Category Archives: Theology

Emil Brunner’s Simple Faith (7)

Theology, ,

Brunner’s Natural Theology

It is clear in this section that Brunner presupposes a universal knowledge of God, natural in the sense that every person has some ‘instinct’ (53) for it, that the gift of conscience has been given to every person by God, that “the law of God is as though it had been engraved in the human heart” (46). “Even the heathen know faintly that this life is a gift of God the Creator” (56). And they know also that they have violated God’s law and ordinances.

Everyone has a bad conscience whenever he thinks about God, for we know quite well what God wants of us, and our own failure to do what He demands. We know that we are disobedient. But because we know … we flee from God, we hide from Him like Adam and Eve after the Fall. The Law of God drives us away from God, or, more correctly, our bad conscience drives us away. We do not fear God, but we are afraid before God. … A bad conscience and the law of God belong together. We have a bad conscience because we know the law of God (55).

Evident in this citation is Brunner’s emphasis of human responsibility before God, of a final accounting before the Judge. “God requires an accounting. He holds us responsible. And that is what strikes terror in us, for how can we bribe the judge in this case?” (47)

The spring of life is really poisoned, things are bad with us. This is the testimony of conscience and even more sharply and clearly, the testimony of Holy Scripture. Behind God’s command stands the fearful word—Judgment! Lost! It is written more sharply in the New Testament than in the Old Testament. What then are we to do? (51, original emphasis)

A question we might ask is whether Brunner has correctly assessed the human condition or whether, in fact, his analysis is predicated on the loss of the cultural knowledge of God in Christendom. His exposition is not uncommon but follows a long tradition of biblical interpretation, especially passages such as Romans 1-2. His doctrine echoes that of Calvin and the Reformed tradition’s distinction between general and special revelation. Nonetheless, his rhetoric seems to presuppose the conditions of European Christendom.

Further evidence of this suggestion arises from Brunner’s discussion of the divine ordinances. He speaks specifically in terms of human marriage, the relationship between parents and children, and rulers and ruled. This language was widespread in nineteenth and early twentieth-century theology but was controversial in the period between the wars precisely because it was applied to such notions as nation, blood, and race. That is, the idea that there are ‘orders of creation’ was used in support of Nazi ideology, as God-ordained structures of existence that must be supported and maintained.

Although Brunner does not here engage these ideas, the structure of his argument suggests that he is aware of the danger that lurks here and that he repudiates it. Brunner explicitly grounds his doctrine of the ordinances in the divine love; they arise from God’s love for the creature and are given that humanity’s relationships might be ordered by the kind of love that God is and gives. True humanity is not defined by nation, blood, or race but by the image of the God who is love. These other realities divide humans from one another and so by definition fail Brunner’s test of what constitutes authentic human existence.

Finally, Brunner clearly notes that the Decalogue begins with God’s Word of grace but does not draw out the implication that the Decalogue is not so much a ‘republication’ of natural law but commandments for the covenant community. In particular, it is difficult to see how the first table of the law could arise as part of a natural law ethic; these commands are specific for the people of Israel.

There is, therefore, a tension in Brunner’s discussion. The traditional interpretation of Romans 1-2 especially, establishes human culpability before God: we are all sinners and therefore liable to divine wrath and judgement. Brunner maintains this interpretation and strengthens it with his assertion that “in his law God tells us nothing but the natural laws of true human life…” (46). But this diminishes the particularity of the revelation given to Israel and over-estimates the natural knowledge of the divine law that humanity supposedly possesses.

Emil Brunner’s Simple Faith (6)

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God’s Will for Humankind

In his reflection on the nature of human being, Emil Brunner suggests that the ‘image of God’ is a dynamic becoming:

He created man as a personal being, that is as a being that does not simply develop of itself into that for which God created it, but rather as a being who achieves his destiny only by saying his ‘yes’ to it (51).

