Tag: Theology

Uncategorized

The Incarnation of Christ as True Union with Fallen Humanity (and Some Mariological Sidebars) in T.F. Torrance

Alex Renner

–

One of the few essential patristic principles which we receive from our older brothers and sisters in the historic Church catholic is the principle that “What has not been assumed [by Christ, in the incarnation] has not been healed.” Such was the implicit assumption of Sts. Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria, and such was the explicit argument of St. Gregory of Nazianzen, against whom all of the myriad voices who would contradict and drown out the Chalcedonian, Nicene faith that had been handed down by the Apostles to the subsequent spiritual offspring of the One-Springing-Triad God were casting their stones. In a very real sense, an attack on the Christological principle of His assumption of all that is human is an attack on the core of the Christian faith, a fact the fathers rightly and consistently perceived (but one which unfortunately leaves many Christians today, particularly evangelicals, scratching their heads). What does such a principle say, and why is it central (“essential”) to the whole of the Divine Program?

The Apollarian heresy, named after its chief proponent – a common feature of historic heresies – Apollinaris, claimed that Jesus Christ’s incarnation consisted of God the Son taking on all of what was human, a body and a soul, except the mind of a human. In simpler words, Christ became physically a man, but retained his divine mind in such a way as to “leave out” the assumption of a human mind. To Apollinaris, Jesus wore the body of a man but left out the mind; i.e., Jesus was less than truly and fully human. After an examination of such a position, contemporaries of Apollinaris began to contend that such an incarnational formula was out of step with the Nicene faith. To many of the Nicene/orthodox bishops, Apollinaris was spreading lies about what Christ accomplished for humanity in His incarnation.

Queue the Christological principle mentioned before: What has not been assumed has not been healed. The reason why these orthodox bishops rejected Apollinaris’s argument was because if Christ had not truly and completely become all that we are in our humanity, Christ was not redeeming us by uniting himself to humanity, but only “part” of us (in this case the fleshly part), i.e., only a part of what we are is redeemed. You can start to see the problem here. Such a conception of the incarnation puts down a major roadblock against much of the theological language we inherit from the historic Church catholic; we can no longer say with St. John that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” if he did not truly “become flesh.”

Let’s turn to T.F. Torrance’s Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ. Torrance writes:

“In becoming flesh the Word penetrated into hostile territory, into our human alienation and estrangement from God. When the Word became flesh, he became all that we are in our opposition to God in our bondage under law – that is the amazing act of gracious condescension in the incarnation, that God the Son should assume our flesh, should enter a human existence under divine judgment, enter into the situation where the psalmist cried Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, so that the Word or Son of God himself gave out the same cry when overwhelmed with the divine judgment upon our flesh… He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and was even made a curse for us.”[1]

Here, Torrance expounds on just the same topic. However, his further claim that “he became all that we are in our opposition to God in our bondage under the law” deserves to be specially treated, since there are many whose main beef with Torrance on this point is that they don’t deem it appropriate to claim that Christ assumed “sinful flesh”; to them, for Christ to assume sinful flesh implicates a corrupting sinfulness on behalf of the Son of God who assumes that flesh. Although I won’t say these critics are outright heretics, it is interesting that in their attempt to safeguard some aspect of the Son’s holiness and uprightness (arguably the exact motivation of Apollinaris and many other heretics of the same vein) they put a limit on what Christ assumed in his assumption of our human nature.

