Category Archives: Theology

The Blood of His Cross (7) – Vanhoozer (ii, cont’d)

Theology,

agnusdeiVanhoozer accepts several aspects of the postmodern critique of atonement theology, especially the temptation to reduce atonement to one description of its intent and efficacy. “We need a way to think non-reductively about the cross” (397). No theory of the cross is adequate in itself, and all the theories together, will not exhaust the meaning and mystery that is the cross. In a typically amusing and insightful quip, Vanhoozer suggests that,

Some atonement theories may, ironically, partake more of what Luther called the ‘theology of glory’—a trust in human reason to find out the ways of God—than they do the ‘theology of the cross.’ The cross represents a powerful critique of attempts to ‘explain’ God as well as attempts to make oneself right before God (401-402).

Thus Vanhoozer also appreciates the postmodern emphasis on ‘excess’—the cross is a case of how much more (Romans 5:9), always and forever exceeding our understanding of its depths and effects. Nevertheless, Vanhoozer’s non-reductive reading of the cross cuts both ways, and he challenges the postmodern temptation to reduce the biblical testimony of the divine work at the cross to a work only of God’s love and not also of his justice, or to an exemplary rather than also an objective work of God on our behalf.

Vanhoozer’s theology of the atonement circles around several key features. First, he insists that the atonement must be understood within the economies of grace and covenant rather than an economy of exchange. God did not have to do anything; “there is no causal explanation for grace” (396). What God did do was give himself, a gift of gratuitous love beyond all reason. The death of Jesus must be understood in terms of Old Testament covenantal categories of exodus (liberation), exile (punishment), and restoration and return (reconciliation). Thus Jesus’ death includes both legal and relational aspects, both punitive/retributive and expiatory/ liberational aspects; these polarities must not be reduced on the one side or the other.

“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (Mk 14:24). … What Jesus is claiming in the Last Supper is that his broken body and shed blood are the place where sin is dealt with…making possible life in the presence of God. … The shed blood is a sign that God has proved this covenant faithfulness precisely by undergoing the sanctions, legal and relational, for covenant disobedience (398, original emphasis).

Second, Vanhoozer insists that a doctrine of the atonement must give equal ultimacy to both God’s love and God’s light (his justice and holiness):

The death of Jesus represents both the excess that is constitutive of the gift (love), and the excess that is constitutive of one’s ethical duty towards another (justice, as understood by postmoderns). God’s reconciling act in the death of Christ was ‘excessive.’ In loving his enemies (Rom. 5:10), God brings his covenant partner to justice, not simply retribution. … God did not merely compensate for human sin; he did more. He did not simply make up sin’s deficit; he destroyed it. The New Testament, of course, knows this ‘excess’ by its proper covenantal name: grace. … The economy of covenantal grace is not exhausted by the logic of penal substitution even though the latter has a legitimate place (403-404).

Third, Vanhoozer’s understanding of the atonement is necessarily substitutionary: “Substitution is the principle that best corresponds to the preposition (hyper); God pours himself out for us, not in an economic exchange, but in an excess of justice and love” (403, slightly altered). Substitution is a necessary if not sufficient condition for understanding the biblical testimony to the death of Christ. Jesus died for us.

Finally, Jesus’ death is excessive, an economy of eschatological promise, gift and blessing whereby his death issues in the gift of the Holy Spirit—God’s self-gift to the believer—which bursts the limits of an economy of exchange and calls forth the free subjective response of the believer.

Jesus gives his body and blood for us, and in return we receive his Spirit, the operative principle of the new covenant and of the new age. Jesus’ death both creates and cleanses a new temple, the people of God. … Jesus’ death on the cross is a new exodus, a new Passover supper, a new return from exile, an entry into a new kind of promised land, a building of a new and better temple. God reconciles the world to himself by providing his own Son as a substitute for the exile that should be ours. Jesus is God’s gift, the goat that bears our guilt—the covenantal curse, separation from the promises of God—who in doing so enables our covenant restoration. Jesus’ death on the cross is at once an exodus and an exile, the condition of the possibility of our entry to the promised land of the Holy Spirit (399, original emphasis).

The Blood of His Cross (7) – Vanhoozer (ii)

Theology, , ,

agnusdeiKevin Vanhoozer’s essay “The Atonement in Postmodernity: Guilt, Goats and Gifts” (in Hill & James (eds), The Glory of the Atonement: Biblical, Theological & Practical Perspectives, 367-404) responds to postmodern critiques of atonement theories generally, and the penal substitutionary theory of atonement specifically. For some postmodern theorists, atonement theories seeking to understand and explicate the death of Jesus are problematic on two fronts: first they are reductionist, attempting to ‘control’ the biblical material that witnesses to the death of Christ, and hence second, are violent, imposing a ‘system’ on this material.

