Tag: hermeneutics

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Eberhard Jüngel on Theology, Language, and God

Alex Renner

I recently purchased John Webster’s Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to his Theology, and have been wildly pleased with what I have found and read there. Amidst my daily perusing of the best anthology of Barth’s work in English today – The Essential Karl Barth by Keith Johnson – I find that reading Webster’s intro on Jüngel is a helpful supplement for illuminating certain points of Barth and for understanding how those after him built upon and developed his theology. Jüngel, in my opinion, functions as a sort of theological son to Barth: he builds upon his good points, elucidates emphases of Barth’s which aren’t totally clear in Barth’s writings, and critiques Barth when he thinks he is in error. I find many aspects of Jüngel’s life and work exciting, too. Both of Jüngel’s mentors, for example, Karl Barth and Martin Heidegger, have inspired much of my own life, language, and thought. Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, though I have only read portions of it, has solidified certain convictions I was playing around with when meditating on the relationship between human subjectivity, hermeneutics, and theological method. Needless to say, too, Barth’s writings have had a similar yet greater effect on me.

I found much to appreciate in the opening chapters of the book. Webster writes, commenting on a few core ideas of Jüngels’,

“The essence of God is nothing other than the essence of the one who works and reveals… The history of the man Jesus constitutes nothing less than the inner life of God, the very place where God’s trinitarian relatedness is played out before the world… God’s way of being himself is by being God for us. It is this which lies behind the concept of ‘correspondence’ (Entsprechung) which Jüngel uses to describe the inseparability of God’s immanent life from his economic operations. For if God ‘corresponds with himself’ in the event of revelation, then his revealed being pro nobis is nothing other than his immanent being pro se.”[1]

Jüngel emphasizes, then, the same point put forward by Barth, Rahner, and the Nicene theologians, that who we receive by faith in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ is none other than the Eternal Son of the Trinity. If we want to say that the Lord Jesus is truly “in the form of God” (Phil. 2:6) as we meet him by faith, then who God is in His economy (i.e., in Jesus) is who He must be in His ontology (i.e., in His Triune life). If “Rahner’s Rule,” that who God is in His life (i.e., who He really and truly is within Himself) is who He is in His activity or workings towards us, is to be upholded and maintained then we must affirm Jüngel’s point here: “The history of the man Jesus constitutes… the very place where God’s trinitarian relatedness is played out before the world.” The theological implications of this simple formula are tremendous. Furthermore, the statement that “God’s way of being himself is by being God for us” finds deep soil in Barth’s same case: who God has chosen to be in His act of love by uniting Himself with humanity in Jesus Christ is “God-with-humanity.” In other words, God’s incarnation in Jesus is the point at which God chose to forever be united with humanity in intimate union. God will never again be Himself without being God-with-humanity.

Going on to illuminate more of Jüngel’s core ideas, Webster discusses Jüngel’s elucidation of revelation from a different yet similar angle. Jüngel seeks to answer the question, in a truly post-metaphysical vein (with heavy overtones of Heideggerian ontology language): How is it that humans can speak of God “as object”? Jüngel’s contention with “traditional,” metaphysical accounts of God are that they subject God to metaphysical categories foreign to the subject itself (i.e., God) and inevitably treat God as an object to be analyzed. As a theologian of the inductive vein, convinced that theology can only proceed and take its cues from the nature of the divine subject in question rather than from general principles applied to the subject, Jüngel proposes that the only way humans can speak of God’s being-as-object is through the utter and total subjection of theology’s speech about God to the ways in which God has already allowed Himself to be spoken of. Webster includes a quotation I think should be given here in full (from Jüngel’s seminal work God’s Being is in Becoming):

“God’s being-as-object is his being-revealed. God is thus the object of knowledge insofar as he has interpreted himself. And insofar as God has interpreted himself in his revelation and so made himself the object of knowledge of God, he has also made man into the subject of the knowledge of God… That means… that God’s being-as-object is not the result of human objectification of God… He is only objective as the one who has made himself objective.”[2]