Torrance goes on, meeting these critics’ claims:

“One thing should be abundantly clear, that if Jesus Christ did not assume our fallen flesh, our fallen humanity, then our fallen humanity is untouched by his work – for ‘the unassumed is the unredeemed’, as Gregory Nazianzen put it. Patristic theology, especially as we see it expounded by the great Athanasius, makes a great deal of the fact that he who knew no sin became sin for us, exchanging his riches for our poverty, his perfection for our imperfection, his incorruption for our corruption, his eternal life for our mortality.”[2]

And then:

“If the Word of God did not really come into our fallen existence, if the Son of God did not actually come where we are, and join himself to us and range himself with us where we are in sin and under judgment, how could it be said that Christ really took our place, took our cause upon himself in order to redeem us? What could we then have to do with him? We stand before God as flesh of sin under God’s judgment, and it is into this concrete form of our sin-laden, corruptible and mortal humanity in which we are damned and lost that Christ came, without ceasing to be the holy Son of God. He entered into complete solidarity with us in our sinful existence in order to save us, without becoming himself a sinner [emphasis added].”[3]

–

Torrance makes his point well. See, much of theological history in the past millennium has tended to argue that – although it is completely true that Christ assumed all that we are – Christ took on a humanity that in a very real sense was already healed, especially if such humanity was bestowed on him by being birthed from the Mother of God, the Theotokos, whom many theologians consider to have been conceived in an “immaculate” way as well. Well, if the Mother of God holds a humanity which is already cleansed, then what Christ assumes by being born of the Theotokos is a humanity which is foreign to the rest of us, right? This seems, to me, to be an impasse at which a Mariology or Christology which disallows any talk of Christ or Mary holding sinful flesh (not that they themselves are sinful or engage in any sort of sin) contradicts the patristic principle we receive from the historic Church catholic. What do we do about this?

Well, as someone who holds a high reverence for the Theotokos and who even affirms (with the fathers) that she very well can be said to be sinless, I think the way forward for all catholic Christians is to hold to a sort of dual affirmation: that, just as Torrance emphasizes, Christ (and Mary) are completely sinless and spotless but in order to be in step with the Christological principle that “all that is unashamed is unredeemed” we must also say that Christ (and Mary) had corrupted flesh, at least in their earthly, pre-ascension, salvific lives.

Such it seems to me. Torrance ends, saying:

“Christ the Word did not sin. He did not become flesh of our flesh in a sinful way, by sinning in the flesh. If God the Word became flesh, God the Word is the subject of the incarnation, and how could God sin? How could God deny God, be against himself, divest himself of his holiness and purity?… By remaining holy and sinless in our flesh, he condemned sin in the flesh he assumed and judged it by his very sinlessness.”[4]

Our Lord Jesus Christ assumed all that we are in order that we may be all that he is in his restored, redeemed, ascended humanity. We truly do not have a great high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.

Soli Deo Gloria

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 61.

[2] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 62.

[3] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 62.

[4] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 63.

Uncategorized

Maximus the Confessor on Deification in His Two Hundred Chapters on Theology

Alex Renner

–

Maximus the Confessor is quickly becoming one of my favorite historical theologians. His characteristic Christocentrism, his healthy balance of apophatic and kataphatic theology, and his descriptions of the Christian life all lift up the soul to heights of love and peace which few contemporary Christian paperbacks have the ability to do. I am reminded of C.S. Lewis’s insistence, in his famous preface to Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, that, nine times out of ten it is the time-tested, ancient theological treatises which offer more spiritual encouragement than anything coming out in print today (with a few exceptions). I find the same to be true when reading Maximus; you can tell the man loved God, loved people, and found much growth in the contemplation of divine things. I myself benefit by allowing my soul to be lifted up by his theological movements.

When my wife and I were perusing the humungous Oxford book store, Blackwells, I came across a Patristics section which took up most of my time that day. While there, I purchased SVS Press’s copy of Maximus’s Two Hundred Chapters on Theology. It is turning out, in only the first few pages, to be enormously rich and spiritually and theologically precious to me. There is much gold to be dug up, here.

