assume the truth of actualism itself, of course — but if Barth is doing actualist theology you’ll need to account for that. Evaluate Barth’s claims on Barth’s terms and not your own.
With regard to the charge of speculation, it seems to me that this criticism stems from Barth’s doctrine of revelation. If he’s right that 1) theological speech is not possible without divine self-disclosure, and 2) that this disclosure takes place only in the event of Jesus Christ, then it follows that other starting points will not be valid. From whence do the doctrines of the divine attributes come, for example? Again, if Barth is right, any theological reflection that is not christocentric — even if it has a plausible exegetical support — is unrevealed and therefore speculative. I have yet to find a good argument for why that claim does not stick.
January 26, 2012 at 10:12 pm
David and Darren,
Thanks for the thoughtful responses. I’ll hold off on any further questions until a new thread is opened.
James
January 27, 2012 at 4:21 am
I appreciate these comments; but I would really like to hear from some Westminster chaps. I doubt that though! Great post, Darren!
January 27, 2012 at 9:24 am
Bobby, hopefully some Van Til supporters will eventually discover the post and desire to interact with it. (I’ve made Jim Cassidy aware of it, at any rate.) That’s where the conversation would lie. As I said, among students of Barth there seems to be a pretty unanimous agreement here.
January 27, 2012 at 6:55 pm
I think this post is well written and thoughtful, and I hope that the newer post on actualistic ontology (which certainly sounds more thrlling) doesn’t distract potential engagement with some of the issues raised here. This was one of the central questions of the early, ‘liberal’ Barth (in 1912 he called it ‘the’ problem of modern theology, and criticized Catholicism, in the throes of the anti-modernist crisis, for failing to handle it); it forms a contextual background for some of Barth’s moves in R I and II and even in the later volumes of the CD; it received renewed attention with Pannenberg and the ‘revelation as history’ debate in the 1960s; and it perhaps highlights as few other issues can the difference between Barth’s germanophone theological context and a North Am. or British theological context, where the question of history is seldom raised or at leat is seldom raised with much sophistication.
I would venture that one of the unstated concerns driving no small part of the van Til/Barth debate is the status of historical apologetics and thus the referent of the Scriptural text. Barth’s lifelong aversion to historical and philosophical apologetics aside, it seems that by ‘calendar history’ or ‘historicality,’ or whatever, one of the big worries is that the Scriptural text must still be able infallibly to refer to and describe a historical kernel lying behind the text. Barth certainly wouldn’t deny such a kernel, but he also just isn’t interested in apologetically establishing it through generally available historical methods; he tends just to content himself with the final form of Scripture for his exegesis. Here too, I think, van Til’s theology is open to the standard criticisms regarding textual reference (the simplest and most well worn criticism being that if the history behind the text is most important then why not just ask the historians to improve the history for us?), and so it would be a potentially fruitful avenue to stroll down.
January 27, 2012 at 10:38 pm
Spot-on, Ken. I concur completely. “Historical apologetics” is precisely what is at issue here with Van Til & co.
January 30, 2012 at 8:43 am
@Darren,
Thanks again for this post; it’s always nice to have a handy critique of Van Til’s reading of Barth at ready notice when I am talking with my WTS friends
. Is Cassidy doing his doctorate on Barth? I didn’t catch that, maybe you know more—I’m assuming he is, given his appearance on RF’s podcast as an apparent ‘authority’ as a Barth scholar (or some such).
January 30, 2012 at 9:35 am
Bobby: Yes, Jim Cassidy is doing his dissertation on Barth’s view of time and eternity. I appreciate the generally irenic tone he has taken on the podcast, even if I disagree with his interpretive judgments.
On a related note, I should add that this weekend I came across a scholar who does support Van Til’s reading of Barth: Richard A. Muller, in the essay “Directions in the Study of Barth’s Christology” (Westminster Theological Journal 48 [1986]), 119-34; see p. 133). Muller echoes Van Til’s worry that the distinction between Geschichte and Historie makes it impossible for God to directly intervene in human history. My comment in the conclusion to the post above still stands, however, since — as respected an historical scholar as Muller is — he is not a Barth specialist. But I thought it worth pointing out.
For Barth Jesus not only has a “history,” but his history is our history. When Barth invokes Geschichte his primary worry is over the accessibility of those events.