The scandal of the cross, for postmoderns, is that theory reduces otherness precisely by explaining it. Postmoderns might say that we need to recover the scandal—the paradox, the ‘aporia’—of the cross through a ‘sacrifice’ of the intellect, acknowledging that conceptual thinking has here reached its limit, its death. … The challenge for theology is to ‘theorize’ the cross (i.e., in a doctrinal formulation) while simultaneously respecting it (i.e., as an ‘other’ that eludes our conceptual grasp). The problem is that theologies of the atonement seem unable to articulate a theory that explains the saving significance of Jesus’ death without betraying the rich testimonies to the event of his death (369, original emphasis).

With respect to penal substitution, the problem is not simply the attempt to render an explanation of the saving significance of Jesus’ death, but the content of the doctrine is also abhorrent: it is thought to legitimise personal and social violence by portraying God as violent, and thereby legitimising a view, practice, and system of retributive—violent—“justice.”

Hence, the scandal of the cross is not metaphysical (how could God suffer and die?) but moral: Does God need to be placated before he can love and forgive? Is God party to an economy of retaliatory exchange? (372, original emphasis).

The idea of atonement as a form of exchange is repudiated by postmoderns: “The operative concept in postmodern theological understandings of the atonement is excess, not exchange. The death of Jesus exceeds our attempts to explain it” (396, original emphasis). God, in this view, does not maintain a ‘moral’ or ‘legal’ economy in which every wrongdoing attracts a penalty of retribution, for retribution alone is not transformative (378).

Vanhoozer examines Girard’s theory that Jesus’ death was as the scapegoat that unmasked the ‘scapegoat mechanism’ which functions at the heart and foundation of every society, culture and institution. The scapegoat mechanism, according to Girard, secures the peace of a particular group by assigning blame and violent retribution to a third party, a victim which by its sacrifice saves the group from tearing itself apart. By taking the place of the scapegoat, Jesus unmasked and repudiated this sacred sacrificial violence. His death was not a sacrifice for us, but rather his exemplary death shows that pattern of divine love which submits to human violence in order to absorb and transcend it.

Jesus’ suffering and death were necessary because of the world’s inability to free itself from the cycle of rivalry and violence, not because God’s justice demanded death. … The death of Christ is thus a unique breakthrough, a decisive event in the history of human consciousness. The purpose of his death is to end all scapegoating, all sacrifices (387).

Postmodern theorists and theologians have also questioned the ‘economy of the gift’ (Vanhoozer discusses Milbank, Derrida, Marion, and Ricoeur):

As soon as we give something to someone, we put that person in our debt, thus taking, not giving. The gift disappears in a web of calculation, interest and measure. Such is the aporia of the gift, according to Derrida. It cannot be given without creating an economy of debt (392, original emphasis).

So long as the gift of God is viewed as part of an economy of debt or exchange, God is implicated in a dubious and oppressive system. But the idea of gift need not be reduced to a system of exchange in which the gift issues in debt and duty. Rather, a gift may exceed all expectations:

Ricoeur especially wants us to get beyond the ‘moral vision,’ together with its economy of retribution and logic of equivalence, in order to perceive the ‘eschatological vision,’ with its economy of restoration and its logic of extravagant excess. The moral vision is guilty, Ricoeur thinks, of an overly literalistic reading. … It is only by interpreting within the old economy of law, where the loss of an eye demands exact compensation (another eye), that we arrive at the notion of penal substitution theory of atonement. … In Ricoeur’s view, the doctrine of atonement belongs, not in an economy of crime and punishment, but in a hyper-economy of gift and grace (395-396).

Continued tomorrow…

The Blood of His Cross (6) – Kevin Vanhoozer (i)

Theology, , ,

agnusdeiIn his excellent survey of modern atonement theories, Kevin Vanhoozer identifies seven lines of thought (“Atonement” in Kapic & McCormack (eds), Mapping Modern Theology). The classic lines of atonement theology were, of course, laid down a thousand years ago by Anselm and Abelard in the so-called objective and subjective theories of atonement. The Reformers focussed primarily on the former, while in the nineteenth century the ‘turn to the subject’ in philosophy was echoed by a similar ‘(re)turn to the subject’ in atonement theology. The rise of psychology, an emphasis on human history and experience, and a rejection of divine retribution all contributed to a new focus on Abelard’s approach (178). The first five lines of modern atonement theology are characterised by Vanhoozer as:

  1. Jesus’ spirituality and socio-politics: Jesus, the exemplary human, communicates divine love, a consciousness of forgiveness, a new consciousness of God, and a new ideal of sociality and justice (Schleiermacher, Harnack, Ritschl, and Theodore Jennings). The cross overcomes our enmity towards God and calls us to a new way of life.
  2. From Substitution to Representation: Incarnation as Atonement. Atonement occurs not simply in the death of Jesus but in the entirety of his life. The focus is more ontological than moral, more incarnational and participatory, though the question arises, how one does participate. (Irving, McLeod Campbell, T. F. Torrance).
  3. Non-Violent Atonement: the cross is not an atonement as such, but an exposure of the myth of violence, a divine refusal to overcome sacrifice and violence with more violence. Sacrifice and violence are not redemptive but self-perpetuating; God never uses them, nor requires retributive justice before he can or will forgive (Girard; feminist, black and liberation theologies.)
  4. Christus Victor Recapitulated: the older account of the atonement demythologised: cultural rather than cosmic powers have been defeated in the work of the cross. Against the violence of the cultural powers which crucified Jesus comes the non-violent ethos of Jesus in the face of violence. This is not a passive submission to violence, but its unmasking through non-violent forgiveness and witness to the reign of God (Aulen, Wink, Weaver).
  5. The Cross as an Event in God’s Being: Hegel proposes a metaphysical account in which God overcomes the estrangement between the finite and the infinite by taking alienation and the finite into his own being and overcoming it. God is the reconciliation, the overcoming of opposites. Moltmann proposes a similar eschatological account of the cross as death in God, in which the event of the cross is constitutive of God’s nature as suffering love that takes the whole of created history into itself. Barth, too, sees the cross as an event in God’s being, but as the outworking of the divine self-determination established in the divine election. “The cross is not a contingency plan but part of the content of God’s self-determination to be our God and to embrace humanity as his covenant partner” (195).

Following this survey Vanhoozer questions the place of penal substitution in modern evangelical theology noting that it is both criticised and defended by different groups and theologians from within the evangelical camp.

One merit of the penal substitution view is the clarity and conciseness with which it is able to answer the question, “Why did Jesus have to die?” The answer: in order to bear the condemnation (penal) in our place (substitution). … The outstanding question for evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic now concerns not only the legitimacy of penal substitution but its centrality: is it merely one among many possible models, first among equals, or the one true explanation? (197, 199)

Vanhoozer’s comment about defenders and detractors of the doctrine shows these two groups dividing along classic Anselmian-Abelardian lines: “While defenders of penal substitution affirmed divine justice and human guilt, it detractors…emphasized divine love and human repentance” (197).

The seventh line of modern atonement theology is identified as a “unified” or “non-reductive” approach, in which proponents seek to bridge the divides between various models and incorporate the various strengths of each (Sherman, Boersma, Spence). In the end, Vanhoozer too adopts a unitive approach understanding the atonement in terms of ‘triune covenantal mediation.’ Vanhoozer refuses to play one set of divine attributes off against another: “God is all that he is—all holy, all loving, all just, all merciful—in all that he does. The cross, as the sum of divine wisdom, displays all the divine perfections.” Further,

The cross is the climax of the history of the Son’s covenantal mediation, the culmination of the whole triune economy of redemption. The shed blood is a graphic sign that God has proved faithful to his Abrahamic promise (Gen. 17) precisely by undergoing the sanctions, legal (i.e. death by execution) and relational (i.e. exile), for covenant disobedience (Deut. 28:15-68). By dying for us, Jesus makes possible new and expanded ‘in-law’ relationships (Rom. 5:15-19; 8:15), giving us a share in his Sonship (201).

It is clear, however, that while Vanhoozer seeks to include the positive contribution of all the approaches, he prioritises the objective nature of the atonement as the ground by which the subjective response might be realised. The ‘penal’ nature of the atonement is still present but reimagined within a broader covenantal context and narrative. Jesus’ death is for us and in our place, a redemptive suffering on our behalf. His blood plays a positive role: as witness that he has borne the legal and relational covenant sanctions for us—rejection and death—that we might be given a share in his divine Sonship.

Reading Karl Barth on Election (3)

Theology,

Church Dogmatics Study EditionSelection: The Church Dogmatics II/2:25-34, The Orientation of the Doctrine of Election.

Barth concludes his discussion of the orientation of the doctrine by viewing his three central characteristics through the lens of the gospel. The election of God is not bare choice as though the concept of choice can be absolutized.