Maximus begins his work by setting up a few guard rails about God’s absolute otherness, using terms I have only ever read Dionysius use (i.e., “super-substantial” and “absolutely above/beyond essence or substance”). He then goes on to describe the inner life of the one whose spiritual/thought life is continually disciplined to draw itself up to God:

“1.13 He who has dazzled the intellect with divine thoughts, and has accustomed his rationality unceasingly to celebrate the creator with divine hymns, and has hallowed his sensory perception with unadulterated mental representations – such a one has added to the natural beauty in accordance with the image, the deliberate good in accordance with the likeness.”[1]

You can see here the patristic conception of image/likeness in Maximus, as well as a definition of deification as a mystical union or sharing, an unutterable love-relationship which God and Man continually keep up with one another (based on both God’s and Man’s dual initiative). Reading 1.13 reminded me of a similar statement of Maximus’s in his Ambiguum, where his explanation of mystical union revolves around something like the idea of being fully encompassed by the Other. To Maximus, our union with Christ is a full-encompassing, where, though we keep our essential humanity intact, we are known and are seeking to be more known only in line with those characteristics and particularities as filtered through God’s gifting of them. In other words, we refuse to be known or encompassed apart from our own total-identification and encompassing by Christ. Glorious.

Three “chapters” later, Maximus illustrates a provocative picture of salvation which further attempts an elucidation of deification. He writes,

“And he who has been purified, is illuminated; and he who has been illuminated is made worthy to lie with the bridegroom Word in the chamber of the mysteries.”[2]

Maximus chooses to relate our union with God to the sexual union which a husband and wife share on their wedding night. He caveats that image, though, with the “mysteries” as the place wherein that sexual union takes place. Now, by “mysteries” he means the sacraments of the Church: the Eucharist and Baptism. So, the sacramental mysteries are the means through which God unites himself, continually, to his people. Without a consistent participation on the part of the Bride (the Church) in the mysteries (the Eucharist), the Bride and Groom (the Word, Christ) are not in full union and their relationship is not initiated or brought to completion. Again, glorious.

In case you thought Maximus the Pelagian, however, he insists, later on in the first forty or so chapters, that:

“1.31 Never can a soul reach out towards the knowledge of God if God himself does not, having condescended, lay hold of it and lead it up to himself. For a human mind is not strong enough to ascend such a distance – as if to seize for its part some divine illumination, if God himself did not draw it upward, as far as is possible for a human mind to be drawn upward, and enlighten it with divine radiances.”[3]

Such union, mediated to the Bride in the mysteries, is more rightly said to be initiated and brought to its end by the Groom, i.e., Christ. It is Christ who reaches toward the Christian and pulls him up to union with Himself. Christ gets the credit and the glory for the Triune work he completes in us, using the mysteries, to do such work.

Amen, amen, and amen!

For those who want a deep spiritual nourishment beyond the steady flow of contemporary, popular Christian literature (much of which misses the point), turn to the ancient fathers for the golden honey of biblical wisdom. Turn to the Tradition, and be satiated.

[1] St. Maximus the Confessor, Two Hundred Chapters on Theology (Yonkers, NY: SVS Press, 2015), 51.

[2] St. Maximus the Confessor, Two Hundred Chapters on Theology (Yonkers, NY: SVS Press, 2015), 53.

[3] St. Maximus the Confessor, Two Hundred Chapters on Theology (Yonkers, NY: SVS Press, 2015), 61.

Uncategorized

Dionysius the Areopagite on the Most Holy Trinity

Alex Renner

–

St. Dionysius the Areopagite, also known as “Pseudo-Dionysius” in more scholarly circles due to the fact that he was almost definitely not the Dionysius mentioned in Scripture as the disciple of the Apostle Paul, is a Christian theologian who garnered massive subsequent theological influence in both Western and Eastern theology. His treatise On the Divine Names is a meditative Trinitarian exposition on the central doctrine of the Christian faith, the Trinity. While the language Dionysius uses to describe human participation in the Triune God can be, at times, oddly-phrased, his theologizing stands as a cornerstone of later theological thinking and by itself serves to bring the reading Christian into further contemplative union with his God, who is Father, Son, and Spirit.