Persons achieve or realise their ‘true’ humanity as they hear and receive the Word of God addressed to them. In chapters 10-13 of his little book Our Faith he explores the nature and contours of this Word, beginning with the Law.

Brunner begins with human experience of ‘law’ in general: our experience of cultural and social laws, of the laws of physics, of the human freedom and sense of autonomy that tempts us to think that we might be a ‘law unto oneself.’ Perhaps we can be even our own god! Yet, says Brunner, we find our autonomy limited and ultimately doomed. We find ourselves in environments we are unable to change or to bend to our will. We are confronted, finally, by the inevitability of death and with it all our God-pretensions. Brunner thus argues from a learned sense of law to establish an understanding of that which stands over against us and for which we are responsible: the Law of God.

The divine law is God’s will for humankind. “Every man, Jew or Christian, believer or atheist, cultured or uncultured, has some knowledge of this law. Every man has the consciousness of ‘responsibility’” via the faculty of conscience (46). This law is a reflection of the Creator’s good will for human life and it is just as inviolable as the laws of nature (47). Further, God has supplemented conscience by giving his people a written Law which is really a reiteration of “the natural laws of true human life” (46).

God’s law reveals that God wants something of us and that we are accountable for it. What is it that God desires? Brunner’s answer is threefold: something new every moment (!), only a few things—the Ten Commandments, and indeed, only one thing—the first commandment, for “he who keeps the first commandment keeps all the rest” (49). To have God alone as our God is to have a Master and thereby to forsake all alternatives, including especially the desire to be our own master. “God wants only that we should be that for which He created us. He created us ‘in His image’” (49). In binding us to himself God binds us also to others for the command to love God includes within itself the command to love our neighbour.

The Commandment of God is what God wants of us. But if we understand the words concerning the image of God, we also know what God wants for us. That God first loved us, before He demanded anything of us, and that He demands nothing more than that we should accept His love, that is, react to love with love, is simply what we call faith. … God’s incomprehensible, undeserved Love; and whosoever does that fulfils the will of God (49-50, original emphasis).

Of course, humanity has failed to keep God’s commandments and his law. We have supplanted God’s rule in the attempt to be our own master, seeking to live without and apart from God. We misuse our freedom of choice to do that which God does not will.

But God in His creative goodness, having given man freedom to choose for himself, gave him something more in that when he sinned he might not wholly corrupt his life and the life of others, might not wholly deviate from God’s way. This gift is the Ordinances of God (52).

The ordinances of God are those regularities of the natural ‘order’ in which human life is set. More particularly, they are limits and realities implanted in our very nature by God, which we can know intuitively, and which we can but ought not to transgress.

The most important of these ordinances is the fact that God has so organized human life that no man can live for himself. He cannot live without the other. Man needs woman, woman needs man. … Human life is so ordered by God because God has created man for love (53).

The ordinances of God can be endangered by human wilfulness, and, says Brunner, this has never been more apparent in world history than ‘today’ (53). The individual’s will for mastery, for autonomy, for independence tears at the very fabric of relationship and society.

The man who recognizes nothing higher than reason becomes ‘independent’—he no longer needs others, he is his own master—even his own God. And then human fellowship is dissipated like a string of pearls when the cord is cut. What binds us together is the Ordinances of God, behind which stands God’s love. He alone who is bound to God, and through God to his neighbour, can really become a man (54).

God’s address to humanity takes not only the form of law but also promise. Indeed, “God is not primarily the lawgiver, but the lifegiver” (55). The law functions to make us aware of our failure to do what God wills. But in itself it is a gift of divine love given to us for our good. Brunner acknowledges that the commandments do not begin with Thou shalt Not but with I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. All humanity have some inkling of the divine demand but the knowledge of the promise is strictly the message of the Bible.

That is the biblical message, not what God wants of us, but what He desires for us; no what we should do, but what God does and gives. The Law of God is everywhere, the Promise of God is only in the Bible—the promise, namely, that God comes to His sick, rebellious people, to heal them, the message of the ‘Saviour,’ the healing, saving, forgiving, and redeeming God. This promise is really the Word of God. … God desires nothing of us save that we allow Him to bestow life upon us (57, original emphasis).