If we are to understand and explain the nature of this primal and basic act of God, we cannot stop, then, at the formal characteristic that it is a choice. We must resist the temptation to absolutise in some degree the concept of choosing or electing. … It cannot well be denied that there has taken place such an absolutizing of the concept of electing, or of its freedom, with the accompanying influence of a non-Christian conception of God, in the history of the doctrine. … As against that, we must take as our starting-point the fact that this divine choice or election is the decision of the divine will which was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and which had as its goal the sending of the Son of God (25).

The freedom of God’s decision is not an abstract freedom, but the freedom of the God who loves in freedom. God’s love is the movement toward fellowship, ultimately expressed in John 3:16. Election can be understood only in these terms, and therefore, only as gospel. “What takes place in this election is always that God is for us; for us, and therefore for the world which was created by Him, which is distinct from Him, but which is yet maintained by Him. … This much is certain, that in this election…God loved the world. (25-26).

Barth acknowledges that God’s love toward the world may be resisted and opposed and that there remains a “definite sphere of damnation ordained and determined by God as the negation of the divine affirmation…but the divine affirmation, the divine willing as such, is salvation and not damnation. The message of God’s election means always the message of the Yes determined and pronounced by God” (27). Even in hell we can think only of the love of God; we may have refused God’s election but God has not refused us. “In that decree as such we find only the decree of His love. In the proclaiming and teaching of His election we can hear only the proclaiming of the Gospel” (27).

Thus with respect to the three aspects of a serious doctrine of election, Barth insists,

1. That the freedom of God’s grace and decision unconditionally precedes the creature and so is the ground of the “final and severest humiliation of the creature” (28). God is free to say Yes and, Nevertheless, in the face of human opposition, and so free also to forgive our sins and overcome our resistance to him (31). God’s Yes is his final word and ultimate intent, and is the word which we must declare. The human No is vanquished in the divine Yes; i.e. it cannot be ultimate. Neither, however, can the creature despair. It is humiliated, decentred and relocated, not in autonomy but in the overarching sphere of divine grace. Does this mean human decision is not real? No, but it does mean that it is not ultimate.

He is free rather, and His hand is almighty, in the fact that He can rescue the creature from the destruction into which it has plunged itself by its opposition. He is free in the fact that He can turn it in spite of itself to the salvation and life which are the positive and distinctive meaning and goal of His love. And it is that which God elects (28-29).

2. That the mystery of election remains: it is grounded in God’s own good pleasure which knows no “Wherefore”, that is, no cause outside of God’s own good will. Because it remains inexplicable to us, we can but bow before the gracious God and submit ourselves to him.

Confronted with the mystery of God, the creature must be silent: not merely for the sake of being silent, but for the sake of hearing. Only to the extent that it attains to silence, can it attain to hearing. But, again, it must be silent not merely for the sake of hearing, but for that of obeying. For obedience is the purpose and goal of hearing. Our return to obedience is indeed the aim of free grace. It is for this that it makes us free. … In its very character as unseaerchable the election of God demands as such our obedience. It is not proclaimed to us, nor does it reach us…if in and with that election there is no summons to obedience—quite irrespective of the accusation laid against us, the curse resting upon us, the death showing our whole life. From these very things the election of grace has, in fact, released us (30).

Whereas, therefore, in God’s freedom human decision is relativised, in God’s mystery it is required. Election calls for obedience and worship, silence and hearing. Yet obedience is not self-effort, merit or even confirmation of our election. It is acknowledgement; that is, the believer is called to an obedience already fulfilled, and therefore this call is gospel, a call to peace. God’s yes to the creature is total and eternal; God has claimed the creature as his own, and thus claimed, “it has no longer any need to justify itself, to defend itself, or to save itself. It may be silent and still before this mystery” (32).

3. That the divine righteousness of God both judges and saves us. God is vindicated by his righteousness in judging us, yet God’s righteousness is the faithfulness he expresses to the creature in mercy and forgiveness. God’s righteousness is viewed as God being true to God’s own self and purpose. His righteousness means that,

God does not acquiesce in the creature’s self-destruction as its own enemy. He sees to it that His own prior claim on the creature, and its own true claim to life is not rendered null and void. He cares for the creature as for His own possession. And in seeking its highest good, He magnifies his own glory. We cannot distinguish God’s kingly righteousness from his mercy (34).

Meanderings…

Culture, Theology,

Old BooksDarren Sumner has been writing on the Eternal Functional Submission controversy in Evangelical Theology. His careful work is worth reading.

In other words, there is no dispute that the Son submits to the Father in the economy, or in God’s life ad extra.  The thing under dispute — the only thing under dispute — is whether this submission also obtains in the immanent Trinity, in God’s life ad intra.  This is why specificity here is crucial.  But it is crucially absent from most of what Ware, Grudem, and their supporters have written.

*****

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense.