The second chapter, subtitled “Letter to Titus: Concerning common and distinctive theology, and what is the Divine Union and distinction” is uniquely worshipful, and offers us some theological meat to chew on. A feature of Dionysius’s theological vocabulary here which most excites reverence for his project in me is the frequent use he makes of what I call “super” terms. Since, for Dionysius (and the rest of the Christian Tradition), God is “beyond being” – i.e., beyond existence and non-existence, being and non-being – God can therefore rightly be called “superessential” or “supersubstantial.” God is “super essential,” then, because he is “above essence” or “substance-above-substance.” Substances or essences for Dionysius constitutes all that exists in the creaturely realm, i.e., everything that is not God; since God is not a creature and therefore not a part of the “substantial” or “essential realm,” he is therefore “super substantial.” I have yet to hear a contemporary theologian use such a term, but I believe terms like these – which make quick work of the Creator-creature distinction once its meaning is explicated – can help explain in concise ways God’s wholly otherness.

Before beginning his explication of the Trinitarian-ontological relations, he prefaces in section II,

“By taking thence the Divine revelations, as a most excellent canon of truth, we strive the guard the things lying there, in their native simplicity and integrity and identity – being ourselves guarded in our guard of the Oracles [Scriptures], and from these receiving strength to guard those who guard them.”[1]

By thus beginning, Dionysius tells his readers that the Trinitarian dogma he will then go on to describe has their foundation and source in the “Oracles” themselves. The Trinity and the Bible are inseparable.

In case anyone thought he only relied on an individualistic reading of the Oracles, he begins his explication in section IV by writing that his chronicles function within the Tradition which he inherited, stating,

“The sacred instructors of our theological tradition call the ‘Divine Unions’ the hidden and unrevealed sublimities of the super-unutterable and super-unknown Isolation; but the ‘distinctions,’ the goodly progressions and manifestations of the Godhead; and, following the sacred Oracles, they mention also properties of the aforesaid ‘Union’; and again of the distinction, that there are certain specific unions and distinctions… there is kindred and common to the One-springing Triad… the Oneness above source of one.”[2]

There is such richness packed into this portion I couldn’t possibly cover it all, but his theological vocabulary continues to arrest me. The Triune being, he argues from the Tradition, is “constituted” by a “super-unknown Isolation” and also by “goodly progressions and manifestations of the Godhead.” Translated into later Trinitarian parlance, God is Father who generates forth the Son and spirates the Spirit. The monarchy of God, i.e., the Father, is the “One” who is “springing” within that life of the “Triad”; but that springing forth is a “Oneness above source of one,” i.e., in unutterable and unspeakable (apophatic) generation within God’s ontology.

He clarifies in section V:

“But there is a distinction in the superessential nomenclature of God, not only that which I have mentioned, namely, that each of the One-springing Persons is fixed in the union itself, unmingled and unconfused; but also that the properties of the superessential Divine Production are not convertible in regard to one another. The Father is sole Fountain of the superessential Deity, since the Father is not Son, nor the Son, Father; since the hymns reverently guard their own characteristics for each of the supremely Divine Persons.”[3]

Let us not forget the distinctions within the Godhead, Dionysius reminds us. The Father does not stand alone as a unitary monad without inner distinction, but is eternally the Father-issuing-forth-both-Son-and-Spirit; neither the divine ontology nor any of the Christian theological pronouncements makes any sense without such inner-life distinctions between Father, Son, and Spirit. The Christian faith rests on such distinctions. “How these things are,” though, Dionysius says, “is neither possible to say, nor to conceive.”[4] Don’t think about it; shut up and worship the God who is Father, Son, and Spirit!