Moving on to Jüngel’s position on theological language, which I thought was particularly illuminating, Webster lays out the centrality of the idea of metaphor in the theology of Jüngel. Following Heidegger, Jüngel argues that the literalistic boundaries which Western thought has placed on the conception of truth has stifled theological language and theologians’ understanding of just what can be rightly said concerning God. However, theological language is not therefore transcendent of human speech. Theological language is and can only be decidedly human. Webster comments,

“Jüngel insists that language about God must be authentically human language. Of course, he is firm in the conviction that language about God is only possible on the basis of God’s revelatory utterance, and that such language does not take its rise from within human language since it is demanded of man from beyond the horizons of worldly discourse. But he affirms with equal conviction that language about God is not the suspension of human language or its devaluation. Language about God is certainly not immanent within the structures of ordinary human speech. Yet it does not so transcend those structures as to lose its human character. Language about God is a demand which goes against the grain of man’s natural linguistic resources; yet it is not thereby less but more human than ‘ordinary’ discourse.”[3]

Theological language is human language in the highest and most true sense.

I highly recommend the works of Jüngel, and this small introduction, to you. Along with the rest of the dialectical theologians, Jüngel stands as a voice which points a way forward (albeit imperfectly) for future theological speaking in this post-metaphysical moment.

[1] John Webster, Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to his Theology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), 17-18.

[2] Eberhard Jüngel, The Doctrine of the Trinity: God’s Being is in Becoming (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2014), 57.

[3] John Webster, Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to his Theology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), 40.

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Paul Tillich, Faith, and Theological Reflection

Alex Renner

The end of my last post includes a quotation from Paul Tillich’s Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality which puts forth Tillich’s position on the compatibility between philosophy and theology. The central thesis of this little book is that philosophy and theology can, in fact, coexist, and are, even further, codependent on each other’s relevance and success as human thought projects. As a lay evangelical theologian, I went into reading his work with a cautious skepticism (which I was right to do), but nevertheless found some insights – about both philosophical investigation and theological speaking – which I thought would best be to throw out there and discuss.

A personal note: later this summer, I plan on flying up to Wisconsin to complete an audited class on the patristic doctrine of Participation at an Anglican seminary. My interest in the patristic vision, generally, stirred my interest in this, and so you can imagine that when I got to Tillich’s section on Participation (and our current age’s rejection of the participatory outlook) my interest piqued. He writes,

“In terms of the history of philosophy, it is a nominalistic ontology which has determined philosophical empiricism from the high Middle Ages to the present moment. Being, according to this vision of reality, is characterized by individualization and not by participation. All individual things, including men and their minds, stand alongside each other, looking at each other and at the whole of reality, trying to penetrate step by step from the periphery toward the center, but having no immediate approach to it, no direct participation in other individuals and in the universal power of being which makes for individualization… one thing must be emphasized. It is a view of reality as a whole.”[1]

Indeed, Tillich! While I have serious reservations about the attempts by many contemporary theologians (most of whom stem from high-church backgrounds) to revive the sort of participatory outlook so-long espoused by the Christian tradition, Tillich does a great job here of outlining the general philosophical air we breathe now: one which chokes us on our own scientistic individualism.

In the next chapter, Tillich displays his presuppositions concerning the nature of religion (Christianity including), but says some thought-provoking things that have real theological implications. He writes, concerning man’s tendency to anthropomorphize:

“There is no type of religion which does not personify the holy which is encountered by man in his religious experience… In the moment in which something took on this [sanctified] role, it also received a personal face. Even tools and stones and categories became personal in the religious encounter, the encounter with the holy. Persona, like the Greek prosopon, points to the individual and at the same time universally meaningful character of the actor on the stage. For person is more than individuality. ‘Person’ is individuality on the human level, with self-relatedness and world-relatedness and therefore with rationality, freedom, and responsibility. It is established in the encounter of an ego-self with another self, often called the ‘I-Thou’ relationship, and it exists only in community with other persons.”[2]