And not just in America! In Australia, too, this is a growing popular sentiment that in my view, threatens the intellectual heritage and cultural fabric of free societies. This sentiment is already very prominent in the often hostile and facile political discourse of our country.

The Atlantic argues that tertiary educational institutions have a responsibility to encourage robust thought and discussion, even where the views expressed might cause some offence. Students need to be encouraged to engage constructively in such discussions, rather than be wrapped in cotton-wool lest their feelings and commitments be challenged. A few more citations from the article:

If our universities are teaching students that their emotions can be used effectively as weapons—or at least as evidence in administrative proceedings—then they are teaching students to nurture a kind of hypersensitivity that will lead them into countless drawn-out conflicts in college and beyond. Schools may be training students in thinking styles that will damage their careers and friendships, along with their mental health.

Attempts to shield students from words, ideas, and people that might cause them emotional discomfort are bad for the students. They are bad for the workplace, which will be mired in unending litigation if student expectations of safety are carried forward. And they are bad for … democracy, which is already paralyzed by worsening partisanship. When the ideas, values, and speech of the other side are seen not just as wrong but as willfully aggressive toward innocent victims, it is hard to imagine the kind of mutual respect, negotiation, and compromise that are needed to make politics a positive-sum game.

The presumption that students need to be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual.

For another article on a similar vein see Rachelle Peterson “On Reading Old Books.”

Reading Karl Barth on Election (2)

Theology, , , ,

Church Dogmatics Study EditionSelection: The Church Dogmatics II/2:12-24, The Orientation of the Doctrine of Election.

Barth then develops his next major point, namely, that the doctrine of election must be understood as gospel, as grace. There can be no parallel or coordination of election and reprobation otherwise the good news becomes “bad news” (12-18; the reference to “bad news” is on page 18).

The truth which must now occupy us, the truth of the doctrine of predestination, is first and last and in all circumstances the sum of the Gospel … Its content is instruction and elucidation, but instruction and elucidation which are to us a proclamation of joy. It is not a mixed message of joy and terror, salvation and damnation. … The election of grace is the sum of the Gospel—we must put it as pointedly as that. But more, the election of grace is the whole of the Gospel, the Gospel in nuce. It is the very essence of all good news (12-14).

Barth acknowledges that the doctrine “throws a shadow” (13), but insists that the No must be spoken only in service of the Yes which is the first and last word. For Barth, the doctrine must be understood unequivocally as gospel. Barth notes that this positive statement of the doctrine has been asserted throughout the tradition, which indicates its “evangelical character.” Barth provides a brief biblical overview of the nature of election as grace in which he insists that there are not two columns in the Book of Life, but one column only. Whence, then, the doctrine of “double predestination”? Barth traces the concept through Augustine, Aquinas, Isidore of Seville, Gottschalk, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and the Arminians.

The basic demand by which any presentation of the doctrine must be measured, and to which we ourselves must also conform, is this: that (negatively) the doctrine must not speak of the divine election and rejection as though God’s electing and rejecting were not quite different, as though these divine dealings did not stand in a definite hierarchical relationship the one with the other; and that (positively) the supremacy of the one and subordination of the other must be brought out so radically that the Gospel enclosed and proclaimed even in this doctrine is introduced and revealed as the tenor of the whole, so that in some way or other the Word of the free grace of God stands out even at this point as the dominating theme and the specific meaning of the whole utterance (18).

Barth identifies three central characteristics which all “serious” conceptions of the doctrine have in common: “they all find the nerve of the doctrine, the peculiar concern which forces them to present and assert it, in the fact that it characterizes the grace of God as absolutely free and thereby divine” (19). This grace is free, mysterious, and righteous (18-24). There is no cause for election other than God’s free grace. No works or righteousness or even faith are the ground for being elect. God’s grace and therefore his election is mysterious and incomprehensible, and so can be investigated only in faith and adoration. God cannot be called to account before the bar of human reason. Finally, the tradition has also insisted that in the exercise of his free and mysterious grace, God is also righteous. At this point, Barth qualifies the tradition insisting that only as we understand who God is can we agree that election is righteous. If the believer’s agreement is forced, if they harbor secret questions, doubts or protests about the nature of election, it is not true adoration: “We are not bowing before the caprice of a tyrant. Our submission cannot be such that it is accompanied by a still-remaining and ever-increasing inward complaint and resistance” (22). There can be no sacrifice of the intellect in this matter; conversely, we must allow our intellect to be instructed by God: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Barth provides a number of citations from Calvin (23) in which Calvin argues that “God’s will is reason” because God is perfectly just and the fount of all justice. There is no higher court of appeal to which God must give account. God’s justice may be secret; it is also blameless.