Dionysius finishes his second chapter by clarifying one final point: that though the Names of God exclusively apply to each “distinct” – a word I hesitate to use – Divine Person, the attributes of divinity can be rightly said to apply to each: Father, Son, and Spirit. He writes,

“These, the mutual and common distinctions, or rather the goodly progressions of the whole Deity, we will endeavor to the best of our ability to celebrate from the Names of God, which make them known in the Oracles;-first, having laid down, as we have said, that every beneficent Name of God, to whichever of the supremely Divine Persons it may be applied, is to be understood with reference to the whole Supremely Divine wholeness unreservedly.”[5]

Glory be to our Triune, unity-in-diversity God for all His manifold graces.

[1] Dionysius the Areopagite, The Collective Works: St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Trans. Rev. John Parker (Neptic Fathers Publications, 2023), 12.

[2] Dionysius the Areopagite, The Collective Works: St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Trans. Rev. John Parker (Neptic Fathers Publications, 2023), 13. 

[3] Dionysius the Areopagite, The Collective Works: St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Trans. Rev. John Parker (Neptic Fathers Publications, 2023), 14. 

[4] Dionysius the Areopagite, The Collective Works: St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Trans. Rev. John Parker (Neptic Fathers Publications, 2023), 16.

[5] Dionysius the Areopagite, The Collective Works: St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Trans. Rev. John Parker (Neptic Fathers Publications, 2023), 19.

Uncategorized

Maximus the Confessor on The Lord’s Prayer

Alex Renner

–

Maximus the Confessor’s commentary on the Lord’s Prayer is a short, edifying, worshipful read. The preeminent eastern theologian’s interaction with what is going on theo-logically in the words of The Lord’s Prayer is illuminating of the pre-Modern outlook concerning the Son’s salvific incarnation and our subsequent participation in the Trinity’s life. He writes,

“Indeed this prayer contains in outline, mysteriously hidden, or to speak more properly, openly proclaimed for those whose understanding is strong enough, the whole scope of what the words deal with. For the words of the prayer make request for whatever the Word of God himself wrought through the flesh in his self-abasement. It teaches us to strive for those goods of which only God the Father through the natural mediation of the Son in the Holy Spirit is in all truth the bestower, since according to the divine Apostle the Lord Jesus is ‘mediator between God and men’: Through his flesh he made manifest to men the Father whom they did not know, and through the Spirit he leads the men whom he reconciled in himself to the Father. For them and on their account, he became man without any change and he himself worked and taught many new mysteries whose number and dimension the mind can in no way grasp or measure.”[1]

Maximus’s insistence that “the words of the prayer make request for whatever the Word of God himself wrought through the flesh in his self-abasement” is the most profound statement in this small passage here, since it remarkably proclaims that the Lord’s Prayer’s telos goes beyond merely providing a structure for prayer but is itself a proclamation of the fulfillment of the Son’s economic workings. In other words, the Lord’s Prayer is itself a sort of gospel proclamation which tells of Jesus Christ’s working out within himself of the perfection of humanity through his own human life, death, and resurrection. Glory to God for such a wonderful insight.

Maximus continues, outlining the meet response to such reflection on God’s gracious salvation:

“He gives adoption by giving through the Spirit a supernatural birth from on high in grace, of which divine birth the guardian and preserver is the free will of those who are thus born. By a sincere disposition it cherishes the grace bestowed and by a careful observance of the commandments it adorns the beauty given by grace. By the humbling of the passions it takes on divinity in the same measure that the Word of God willed to empty himself in the incarnation of his own unmixed glory in becoming genuinely human.”[2]

Our response, fueled and given by the grace of God through the working of Jesus Christ and the Spirit, is one of worship and obedience. In worshipping and obeying, the human Christian ascends to greater levels of participated divinity in a reverse manner to how Christ condescends from the heights of his divinity down to his finite humanity. Thus is the whole Christian life: one of deifying ascent from one glory to the next, fulfilling our purpose as little Christs.

May we each individually become an εικον of our Lord: the divine and human God-Man.

[1] George C. Berthold, Trans., Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1985), 102.

[2] George C. Berthold, Trans., Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1985), 103.

Uncategorized

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.

Uncategorized

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. 