Emil Brunner’s Simple Faith (5)

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On the Mystery and Goodness of Humankind

What is man? Neither merely dust, nor merely animal, nor a god. As Brunner turns to the Bible to answer this question he finds that humanity is created being, so that whatever we are, we are because God has made us so. Brunner bats away the scientific question concerning the mechanism God used to create humanity: “it is not a critical question for faith” (38). Clearly God uses means as the instruments of his work—such as dust, or human parents—but the work done remains God’s work.

Humanity is created in God’s image which distinguishes the human from all other creatures and establishes a similarity of the human creature to God. “What distinguishes man from the rest of creation is the share he has in God’s thought, that is, reason as distinguished from perception, which the animal also possesses” (39). More fundamentally, humanity is not merely created,

by the Word of God but for and in his Word. That means, God created man in such a way that he can receive God’s Word. That is reason in its true sense. Man really becomes man when he perceives something of God. … Man has been so created by God that he can become man only by perceiving God, by receiving God’s Word and—like a soldier repeating a command—repeating God’s Word. … When he says that in his heart homo sapiens becomes humanus. … We are man to the extent that we let God’s Word echo in our hearts. We are not simply men as a fox is a fox. But we are men only when God’s Word finds an echo in us. To the degree that this fails to happen we are inhuman (39, original emphasis).

Two features of this exposition bear reflection. First, ‘reason,’ for Brunner, is true to the extent that it responds and corresponds to the Word of God. The instrumental use of reason which has so distinguished the human from the rest of creation must be supplemented or perhaps crowned with this additional use if humanity is to be truly human, to fulfil its destiny as the divine image.

This infers that, second, Brunner views human existence as a project of becoming. We are human but must become, as it were, what we truly are. What we truly are is what God has intended and created us to be rather than what we find ourselves as. Homo sapiens must ‘become’ humanus. The Latin term can simply mean ‘human’ but also carries the nuances of humane or cultured or refined. This ‘becoming’ is a matter of positive response to the Word of God addressed to us. The person must perceive God, receive God’s Word, and let it echo in their heart. “The freedom to say yes or no to God is the mystery of man” (40). We have this freedom only because we are addressed by God. In this way we become his image, corresponding to him in his Word.

Failure to answer God’s Word addressed to us leaves us ‘inhuman.’ I don’t think Brunner intends this pejoratively, though it is tempting, perhaps, to see here a reference to the developing political and social situation of Germany in the mid-1930s. Rather, we fail to realise our existence as ‘the image of God.’ We are still ‘human’ in terms of our species but now without God as it were, less than what God intends for his creation. We are still endowed with the remarkable capacities God has given us but they now function in ‘inhuman’ ways, warped perhaps by our selfishness. For Brunner as for Calvin, we can only truly see and know ourselves as we perceive God; we know ourselves in his light.

To know ourselves truly, however, is also to understand that we are sinners. From a human perspective there is no one who is wholly good or wholly bad for we are all a mixture of both, though some people tend more the one way and some the other. In a biblical perspective, however, ‘there is none that does good, no, not one…’ To be a sinner is to be “bad at heart, infected with evil at the core” (41).

Sin is a depravity which has laid hold on us all. It is a radical perversion from God, disloyalty to the Creator who has given us so much and remains so loyal, an insulting alienation from Him, in which all of us, without exception, have shared (42-43).

Brunner uses the image of two people on a train, one sensible and the other stupid. But the point is that they are both on the same train and both heading in the same direction—in this case, away from God. This perversity, this evil that has captured the human heart, is inexplicable. We cannot explain sin nor even perceive it until it is shown to us in the death of Christ:

It is not until we see how much it cost to remove the stone between us and Him, that we understand how great was the weight of sin’s guilt. Christ shows us how completely the whole movement of life is in the wrong direction (44).