For the will of God is so much the highest rule of justice, that whatever he wills must be considered just. So when it is asked why God acts in such-and-such a way, it must be replied, ‘Because he wills’. But if you go further, and ask why he has willed it, you ask for something greater and more sublime than the will of God, which cannot be found … We are not describing a lawless God, who is a law unto himself… The will of God is not only pure of all wickedness, but is the purest rule of perfection, even the law of all laws [Inst. iii.23.2].

If a mortal man pronounced that he willed or commanded that his will was to be reason, I would say his statement was tyrannical. But to extend that to God is a terrible sacrilege. For it is not permissible to attach anything improper to God, such as that desire springs up in him as it does in men. But by this merit of honour, it is attributed to his will that it be worthy of being reason, since it is the fount and rule of all justice (23; Congrég. C.R. 8, 115?).

Barth thus accepts these three primary characteristics of the doctrine of election in the tradition. To the degree the tradition expounded Scripture as testimony to the work of the triune God, it may be considered Christian theology, and their intention—if not their results—may be accepted (24). Therefore he concludes this discussion of the orientation of the doctrine by viewing these three central characteristics through the lens of the gospel (25-34). The election of God is not bare choice as though the concept of choice can be absolutized.

On the Reliability of Scripture

Theology,

berkouwer2Gerrit C. Berkouwer reflects on the reliability of Scripture in light of its dual nature as ‘the Word of God and the word of man.’ No theory of inspiration is adequate which does not “agree with the ‘phenomena’ of Scripture” (Berkouwer, Holy Scripture, 242). Still, the reliability of Scripture is a critical religious matter, correlated with trust. “The reliability of God is the unshakable foundation of such a trust; … However, one should not think that he enters into an entirely different sector of trust when considering the reliability of Scripture” (241).

Yet the kind of reliability Berkouwer has in mind is not that of the precision, accuracy or exactness of, for example, modern historiography; modern concepts of reliability are foreign to Scripture. He is not concerned by “innocent inaccuracies” (245). Nor is Scripture intended to instruct us concerning the composition of the cosmos or of the human person. “The purpose of Scripture is directly aimed at the revelation of God in this world and to man” (245, original emphasis).

As Ridderbos writes, the evangelists did not intend to give “an historical narrative of Jesus’s words and works but a portrayal of Jesus as the Christ.” This is the character of our gospel, or, expressed in other terms, not report but witness (247, original emphasis).

If absolute preciseness and exactness is seen as the ideal, excluding all interpretive subjectivity, in order to render ‘facts’ as objectively as possible, we must conclude that the Gospels do not coincide with this ideal and therefore are not reliable (248).

The reliability of Scripture, therefore, is in accordance with its purpose, not the character of its precision or otherwise.

Thus, various emphases on witness, truth, and reliability are clearly evident (Jn. 19:35; 21:24). But these are not in opposition to a freedom in composing and expressing the mystery of Christ; their purpose is rather to point in their testimony to that great light. … For the aim of the portrayal was not to mislead and to deceive; it was not even a ‘pious fraud,’ for it was wholly focused on the great mystery. This explains why the church through the ages was scarcely troubled by the differences pointed out long before, and by the inexact, non-notarial portrayal. A problem was created only as a result of attempts at harmonization and the criticism that followed (252).

That is, the church has long recognised—and been unconcerned about—discrepancies of detail in the gospels. The problem arose as a result of harmonisation and historical criticism and led subsequently to anxiety about inspiration on the one hand, or a conviction that the gospels were unreliable on the other. Both concerns are invalid because they ground the reliability of Scripture on its verbal precision rather than on the content and reliability of the witness to Jesus Christ, and the use made of that witness by the Holy Spirit to guide us to salvation (254, 263).

If Scripture is truly what the church confessed it to be in its creed, we should continually be reminded of the prayer during all reading of Scripture: “Come, Creator Spirit!” … The message of Scripture alone, convincing and overwhelming as it is through the power of the Spirit, clearly can lead us quietly to trust this reliability (264).

Reading Karl Barth on Election (1)

Theology, ,

Church Dogmatics Study EditionSelection: The Church Dogmatics II/2:3-12, The Orientation of the Doctrine .

Barth begins his account of the doctrine of election by reviewing the method he has applied in his earlier volume on the doctrine of God; that is, he will allow only Jesus Christ as he is attested in Scripture to be the first and final word in theology. Having established his methodological point, he goes on to insist that the doctrine of God can never be a doctrine of God alone, or put differently, a doctrine of a solitary or isolated God. A Christian doctrine of God—made known in Jesus Christ—includes the reality that God stands in a definite relation ad extra such that we cannot speak of God correctly apart from this relation. This relation is the covenant between God and the man, Jesus Christ, and the people represented by him. God’s decision for this covenant is a divine self-determination such that we can no longer think of God in abstraction from this man, covenant and relation (5-9).