January 30, 2012 at 2:29 pm
Hi all! I have genuinely enjoyed reading the interaction on this blog. I had a fine e-mail exchange with Darren about his original post. I myself would desire helpful and irenic dialogue concerning Barth and Van Til’s read of him. I am unsure, however, that the comments section of a blog is the best place to do that! I’m open to suggestions for a better forum. I stand ready to learn from sympathetic Barth scholars. I render no good service to the church huddling in my own corner with a small band of like minded thinkers.
As an aside, I have an article coming out on Van Til’s read of Barth’s Christology in a book entitled “The Reign of Christ.” As is so often the case with these things, the book has been delayed and won’t be out until the end of the year. But I think that piece would be a good starting place for further conversation.
Just one more aside, if you all will kindly indulge me. The Van Tillian read of Barth is indeed the minority report. To this I have two responses. First, the minority report ought not to be dismissed out of hand just because it is a minority report. After all, Barth’s theological project was the minority report (some would say it still is!) in mainstream European Protestantism (and latter, here in America). Second, in addition to Muller, there are a number of other critics of Barth who also need to be taken seriously, showing that Van Til is not alone. For one, I do think that Carl Henry needs to still be taken serious here, along with Gordon Clark. I have issues a mile long with so-called neo-evangelicalism, so there are some significant differences between VT and Henry/Clark. But the overlap is significant. I also think that Berkouwer needs to be taken serious here as well. Berkouwer’s critique is far more irenic in tone than VT, but I think that the substance overlaps with VT’s critique at important points. Muller has already been mentioned, and where Muller agrees with the 17th c. Reformed theologians over against Barth, I think he’s got Barth dead to rights. I think that large parts of Barth’s theology falls if you take away his divergence from Reformed scholasticism (eg, covenant of works, doctrine of election, God’s attributes, etc.). Another irenic but important critic of Barth is Michael Horton. Again, he’s not exactly a thorough-going VTian in his critique, but offers some significant points. And the list can go on. So, its a minority report to be sure, but the I think its a significant minority.
I hope to interact some more with you all in the future!
January 30, 2012 at 4:30 pm
Barth’s theology definitely does make it impossible for God to act directly in history — on that score, Muller is quite right! But anything else would involve a God who is less than absolutely transcendent. What Muller and Van Til want is a god who acts as one more causal influence within the realm of nature and history. But that is the god of myth and metaphysics, not of the gospel.
January 30, 2012 at 4:51 pm
@ David
This was a helpful comment, thanks! It seems there are two questions to the Van Til question (i.e., the question of the validity of – or lack thereof – VT’s critique). One, does Van Til understand Barth correctly (to whatever degree). Two, is Van Til’s alternate proposal a theologically viable one.
Am I correct to say that you are responding in the affirmative to the first (because VT, with Muller, believes that Barth’s god cannot act directly in history), and in the negative to the second?
January 31, 2012 at 12:30 am
@Darren,
I know Muller well! I’ve read much from him as you probably realize; he’s not quite so irenic with his pejorative usage of the ‘older scholarship’ language in his book After Calvin when he is describing how folk like Barth and TFT have read Calvin through their centraldogma; something like this:
The older scholarship, exemplified by the writings of Ernst Bizer, Walter Kickel, Brian Armstrong, Thomas Torrance, and others has typically modified the term “orthodoxy” with the pejorative terms “rigid” and “dead,” and modified references to “scholasticism” with the equally pejorative terms “dry” or “arid.” Such assessment bespeaks bias, but it also reflects a rather curious sequence of metaphors. The implied alternative to such a phenomenon as “scholastic orthodoxy” would, perhaps, be a flexible and lively methodological muddle of slightly damp heterodoxy. . . . Richard A. Muller, “After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition,” 25.
Wonderful! Huh. I am not surprised, Darren, with the tone exemplified above by Muller that he supports Van Til’s reading—I’d be surprised if he didn’t! But of course this all comes back to prolegomenon and ones attendant doctrine of God; the divide and reads (or misreadings) start from this point and flower or shrivel; whatever the case may be.