Emil Brunner’s Simple Faith (4)

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Evil & Election

Although God created, rules, and guides the world God is not the sole actor in it. The reality of evil and suffering in the world calls divine providence and goodness into question. “Who can deny that this is a bedevilled world?” (30). Although Brunner acknowledges the reality of a diabolical power inimical to God, the greater issue is the stubborn opposition to God’s will which arises in human willing and which results in that being done which God does not will. God allows this. The disorder in the world is not a sign that God’s rule has been overthrown or forfeited. Rather, God gives time and space for the human creature to learn of God, to hear his Word, and freely to turn to God.

Hence He gives us, situated as we are in this deranged world, His Word, namely, the Law and the Promises, that we, perceiving the insane folly of evil and the fixed nature of His love, may return to Him in freedom and gladness (31).

Further, God has given himself to the world in Jesus Christ, permitting the world to rage against him, and in and through the cross of Christ demonstrating that he is Lord even in the face of the greatest human evil. Indeed, “men even in rebellion against him still remain tools in His hand to be used as He wills” (32).

In the Cross of Jesus Christ we perceive that destruction is not God’s will, and that in spite of it God keeps His masterly grip upon the world, and accomplishes His counsels of love. He gives us time to decide for ourselves, to turn to him (32).

Brunner does not pretend to explain God’s purpose in the face of the horrendous evil in the world. He places the blame for this evil squarely on the misuse of human free will and the diabolical power at work in the world. God does not will this evil and suffering or the derangement of this bedevilled world. But in the darkness of this world God shows us his will, found in the commandments and the gospel of forgiveness and salvation (33). The task of the church is to not explain but to announce the triumph of God’s love as revealed in the cross of Christ. Or to put it in words that Brunner does not use: the gospel is our theodicy. God has not given us an explanation for evil and suffering but an answer and a hope, grounded in the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

God’s purposes are grounded in the eternal thought and will of God, in ‘the eternal counsels’ of the God who views us graciously: “Deep, deep are the roots of our life” (33). Divine election signifies both origin—we come from eternity—and destiny—we are destined for eternity. The ‘we’ in this sentence is the believer; the circle of election is the circle of faith.

The elect in themselves are only ‘them that believe.’ And believers are those who in their hearts ‘have become obedient to the Word of God.’ Election dawns upon no one except in the full, independent, obedient and trustworthy decision of faith. … Election and obedience, election and personal decision of faith belong inseparably together in the Bible. One cannot play election off against decision, nor personal decision against election, tempting though that be to reason. Reason must bow here, yet dare not abdicate. How the two can be reconciled, the free eternal election of God and the responsible decision of man is a problem we cannot understand (35, original emphasis).

Election thus involves first God’s free, eternal decision and then a person’s responsible decision, the latter grounded in the former: “When a man is permitted to perceive that God sees him from eternity … A man then knows…” (34). Brunner rejects the idea of ‘double predestination,’ the idea that God from all eternity has chosen some for salvation and others for damnation. Of this doctrine,

There is no word to be found in the Holy Scripture. One can scarcely avoid drawing this conclusion from the teachings of the Scripture. Logic always misleads in that direction. But the Scripture itself does not do it, nor should we (35).

Thus, Brunner holds an election to faith and a judgement of the unbelieving. He insists that underlying all this is the divine will and purpose but refuses to draw the logical conclusion that God is responsible for the fate of the unbelieving. The teaching of Scripture is ‘a-logical’ (36), a mystery beyond our ability but a mystery nonetheless that may be believed and in which we may rejoice. This election—and thus our salvation—is entirely by grace alone, the operation of God’s boundless love and mercy. This is the Christian’s ‘greatest joy,’ and the true source of the ‘peace that passes all understanding’ (34).