Jesus Christ is indeed God in His movement towards man, or, more exactly, in His movement towards the people represented in the one man Jesus of Nazareth, in His covenant with this people, in His being and activity amongst and towards this people. Jesus Christ is the decision of God in favour of this attitude or relation. He is Himself the relation. It is a relation ad extra, undoubtedly; for both the man and the people represented in Him are creatures and not God. But it is a relation which is irrevocable, so that once God has willed to enter into it, and has in fact entered into it, He could not be God without it. It is a relation in which God is self-determined (7).

The covenant relation established by God has two aspects. First, because God is the sovereign lord of the covenant it is a covenant of grace, and thus of love and freedom, the covenant of the God who loves in freedom. Second, as Lord of the covenant, God claims humanity as his covenant partner. Grace also rules, and those claimed by God are made responsible to God. As such, election issues in ethics. “Being responsible” is the nature and meaning of human existence.

God ordained and created him as partner in this covenant; God elected and called him to that position; and in that position He makes him responsible. How could God draw him to Himself, as He does, without making him responsible? God constitutes this “being responsible” the whole meaning of his existence (12).

Beth Felker Jones, Practicing Christian Doctrine (Review)

Books, Theology, 
Felker Jones, Beth, Practicing Christian Doctrine: 
An Introduction to Thinking and Living Theologically
 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2014), 246pp.
 ISBN: 978-0-8010-4933-0

Practicing Christian Doctrine

In a summary comment to the doctrine of salvation, Beth Felker Jones writes,

My sketch of the doctrine in this chapter points, gently, to legal acquittal in justification by grace, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and God’s defeat of death in resurrection as the vital core of soteriology. But to acknowledge a core is not to deny the importance of the rest of the doctrine… (164).

This self-referential comment captures something of the charm of Jones’s introduction to Christian doctrine: the gentleness that characterises her work, as well as her awareness that the field of Christian truth is indeed vast and expansive. Jones has written a warm and irenic account of Christian doctrine from an Evangelical perspective, but one which engages broadly with other traditions and perspectives. Her account follows the usual path one expects in such an introduction with an initial chapter on the nature of theology, followed by chapters on revelation and Scripture, God as trinity, creation and providence, theological anthropology, Christology and soteriology, pneumatology, ecclesiology and eschatology.

Jones’s evangelicalism has Wesleyan roots and a pietist flavour, and is, as one might anticipate, robustly biblical in orientation. Her approach introduces the primary features of each doctrine, surveying the main lines of an evangelical understanding, while also indicating the richly textured nature of Christian doctrine which defies being captured in rigid formulations. Each chapter includes a key biblical passage as well as occasional shaded text-boxes which might include a hymn, a poem or a prayer, a creed or statement from one of the major historical theologians, perspectives from contemporary global theologians, sidebar notes on, for example, the deuterocanonical books or millennial expectations, or further explanation of a key idea in the main text. These brief asides are not ancillary but serve to introduce the reader to the historical depth and global scope of the theological enterprise, and the evangelical reader, to riches and perspectives outside their own tradition.

The distinctive feature of Jones’s book, as indicated in the title, is the idea of practising Christian doctrine with the result that each chapter concludes with a short reflection concerning the practice of the particular doctrine under review. Nor is this emphasis something simply tacked-on to her theology. Rather, theology and Christian life are bodily realities which press towards visibility in the world. Therefore the careful articulation of doctrine must issue in practice if it is to be faithful to its intent. This is a welcome, indeed timely, emphasis in theology. Thus, with reference to practising the doctrine of Scripture Jones cites Richard Hays:

No reading of Scripture can be legitimate, then, if it fails to shape the readers into a community that embodies the love of God as shown forth in Christ. This criterion slashes away all frivolous or self-serving readings, all readings that aggrandize the interpreter, all merely clever readings. True interpretation of Scripture leads us into unqualified giving of our lives in service within the community whose vocation is to reenact the obedience of the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us (52-53).

Note that Jones’s reflections are indicative rather than prescriptive. So, for example, “the Felker-Jones, Bethmost proper and important fruit” of the doctrine of the trinity is worship, and, since we in some sense become what we worship, “worship of the true God shapes us too, drawing us into God’s own relational life of love and changing us into luminous reflections of God’s true nature” (75). Jones does not detail a worship practice but shows that actual worship is the fruit of the doctrine. How that worship occurs and is expressed is left to the individual and community concerned. Some may wish for more explicit direction here, but Jones has resisted this temptation thereby protecting the freedom of God and that of the believer and the believing community. The responsibility of the believer is also maintained: the reader must still discern and identify—by the Spirit and in community—how they will fittingly embody the faith in their own life and context.