@Jim Cassidy,
I’m glad you came over and commented! Out of curiosity, could you shed light on what has motivated you, personally, to engage Barth within the context from which you move and breath (@WTS). Is there something about Barth that you like; or is there something you dislike, and are seeking to elucidate why? You seem to be in the same tribe as this fellow, Ryan Glomsrud, current editor of the journal Modern Reformed; and recent graduate of Oxford with his D. phil dissertation entitled: “Karl Barth between Orthodoxy & Pietism: A Post-Enlightenment Recovery of Classical Protestantism.” A fellow who engaged Barth, but it seemed like for polemical reasons (somewhat like Muller’s engagement of Barth), and not theologically constructive ones. Anyway, I am just curious where you see your own Barth research situated; further how you see your research benefiting the larger body of scholarship toward which you are seeking to offer another layer of original Barth research for others to build upon.
January 31, 2012 at 1:15 am
@Bobby
I have to say, thank you for that Muller quote. Stated as only he can! I get the impression that the problem Barthians have with people like Muller and Van Til is their tone. I understand, no one likes to be called a heretic! This may explain why men like Horton and Berkouwer have been better received among Barthians. But I wonder if you think, once you get past the name calling, if you find anything valid in the substance of their interpretations of Barth quite independent of the critique (and the tone) they level him?
As for a personal motivation . . . There is much I like in Barth. And there is much with which I disagree. But like him or disagree with him, one thing current theology cannot do is ignore him. I’ve been told my whole training that Barth was wrong at various points. Then I began to attend Barth conference at PTS and engaged others, some within my own circles (read: confessional Presbyterianism). Many were quite positive about Barth’s contributions. So, I had to figure out for myself who was right and who was wrong. As you can tell, I have come to some settlement on that question, and – as with us all – would like to advance those thoughts in current scholarship. Let’s just say I have a “vision” for the future of theology along the lines of a Richard Muller and (perhaps) a John Bolt. In other words, the future of theology – and a vital church ministry to a lost and dying world – is found in the past (in men like Bavinck, Owen, Turretin, and Calvin).
January 31, 2012 at 12:48 pm
@Jim Cassidy,
No, I’m afraid I cannot affirm the Van Til/Muller reading of Barth in any regard. Sure, at times they’ll say things that are half-true, such as that Barth was influenced by Kant and that Barth rejects God’s direct action within history. But half-truths are still falsehoods. The full truth is something they never saw, viz. that Barth appropriated Kant and Hegel under the sovereignty of Jesus Christ and that God is indirectly or paradoxically active in history in a way that is more faithful to the gospel. And since their own views are built in reaction to these half-truths, their constructive alternatives are equally problematic.
January 31, 2012 at 9:12 pm
@ David
Thank you for your answer, I think it bring into sharp relief the heart of the difference between Barth and Van Til.
For Van Til, without God’s direct activity in history there can be no Gospel. Man is left in his sin and in his epistemological darkness. To say another way, Barth has a different Gospel than Van Til does, and for the latter it is in no way “more faithful.”
Perhaps the way forward for Barthians and Van Tillians is to sit down and agree on what exactly the Gospel is?
January 31, 2012 at 11:39 pm
@Jim,
I agree, that would be helpful. But let me be very clear: Barth *does* think that God acts in history, and acts decisively to redeem humanity in Christ. But this cannot be *direct* action, because it is God who is acting in Christ, and God does not become directly or generally available. God’s action in history cannot be perceived apart from the eyes of faith. Barth takes with absolute seriousness Jesus’ statement to Peter that “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” If it were flesh and blood, then it would be direct action; but since it is God alone who makes the messianic truth of Jesus known, it is only ever indirect or paradoxical. To put it in classic Barthian language, God is hidden in God’s self-revelation.
The problem I see with Van Til & co. is that they want flesh and blood to make Christ known, because they want a historical apologetics. But that trades on a view of God that is theologically untenable and biblically unsupportable, in Barth’s view and my own.
February 1, 2012 at 1:13 am
@David,
Thanks again for this, I think you’re doing well in getting us nearer to the nub of the issue.
If I may ask a question, the answer to which would take me a long way toward greater understanding. I understand that, for Barth, God’s acts in history are indirect, paradoxical, and hidden. But how exactly is God acting in history, in what respect? Let’s say, for instance, between the years 1-30 AD.
February 1, 2012 at 1:14 am
@Jim,
My problem is more than tone; it is as David is highlighting, a distinction between our disparate doctrines of God and prolegomena; like your all commitment to the analogy of being (i.e. direct access through flesh and blood), and Barth’s (and TFT’s for that matter) commitment to the analogy of faith (so an indirect, dialectical access).