Emil Brunner’s Simple Faith (3)

Theology, ,

Creational Purpose

God is the Creator—and Lord—of all things. He is the Lord prior to, in, and over his creation. To know God as Creator is to know him as the Lord who claims us in the totality of our existence. The world is God’s world and it testifies to him who made it.

The world is the house of the Great King and the Great Artist. He does not permit Himself to be seen; for man cannot see God, only the world. But this world is His creation, and whether conscious of it or not, it speaks of Him who made it. Yet in spite of this testimony man does not know Him, or at least not rightly. … We behave ourselves in this God-created world (if one may use the clumsy simile) like dogs in a great art gallery. We see the pictures and yet fail to see them. … Our madness, haughtiness, irreverence—in short, our sin, is the reason for our failure to see the Creator in His creation (24-25).

Humanity in all ages has had ‘presentiments’ of God though not true or full knowledge. This natural awareness of God’s existence is the basis of human religion: “the gods of the heathen are partly constructions of human fantasy, partly surmise of the true God, a wild combination of both” (26). This is true also of the philosophers.

Brunner distinguishes between belief that a divine being created the world (which is merely a theory of origins) and faith in the creator. The latter is, as already mentioned, to know God as Lord and to obey him as such.

The world is not an arbitrary occurrence, rather God’s creation is purposeful. What appears to us as perhaps random chance or fate finds its place in God’s overarching plan.

There is One who knows the destiny of the world, He who first made the sketch, He who created and rules the world according to this plan. What is confusion for us is order for Him, what we call chance is designed by Him, thought out from eternity and executed with omnipotence (28).

This purpose, however, is not immediately evident to those who live in the world and its historical unfolding but is a matter of revelation, a matter of Jesus Christ. Here Brunner announces the divine purpose: “reconciliation, salvation, forgiveness of sins, promise of eternal life, fulfilment of all things in God’s own life. That is God’s plan for the world” (29). The world that originated in God is to find its fulfilment and destiny in God: to this we are called and invited, and to this we must respond. “To hear this call, and in this call to hear where God will lead us, to have insight into God’s plan for the world—that is faith” (30).

Emil Brunner’s Simple Faith (2)

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The Knowledge of God

Brunner’s first three meditations concern the knowledge of God: Is there a God? Is the Bible the Word of God? and the Mystery of God. Brunner wants to turn the first question on its head. To even ask the question is to signify a fundamental disconnect between ‘ourselves’ and our heart, conscience, and awareness of the world, all of which testify to the reality of God. “Your heart knows something of God already; and it is that very knowledge which gives your question existence and power” (Brunner, Our Faith, 14). Further, “not only the heart within, but the world without also testifies of God” (14-15).

To ask the question, then, “Is there a God?” is to fail to be morally serious. For when one is morally serious one knows that good is not evil, that right and wrong are two different things, that one should seek the right and eschew the wrong. There is a divine order to which one must bow whether one likes to do so or not. Moral seriousness is respect for the voice of conscience. If there is no God, conscience is but a complex of residual habits and means nothing. If there is no God then it is absurd to trouble oneself about right—or wrong (15-16).

Like Calvin, Brunner presupposes an innate knowledge of God, supported by an external knowledge of God grounded in the created order. “That God exists is testified by reason, conscience, and nature with its wonders. But who God is—God Himself must tell us in His Revelation” (16, original emphasis). This ‘natural’ knowledge of God (shared by all humanity) is really an awareness of something more rather than personal knowing. One does not know God in a personal or relational sense but ‘knows’ of God or has an intuition of his reality. The reason for this is that God is not ‘a thing’ in this world, one more thing amongst other things, an object of knowledge which might be discovered and categorised and thereby mastered by the knower (13). God, rather, intends that we might know him and be mastered by him.