To provide another example, practising the doctrine of creation involves learning to be creatures in all the dailyness of life—dependent on God and interdependent with others and the whole created order in a holistic, hopeful integration of life. In a list of thirteen items Jones provides images or examples of what such practice might look like, again without detailing any specific practices (95-96). Since Jesus Christ defines our true humanity, we practise theological anthropology when we “ask God to transform our lives here and now into a foretaste of what we will become in the end” (115). The practice of the doctrine of the incarnation involves recognition of the particularity of Jesus and so of its revelation of the nature of God’s love for each and for all:

God’s love for us is not some idealized longing for a sanitized, universal idea of humanity. It is real love for real people: male and female, gentile and Jew, Middle Eastern and African and European and American and Asian—people from every nook of the planet. It is not just a love for ideas or for souls. It is a love that encompasses bodies as well as souls, a love concrete enough to become incarnate, to extend to fingers and toes: both Jesus’s and ours. God love is big enough to love specifics. Because God is with and for us, we are freed to be with and for others. Because God’s love reaches into our specificity, our particularity, we have hope that our love can follow suit (137-138).

Jones has written a pastorally-sensitive and reliable account of Christian doctrine, appropriate for use in church contexts, and classroom settings. New Christians and introductory level students will benefit from her clear articulation of the doctrines and her passion to see these truths embedded and embodied Christian life. Pastors, too, will find fresh reflection and approaches to old doctrines, together with the occasional homiletical flourish—“We are all Barabbas” (148). The book deserves widespread use—and practise!—in our churches.

*****

See also my (two-part) review on
Beth Felker Jones, Faithful: A Theology of Sex

Reading Karl Barth: On 19th-Century Theology

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Karl Barth had photos of nineteenth century theologians on the wall as he climbed the steps to his study.
Karl Barth had photos of nineteenth century theologians on the wall as he climbed the steps to his study.

Barth’s lecture “Evangelical Theology in the 19th-Century” was given in Hannover to the Goethe Society, January 8, 1957, when Barth was seventy years old. The lecture contains three major sections plus a brief introduction and conclusion appropriate for a non-theological audience. After the introduction which defines the key terms of the title, Barth provides a summary or overview of the beginnings, course and eclipse of nineteenth-century Liberal theology (Karl Barth, “Evangelical Theology in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Humanity of God, 12-17). Barth’s overall assessment of Liberal theology is that “Theology turned into philosophy of the history of religion in general, and of the Christian religion in particular” (13). In an important biographical aside Barth recalls his utter despair and horror at the actions of his venerated theological mentors and realised that for him, “19th-century theology no longer held any future” (14). Yet Barth refuses to consign this theology to obscurity. Despite this ultimate failure of Liberal theology, Karl Barth affirms the liberals for their spiritual steadfastness and courage in the face of the onslaught of modernism, for their highly cultivated character, piety and openness to the world, as well as their focus on the historical nature of Christianity (16-18, 28).

The second section—and heart—of the lecture comprises Karl Barth’s assessment of the two key problems of Liberal theology (18-28). The first is the Liberals’ fundamental conviction that theology arises from the confrontation of the church and faith with the world. Thus, 19th-century theology was primarily concerned with the world, in order to demonstrate the rationality and relevance of faith. As a result the thought-forms of the world became normative for theology, thus rationalising and truncating theology (19). The second great problem was the Liberals’ search for universal grounds for faith, grounded in an innate capacity for religion, and demonstrated in the history of religion (21, 28-29). For Barth, not only was this apologetic strategy fruitless, but it also resulted in an eviscerated theology (22). The ethical result of this faulty theological method was an ‘uncritical and irresponsible subservience to the patterns, forces and movements of human history and civilisation’ (27). That is, the church lost its distinct identity and task, becoming instead a servant to the culture, and a chaplain to the warring state.

In his final section Barth pinpoints the ultimate cause of this theological failure: the theologians of the nineteenth-century operated within the worldview presuppositions of the Enlightenment which inevitably resulted in historicism, psychologism, and demythologisation: in short, the rationalising and curtailing of Christian theology (15, 19, and 21). Thus Barth asks his programmatic question:

What if by talking about Christianity as a religion these theologians had already ceased to speak of Christianity and hence were unable to communicate the faith with authority to those on the outside? What if the only relevant way of speaking of Christianity was from within? (30-31).