Thank you for sharing your vision and motivation for Barth studies. I am of the mind that we can and should and must Listen To The Past (as Steven Holmes has written on), but I am also of the heart that the best way forward is to engage, at most in theologies of retrieval that are truly constructive and organic; and thus not engaging in a repristination of a particular period of what we might consider a golden age of bygone theological flowering. So I think that the Father is working even up and until now … and into and from the eschaton and into the present.
peace, Jim.
February 1, 2012 at 1:20 am
@Jim,
God acts through Word and Spirit. God encounters humanity as a divine word of judgment and grace. This word is incarnate in Christ, testified to in Holy Scripture, and heard again and again in the proclamation of the church, but it is only ever encountered (in any of these forms) when and where the Spirit opens our eyes and ears and awakens us to its occurrence. It is not a word that we hear apart from God making us receptive to it.
February 1, 2012 at 1:26 am
David, thanks for the comments of clarification. I admit that your first post threw me a bit, but it quickly became clear that you and Jim don’t mean quite the same thing when you speak of “God (directly) acting in history.”
Please correct me if you think I am wrong, but the way that I have positioned this in the main post above is epistemological in nature — i.e. the problem of Lessing’s ditch, the remoteness of historical events. God really does act in history, I’ve suggested, but this is not something we can access but through faith. The point you are driving at, however, seems to be that even for Jesus’ contemporaries they did not have a “direct,” unmediated access to divine revelation in his person. Even with the historiographical problem diagnosed by Lessing removed from the equation, Jesus’ contemporaries witnessed a God who was veiled precisely in His unveiling. “They have eyes but do not see, and ears but do not hear.”
We might say that the acts of God in the event of Jesus Christ are “historical” in that they took place in “our real, calendar time” (as Jim has put it), between 1 and 30 A.D. in Palestine. But they are not “historical” in that they are historically verifiable (as in apologetics), nor in that they become “accidental truths of history” at all. As Barth says, revelation becomes history but history cannot become revelation.
February 1, 2012 at 1:27 am
@Jim,
I’ll be interested to hear David’s response; but Darren already addressed your question to David when he wrote:
What is it that you find unsatisfactory about this?
February 1, 2012 at 1:54 am
@Darren,
I think you’ve basically understood my point correctly. However, I disagree regarding your statement that God’s historical acts don’t become “accidental truths of history.” Maybe I’ve misunderstood you, but I think Barth is pretty clear that God’s act in history *is* a contingent historical occurrence. He repeatedly affirms Lessing’s statement only to overturn it. For Barth, eternal divine truth is (paradoxically) identical with an accidental truth of history. He states this explicitly, for example, in CD IV/2, 696. Of course, this doesn’t change in the slightest Barth’s insistence that Christ is the ordained ground and telos of human history, since contingency and necessity coincide in the Christ-event.
Having said all this, I should say that I want to push Barth in a more radical direction than he himself went. I do think his theological position (rightly) undermines all supernaturalism, all talk of miracles, even if he did not himself make these ramifications explicit. But that’s the direction in which dialectical theology logically leads, which is precisely why I’m dedicated to it. As you know, I’m an apologist for Rudolf Bultmann, and I think he and Barth belong together. But since that will no doubt derail our conversation, let’s save that conversation for another time.
February 1, 2012 at 2:02 am
Wow, its rapid fire response time, now! Bear with me, friends, as I attempt to consolidate a response to all these fine points of discussion!
First, I do think there remains some talking past each other. I am happy to say that I categorically reject an analogia entis ontology. With the exception of some fringe 17th c. scholastics, so does the mainstream of classical Reformed theology.
Second, Van Til (and I with him) would reject any notion of direct revelation in terms of an unmediated manifestation of God. There is no way to know God which is not mediated in such a way that humans can perceive him. Even the visio dei is mediated through the glorified humanity of Christ in classical Reformed theology.
Third, I affirm fully that apart from faith it is impossible to know the revelation of God in a redemptive way. This faith is given by grace alone as a monergistic work of the Spirit in regeneration.
Fourth, and here is my follow up question. Lets put it in the form of an (absurd) hypothetical. What if no one believed or received the Spirit in the years 1-30 AD? Would you say that God was still acting in history, revealing himself? In other words, can Barth speak about the revelation of God in history without the reception of the revelation by faith?