What struck me about this section of the reading is the utter truthfulness of his argument. As one who places himself (generally) within the Reformed theological camp, I place a high value on the proposition that humans, when left to their own devices, will 100% of the time fashion idols for themselves. Calvin’s whole “The heart is an idol factory” meets me with a hearty Amen. Humanity does not and cannot go on long without worshipping anything and everything as long as it is not the God revealed in Jesus Christ. We fashion ideological, material, and emotional gods for ourselves like hotcakes: it is our basic function as corrupted beings. Yet, the Eternal Son’s incarnation as Jesus Christ proclaims an insane and wonderful truth to us, that neither does God seek to be an impersonal God to us; in matter of fact, humanity cannot even come to know or understand a God who does not condescend to our human ways of knowing, thinking, speaking, and being. There is a double edged sword brought out by reflection on Paul Tillich’s assertions here: humanity both cannot understand a God who would require them to either transcend or escape their humanity (since there literally is no way for us to know or be known except in ways appropriate to our mode of being), yet humanity continually and doggedly insists on making created puppet-gods who conform to who we believe god should be (which ends, every time, in an anthropomorphized idol).

While there are numerous other sections of the book that I could comment on, I think his page-long discussion of the nature of faith presents some good, final theological-meat to chew on:

“Faith, in the biblical view, is an act of the whole personality. Will, knowledge, and emotion participate in it. It is an act of self-surrender, of obedience, of assent. Each of these elements must be present. Emotional surrender without assent and obedience would by-pass the personal center. It would be a compulsion and not a decision. Intellectual assent without emotional participation distorts religious existence into a nonpersonal, cognitive act. Obedience of the will without assent and emotion leads into a depersonalizing slavery. Faith unites and transcends the special functions of the human mind; it is the most personal act of the person… Biblical faith is the faith of a community, a nation, or a church. He who participates in this faith participates in its sumbolic and ritual expressions. The community unavoidably formulates its own foundations in statements which reveal its difference from other groups and protext it against distortions. He who joins the community of faith must accept the statements of faith, the creed of the community. He must assent before he can be received.”[3]

Perhaps this sort of definition of faith is at the heart of my insistence that the center of all theological language be Jesus Christ; it is why I am an avid reader of theologians like Karl Barth, Thomas F. Torrance, St. Athanasius, and the Cappadocian Fathers. Faith, says these figures, is real faith when it is a movement of the Christian’s being, when the intellectual assent which comes through prolonged theological reflection has a purpose and a mission. When simply joined to the ever-lethargic-and-hardly-ever-for-a-noble-purpose school of (in the end, anthropomorphizing) philosophy, theology becomes corrupted by the boundaries of the theologians’ study, the place which should be the locus of ministry and outreach. When evangelicals are lambasted by other sections of the Church on the grounds of some form of anti-intellectualism, I almost want to shout back “Because we have seen how y’all do it, hold’ up in your studies while the widows starve in your pews!” I will proudly wear the badge of anti-intellectual if it means my theologizing must always, always, always have practical ministry application, which is exactly what an absolute Christocentrism will accomplish for the ministry-minded theologian.

Ironically, Tillich realizes the problem that biblical (Christian) theologians have with philosophical speculation’s attempt to wed itself to the theological task. He writes,

“The Bible often criticizes philosophy, not because it uses reason, but because it uses unregenerated reason for the knowledge of God.”[4]

[1] Paul Tillich, Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1955), 17.

[2] Ibid., 22-23.

[3] Ibid., 53-54.

[4] Ibid., 56. 

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BOOK REVIEW: The Divine Invasion by Philip K. Dick

Alex Renner

The Divine Invasion is Philip K. Dick’s second book in the VALIS trilogy. Written near the very end of his life, the book is an interweaving of Dick’s final meditations on metaphysics, spirituality, and theology with some of his earlier narrative motifs.

This is how the goat-creature sees God’s total artifact, the world that God pronounced as good. It is the pessimism of evil itself. The nature of evil is to see in this fashion, to pronounce this verdict of negation. Thus, he thought, it unmakes creation; it undoes what the Creator has brought into being. This also is a form of unreality, this verdict, this dreary aspect. Creation is not like this and Linda Fox is not like this. But the goat-creature would tell me that… Gray truth, the goat-creature continued, is better than what you have imagined. You wanted to wake up. Now you are awake; I show you things as they are pitilessly; but that is how it should be. How do you suppose I defeated Yahweh in times past? By revealing his creation for what it is, a wretched thing to be despised. This is his defeat, what you see – see through my mind and eyes, my vision of the world: my correct vision (Dick, The Divine Invasion, pgs 227-228).