It is for this reason that God has given us the Bible: “God has made known the secret of His will through the Prophets and Apostles in the Holy Scriptures. He permitted them to say who He is” (18). Brunner holds an instrumental view of the Scripture. God speaks to humanity through the Bible. It is the Word of God because and as it points to Jesus Christ, and because in it we hear the voice of God. The Bible speaks in many ways of its one central theme—of the Good Shepherd God who comes to us. “The voices of the Prophets are the single voice of God, calling. Jesus Christ is God Himself coming. In Him, ‘the word became flesh.’ … He is the Word of God” (19, original emphasis). Brunner uses the analogy of a gramophone record and the record label “His Master’s Voice” to illustrate how the Scripture functions as the Word of God. (I remember as a child my father’s record collection included albums from this label!)

If you buy a gramophone record you are told that you will hear the Master Caruso. Is that true? Of course! But really his voice? Certainly! And yet—there are some noises made by the machine which are not the master’s voice, but the scratching of the steel needle upon the hard disk. But do not become impatient with the hard disk! For only by means of the record can you hear ‘the master’s voice.’ So, too, is it with the Bible. It makes the real Master’s voice audible—really His voice, His words, what He wants to say. But there are incidental noises accompanying, just because God speaks His word through the voice of man. … But through them God speaks His word. … The importance of the Bible is that God speaks to us through it (19-20).

What the Bible reveals is Jesus Christ—the mystery of who God is. All that humans can know in their own capacity is the world. God, however, is not the world but rather the mystery within which the world has its being (21). The mystery of God is threefold: his transcendent majesty over the world, his searing holiness which wills our obedience, and his unspeakable love and condescension. In his transcendent majesty, God is Lord. He is the Almighty whose holy will confronts us as an absolute to which we must either submit ourselves or against which we will shatter ourselves.

But the mastery of God is even greater. The will of this holy God—what He absolutely desires, is love. His feeling towards us is of infinite love. He wants to give Himself to us, to draw and bind us to Him. Fellowship is the one thing He wants absolutely. God created the world in order to share Himself. … God desires one thing absolutely: that we should know the greatness and seriousness of His will-to-love, and permit ourselves to be led by it. Our heart is like a fortress which God wants to capture (22-23).

Brunner’s portrayal of the divine mystery posits the sheer givenness of God’s transcendence: God simply is and is the almighty and holy God. This is the overarching reality within which our being and the being of the world has its being. The central category Brunner uses to discuss God’s relation to the world is the divine will. Brunner speaks first of the holiness and demand of God and only then of the tender lovingkindness of God. In each case it is a matter of the divine willing, and in each case the divine will is absolute. Yet although Brunner speaks of the divine holiness first, it seems that the divine loving has a deeper and perhaps more fundamental bearing: God created the world in order to share himself with it, and wills above all things that we should know his ‘will-to-love.’

Our heart is like a fortress which God wants to capture. He wants to capture it with His love. If, overcome by His love, we open the gate, it is well with our souls. If, however, we obstinately close our hearts to His love, His absolute will—then woe to us! If we refuse to surrender to the love of God, we must feel the absoluteness of His will as wrath (23-24).

Emil Brunner’s Simple Faith (1)

Theology,

In 1935 Emil Brunner published a little book entitled Unser Glaube: Eine christliche Unterweisung, translated by John W. Rilling in 1936 into English as Our Faith. Just 123 pages, the booklet contains thirty-five brief meditations from ‘Is there a God?’ to ‘Life Eternal.’ Or perhaps the sections called be called sermonettes, for they have an easy, down-to-earth and relatable style. It seems to have won an audience: the English translation underwent continual reprint until at least 1965, the year before his death in 1966. Overshadowed throughout his life—and since then—by the towering figure of Karl Barth, Brunner was nonetheless a significant theologian in his own right. This little book reflects his deep concern to provide an accessible introduction to Christian faith for those outside the church, as well as initial instruction for those inside. As such, it is a work of apologetics and catechesis, a pastoral theology in service of Christian faith. Not only does the book provide an introduction to ‘our faith’ but also to the thought of Brunner himself.