Fifth, if the acts of God in Jesus Christ took place in a real place and real time, then why are they not verifiable? As Paul says in Acts, these events did not occur in a corner. It seems Darren is articulating a two-fold history. Do these two histories (geschichte and historie?) have different “rules” to them? Or, do they have two different natures or characteristics? When Jesus said, outside of Jerusalem in 30 AD, “it is finished,” was that a revelation of God in history (still assuming that no one who heard it believed)?
Thank you all for bearing with me!
February 1, 2012 at 2:41 am
@Jim,
Thanks, that was a helpful comment. Barth couldn’t accept the hypothetical question, not only because he rejects speculation, but in this case because he understands the subjective and objective dimensions of revelation to be posited simultaneously. He goes so far as to say (CD IV/2, 120) that the historical event of Christ “creates the possibility of a special perception to meet it” and “establishes itself in the knowing human subject.” So to answer your question: no, Barth cannot accept the notion of a divine revelation in history abstracted from its human reception.
Your fifth raises the problem of “direct” action in history again. The acts of God are not verifiable *as acts of God.* They are (in theory) verifiable as historical occurrences like any other, but such verification says nothing about their identity as divine acts. As generally visible occurrences in history, they are unremarkable; they are wholly natural occurrences. Their divine character is “visible” to faith alone. Geschichte and Historie are not two histories but rather the one sphere of world history seen in two different ways: from the perspective of faith (Geschichte) and from the perspective of the neutral, scientific observer (Historie).
When Jesus said “it is finished” — assuming he actually said those words, which is rather doubtful — it was only a revelation to those who heard those words within the context of a messianic faith in the God of Israel. But given the nature of the Gospels, I’d rather say they are the words of Jesus as remembered by the disciples who are reflecting back on his passion in light of their Easter faith. In that sense, they bear witness to God’s self-revelation, though they are not directly identical with that revelation.
February 1, 2012 at 1:08 pm
@Jim,
I heard you say that you all reject the analogia entis in your podcast as well, as I recall. That somewhat surprises me. What kind of metaphysics do the post-Reformed or classically Reformed use toward their thinking and unpacking of God? I was under the impression that you all used some mode of a substance metaphysics, even a neo-Thomist form to speak of God’s substance and subsistence in the persons etc. Has my impression been wrong on assuming this about the classically Reformed?
By the way, TF Torrance has some interesting things to say on this, and he is much more classically disposed, on a modified analogy of faith pace Barth. Are you familiar with TFT, and not to broaden this discussion out too much what do you (and your family
) think about TFT juxtaposed with our brother Barth?
February 1, 2012 at 2:22 pm
@ David
Thanks for your continual patience and good explanations.
Up front, I have some reservations about your explanation as genuinely Barthian. It sounds more neo-Kantian in the existentialist tradition (a la, Bultmann). I do believe there is a difference, a significant difference, between Bultmann and Barth on the issue of revelation and history.
My problem with this position is actually much more significant than my problem with Barth as I understand him. On the view articulated above, God’s revelation is contingent upon the human response. This renders revelation anthropocentric to the core.
I think that Barth is much better than this. He provides for the human reception of revelation not in our own time, but in the time of Jesus Christ (a third time-dimension he calls technically “Gottes Zeit fur uns”). For Barth, Christ IS the revelation of God precisely because he is in himself both the divine revealer and the human receiver. This too is problematic, I believe, but not as problematic as the more consistently existentialist position outlined above.
I think, in response, useful here is the position advanced by such men as Herman Bavinck (thinking of his Stone Lectures at PTS entitled “The Philosophy of Revelation”) and Geerhardus Vos (especially his inauguration lecture as professor of Biblical Theology at PTS found in his Shorter Writings volume in which he maps out a Reformed doctrine of Revelation relative to a robust Christian Biblical Theology). In these men there is no dualism between God’s redemptive deeds and revelatory word. The two always coincide. In other words, God’s revelation always and everywhere accompanies his redemptive (not to mention creative!) deeds. Only in this way is the unbeliever rendered without excuse (a la, Romans 1). It is this truly and consistently Reformed understanding of revelation which cuts off the anthropocentric view resident in both neo-Protestant and neo-Orthodox (for a lack of better term) theology.
As an aside, the dismissal of the words of the Savior on the cross is to me quite disturbing. You affirm Jesus said to Peter “flesh and blood have not revealed this to you . . .” but deny “It is finished.” I am not sure how you can separate the words and acts of Jesus from their divinely inspired record and interpretation. It is these kinds of dualisms which Reformed theologians find utterly unhelpful and destructive of the Gospel.