The Divine Invasion includes much of what I loved about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and reminded me why I started reading PKD. The way he introduces one or two primary male characters who drudge through the inescapably terrible world, simultaneously harboring an impure thought life while wrestling to become purer and be at one with the ordering principle of the universe. While in Do Androids Dream Dick’s usually-singular male character is split into two in Rick Deckard and John Isidore (Deckard acting out the immoral or impure role and Isidore the somewhat naive but still heroic trope), The Divine Invasion acts out two parallel stories of similar veins, one at the localized human level and the other at the archetypal, divine level. God himself becomes the split personality, while the human Herb Asher has to deal with the changing tides of the god’s inter-dimensional actions and wrestle with his own choice to act valiantly despite his perceivably unforutunate circumstances (typified, by him, by his endlessly sick wife, Rybys).

Side Note: I couldn’t shake the impression that the characters Emmanuel and Zina were inspired by Leto II and Ghanima Atreides from Children of Dune by Frank Herbert. The way the two children’s dialogue sounds more like philosophy-filled embodiments of the author’s own thoughts in narrative form, and the generally gnostic and meta-human impression they give to the reader point to this comparison. As much as the divine-child narrative trope is worthily used to act out certain incredible aspects of the Divine Son’s Incarnation, I can see how much some of these author’s misunderstand the essence of the Christian doctrine itself; especially as it relates to the humanity of Christ. What I mean is, one of the most incredible markers of authenticity of Jesus’s humanity is his growing up into maturity clearly argued for in the biblical texts. When authors like Herbert and PKD leave out that aspect of their God-Man characters, the divine side, so to speak, overtakes the human side and therefore places the character beyond relatability. It is not a big negative of the story, but an aspect of theology worth considering.

Dick has a great ability to show forth the inherent potency of the divine archetypes. Dick’s knowledge of what people respond to archetypally acts as his primary navigation in his storytelling. The way he makes the character Linda Fox function, for example, is a perfect demonstration of how Dick can intersect the themes of sexuality, femininity, desire, and emotional consolation in a character to evoke in the reader a sort of foundational, wordless understanding. Dick’s characters are embodiments of humanity’s universal feeling towards archetypes like the Great, Consoling Mother, the Harsh, Judgmental Father, the Tempter, the Wise Desert Sage, etc. Something about these character types speak to us, and Dick knew it. Any reader, for example, can empathize with Herb Asher’s morning meditation on Linda Fox (who, in this scene, is the fleshly incarnation of the tender aspect of the divine Being, the feminine side of God named Zina):

Has anyone loved another human as much as I love her? he asked himself, and then he thought, She is my Advocate and my Beside-Helper. She told me Hebrew words that I have forgotten that describe her. She is my tutelary spirit, and the goat-thing came all the way here, three thousand miles, to perish when she put her fingers against its flank… she consoled me, she consoles millions; she defends; she gives solace. And she is there in time; she does not arrive late (Dick, The Divine Invasion, pg 233).

Needless to say, PKD knew what he was doing utilizing these sorts of figures.

It is a hard thing to review a book like this one, especially since PKD fundamentally eludes traditional categories of analysis. As any PKD fan can attest to, Dick’s stories aren’t so much about the details of the world he has “built” within them (in fact, its almost the point sometimes that the details are fluid); Dick’s primary interest is the relationship between the Mind of the protagonist/reader with the shifting reality of the literary world. That said, I think there exists certain strands of beauty and truth interwoven throughout the novel which merit a detailed and meditative read by fans of science fiction (and philosophy) generally. The questions PKD asks (but doesn’t necessarily answer) like What is reality?, What is truth?, What is God?, and What are humans? is enough for anyone to benefit from Dick’s takes. While I don’t think attributing a numerical rating to The Divine Invasion appropriate considering all these ways he eludes such a rating, I think anyone would benefit from reading the book, and think storytellers, in particular, would do well to utilize the sorts of embodied Forms Dick utilizes in this book.