Brunner begins his little work with a foreword, the first words of which are:

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” That is no simile, but a literal law of life. There is a pernicious anaemia of the soul, a starvation of the soul as well as of the body. Humanity in our time suffers from chronic under-nourishment of its soul. … The Bible can nourish us only if it is understood and personally appropriated as God’s own Word. … The performance of this task, in my opinion, is the true service of theology—to think through the message of God’s work in Jesus Christ—think it through so long and so thoroughly that it can be spoken simply and intelligibly to every person in the language of their time (Brunner, Our Faith, 9).

In these words, we capture several of Brunner’s orienting convictions: the Bible is ‘God’s own word’ given for human nourishment. But it must be understood and personally appropriated as such. This is the true service of theology: not merely theoretical or metaphysical speculations, but the thoughtful exposition of this Word in light of and in reference to God’s work in Jesus Christ, that men and women might hear and understand this message.

But Brunner also has a broader horizon in view: as dark clouds gather over Europe and the east “many are beginning to listen to Truth which is not from man.”

The Word of God is the one thing which is able to unit East and West, the whole dismembered mankind, and to reshape it into one big family of nations. May it help in bringing to our consciousness that we are all called to one aim as we are all created by one Creator after His image (9-10).

The Word of God nourishes not merely a privatised faith or spirituality, but a vision for a world renewed. Christian faith has personal and devotional implications, yes; it is concerned also not merely with the self but with others, and indeed, all. It has missional and moral implications also. Our Faith is in God—Creator and Saviour of all.

Over the next little while I plan to give a brief precis of Brunner’s reflections on the faith, using his little book as a guide. If you’d like to read the book itself, it is helpfully published online chapter by chapter at Religion Online.

Baptism and Identity

Culture, Spirituality, Theology, ,

These days, it seems, we wear our identities on the outside, writ large. We proclaim and display them, manipulate and manage them. It’s become very important to carve out a space for ourselves, to be the somebody we are in such a way that, for others, there’s no mistaking it.

Is this so very different from the way things have always been? Maybe, maybe not. Who we are, as well as our sense of who we are, have always been important. Especially when we’re young and ‘becoming,’ or, ‘discovering,’ who we are.

In the present cultural moment, these things have become more prominent, and curious. On the one hand, a person’s identity in modernity has become a project of the autonomous self, and the technological and cultural milieu encourage the development and display of one’s unique identity. On the other, we’ve seen in the last several decades, a resurgence of ‘group identity’ where belonging to – identifying with – one’s tribe has become increasingly foundational, and thereby a cornerstone in one’s personal uniqueness.

But this, too, is probably the way it has always been: identity as an interplay of the intersecting aspects of one’s life, personal attributes and experience, community, and so on. Perhaps one factor in the present moment is the degree of independence one has in choosing their tribe and identity. Again, this is a luxury not everyone has equally.

Does becoming a Christian complicate or simplify one’s identity? I suspect that this is not an easy question to answer. For some people it will be the former, for others the latter. For many, perhaps, first complication before things becoming simpler. But it could go the other way as well, with the nature of a person’s Christian experience resembling a lifelong wrestle.

Nevertheless, it does appear that Christian identity is ‘a thing’: that, ideally, some features of Christian identity are discernible across time and tradition. To speak like this is to speak normatively rather than with reference to the diversity of Christian experience. It is to suggest that there is, in fact, a Christian ideal to aspire to, in spite of the great and often legitimate diversity of Christian experience and expression that has existed and continues to exist.

More precisely, we can speak of Jesus Christ as he is set forth in the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments as the archetype and exemplar of Christian identity. He is the pattern, the standard, and the goal. A Christian is one called to follow Jesus, to be conformed to Christ. It is evident that this will involve a hermeneutical exercise—who is this Jesus to whom I am called to conform?—and therefore inevitable variety and diversity in Christian experience and identity formation.