@ Bobby
Thanks for your good question. Would have to give the TFT question some more thought. Though I think that his ontology (theo-ontology) falls into similar problems as Barth’s. But, again, let me mull that one over some.
As for classical Reformed theology and the analogia entis, I would recommend beginning your reading with Van Til. No one – save Barth – was a more vehement opponent of Thomistic metaphysics. In its place, he proposed a consistently Reformed ontology. Van Til’s radical creator-creature distinction is advanced and explained quite nicely in two recent volumes by K. Scott Oliphint. The first “Reasons for Faith” the second is his more recent “God with Us.” Here he explains Reformed ontology relative to the creator-creature distinction and what it means to speak about God’s essence without falling prey to the analogia entis. Believe it or not, its quite possible!
Men, this has been truly stimulating! Maybe I can check back in next week. Right now, however, I have a list of academic, pastoral, and family obligations staring me in the face before this weekend (as I am sure you all do as well). I like you guys a lot, but have to say I love my wife and my church more!
We really have to do this some night at a pub over a couple of pints. Even better (for me anyway) would be a place where we break out a pipe as well.
Cheers for now!
PS – Any of you are of course most welcomed to contact me by e-mail or phone (though wait until early next week, please). Both are available at my church’s website.
February 1, 2012 at 6:44 pm
I really appreciate you taking the time to interact with respectful candour here, Jim. And David as well. This has been very helpful to think through.
One small thing, which maybe doesn’t need saying but I’ll say it anyway, when it comes to whether Jesus said “it is finished” or not, I suspect it is more a question of biblical criticism than a necessity of the Barthian view. The larger and more interesting point, obviously, is that these words of Jesus’ on their own (without the illumination of the Holy Spirit and the eyes of faith) do not somehow contain or directly enact revelation. Perhaps the Barthian view of revelation (and Scripture) will be more conducive to those forms of biblical criticism that are willing to give these words to the apostolic author or redactor, but there would be debates to be had there, and one could still attribute the words to a redactor and call them inspired, I would think.
Anyway, mainly what I wanted to say was thanks a lot for engaging us here. Peace.
February 1, 2012 at 7:55 pm
@Jim,
I think you’ve hit on precisely what infuriated Barth about Reformed orthodoxy, and especially the Dutch Reformed in his own time, namely the inability to differentiate between a proper and improper “anthropocentrism.” When you lump together liberal neo-Protestantism and existential/dialectical theology, we have a serious problem. In his 1962 lectures on evangelical theology, Barth makes it very clear that the only proper theology is a “theoanthropology” because it takes the divine-human unity in Christ as the sole and determinative subject matter for all Christian theology. But he then distinguishes this as sharply as possible from all “anthropotheology,” which characterizes the liberalism of 19th century German theology. The inability to differentiate these two signals to me that Reformed orthodoxy has a different object, a different controlling center and starting-point for faithful speaking of God, one not located in the historical event of Jesus Christ but rather in an abstract deity. As Barth says in CD II/2, 79: “According to [Protestant orthodoxy's] conception God is everything in the way of aseity, simplicity, immutability, infinity, etc., but He is not the living God, that is to say, He is not the God who lives in concrete decision.”
The scripture discussion is tangential to this main point. Jon is correct that it comes down to biblical criticism. I don’t really know or care if the earthly Jesus said those words to Peter either. My only point here is that if our doctrine of revelation and scripture cannot fully embrace all historical-critical research, then there is something wrong with our doctrine.
February 1, 2012 at 10:48 pm
@Jim,
I’ll have to give Oliphant a read. I’m well aware of Barth’s disdain for Thomism and analogia entis; that’s one of the reasons I like him so much. I’ll remain skeptical about the analogy of being, and its rejection by the Reformed orthodox until persuaded otherwise; maybe by Oliphant.
I am much more Torrancean myself, and that’s why I wondered what you thought of him—if you’ve thought of him. True Barthians don’t see TFT going far enough with his so called onto-relational metaphysic—indeed because he still has a metaphysic, and thus I’m afraid TFT remains in limbo (which I appreciate!) between the classic substance metaphysic and radical actualism of Barth (or McCormack); of course the Barthian doesn’t really see TFT in limbo, she sees him with a somewhat still born actualism, and thus back with you, Jim (a Thomist).