One negative aspect of The Divine Invasion, I will say, which is really applicable to most of his novels (and something I have noted before) is Dick’s pretty terrible portrayal of women. Although the example I gave above (of Linda Fox) appears a positive portrayal of women, it really acts more as a sort of commentary on the “universal” of femininity, and less on women particularly. The sort of a priori-accepted sexual obsession Herb Asher shows to Linda Fox despite the immanent presence of his wife does not do anything to teach the reader, and frankly should disgust them. You would expect that negative trait of Asher’s to be deconstructed over the course of the story and Asher to realize how foolish and disrespectful he has been towards his wife (who you can only really feel pity for), but the final scenes try to portray Asher’s eventual hook-up with Linda Fox as a positive development. I think this really does show a concrete example of Dick’s analytic evasiveness, since the very person who functions the most like the Blessed Virgin (the Virgin Mother of Jesus) is the most unlike Her and the most unpleasant, while the person whose personality best resembles the Virgin is the one who, ultimately, plays the role of the seductress. While portraying specific woman characters negatively isn’t by default immoral (many great villains in stories have been women), the way Herb Asher completely and continually disregards the woman to whom he is married does not translate into any discernible lesson or embodiment of virtue. A question then comes to mind: What constitutes an effective use of archetype? This example would seem to point towards a traditional use of archetypal figures and narrative forms, yet it remains to be seen how they can be utilized in unique ways to teach the good ol’ truths of the universe.

So, what do you think? Have you read The Divine Invasion? Do you think PKD is a beneficial read?

*To read my review of VALIS, the first book in the VALIS trilogy, click here.

Dick, Philip K. The Divine Invasion. New York, NY: Timescape Books, 1981.

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Why Read Karl Barth?

Alex Renner

*This is the most recent post from my former Wix blog, but I thought it would be a fitting first post for this blog considering what its purpose is. Enjoy!*

For Christmas this past year, I asked for two books: Incarnation by T.F. Torrance and Christiane Tietz’s new biography every theology nerd has been raving about, Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict. I can confidently say, even before I received the books, that the subjects of these two books have had more impact on my life and Christian walk than any other figure outside of the early church fathers. Further, my appreciation and passion for the writings of Torrance intimately stems from my appreciation for his spiritual and intellectual mentor, Karl Barth. Why should you read this towering, momentous figure Karl Barth? What is there to be gained by reading and meditating on Barth’s doctrinal and biblical expositions?

“There is no God behind the back of Jesus Christ.”

I first learned about Karl Barth after coming out of a Christian Theology class I took during my sophomore year in college. My theology professor kept saying this phrase in connection to natural theology (the assumption and study of the natural world in order to come to truths about who God is) and as time went on I was more and more captured by the phrase. My professor explained that many times theologians will speak as if what can be learned about God through nature is essential to truly understanding what Christians have in the biblical text. In other words, Christian theologians sometimes speak as if we needed the natural world in order to interpret the Bible. The more I kept thinking about that phrase, though, that “there is no God behind the back of Jesus Christ,” the more I came to see clearly the problems I was already perceiving in a theological system which allowed language about God to be bound by what we can see (or think we are seeing) in the natural world. My professor helped me realize that to concede that the natural world is a valid lens through which to interpret Divine Being is to refuse to take the revelation of God – which we most definitely have in Jesus Christ – as fully and authentically serious. Put simply: to look elsewhere other than where God has clearly said “Here I am!” is to not take God’s “Here I am!” seriously.

Where is God’s true and exclusive “Here I am!”? It is in Jesus Christ! Barth says. Barth’s famous quip demonstrates the absolute focus of the whole of his massive theological corpus: Christ, Christ, and only Christ! Now, my theology professor at the time would not have admitted that what he was espousing was what Barth taught – since evangelicals, generally, are not very friendly to Barth as they have considered his teachings on the Bible and the preaching moment – but, not being able to get the phrase out of my head I looked it up. And there, looking back, was Barth’s wrinkly, intelligent face. I immediately started devouring his more introductory works (like this one and this one), and was, simply, hooked!