Uncategorized

Baptists, Barth, and Holding to Your Tradition

Alex Renner

Karl Barth, if you couldn’t tell, has played a monumental role in the recent refining of my theological speech concerning God and man. Yet, Barth has also helped me think through a special difficulty I perceive many young, low-church Christian men are also wrestling with: a pull towards the high churches (Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, etc.). In my own experience, this (primarily liturgical) pull originated after I dove headfirst into the theological writings of many of the patristic figureheads like Athanasius of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria, the Cappadocian Fathers, etc. Learning about the patristic theological vision (centered around things like theosis, a robust Trinitarian theology, a deep sacramentology, etc.) pushed me to rethink the tradition in which I have functioned as a Christian, since what I was hearing from the pulpit was not (wholly) what I was reading in the Fathers.

This crisis event led me to seriously consider (and almost act on) a decision to split with the Baptists. However, as time went on, and my theological readings continued and widened (all while sweating over a decision to leave), I further clarified my stances on certain issues concerning the sacraments, the Trinity, and Christian spirituality generally; surprising to myself, I didn’t come out as someone who would be completely out of place among the Baptist fold. Instead of giving in to the pressure of many higher church apologists today – who ruthlessly pursue young men of other Christian folds in order to usher them into their own “true” church – I decided to meditate further on the implications of discontinuity of belief and practice across Christian history. I also found other Baptists who were wrestling with the doctrinal dizziness of the historic Church, Baptists who were trying to appropriate richer, less-dismissive practices within the wider Baptist culture, and (yes!) Baptists who held a similar love and sympathy for theologians like Barth and Torrance.

Back to Barth. As a theologian constantly exposed to traditions different from his own (as an out-of-place, theologically Reformed instructor in primarily Lutheran universities throughout Germany), Barth was forced to deal with the central claims and distinctives of his own tradition of which he had been previously ignorant. Today, many young men who begin to wrestle with the claims of their own tradition, while simultaneously meditating on the doctrine of the Church past, see jumping overboard to another ship as the only valid option (because of numerous factors like the general rootlessness which young people feel, a quick-and-ready choosiness available to anyone and everyone, and a decidedly individualistic American spirit). For Barth, however, who was daily brought up against the looming Lutheran giants around him, the option of switching traditions was an inconceivable option. Barth, for all the allurements which the traditions surrounding him presented, remained decidedly Reformed. Over time, though, he began to tweak his own tradition’s understandings of its distinctives as he garnered more and more due influence across theological circles, and was criticized for it. Now, I don’t mean to compare myself with Barth as some theological pioneer or hero, but I take comfort in his story which has certain similarities with my own. Barth took the hard way: he stuck with those who had nurtured him in the faith and sought to influence the Reformed church according to problems he perceived needed fixing.

Contemporary (American) Baptists have many theological, ministerial, and liturgical problems. They are by no means guiltless when it comes to their annoying confusion over the significance of central doctrines of the faith (the Hypostatic Union, the Trinity) and their subsequent appropriation of those doctrines for the sole end of holding up their prized elucidation of penal substitution. They have an almost offensive disregard for and ignorant misunderstanding of traditional liturgical forms (although this is changing), and a biblicism that gets much of their language in trouble, especially when its mixed with isolated rural settings in which no one holds them accountable for their theological speaking. Baptists also have a tendency to idolize their leaders, and pastor-worship is by no means a small problem.