Yet such variety will occur within a somewhat bounded field: while many forms of life and identity may find their place within the field—from ancient Christian asceticism to modern evangelical Christianity to forms of Christian mysticism—not everything will. The New Testament writers clearly saw some forms of life and identity as contrary to life in Christ. It is also the case that we cannot always discern where the boundaries lie, or to shift the metaphor, what distinguishes the wheat and the weeds. Careful theological reflection and pastoral discretion are required, along with humility and generous hospitality as the posture we adopt when considering these matters and engaging in dialogue.

These days, it seems, we wear our identities on the outside, writ large. Hopefully this is the case with Christian identity, that we might truly be the Christian we are in such a way that, for others, there’s no mistaking it.

I have reflected on some of these issues in a new article recently published at Religions entitled “The Role of Baptism in Christian Identity Formation.” The abstract for the article is:

The construction of one’s identity in late modernity is sometimes viewed as a project of the autonomous self in which one’s identity may shift or change over the course of one’s existence and development. For the Christian, however, one’s identity is both a divine gift, and a task of ecclesial formation, and for both the gift and the task, Christian baptism is fundamental. Baptism represents the death of the self and its rebirth in Christ, a decisive breach with the life that has gone before. Baptism establishes a new identity, a new affiliation, a new mode of living, and a new life orientation, direction, and purpose. This paper explores the role of baptism in the formation of Christian identity, finding that Christian identity is both extrinsic to the self and yet also an identity into which we are called and into which we may continually grow. The essay proceeds in three sections. It begins with a survey of recent philosophical reflection on the concept of identity, continues by reflecting on the nature of Christian baptism in dialogue with this reflection, and concludes by considering in practical terms how baptism functions in the process of conversion–initiation toward the formation of mature Christian identity.

“As If Nothing Had Happened”: Karl Barth’s ‘Responsible’ Theology

Theology, ,

My latest essay has just been published at Religions, Vol. 13 No. 3 as part of a special issue concerning “Karl Barth’s Theology in a Time of Crisis” edited by Mark R. Lindsay. My essay examines how theology might proceed responsibly, in times of crisis. It explores Barth’s treatise Theological Existence Today, to understand Barth’s own response to the crisis confronting German Protestantism in the face of Hitler’s rise to power.

The abstract for the essay is:

Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in early 1933 precipitated an ecclesial and theological crisis in the life of the German churches. Karl Barth responded to the crisis in his treatise Theological Existence Today, calling the German church to steadfast faithfulness in the face of increasing pressure to compromise the central commitments of its faith. This essay provides an exposition of Barth’s treatise, exploring his understanding of theological existence, and evaluating his rather infamous assertion that he would “carry on theology, and only theology, now as previously, and as if nothing had happened”. It finds that Barth called his peers to ‘responsible’ theology, the practice of which required a particular ethos and specific methodological commitments. Such responsibility was critical if the church was to retain both its integrity as the people of God, and its ministry, during this crisis.

If you have trouble using the above link, go to:
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/3/266/htm#fn001-religions-13-00266

Karl Barth’s “Unfortunate” Affair

Theology,

This is a good reflection on the Barth-von Kirschbaum relationship from Carolyn Mackie (Women in Theology). She notes some of the difficult decisions made and rightly concludes that “The production of a brilliant piece of theology is never sufficient justification for harming others.” I agree. Charlotte von Kirschbaum indeed proved indispensable to Barth’s theological work and perhaps her contribution might still have been made even had the circumstances differed.

I think I would use a stronger term than ‘unfortunate’ to describe the affair. There is, of course, much that we will never know, and the story reflects the ofttimes tragic nature of human relationships. Yet we ought not to justify, least of all religiously and theologically, that which cannot and should not be justified. It is better clearly to acknowledge that Barth crossed a line that should not have been crossed.

Mackie is also correct to assert that Barth’s theological work should be assessed in the light of this knowledge to ascertain how his domestic arrangements may have influenced his theological construction. His discussion of marriage in the Command of God the Creator is a case in point (CD III/4), and warrants further examination.