Karl Barth is undoubtedly the most influential, provocative, and important theologian of the twentieth century. As the son of a well-respected academic himself, Barth grew up at the very beginning of the twentieth century, and through his political and theological disputations during the Second World War helped to cement his name and doctrine as internationally renown. Theologically, he is perhaps best known for his massive, unfinished set of theology books, the Church Dogmatics. Among the wider evangelical world, Barth is characterized by certain teachings of his which evangelicals perceive deviate from the norm of Christian orthodoxy (yet, considering the Protestant liberalism in which he grew as a theologian and thinker, he is a stark and healthy contrast). Perhaps one disclaimer could be made about Barth (this, keep in mind, coming from an evangelical myself): the way Barth is interpreted and appropriated today among those who are reasonably characterized as Progressive Christians may help you to see where Barth could have been clearer on the implications of what he wrote. This is not to say that how he is appropriated among Progressive Christianity today is the right way of interpreting Barth, but keep in mind that Barth has been used to espouse and set the cornerstone for contemporary Christian Progressivism (as seen in most of the mainline denominations). Nevertheless, he will undoubtedly go down as a flawed theologian who still helped the Church worldwide use language which benefitted Christians’ understanding of their own doctrines, like revelation, who God is in Christ, and, most of all, the nature of the Triune God’s relationship with humanity.

So, to return to the question: Why should you read Karl Barth?

Well, in my experience, to learn from Barth that the locus (the exclusive place) of God’s revelation is Jesus Christ (and, I would add, Jesus Christ as put forth by the whole biblical text) was to revolutionize my understanding of what the task of theology, and the Christian life, in turn, is all about. Some interesting implications, too, opened up concerning theology’s relationship with philosophy, and my understanding of what it means for “all truth to be God’s truth,” a favorite saying of many natural or analytic theologians. Karl Barth, as an expositor of God’s Word and as a Christian theologian in harmony with the voice of the Christian past, will help you to see the centrality, beauty, and exclusivity of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Triune God which he reveals to all people. Amid all of Barth’s heady and complicated theological musings is a beautiful, central focus on God as revealed in Christ, and can be a helpful, useful way of understanding anew the task that Christians have in continually reforming, re-using, and rethinking their employment of theological language.

Some works on Barth’s writings/life:

Newest Barth Anthology: https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Karl-Barth-Reader-Commentary/dp/1540960730.

Older Barth Anthology (written by one of his students): https://www.amazon.com/Barths-Church-Dogmatics-Helmut-Gollwitzer/dp/0567290514/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1ZPAMQKH40VOT&keywords=helmut+gollwitzer+barth&qid=1686231204&s=books&sprefix=helmut+gollwitzer+barth%2Cstripbooks%2C156&sr=1-2.

Classic Barth biography: https://www.amazon.com/Karl-Barth-Letters-Autobiographical-English/dp/0800604857/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1DN8514SX3KJO&keywords=eberhard+busch&qid=1686231272&s=books&sprefix=eberhard+busch%2Cstripbooks%2C154&sr=1-1#customerReviews.

Newest Barth biography (expands more on his relationship with student/partner Charlotte Von Kirschbaum): https://www.amazon.com/Barth-Professor-Systematic-Theology-Christiane/dp/0198852460/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2YLANCC2PPXFM&keywords=karl+barth+a+life+in+conflict&qid=1686231320&s=books&sprefix=karl+barth+a+life+in+conflic%2Cstripbooks%2C159&sr=1-1.

Barth’s massive Church Dogmatics (only for the truly O.G. Barth fans): https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=31521117842&ref_=ps_ggl_17730966692&cm_mmc=ggl-_-US_Shopp_Trade50up-_-product_id=COM9781598564426USED-_-keyword=&gclid=CjwKCAjw-IWkBhBTEiwA2exyOy5tvNBEYDxO7YWiHNjyGbuudJfveDY51VhbwcGSIhS8KVV-ObP9JRoCN-0QAvD_BwE.