On the other hand, Baptists are virtually undisputed in regards to their evangelistic fervor, their love for the poor and the downcast, and their rigid and unflinching passion for the truthfulness of the Bible. As far as ministerial problems go, I would rather have an overdose of these issues than a mediocrity in any one of them. Perhaps the greatest lesson which Barth has imparted to me – other than doctrinal language I have found to be indispensable to a robust and informed theology – is embodied in his acceptance and appropriation of his own tradition. I’ll end with a quotation from the CD which Baptists, for all of their blemishes, firmly hold to heart:

“For who really knows what grace is until he has seen it at work here: as the grace which is for man when, because man is wholly and utterly a sinner before God, it can only be against him, and when in fact, even while it is for him, it is also a plaintiff and judge against him, showing him to be incapable of satisfying either God or himself? And looking back once again, it is the grace of God as mercy pure and simple, as a sheer Yes and Nevertheless, which reveals, and by which we have to measure, how it stands with the man to whom it is granted. It is not independent reflection on the part of man, or an abstract law, but grace which shows incontrovertibly that man has forfeited his salvation and in so doing fatally jeopardized his creaturely being – which reveals his sin and the misery which is its consequence. From the redemption which takes place here we can father from what it is that man is redeemed; from the pure fact of the salvation which comes to man without and in spite of his own deserts we may know the brute fact which he for his part dares to set against God. Because the ‘God with us’ at the heart of the Christian message has to do with that pure fact of the divine mercy, we must not fail to recognize but acknowledge without reserve that we, and those for whom God is according to this message, are those who have nothing to bring Him but a confession of this brute fact: ‘Father, I have sinned.’”[1]

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), 6-16.

Uncategorized

Barth on Theology

Alex Renner

From Church Dogmatics II/2: here Barth gives a few preliminary remarks before expounding his unique (and revolutionary) take on the Reformed doctrine of Election.

“Theology must begin with Jesus Christ, and not with general principles, however better, or, at any rate, more relevant and illuminating, they may appear to be: as though He were a continuation of the knowledge and Word of God, and not its root and origin, not indeed the very Word of God itself. Theology must also end with Him, and not with supposedly self-evident general conclusions from what is particularly enclosed and disclosed in Him: as though the fruits could be shaken from this tree; as though in the things of God there were anything general which we could know and designate in addition to and even independently of this particular. The obscurities and ambiguities of our way were illuminated in the measure that we held fast to that name and in the measure that we let Him be the first and the last, according to the testimony of Holy Scripture. Against all the imaginations and errors in which we seem to be so hopelessly entangled when we try to speak of God, God will indeed maintain Himself if we will only allow the name of Jesus Christ to be maintained in our thinking as the beginning and the end of all our thoughts…”[1]

If Christological and Trinitarian Theology do not function as the central paradigms through which all other Christian doctrines are seen and interpreted, Barth says, the Christian theological project is doomed from the start. Since, for Barth, Jesus Christ is the unique and perfect and fully-revealing event of God’s-revealing-of-Self, to speak and presuppose (as the rest of the Western theological tradition does) that there can be true, substantial, or good things said about God apart from what is revealed in Jesus Christ – like what is propounded in so called “natural revelation” – is to take the wheels off the theological vehicle at the very beginning of the race. While Barth definitely aligns himself more with the Eastern Christian spirit of theologizing in this regard, his relegation of God’s-revealing exclusively to the Logos of God (Jesus Christ) even further separates him from the wider Christian tradition. Nevertheless, Barth is correct (albeit with a few caveats as to the locus of where Christ is to be found and subsequently interpreted).

The way Barth distinguishes himself from most all other theological methodologies is by refusing to subject his theological reflection to the “general principles” of philosophy and the analytic tradition’s conceptual structures, generally. Theologians would do well to see that the general direction of theological reflection today – a decidedly “post-metaphysical” direction – is not (surprise!) the spawn of Satan, but in fact should be seen as the heart of the task of the first-millennium-Church’s enterprise. Post-metaphysical theology, though it is admittedly being interpreted and applied in harmful and unbiblical ways, presents a better and more promising direction for the theologians who would uphold the absolute validity and infallibility of the Scriptures (all of which speak of Jesus Christ). Karl Barth points us towards where theology should be heading all the time: Christ, Christ, Christ! Any conceptual or philosophical shackles that would keep Christ caged should be done away with, destroyed, and left to the ashes of history.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 4-11.

Uncategorized

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.